Jenius Creations

Author: Jen

  • Love to Love You

    I know I’m always saying it, but you might not believe me – I love to hear from you! Most of the time I’m living here in my own head, so it’s good to hear what’s going on in your heads!

    I’ve written a lot about getting your practice time in. Recently Sharon mentioned that she struggles to understand why getting practice time in is so hard for some people. Most of us are adults, so we don’t “have” to practice like we did when we were kids and a parent “made” us do it. We have freely (and lovingly) chosen to play our beautiful instrument. We are adding it to our lives because we have always wanted to play it, because it speaks to our hearts and souls, because in our mind’s eye we can see ourselves behind it making incredible music. Some, like me, play because at the beginning, it was there (sorry I don’t have a better, more romantic origin story – I really did start playing because while we were drinking wine in a hot tub, someone suggested it, and I had a little free time that week). It is an instrument we love to love.

    Sharon has a good point – why would you not make time for something you love? When you fork out many days’ salary for an instrument and pay quite a bit for instruction, why wouldn’t you spend as much time with your new crush as possible? When she began playing (as an adult), she not only looked forward to playing but also did play nearly every day. So, reasonably, she doesn’t understand how people can keep distant from their own true love! I don’t blame her for asking!

    She’s got a point – as a teacher it can be frustrating to have students come in unprepared. It’s also frustrating to see a student get stuck, especially in elements we think of as easy or simple, that are steppingstones to more challenges. And as a teacher, it can be heartbreaking to watch a student’s own frustration as they don’t make progress.

    I’m of two minds here. Of course I want my students to burst into bloom, playing ever more difficult music, generating their own compositions, flourishing as musicians. I’m not a monster!

    But I also need to be the teacher they need. To recognize why they are sitting here with me. To facilitate their learning – whatever it is they need to learn today and in the long run. To be honest, students don’t come to me to prepare for their Juilliard auditions. They don’t come to me for coaching ahead of their Carnegie Hall debut.

    They come to me because they have a yearning. Some of them are not even sure what that yearning is, but they feel it is connected to music of the harp. Some have played an instrument as a child, so they have some cognizance of the need to practice. Others have never played an instrument and honestly, practicing is a foreign concept. But they each have their own (differing) definition of success – and I must honor that…and play my role in aiding their journey.

    All my (adult) students are professionals in their fields. They’re not strangers to discipline or hard work. They range from early career to retirement, and they represent divergent fields from engineering to non-profit administration.

    They also have, you know, life to take care of. They face pressures from being laid off to moving, caregiving, care receiving, and more.

    And yet, they yearn.

    Are they challenging? They are, to a one, creative, intelligent, and curious. They make me think about the harp and music (and sometimes life) in new ways. But that’s about me – what’s more important is about them. And what they need to learn as we sit together.

    Of course I want them to become proficient at playing the harp, but here’s what else I want them to learn:

    1. Creating makes you feel whole.
    2. Learning new things requires bravery – that you already have and just need to exercise.
    3. While it’s nice to play really well, until then, it’s ok to play just ok.
    4. Comparison is the thief of joy.
    5. Often what feels like no progress is just processing.
    6. I cannot be disappointed in you – only you can be disappointed in you.
    7. Hard things have big, juicy rewards.
    8. What was hard yesterday will be easy tomorrow and be replaced with something even harder.
    9. When you’re being attacked by multiple things, it’s easiest to take them on squarely but one at a time – so if practice slipped this week, so be it!
    10. You can’t pour from an empty pitcher. This is something you selected for yourself – honor that.
    11. When life hands you lemons, flex! (if you’re not “prepared” for our lesson today, I’ll think of some other way to torture you! 🙂 )
    12. No matter how much you think I don’t want to review this again or that I’m bored with you, this piece, this technical element – HA! I have endless reserves of “again” – I use them all the time when I’m practicing and I’m happy to share them with you!
    13. A little bit every day is so much better (and sustainable) than an hour the day before your lesson.

    Students will often say:

    “I didn’t practice again – you’re going to fire me!”. 

    Nope, you’re not getting out of it that easily! I reply:

    “I will only fire you if you don’t practice and then come in here and whine, ‘I don’t know why I’m not getting any better’! Until then, let’s (do some musical activity that isn’t necessarily just playing whatever you didn’t practice).”

    Having said all that, there are many reasons that practice gets skipped. I’ve found that in new students it is often because they don’t understand that they have made a commitment. And it’s like getting a puppy (but without the cleanup). But a puppy will whine, cry, and piddle on the floor while your harp will just sit there going out of tune.

