Monthly Archives: March 2025

Just Listen –

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Harp can be a somewhat lonely instrument. We play solo so often. If we play in recitals we are likely to be alone on the stage. It’s not that we can’t play with others, it’s just that we do spend a lot of time on our own.

But playing in an ensemble is something special! I cannot encourage you enough to find a way to play with somebody – other harpers, other instruments, combinations of two, three, 100 – whoever you can find to play with.

Playing with others gives you the opportunity to remember that when we’re making music, it’s not about you. And playing with others in ensemble can yield incredible benefits to you as a musician. I hear you saying (skeptically), “like what?”

There are the obvious benefits like being part of a team and being camouflaged. But there are even bigger payoffs. Here are some ideas for your consideration.

Being on a team shifts your attention from what you are doing to what you are doing together. No one has the lead the whole time. The melody moves between the players and parts. Sometimes you have the harmony, or the melody variation, or a highlight bit. The pressure to perform is shared. You can breathe!

You learn the importance of following the conductor. This can be obvious with a person standing in front of you, reading a score, and herding the cats with a baton. Or it can be subtle with someone selected to set the tempo, or count you in, or do some pseudoconducting (waving an arm to direct until their part starts and they have to play too). No matter the level of conducting, you must pay attention and listen to the direction you’re receiving. You’re not solo and you need to follow the conductor as a part of the ensemble team.

All of this is built on you having strong skills – good technique and good musicianship. You will be listening for your own tone, rhythm, dynamics as agreed, and you will be filling in tweaks to create the shared music.

But perhaps most importantly, you have to know your place. You must listen to the whole, not just your part. You listen for your entrances and make compromises to ensure the music is musical. You have to hear how your part fits into the whole. And you have to hear how the other parts are in and around your part. You will only get that if you listen intently and with purpose. You need to match yourself to the rhythm of the group and incorporate the inflections of the ensemble.

You must constantly just listen, stay with the crowd, do your part, and contribute to the whole. Just Listen – that’s how you do it.

Have you played in a group (of any size)? What did I miss? If you’re new to ensembles (or after reading this want to do even better) how will you improve your listening? Let me know in the comments!

Relax

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You know how it feels. You learn a fast tune – a reel or a jig. You can hear it in your head – faster, faster, faster! Sadly, your fingers are not q-u-i-t-e ready for that! But we’re focused and so we push. We push the tempo so we can play as fast as everyone else. We want to play faster than everyone else!

So, we set ourselves the task of speed. And we repeat (a lot, as we talked about here). We push as hard as we can.

AND IT ALL FALLS APART. Why (whine)?

This happens because we are focused on the wrong thing. No tune is good if it isn’t accurate and well played. That’s true of airs but one could argue that it’s even more true in the fast tunes. In a slow air you have time to fix things in real time. But in a reel there’s no buffer – there’s only hanging on and hoping for the best! And that’s stressful.

Stress is not good for fast tunes. It seizes your hands, your arms, you brain! You need to r-e-l-a-x!

No really. Try playing some tune you think you know as fast as you possibly can. When you’re in the middle of the tune, stop playing and check-in with yourself. Is your hand relaxed? Arms? Shoulders? Butt? Legs? (no, really, check your legs too!)

As long as you are holding a lot of tension and stress, you will not be able to play your fastest. Sorry, but it’s true. You have GOT TO RELAX!

And to get relaxed, you have to play at a tempo that doesn’t stress you out! If that’s at Lento/40, so be it! There’s no shame in a well played tune at an approachable tempo. Only when that feels easy and all the notes are correct (no, really – all the notes, rhythms, harmonies, etc.) will you be ready. Then you can speed up a little (like to 44!).

Use the “feels easy” and accuracy as metrics for when you might try going a little faster. This is where you can push yourself a little – each time it feels easy and is accurate (and be very strict on this – accurate is accurate, not sorta accurate, not mostly accurate – actually accurate!), then go a little faster. If you like more precision, use your metronome for each speed and make it part of your accuracy metric. When you hit your limit (and you will – we all do), slow down a little bit and get accurate again, then run at it again. This is a process that will take a little time but will help you develop a tune you thought was cool enough to learn into a tune you love to play!

