Author Archives: Jen

Join Celtic Journeys in 2024

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Join Celtic Journeys in 2024

We have visited Scotland on the Harp the Highlands and Islands trips since 2010, so I was understandably sad when my dear friend David shared that he was ready to move along, fully retire, and enjoy more time with his lovely wife, Heather.  They both had done so much to share their country with harpers and harp appreciators that I couldn’t even imagine that I would be able to continue sharing the music of my favorite place on earth with other harpers (and their fans)!

But, honestly, I didn’t want to be done, and I didn’t have a solution, which made me sad.  Curiously, life in my world is always interesting, and another opportunity sprang up.

It’s a wonderful alignment with a travel company that specializes in small group travel experiences – much like what David had crafted.  I am so excited to join with Babcia and Yiayia who get what I wanted to share with you!  I think you’ll enjoy the B&Y approach too!

The focus is on creating a thoughtfully curated package of experiences that includes site seeing, interacting with people, and enjoying history, culture, food, and events, as well as incorporating a harp events where you learn and grow!  As before, the harp will be there for you (no schleping your own!).  And we know that not everyone necessarily plays the harp so harp appreciators are welcome to join us!   Play another small trad instrument? Also welcome!

Over the years, you had said that you’d like to see Ireland as well as Scotland and I heard you!  This year we have a completely new itinerary – on this trip we will travel for nearly two weeks, starting in Ireland and ending in Scotland!  The 13 day/12 night trip will include highlights of the north of Ireland and Northern Ireland with stops in Galway, Connemara, Antrim, and Belfast to see hawks, sheepdogs, giants, and glorious scenery.  Then we’ll travel to Scotland to see the sites of Glasgow and Edinburgh including the Royal Mile and the Edinburgh Tattoo!

The trip will be 29 July – 10 August and there are details here on the trip page.  If you have questions, ask away!   I am looking forward to seeing all these fantastic things with you!

Do you agree with your metronome?

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Do you agree with your metronome? 

I don’t have a great sense of rhythm.  Well, that might not be true, but it is true that I don’t have a good sense of time.  Whether it’s estimating what time I’ll be ready to leave my house or the interval between notes within a beat, I’m usually wrong. I typically don’t leave enough time to get out the door but in between beats, I inevitably rush!

For a long time, I struggled to improve my timing by torturing my metronome.  I grew up with a Seth Thomas – the classic “tick-tock”.  I’ve been a musician for so long that my Seth has an actual real wood box.  I look at it every day and will always be grateful to my parents for giving it to me.  But it took me a long time to be grateful! 

Why?  Not because I wasn’t delighted to be given such a lovely gift, but because the darn thing defeated me at every turn!  I found it confusing and dispiriting and frustrating.  Usually I didn’t know I was off until I was done.  And even on the few occasions when I knew I was off, I was never sure how or why!

GRRRR.

But one day I had a revelation.  I finally figured out that I was using my trusty Seth all wrong!

Whaaaa??????

I had always set Seth to tick the quarter notes.  But Seth is much more versatile than that!  And one day I finally realized it.  That day I was so frustrated.  I was off the beat almost immediately – how the h***?  I was like 2 measures in, and I was already off? Curses.

So, I decided that I wasn’t getting it and I needed to slow down (see, I don’t just say that to torture you, I say it to myself all the time!).  I set Seth even slower.  And then, (finally!) I realized that I could make the tick the beat and the tock to be the “e”, then the next tick could be “and” and it’s tock could be an “ah”.  And suddenly all was right with the world.

Ok, not really.  But because I had subdivided the beat formally, the wobbliness of my timing became crystal clear.  No matter where in the subdivision I was lagging (or speeding up), it was a lot easier to find now.  And then I had another thunderbolt.  If I used my metronome app, I could actually set the number of ticks and tocks to be whatever I wanted – so if I needed 32nd note precision, I could have it.  16th note precision? I could put sixteen beats in.  If I only wanted 8ths, I could have them.  And if I counting in quarters would do the trick, I could have TICK tock tock tock, so that I was not only on the beat but on the right beat!

And perhaps best of all, I could turn the volume up really loud – and wear headphones – so that I can indeed hear the ticks and tocks, no matter how hard I was concentrating (because we only have so much brain and if I’m working more than my brain can keep up with, then I don’t hear the metronome at all!).

There was another magical property that arose from this exercise – I found that I was actually mindfully counting more/better and relying less on “getting it”.  And once I was more accurately counting, then I could pick up the tempo more carefully – and accurately!