    Other students haven’t made a “permanent home” in their schedules for practicing, so they are in a catch-as-catch-can situation – and then it’s midnight and while lunches are packed, laundry is folded, and teeth are brushed, the harp is unplayed. It’s sometimes difficult to “find” that time. For this, I suggest getting up 15 minutes earlier for some you-time (I know, ugh).

    Sometimes, practice grows in our heads. We don’t have an hour to practice. And like a callus, this concern grows with friction. Well, duh, who has an unplanned hour? It can be difficult to carve out time for something you’re doing for yourself, that has no monetary value or an immediately observable domestic value. For this, I often give “counter-homework” in which their practice is to sit on the bench but NO PLAYING! Just plant the tush onto the bench and then walk away. The next week might be to set a timer for 2 minutes and play pentatonic improv, but when the timer dings, get up and walk away. No extra time. This is a gentle reminder that when you (finally) get on the bench, you want to be there! Making the time dear helps highlight this.

    Just so you know, I have it on good authority that the practice police are not going to give you a ticket if you break up your practice into smaller segments. You can do scales for 2 -3 minutes in the commercial break of the show you’re not going to give up watching. Do technical exercises for 3 – 5 minutes (which is actually less than the time for the commercials on PBS! (yes, I watch too much tv)). Want 10 minutes to work on your new tune? That’s about how long it takes to boil pasta (it will cook without you watching it and you get dinner at the end!). When we acknowledge that practice does not require a monolithic chunk of time, that we can control it and still learn, then it gets easier to squeeze it in!

    Enough of my pontificating, Sharon had a good question – if you’re not practicing, what’s stopping you? Are you bored with your tunes? Do you have a technique question that’s getting in your way? Do you think some version of, “this is pointless, I’m never going to get there (however you’ve defined “there”)? Do you dread your lesson time? Are you not gelling with your teacher? Do you struggle to fit it into your day? Are you no longer in love with your harp? Things that get in the way tell you a great deal and knowing the why can help with the what of “what to do”.

    If you’re struggling, your teacher already knows – and wants to help! So, you can always ask. If you don’t feel that would be a productive conversation, you can ask me!

    Do you find you often don’t get to practice? I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you have a chance to try some of the stuff I’ve listed here, I’d love to hear how that worked out for you! Sharon and I are very interested to hear your thinking about the thing you love to love, so please let us know in the comments!

    Name

  • Habits

    I talk about habits a lot – forming habits, building habits, strengthening habits. But there is something I have glossed over, so I wanted to bring it up – and that’s the time required for these things to develop.

    You have probably heard that it takes 21 days to create a habit. Like most of these “everyone knows” rubrics – it’s not very accurate. If it were, we would all have built an incredible collection of immutable habits…but we haven’t.

    That’s because it can take much, much longer than that to do all the things needed to really solidify a habit. You need time to develop, set, and inculcate any change. Habits don’t just need to be generated, they need to be nurtured and sustained. When the habits are new, they are susceptible to all kinds of attacks including fatigue, planning (more appropriately, failing to plan), scheduling, emotional upset, inertia, momentum, etc.

    We also often neglect to think about the other side of the coin. Typically we want to develop a habit to replace a different, “bad” behavior that we believe is not serving us. So we also need to include the time we will need to unlearn that behavior and install a “better” behavior.

    So the next time you think you need to develop a new practice habit – whether it’s to practice every day (even if only for a short time), to warm up every time, to include technical work, to learn new tunes, to learn new techniques, to prepare for specific events, whatever it is – be sure to give yourself the favor of taking the time you need. Use tools to help you succeed (journal, note taking, mark your calendar – whatever it takes).

    Define success. Reward yourself for the interim milestones. Celebrate your wins. And when you slip or slide, stand up, brush yourself off, and get back to it. You’ve got this!

    What do you think? Do you have a way to make habits stick? If so, please share – in the comments below!

    Name

  • A Harper Walked into a Bar…

    One of the things that I enjoy about learning by ear is that, from the beginning, you are learning not only the notes, but also what the melody sounds like. When we go to play, that sound is what we’re trying to recreate. It’s a pretty straight line in terms of how it sounds.

    On the other hand, learning the music from paper gives you memory support. All the details are there. The major aspects and the minor features. The demands as well as the suggestions. Everything you need to know all in one place, right?

    Not exactly.

    To be fair, the ink is doing all it can to ensure you know all the things. It’s trying to help by giving you so…many…details! It wants you to have all the information – all of it. The problem can start … when you walk up to a bar(line).

    Bar lines do make the music easier to read. They provide structure in the visual representation of what becomes fairly continuous sound. They can make it easier to keep your place. They encapsulate the rhythm and pitches. Bar lines make little, easy to manage, boxes which is perfect when you’re starting on a piece.

