Questions?

We are all different. We know that. One could argue, given our proclivity for an instrument very few people every attempt, much less become proficient, we are quite different. Yay us!

One of the major ways we differ from one another is in our fearlessness. Full disclosure – I’m a chicken most of the time. How about you? I am fortunate to be able to hang out with some incredibly fearless people though.

Ok, fearless can mean a lot of things but right now I’m thinking about being brave while being creative with our playing. And on that, we all run the gamut!

We all know of people who somehow rub two notes together and suddenly an amazing, lush, brilliant blanket of sound bursts forward, enveloping us and taking us places we never even dreamed of!

And we all know people who take something beautiful and amplify it, generating landscapes of abundance that leave us breathless!

And then there are those who are tentatively bold, making little nips and tucks but sticking fairly close to the well known – never straying too far from the shore.

And there are those who are small and timid, sticking strictly with the program, using what was given and becoming comfortable, never straying off the beach.

As I read this, it feels judge-y. Its not meant to be – I can’t seem to leave sight of the shore myself. What I do know is that we are all in awe of the first two and may wonder how we get into their lofty ranks! How do we move in that direction (even if we don’t get to the pinnacle)?* Here’s how:

Eileen Gray (architect & furniture designer)**

And right there is the crux of the differences between our boldness and creativity – it’s in the questions we ask. In the questions we think to ask and in those we’re willing to ask.

Here’s the secret – it never hurts to ask a question. And it nearly always opens door to another dimension of thinking about the original question. But if we’re not in the habit of asking questions of ourselves and our music – how do we do it? How do we ask ourselves musical questions and create our own music?

1. Be quiet. Asking questions (even of yourself) will go better if you have a moment to think. Because really, that’s what your question starts as – a moment to think. We often don’t give ourselves this luxury – even when we think we do. Breathe, quiet your mind, focus, and ask.

2. Is this good? isn’t a starting question. When you’re in questioning mode to get your creative juices flowing you don’t need to critique right out of the gate. Just ask – there really are no stupid questions.

3. Ask questions that lead to more questions. What will clarify your thinking and build your creative flow? You don’t want to know if it’s good, you want to know what it’s missing, where might this lead, or how it might fly higher. Don’t stop with the first question you think of, keep going, there’s gold in there.

4. Focus on your thoughts, not the tune. Eventually you’ll need to polish up your ideas, but when you’re asking questions, your focus is on discovery not performance. You can worry about how to make your ideas come out of your harp later. For now, the questions are focused on what might be, could be.

5. Challenge everything. Sometimes the best, most creative ideas get cut because implementation is intimidating (“I won’t ever be able to do 3-on-2”, “My four note arpeggios aren’t good enough”, “I can’t play that fast”, blahblahblah). Just because you don’t think you can do something right now doesn’t mean that you should abandon the questions. Questions lead to creative ideas. Implementation is improved through practice – totally different animals. Grab your ideas – worry about pushing your limits later!

6. What-if is your best friend. What-if has a million possible answers. What-if opens doors, windows, dog flaps, and other entrances! What-if leads to other questions, other opportunities, other ideas, other chances to be brave.

You might have noticed that being brave is a central element here – and you’re right. But let’s leave this here with creativity this week. We can talk about being brave later. As for now – what other questions would you want to ask you as you continue to create your music? If you’re more timid, what questions would you ask yourself this week to push your creativity just a little farther from the shore? Let me know in the comments!

* This is also a continuum – we’re all over the map, there’s no defined categories.

**Source: Eileen Gray: Her Work and Her World

News you can use

Did you know that there is now a harp emoji?! If ever there was a must-have addition to your phone, this has got to be it!

It wouldn’t be surprising if you hadn’t heard – this just happened recently. The Harp emoji was approved as part of the latest update by the standards organization. It was published in Unicode16.0 and Emoji 16.0 in September 2024 and was introduced on iPhones last week.

This might be the most exciting tech news of 2025!

It will be challenging to use the harp emoji to mean anything except harp-y stuff (no weird fruit or veg connotations here) so you should feel free to use it everywhere you would normally emoji-ate.

I’m not a phone tech genius, but if you’d like to add this brilliant emoji to your device, you can wait for your phone update – rollouts will be going on throughout the year. But if you just can’t wait, I found directions (no assuring they are the best, just info I found) here for Android or here for iOS.

Usually I talk about things I actually know. This isn’t really in my knowledge space, and I encourage you to read up on it if you’re interested. Here are some of the references I used:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/harp-emoji-1.7328612

https://emojipedia.org/harp#emoji

https://emojiterra.com/harp

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/here-are-the-8-new-emoji-apple-brought-to-your-iphone-with-ios-184/ar-AA1AaGEa

I’m going to wait until it gets pushed to my phone but if you’re an early adopter, I’d love to hear about how you go with adding the harp emoji to your phone. Let me know in the comments!

The Answer Is Not On YouTube

I get it. YouTube is an attractive nuisance. After all, where else can you go to learn all you ever needed to know right now about how to change a tire, make a martini…or play the harp?