Now, as a matter of practice, once I have the rhythm down, then I can “step down” the metronome. I can go from 16ths to 8ths, and when it’s steady then I can go down to quarters.  Occasionally I can test myself and go back to 16ths to see if I’m as precise as I think.     

Now, don’t be fooled.  I still rush.  But now I’m much more aware of where I’m rushing.  I still struggle with picking up speed on triplets and with feeling like everyone else is faster than me.  But at least I have a strategy for improving. 

So, I challenge you to give this a try.  If you want it to be easier, start with a tune you already know and can play. Set up your metronome for the subdivision you need (not the one you want) and give it a try.   Remember that the metronome is a tool in service to you – set it as you need it at that point in time.  Be ready to add more subdivisions, slow down or speed up, make it louder or quieter, you’re driving.

Let me know what you learn!  Are you rock steady? All the way through? Is there a particular element you are always rushing (or late with)?  I’d love to hear what you learn – let me know in the comments!

I’ll be Bach

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I recently started reading daily posts from Arnold Schwarzenegger – known for his movie line,

“I’ll be Bach” 

What do you mean that’s not what he said?

I’m impressed with him because he demonstrates a single-minded focus on achieving things he thinks are important.  Now, whether you agree with him on his choices or not, it’s difficult to argue with his successes.  I admire that he works hard, doesn’t pretend that the work isn’t work, faces challenges head on, thinks before acting, owns his successes, moves onto other goals once he has achieved the current goals, and is relentlessly upbeat (sound familiar?)*.  I’m pretty sure that if he had an interest in playing an instrument, he’d be quite good at it – for all the same reasons.

But the one thread to which he frequently returns is the importance of consistency.  He champions the reality that, no matter what your focus (weightlifting, acting, authoring, playing an instrument) you have to put in not just hard work but consistent hard work.  He highlights that it is the small gains that accrue day after day that are behind success.  And that these daily small achievements build on each other to become what we often think of as “real success” – achieving big goals. 

He doesn’t discount that these small daily increments are sometimes challenging to detect. What does he suggest? Capturing them (dare I say, in some sort of journal?). Why didn’t I say that (except maybe here, here, here, and here)?!

Consistency doesn’t have to be huge, BTW.  Consistency is exactly what it sounds like – do small things with extreme regularity.  It means practicing every day.  Making some routine for your time at the harp so that you can complete the consistent behavior.  Acknowledging that you have been consistent (whether that’s giving yourself stars on a wall chart or giving yourself a cookie – well, that’s up to you!).  And don’t forget being grateful for the outcome of consistent small progress.

You can become consistent by making the commitment to yourself.  You can help yourself along with a calendar reminder, a schedule, a process, a cookie (if needed. I’m sure I’m not the only one that is big on external rewards!). Keep in mind that consistent is not the same as perfect.  If you mess up or get sidetracked, don’t beat yourself up, just get back on it – consistently.  You don’t need excuses, just get back to it.  If it helps, at the end of each practice session, tell your harp, “I’ll be Bach”.Could you benefit from increased consistency?  What do you do to keep consistent?  What might help you to be more consistent?  Let me know in the comments!

* if you want a daily dose of relentless optimism that’s nearly as relentless and almost as optimistic as this blog, you can get it from Arnold here in his latest thing of bringing positivity to the internet.  Not an affiliate, just a fan.

Pumpkin Spice Everything

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  1. Pumpkin Spice Everything

Remember when Pumpkin Spice was an autumn thing? It originated with holiday pies and then after hundreds of years (somehow, I’m not going to pretend to understand the mechanics of food fashion) it moved to coffee.  Then it migrated to other foods like cereal, donuts, yogurt, snack chips, etc.

This is wonderful – if you’re a pumpkin spice fan.  You get more opportunities to enjoy your treat in many forms.  If you wanted to, you could be awash in pumpkin spice (literally – there’s pumpkin spice body wash).  You could take your freshly washed pumpkin spice self to chase your pumpkin spice donut with a pumpkin spice coffee.  Pumpkin Spice Everything!

But there’s a dark side to Pumpkin Spice Everything (PSE).  When PSE is all the time for everything, it’s easy to get burned out on pumpkin spice.  With enough exposure you can become tired of it and PSE loses its attraction.  You see a PSE item and think, “ugh” or worse, “yuk”.

What does this have to do with playing the harp? Well – everything, of course!  Instead of coffee, donuts, and body wash, think air, jig, march and instead of pumpkin spice insert broken triads, boom chucks, or octaves.