    At the same time, though, if you focus on this very helpful convention, it can obfuscate the movement of the music. If you narrow your work to between the bar lines, you can’t really get up a good head of steam because it’s over before you’ve begun. It is as if the bar lines inject a stutter to your reading (and by extension in your playing). The same thing that makes it easier to read can make it so much harder to play.

    We’ve all done it – we generate kludgy fingering because we’re focused on where we are (rather than where we have come from or where we go from there). We focus between bar lines which may inhibit our taking a wider view. When we work measure by measure, we’re cutting everything into tiny bite sizes (because we are trying to digest a great deal of information). However, while measures are tight, convenient capsules of music, the music itself moves in wider swaths. While we’re taking tiny bites, the music is happening in the big gulps!

    There’s no magic to avoiding this. It really requires shifting your focus from the small bites to the bigger feast (from the measure to the phrase to the movement). But the ink is visually compelling, and you might find that it is challenging to ignore how the bar lines cut up the flow. What can you do?

    When we are learning (which is always!) we need to be shifting our focus throughout the process. I’m not suggesting here that you never take the small step, the tight take, the à petit four bite! Rather, you will be making small changes to your focus nearly all the time so that you can both take the wider view and the note-by-note examination as you continue to learn and develop a piece.

    It’s sort of like driving – you look way ahead, at the car next to you, at your speedometer, at the lane lines, and back out again – always shifting your focus to manage the entire task.

    The bar line is a useful guard rail, but you will also need to take the broad strokes across those same bar lines. You can do this when you notate your music to capture both the movement of the music (wide view) and the fingering (much narrower view).

    Start by trying to ignore those bar lines. No, really, work as if they are not there. If that doesn’t work, you could use Wite-Out to literally remove them! (I am not kidding – this is why I always suggest you make multiple copies so you have plenty to work from while you mark and modify throughout the playing life of the piece!)

    Some of us are loathe to write on our music (I’m not finger pointing – I always think I have make copious markings, but when I get back to the music, I see that it’s hardly marked at all). Write in your fingering so you can plan ahead – especially when crossing the bar line so that your fingering makes sense. Mark your phrasing. Draw in your big (long) dynamics. – so that you can learn that too (remember there are so many things to absorb when learning a tune!).

    So, the next time you start an anecdote with, “A Harper walked into a Bar…” you’ll already know how to duck! Do you have a strategy for working across the bar line? Let me know with a comment!

    Name

  • Boring

    I hear you – you don’t (all) love playing scales.

    One of the reasons people don’t like to play scales is that they are “boring”. 

    Boooorrrrriiiiiinnnnnnngggggggg

    Here’s the problem with that thinking – boring is not a bad thing!

    Wait, what?

    It’s true – boring has some important positive qualities, all of which can make playing easier and better!

    What are these qualities? Let’s take a look – they come in two flavors – one cognitive, the other creative.

    The first of these – cognitive – means that you do not need to apply your full attention when playing your scales. When you have played something long enough, you have learned (something) about it. It feels like playing is getting easier (we’ve used this metric before!). Eventually it will be so easy you might think it is “boring”. But being bored is a really just a feeling of tedium, not an indication of thinking of the elements of playing. When tedium sets in, you actually have learned enough that your brain is looking for a new challenge. That means you have spare capacity to do or learn more. That’s why we have more complicated versions of each scale as well as other scale related exercises. This is definitely something to pursue. And it can go on forever – because once one thing is easy, there is room for expansion and adding to your effort. Once it’s easy, there’s no end to the things you can do to make your scales more interesting!

    The second flavor is creative. When you have achieved an ease of play as mentioned above, you can use that foundation for creative exploration! Being bored is a great place to start when you want to be creative. That same freedom you have from being bored will allow you to come up with new ways to play your scales. Or you can use those scales to come up with new melodies. You can also use these strong scales to come up with varying harmonies – the possibilities are endless!

    So, the next time you are thinking your scales work is boring, instead shift your focus. Develop a take on making them more effortless so you have the spare cognitive capacity to take them farther. Or use them as a launch point for creative exploration. Keep in mind that you can also bring the two together – using your freed capacity to be more mindfully creative.

    What do you think? Are you going to go for freed capacity or creativity or both? Let me know in the comments!

    Name

  • Build a Habit

    We just past Quitter’s Day – the day by which most people have let their resolutions fade out and die. It’s depressingly early in January to have given up. But really, days are long, especially if you’re trying to make a change in your day…or your practice…and motivation and willpower can only hold on so long.