I’m not denigrating or disparaging people who are trying to earn a buck/rise to prominence/achieve world domination (by teaching harp?) – it’s a living.

But…

There are limits to what you can learn by watching someone else do something four dimensional in a 2D space. Especially if you get caught up and watch video after video after video… Made worse if the time you spend watching other people play uses up all the time you have for the harp. Then you are not coming out ahead. Because no matter how much you can learn by watching, the real learning is in the doing – you know, the actually touching your harp, p-r-a-c-t-i-c-i-n-g!

I’m not talking here about content for which you have paid, online courses by legitimate professionals, or online lessons. I’m also not talking about short stints of poking around all the offerings – good, bad, and ugly – to get a feel for the wider world. No, I’m talking about all the schlock that’s out there – the stuff by any yahoo with a harp, a phone, and connectivity. Those people embody “you do you”. You, on the other hand? Is watching their videos really the best way to spend the precious little time you have for harp each day?

No. Turn that off and practice the things you are working on. On your real harp, in your real life, at your current real level. You don’t need to play at some weird angle, or hold the harp like it’s falling, or any of the other crazy stuff you see. Because like all the other unfluencers online (in every genre), you’re only seeing the stuff that made the edit – the false glam, the fake ease, and the counterfeit first-take. You know what you don’t see? The hundreds of lessons and the hours of practice behind every second of the video. They have already done the work so that it looks flawless, easy, and common. Online, everything is easy and you can be just like them. And you don’t even need to practice.

Right….

But this the real world. Yes, of course a little inspiration can go a long way. You should definitely have harp heroes that you aspire to be just like – in your own way. And just like every other worthwhile endeavor, then you should turn YouTube off. The answer is not on YouTube, just in you.

Now go practice! 😊

Perfect

Perfect

What an ugly word.

I often hear people relate that they can’t play a tune yet, because it’s not ready – it’s not perfect.

Pfffttttttt

There is no perfect. There is just today. There’s as good as you can make it just now. Be the star you are.

Don't be perfect, be a star!

I get it. It’s ouchie to perform. It can make anyone anxious to get out there. Especially when some of the repertoire doesn’t feel near ready, much less perfect. And that’s a shame, because I can’t think of any music that was generated to not be shared!

But then there’s that endless loop inside heads that sort of goes:

 it’s-not-good-enough-I’m-not-good-enough-it’ll-never-be-ready-why-am-I-even-trying-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and

How can we get past that – because really, music is meant to be shared! Here are five things to keep in mind:

One. Don’t be anxious (I know, easy for me to say). A lot of the time we are afraid and/or anxious – the tune isn’t perfect and I’m going to look stupid, people are going to know I’m faking it, I can’t withstand the humiliation of not being flawless, etc.

I hate to break it to you, but it’s not about you. People genuinely enjoy music. Even more, people love to hear live music. And they can get ecstatic being in an audience which is small enough that they can actually meet and have a conversation with the artist. You truly are offering a boon to someone, and you should acknowledge that!

Two. Playing perfectly is a failure. If you actually play perfectly, it likely means that you missed the mark for the audience. Every audience is different, even if it’s the cat and curtains or the same people on a different day, so you need to play differently for each of them. People who are listening to you play want heart, to make a connection, to feel. None of that is included in perfect. Perfect is mechanical, static, and dead. Ick.

Three. Rise to play again. So you missed a note or two (or a hundred), got off the tempo, got flustered, or otherwise felt like you didn’t do well. Maybe I haven’t swayed you off being perfect yet, so, here’s another harsh reality – you’re going to play those tunes jillions of times and there’s never going to be perfect. And that’s ok. Ref 2 above. Instead, think about how you got where you were (when something fell apart) and…

Four. Focus. Learn from the foibles of your wobbly performance and use that to focus your practice. Learn from your mistakes and go forward to make new, bolder, more daring, more creative mistakes! Learning goes both ways too. Sometimes your fingering deserts you and you can’t extricate yourself from a bad situation gracefully – then spend time evaluating your fingering and making repetition your friend. Sometimes you miss the chord you were aiming for and you get some glorious, jazzy sound – remember that stuff and mine it for more cool ideas!

Five. You are amazing, right now, right here – just accept that as true (because it is). Concentrate on comparing you to yourself. Every time I get off stage I am struck by two things – how many mistakes I made (I’m not going to lie – I am human) and how much better/easier/less terrifying it was than the time before and definitely since I started! This metric helps pull me through those times when I’m pretty sure I played with rented fingers all the while allowing me to be kinda pleased with my progress (no matter how slow it has been!).

At this point, you might be thinking that I write about this a lot. Well, I’m going to keep writing about this as long as you keep telling me about how you’re not perfect – and until it sinks in that you are good enough and that you should just shut up and play!*

When does the need to be perfect get in your way? Have you ever had that need cause you to seize up (I have!)? Never had that happen? Great – how did you get there? Let me know in the comments!

*Please don’t be offended, I say this to myself any time I start to feel me pulling back. We don’t play for glory or perfect-ing but because we love it, so we should all sit back, enjoy the ride, and shut up and play!