When you introduce a left-hand pattern in a tune, it might be exciting and captivating – dare I say it – perfect.  But if it appears everywhere in everything you play, it will lose that special quality that made it perfect to begin with.  Not only will perhaps get bored with playing it, your listeners might lose that flare of interest they looked forward to and drew them to the music.

Don’t misunderstand – I’m not talking about how complicated the left-hand pattern is, only that it should not be used to inundate the listener (like with an overactive shake of pumpkin spice!).

If you are new to arranging your tunes, it might be uncomfortable to branch out from stuff that works and with which you feel comfortable.  If you’re less experienced with playing, you may doubt your ability to play different patterns.  Believe me, you will get there!

Are you maybe in a comfortable rut? Not sure?  Just observe your playing.  If you always use your “go to” patterns, you’re probably in a rut.  You might be at the PSE stage where everything is the same all the time.  But how do you keep the specialness of your left-hand patterns and make them something that captures attention?  Here are a couple of ideas –

Copy/Paste! I’m sure you have books and recordings of your harp heroes.  If you’re at a complete loss about where to start, listen to their recordings and read their books of arrangements.  What patterns do they choose?  How do those patterns mate to the melody? (and if there are patterns you don’t like, you can not do those!).  You can also copy/paste from more than one harp hero.

Cheat Sheet. Put all the left-hand patterns you can think of on a single page – a cheat sheet.  Keep it nearby your practice space so you can try options in different places in each of your pieces.  Start with something you know well so you’re not struggling to play the tune and have smooth sailing to try something fresh (PS – if adding something in sends the melody into a tailspin – go back to learning the melody, you don’t know it as well as you think you do).

Make up your own – there’s no rule that says, “these are the sanctioned left-hand patterns, all others are forbidden”! (some might argue this point, but why are you listening to them?)  Try your ideas.  Some will work.  Some won’t. Remember Edison? There were loads of failed attempts before there were light bulbs!  Better still, record your ideas – because your ideas will dissipate into the ether whether they’re good or bad.  If you’re recording, when serendipity strikes, you’ll be able to recreate it.

Have you fallen into the Pumpkin Spice Everything season with your music?  Had you noticed if you had? Did you try any of these ideas?  Do you have other ideas to keepbthe excitement?  Let me know in the comments!

100 Days

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I’m not sure what it is about big round numbers, but they are kinda captivating.  Like this little bit of inspiration – there are about 100 days left in the year!  Woohoo!

Then the question is what should you do with them?  I mean – come on – just think of all the things you could do with that time!

You could convince yourself that the year’s nearly over so you might as well coast.

Or you could dig out your goals for the year, take their measure, and decide the year is wash and maybe next year you’ll start over.

Or you could dig out your goals for the year, take their measure, and decide that you crushed that and you can cruise until January.

Or you could see that opportunity of having all that time remaining to do more cool stuff.  For you. To make even more progress. How great is that?!

So what could you do in 100 days?  How about:

1 Commit to learning one new thing each day (doesn’t have to be music, but that’s probably a sure bet!).

2 Commit to practicing every day.  Actually practicing.  It doesn’t have to be a full blown, formal practice, it could just be for fun.

3 Commit to paying a compliment each day – to yourself.

4 Commit to identifying what you’d like to do in the following 100 days after this (ok, that’s just a nice way to say get a head start on your goals for the next year).

5 Consider making an “activity board” so you don’t get stuck in a rut and can leverage your creativity!

6 Think about what you would do (differently?) if it was the beginning of the year rather than most of the way through it)

You can focus on music (after all, why are you here?) or you could take an even broader view and approach to enjoying the remainder of the year. 

Which of these will you do? What did I forget to include? Let me know in the comments!

Dear me

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Dear me

No matter where we are in our harp journey, we have the opportunity to enjoy the ongoing process of becoming musicians.  It can also be easy to get distracted or unfocused or sidetracked as we meander on our path. 

Sometimes we fret over whether we are doing enough, growing enough, accomplishing enough. We compare ourselves to others – even though we know we shouldn’t.  We often spend more time than seems appropriate telling ourselves to stop thinking that way.

But what if we could be our biggest cheerleader?  What if we talked to ourselves like we talk to our friends?  What would we say?

This week – I’m going to give you some homework.  Write a letter to your future self – to you in 5 years.  Tell yourself all the things you have done and what you’re working on now.  Whisper your fears, and hopes, and plans.  Then tell yourself where you’d like to be when you are where they are.  And how you were thinking you might be going about getting there.