Give it a try – take on a new fast tune and work it up this way. Let me know how it goes (in the comments!). Don’t have a fast tune – you can always ask me!

Weird but it works

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Before I embarked on this whacky phase of life as a harp player, I spent most of my time thinking about how people think about their work and how to improve that. Now my poor students have to endure my explanations about what we’re doing and how they might think about it. It’s important to know and understand not just what you’re doing but why.

So what I’m going to share today total makes me crazy. It works but I have no idea why. It just does. It’s a “tip” that might help you learn tunes easier and faster. And who doesn’t want that?

What’s this magic thing?

When you’re trying to learn a tune, there’s a lot to do. And even when you have the tune relatively well learned, you often find yourself stumbling. And if there’s a trouble spot, you will begin to build in a “speed bump” – a place in the tune that frankly scares you – and so you slow down and try to get through it.

If you don’t get that sorted out – and quickly – the tune will always have a speed bump and/or you won’t want to play it because there’s a scary spot. To get past those scary spots, you need a way to learn your way over it! So this week, I’ll share a way to get those smoothed out.

Find a shape at the beginning of a phrase. Place all your fingers as you will be going to do when you’re playing. Squeeze – hard. Definitely distort the strings – yes, squeeze that much. Don’t be wimpy! Then close your fingers – don’t play, just close (all the fingers at once). Place the next shape. Think about the shapes as you place and squeeze and then move to the next. Work in phrases. Think about what you’re doing in each shape. Focus on one hand and then the other (unless the shape of the tune makes that untenable). As the shapes become more familiar, shift your focus to the movement between the shapes. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat more than you think you should. Then repeat again.

Once the placing and moving begins to feel easier (than it had been) then you can shift your attention to playing the shapes. This isn’t the speed round – keep your focus on the shapes and linking them together. You can play and work toward making it musical once you can actually get from shape to shape cleanly and on time. If, as you start playing, you find there are still rough spots or ugly transitions, go back to the place and squeeze and come at it again. Don’t be afraid of repetition (and while you’re repeating – pay attention to what still needs work).

I don’t know why this works – and believe me I have generated multiple hypotheses – but it does. If, after reading this, it’s not clear, send me questions and we’ll see if we can make it clear for you.

When you’re working on a new tune, give this approach a try and let me know how you go – you know I love to hear from you!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day – how’s that O’Carolan tune coming?

What to practice?

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We all know that we need to practice, but one thing we often forget to teach is what to practice. While it’s easy to rattle on about practicing, actually teaching how to practice is more challenging.

People typically ask how long to practice, but this is the wrong question. Instead, start by asking how much time you have scheduled into your daily routine for practicing. Why? Because you definitely will never practice more than you have time for and you’re never going to “fit it in” unless you do so explicitly. This may be the number one challenge for adults – you don’t have a lot of “free time” and practicing isn’t free time anyway – it’s very committed time! You won’t luck into a free slot of indeterminate time in your day. You will have an identified amount of time into which you’ll have to fit it – and that is how long you should practice.

So, if the question isn’t how long to practice, then what is the right question? It is better to focus on what you will spend your time doing – what to practice? Here are some ideas to consider to establish what to practice:

What are you learning? When you first start a tune, everything needs work! Rather than having a scattershot approach, start by identifying the layers of stuff to be learned. This requires a level of concentration – because we typically want to do all the things all at once. Instead, name what is to be learned. How does the melody sound? what’s the fingering? how’s the rhythm go? where is the harmony? what is the order of phrases? all the things! Focus on what you can hold in your brain – when it starts to fall apart, focus on a smaller chunk. And while you’re at it, don’t compare yourself to others – I know that I can learn a lot more in one go (fingers, melody, rhythm) than I could when I started learning (when I learned one note at a time!).

“Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory”

– Coco Chanel

To paraphrase – before you start practicing, prune what you’re going to try to learn in one practice session!

What needs work? What is the weakest link? That’s what you want to focus on. Having trouble with the fingering? Just work on that. Can’t remember the melody? Just work on that. Screwing up the rhythm? Just work on that. Don’t try to work on everything all at once!

What are you doing? Remember that practicing is not a one-shot thing. You are going to practice day after day, week after week, month after month, etc. You’re going to practice the rest of your natural harp life. Remember that your practice will have arcs like a series of novels or a particularly convoluted tv series. Keep those arcs in mind – the short arcs (technical exercises), the mid arcs (etudes and “work pieces”) and the long arcs (your power repertoire). Just like novels or tv shows, all the arcs need to be integrated and make sense individually and together! Keep the end in mind.

What are you watching? It’s not enough to just practice or even to just practice the right thing. You also need to be demanding of yourself. Monitor your practice so that you can see what’s coming along and find what needs more work, different work, or both. Don’t accept poor work from yourself, you’ll only be shorting yourself. Each time you play/repeat, evaluate the outcome and determine what needs to happen next. This doesn’t mean be ugly to yourself – you need to be supportive but firm. Not sure if you’re judging yourself correctly? If what you just played would also cause you to check your teacher’s reaction out of the corner of your eye in a lesson, then it wasn’t good, and you need to keep at it.

All this seems like a lot, but likely you’re already doing most of it. It is important to remember that practicing is part of learning (certainly not the only part!). You still can look forward to loads of mistakes, frustration, errors, questions and laughter, excitement, and the thrill of getting it!

If, after you read this, you think, “that’s all well and good, but it’s one thing to know this and another to practice this way” try this. Tell your third-person self how to do it – write a lesson plan for that person. Be detailed and specific – what needs to be done, what you expect the outcome to be, and what to do next. Don’t forget to leave a motivational boost to remind yourself that you’re showing progress, and even if you’re not finished yet, you’re proud of your growth!).

Which parts of this did you need to hear? Do you feel like you are able to tell yourself what to practice? Will this help you make better progress in your practice? Let me know in the comments!

Ready for the day?

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It is, I’m sure you already know, practically that most important of holidays, not to be missed or overlooked and certainly never able to be over-celebrated.

Yes, it’s nearly St. Patrick’s Day. The one day everyone believes themselves to be Irish, or at least Irish-adjacent. As a harp player, it’s best not to be caught flatfooted and you need to have a tune or two ready to go. So, I thought I’d share one with you.

The best known composer in Irish history is Turlough O’Carolan. It would behoove each of us know to at least one tune by the man. He was, if nothing else, prolific with over 220 compositions to his name. And regardless of how you feel about the man, his story, his music, or St. Patrick’s Day, it’s never a bad idea to be able to whip out something by TC. He was active during the Baroque era, so you can definitely do double duty with these tunes when you’re scouring your brain for something to play for various specialty programs. Another reason to play Carolan tunes is that they are harp tunes, written by a harp player so at least they make sense and fit into your hands!

So, I wanted to share one of those with you today. This piece is Number 171 in the collection and is often referred to as Carolan’s Welcome. It’s recognized by audiences but it’s not one of the top tunes (like Ellenor Plunkett or Fanny Power) – so it resonates with your listeners but is not overplayed. This arrangement is fairly gentle so you can have it ready to play by St. Patrick’s Day and it’s also a bit spare so you can (when you’re comfortable) add your own ideas and nuances to make the arrangement your own!

So, here’s the tune. Give it a whirl* and let me know how you go (especially if you have a place to share it!). Let me know in the comments.

BTW – do you have any idea how hard it is to find a graphic for St. Patrick’s Day that is not insulting or ridiculous? Between the unending beer mugs, creepy leprechauns, and countless shamrocks – ugh. Hence the coin <sigh>.

PS if you’ve gotten this far and are not sure where the link is, click on the link and download the music!