    How do we make a different choice and skip right over Quitter’s Day so we can continue to grow?

    We develop habits that reinforce our continuing to keep going!

    What makes a habit? Repetition and intention, focus and routine all build toward consistent learning, growth, and performance.

    Pablo Casals was asked why he continued to practice given that he was 80 years old at the time. He answered that he thought he was making progress! And he lived quite a while longer, so he had loads of time to practice. He had a practice habit and so should you!

    So, what’s the easiest habit we should have but might not? What will get us to confident, fluent playing which comes to mind as an appropriate end state for all of us. Let’s build one strong habit that can support that and helps throughout our harp lives.

    Let’s build a daily habit of playing scales.

    We learn from a young age that scales are boring. And they are if all you do is rip through them mindlessly! But just a little bit of thinking and they become not only a technical challenge but also brain work and a portal to music we know and music we haven’t learned yet.

    Typically, we think of doing scales at the start of practice time – and they do make an excellent warm-up. But there is no rule that says you can’t do them at the end of your practice – like a desert. Or, for that matter, you can do them in the middle as a break between other tasks and learning.

    No matter when you do them, scales are a tremendous habit to build. And once you have a small, strong habit built, others can follow. When will you do your scales? Let me know in the comments!

    Name

  • Practice steps

    It’s January, so it’s still appropriate to be looking back at where you’ve been to help you look forward to what your next steps should be. As a teacher, I know that we are all over the map with this – some students already have a list of things they’d like to work on, pieces they’d like to play, events they’d like to participate in, etc. Some others look blank. So, who’s right?

    Like so many things, there is no right answer, only the answer for you. The downside to not having thought about this is that you might drift because you’re not heading anywhere. Of course, the downside to having already made a list is that you can be too focused and could miss out on serendipitous opportunities.

    Indulge me – jot at least a couple of things you’d like to work on this year (if you haven’t already). Could be technique improvements (because we can all use that – bad habits are slippery!). Might be to tackle a piece you have always admired but have been intimidated by. Maybe it is a social goal, like inviting people to play ensemble pieces together (formally or informally). Or possibly you feel like you need a challenge that will test not only your playing and learning but will really stress your mettle?

    Once you have a couple of ideas, take a look at them – probably some are smaller, shorter term (I want to learn to play (insert beautiful but very easy tune name here)) and some will be bigger, longer term (I will play with others in ensemble).

    Then you’ll need to suss out the steps that will get you there. For our short-term example that might be that you’ll need about 6 weeks total to study, learn, practice, polish, and finish that tune. In our longer term example that might be to identify 3 pieces of level appropriate ensemble music, find 3 people you would like to play with who are at or near your level of play, invite them to join you, assign the parts, learn and practice your part, set a meeting schedule and place, and secure a place to showcase those pieces. Obviously more steps, some that require 5 minutes, some that will require a little effort over some number of weeks.

    Both long and short term require that you keep an eye on where you’re going while also monitoring your progress, being honest in your assessment of your activities and development, “fixing” things, and checking that the gap is narrowing (or not).

    Once you’ve got the activities, you can then build out your practice time. We all want to be efficient with our practice time, so interleaving these steps will make a good practice plan – include steps for both small and big ideas. Look for ways to “double up” and hit multiple ideas with one activity (I’m looking at you, technical exercises!). This way too, you are never practicing just to practice – always narrowing the gap from where you are to where you’d like to be.

    All this will be true whether you’re working with a teacher or coach, or are guiding yourself. How will you incorporate small and large steps into your practice? Let me know in the comments!

    Name

  • Welcome in!

    It’s the beginning of another year that we get to play the harp! YAY!

    This is that time when subtle (and not so subtle) forces attempt to push us around with talk of resolutions, goals, words, and more to define our upcoming year. In fact, in the past I have shared ways to set goals, define resolutions, and denote focus for the upcoming year. I’m not so sure how helpful or important any of those have been.

    Why? Mostly because they start by implying (or stating) that you’re not complete or sufficient as you are. The implication is that you aren’t good enough and require a structured, stoic, grinding path to get there.

    Bah!

    Because we are, each of us, good enough. Are we perfect? No. Are we fully defined? Not yet. Do we have work to do? Of course! But that’s because one of the reasons we play is that we are actively seeking to grow!

    So, what should we do then? If goals, words-of-the-year, and resolutions are flawed approaches to our growth, what we really need is to find the small, consistent steps that will help move us toward where we would like to be.

    That does mean that we need to have some idea of where we would like to be – where we’re going. That is, we need to name what we intend to do with the time we spend making music.