You might be scoffing – this is silly you might say.  But what if you suspended your disbelief for just a sec? Then you might see the wisdom in thinking about who you would like to be later. 

And since you’re talking to your future self, you can be bossy.  You could tell yourself that you will have to do something hard so that your current self can successfully do the thing you have been talking you out of.  You could be brutally honest and suggest you stop doing things that you repeat so you don’t have to risk failing – so that future you will be there (when you get there).

But while you’re writing, how about you also tell your future self how proud of yourself you are (or should be).  And maybe relate what you’re hoping you’ll have done by then (and maybe what’s stopping or inhibiting you?).

So, get out your nicest writing paper and do your homework!  Let me know in the comments what you think after writing to yourself.  What do you think the letter you get back will say? What would be your response?  If you’d like to share too, let me know!

 

 

HARP in Space!

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HARP in Space!

This might be old news to you, but I just learned that NASA has a HARP! 

Ok, for NASA, HARP means Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas.  What?

NASA HARP Logo

HARPs in Space!

Loads of science-y words to say Hearing the activity of the Sun.

No, really.  The idea is to capture data from the sun and the plasma it puts out, and then listen to it to find patterns.  Patterns that would be harder (or impossible) to find visually.  Or by a computer algorithm. 

The sounds represent the same thing as you see as the Aurora Borealis – how cool is that?! 

As musicians we know all about patterns in sound.  Sound patterns are our stock in trade!  And NASA is inviting you to participate to help explore the data!

This is one of a number of NASA projects open to Citizen Scientists to help them analyze data.  Data is something they have tons of so they need help getting it all poked at.  They provide the open-source tool with which you can poke at (and possibly reveal) what’s hiding in the data from space.  They point out that it’s like using sonar to see the ocean.  They’ll even train you to find stuff so you can identify what they are looking for.  You could find something no one else has identified – again, how cool is that?

Would you like to be a NASA citizen scientist and participate in the HARP project?  If this is interesting to you, you could easily participate!  You can get more information here or sign up to participate here.

Do you think this is as cool as I do?  I’d love to know if you decide to participate – and what you find! Let me know in the comments! 

Play Music on the Porch Day

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Play Music on the Porch Day

The problem with August is that, by the time we get to the end of the month, it’s been a long time since we had a holiday. Or a reason to celebrate anything (at least where I live).  But fortunately, someone made one up and called it Play Music on the Porch Day.  From the official website:

What if for one day everything stopped?  And we all just listened to the music.

Play Music on the Porch Day was Sunday, August 26 this year.  The criteria were stringent, and the rules to participate were harsh.  What was that?  

Just go outside

and play music!

The official site indicated that you could invite friends or play by yourself, and the event could be as big or as small as you want!  And that musicians in over 70 Countries worldwide would be participating!  What’s not to love about that?

While there are lots of things to do to celebrate the day, I had the opportunity to make music with my good friend Donna Bennett who generously donated the setting and invited me to share the day with her.  Our audience were people enjoying a beautiful day near the river in Leonardtown, MD. 

[easy-image-collage id=7063]

We had a fantastic time.  We played tunes we’ve performed a lot. We played tunes we have performed, but not too often.  And we played things we are barely hanging on to but still managed to not mangle too badly.  We played together and we played solo.  Mostly we just enjoyed the company and the laughter and the music making and the fun!  I did remember to take some photos (shock!) but didn’t manage to get a video…I’ll save that as a goal for next time!

Like every Annual thing, Play Music on the Porch Day will come around again this same time next year.  It’s always the last Saturday of August, so you can join in next year. And I’m sure that if you decided to Play Music on your Porch today, or another day, all your audience would be delighted, no matter the date.

Did you Play Music on the Porch?  Want to share your thoughts or photos?  I’d love to hear from you and see your pictures!

What’re you doing?

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What’re you doing?

Do you ever feel like your practicing has fallen into the trap under the sink. It can be really easy to get caught in the comfortable swish of the U joint.  Just be and don’t move.  Don’t practice, or barely practice, or practice but don’t actually change or learn anything.  Loll here in the dark and wait.

Maybe you don’t fall into that trap, but I sure can – especially in “between times” like now – too early for the holidays but after the buzz of the summer.  It could be so easy to stay in the trap because there is so much stuff that needs to be practiced that it can be daunting.  Stuff to be dwelled upon.  To think through.  To work out.  To review.  So much stuff! 

Or maybe we’ll just stay here in the dark (so little motivation). 