    Then we need to have at least an inkling that we need a path. What that path might look like can be fuzzy – and it will likely change. Where we would like to be can be outwardly grand or simply important to oneself. The size of that intention is not so important as having some sort of waypoint so we can check that we’re moving forward.

    The first step then will be to look back, even before we put a name on what we might intend to do with our time. What are looking back at? How about:

    • What are we happy with from the past year?
    • What successes can we count?
    • What was hard?
    • What was discouraging?
    • What felt harder than we expected?
    • What just flowed out our fingers, over the strings, and directly to the hearts of our listeners?

    We have a long stretch of time with which to work (got a year? Yup!). So be gentle and thoughtful. There’s no rush. Take your time. Find moments of silence to reflect. Think about not just what but why, when, how, and who (nothing happens in a vacuum).

    Knowing our historical elements can help us formulate projections that align with our interests. Then we can define the small consistent steps we need to take to get there.

    That was a lot of words to say, “when you know where you’ve been you can see clearly how to get where you want to go”. So here in the first week of the new year, spend a little time reflecting on your musical past and pull the threads to help define who you are and who you want to become or what direction you’d like to explore. Make some notes and don’t be too quick to seize the first thoughts that come to mind. And don’t worry about evaluating your thinking – just capture your ideas – you have time. Welcome in – here we go!

    You know I love to hear from you…

    Name

  • New

    Happy New Year! Welcome to 2026!

    Thank you for being here, learning and sharing, and playing all the tunes!

    What are you hoping to accomplish in 2026? Can’t wait to hear – let me know in a comment!

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  • Celebrate!

    It’s that time of the year – time to celebrate the Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, and to bring the year to an end. I wish you a wonderful holiday full of joy and music! Play me a tune and I’ll play one for you!

    If you’re so moved, leave me a comment – you know I love to hear from you!

    Happy Christmas!

    Name

  • Next

    I know it’s nearly Christmas, so you’ve probably already learned all the holiday music you are going to for this year. So, the next likely question is, what next?

    How do you select the music you should work on next? You can, of course, simply ask your teacher to point you in the right direction. This is a great idea if you are a beginner or low intermediate – you’re at the stage in your harp life that you may not be ready to go without some guidance.

    But if you’re a super independent beginner, or a more advanced student, you want to be selecting your own next tunes. How do you do that? Well, here are seven suggestions to point you in the right direction:

    Go with your Heart – If you L-U-R-V some tune – learn it! This is also true for arrangements by someone you simply adore playing. Don’t worry about whether you’re ready. Tunes can be simplified, arrangements can be flattened, you can learn new techniques, and/or you can invest more time into learning. I never tell a student they can’t play a tune – they may not be ready to play it, but we can work our way there!

    Go with your Head – maybe you know that you are weak at something – rolled chords? Harmonics? Whatever your weakness – find a tune (or arrangement) that requires that thing and work on it until you are good at the weakness. Two birds, one stone – you correct a weakness and learn a new tune to boot!

    Go with your Gut – if you feel like you are missing something, you probably are. Seek out tune types you might be light on. Do you have all the different tune types you need to make a well-rounded set? Do you have fast tunes and slow tunes? Major and minor (and other modes)? Can you build good sets from the tunes you already know? If not, your gut is pointing out to you that you need to fill some gaps.

    Go with your Reach – like going with your heart – what tunes do you not necessarily lurv but every time you hear them, you think, “I should learn that”? Learn those. These can be a little slippery because these are the tunes that you like enough to want to play but not enough to lurv. So, keep a list and learn these along the way.

    Go with your Smarts – If you have loads of tunes but they aren’t in the right keys to make good sets, work on learning the tunes in different keys. This could be dedicated time to learn tunes in new settings OR it can be deep work on transposition on the fly. Both of these will be good for your brain, good for your tune list, and good for your playing!

    Go with your favs – Not everything you play has to be work. Make sure you have some playful tunes in there too! If you love Taylor Swift, you can play that. If you love Mozart – have at it. Just because you may have made yourself a niche doesn’t mean you can’t get out of it every once in a while. Holiday tunes are sort of like that, n’est pas?

    Go with your hunch. Be honest, are you working toward your Julliard audition? No? Then pick music that is a little bit challenging to learn but is engaging enough to keep you playing. If you don’t like it (no matter what it is or who assigns it to you), you’re not going to play, so don’t pretend. Move on to something you will play.

    For adult (and more experienced younger) players, you can step up for these choices. A good teacher will, of course, make suggestions to move you forward. But in the end, you’re the one who has to decide. Don’t push the peas around the plate – take a little time to determine what you should play next.

    Let me know what you pick – can’t wait to hear! Share with me know in the comments!

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