Fortunately, playing is more like a diamond ring.  When it’s caught in the trap, it isn’t as enjoyable!  It is totally worth the work of disassembling the drain to rescue it so it can glitter and sparkle. 

No, staying here in the dark isn’t ideal, but sometimes we just need a push to get moving out of the trap. How do we get moving? Well you could start by asking – what’re you doing?  If there’s no succinct answer to that question, the right answer is focus!  On what? Well, how about:

Start small.  Settle on one thing to work on.  Maybe it’s sight reading? Or counting? Or refreshing stuff you were playing but set aside?  The point is to focus on one thing rather than trying to work on everything all at once.

Count the things.  Figure out what needs to be done.  Maybe this should be the first thing – how can you focus on just one thing if you haven’t figured out what the pool of all things is, prioritized them, and then selected one?

Set an end.  After all, you’re breaking out of a trap so while you’re going to focus, it’s not an unending focus!  Figure out how long you want to work on the thing you selected to be first.  Will it be a timeline of a week or a month? Or will it instead be an accomplishment like playing at tempo or steadily or accurately? When you define the end, you will know when you are going on to the next thing.

Keep track.  You knew I’d get around to this.  You won’t know you’ve gotten to the end if you’re not tracking your progress.  This doesn’t have to be elaborate, just note what you did and how you did it.

Compare.  This one can be tricky.  Because you’re not going to compare your progress to anyone else, only to YOURSELF.  You will never know how someone else got to what you’re looking at, but you can know where you were yesterday (or the day before or the last time) and compare yourself to the you before, not someone else ever.

Be consistent.  Pick your timing.  Help yourself by not only doing the thing as you decided (every day, every other day, whatever you determined) but also by sticking to the same time of day every day.  Or tie your time to another event (for example, always practice right after you walk your iguana (or some other event of your day)).

Be nice. You’re not striving for perfection.  In fact, if you do it perfectly, you won’t learn anything.  By the same token, by remembering that mistakes help you learn, you can be your own biggest cheerleader!  (bonus tip – I find that sometimes I need to let the mistakes I make simmer before I can really figure out what I’m learning there, so I write them down so I don’t forget what happened)

Focus!  Don’t “task share”, don’t pick up your phone (unless you’re adjusting your metronome app!), don’t pet your fish, don’t drink your tea.  Just focus on what you’re doing while you practice.  You can do all those other things when you’re done.

What’re you doing?  Do you ever get caught in that sink trap?  If so, how do you get yourself out?  If not, how do you maintain your equilibrium?  Let us know in the comments!

 

 

 

Buttoned up

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Buttoned up

If there’s one problem we all share – no matter which harp we play – it’s replacing strings!  I don’t know anyone who springs out of bed of a morning and cries, “I sure hope a string broke in the night so I can put on a new one!”

Nope, no one I know.  You?

Like you, I know that with practice the knots get easier, string ends are less likely to spring from your fingers just as you place them, knots don’t pull through as often, and that eventually there’s exactly the right amount of slack for the wind. I know all those things are true. 

But I also know that, no matter how much I do it, I have yet to come to love replacing strings.  So, I’m happy for anything that would make it easier.  One of you asked me about this, so let me expound.

I LOVE STRING BUTTONS!

You might have seen them.  You might have heard me go on and on about them already.  But you might not have given them a try yet. 

String Buttons are made by Dusty Strings.  Here’s what they look like (photos patently stolen from the Dusty website).  I know, they don’t look like much.  In fact, they look like you got them at JoAnn Fabric.  Really, they look like you reached into Johnny Cash’s button box.

You might think that I just love them because Dusty makes them.  But you’d be wrong.  I love them because they make life easier!  They don’t just remove the chore from replacing a string. They can be an important part of growing older with your harp.

Wait, what? Well, think about it as we become more experienced humans, things change.  String Buttons can help you weather the changes.  Whether you have poor acuity, or your vision is changing – you might find handling thin strings and bits of string ends to tie a knot is becoming more challenging (especially in low light).  Or you might find that your hands are not as flexible or as strong as they might have been so gripping the string and the string end in a knot might be harder than it was before.  Or you might have built up a dread of making knots over time and ongoing battles with strings not knotting up quickly. 

In addition, String Buttons are inexpensive.  They come in packets of 12 and are just over a dollar a piece ($13.95). I just tossed mine in my tuning package (where I have the string ends) so they are ready when I need them. 

I hope you check them out – let me know what you think.  You know I want to know so share in the comments!