Jenius Creations

Author: Jen

  • Afterglow resolutions – goal setting not new years resolutions

    So, by this time you have generated your New Year’s Resolutions and maybe started using an inspiration board to develop goals for your personal growth for this year (or you are humoring me by not saying you haven’t). We’re in the afterglow of the Resolutions. All done, right?

    Not by half – now the real work begins. Here in the afterglow we are close enough to forming our goals to forget that within a few weeks we will be in the hustle and bustle of daily living and will have all but forgotten them. We will have forgotten all our resolutions, not just the ones we developed for our harp life. By this time of January, most of us have already stopped going to the gym, begun buying our lunch instead of packing again, and not getting enough sleep, still.

    So there are some strategies to help keep ourselves on track. Here are a few to try if they work for you:

    Set an appointment with yourself. Once a week (or once a month depending on how dedicated and motivated you are), set an appointment with yourself to check your progress against your goals and see how you’re coming. This shouldn’t be a punitive time. If your goals are too aggressive – modify them. If you’re way ahead and your goals weren’t aggressive enough, modify those too!

    Record yourself. Most of us set goals that are related to our performance – either learning, memorizing, improvising, performing, arranging, composing or some other facet of our playing. Record your work so you can hear it better. No matter how well you play or how well you have learned something (including what you’ve written) you will be better able to review it if you listen to a recording than if you listen while you’re playing.

    Don’t be afraid to change things – including your goals. This is not the same as abandoning your goals as soon as things get tough. However, if you realize that you have set an inappropriate goal (a piece you have selected has only been arranged for pedal harp which you don’t have and has a zillion accidentals) – change it.  You should consider modifying a goal that just is not working. If you achieve a goal with relatively no effort (although you have passed your grade eight exam, you decided to work on learning Twinkle Twinkle) that goal may not have been as challenging as you had hoped and you could add a new one.

    None of these is focused on punishing you into meeting your goals. The point of the exercise is to keep an eye on your goals and an eye on your progress to assure that you continue to be moving forward. Be positive and friendly with yourself – and you’ll make it!

    You just have to start.

  • Coming off the season – inspiration boards

    I spend a lot of time on this blog exhorting you to set goals, make plans, and do other things to help you become a better musician. But sometimes, it can be challenging to get motivated to do these things. Especially because they are hard work! Or you might just be stuck. Maybe it seems like a big undoable task. Maybe you don’t know where or how to begin. Or maybe your goals are lofty and you’re not sure how you’re going to get there. Maybe a tool would help you to focus on what you’re trying to do and to find a path to get there.

    One way to get going is to start by building an Inspiration Board. This is a tool to help creative people be more creative. And it is just as good to help busy people be creative, or to help people who don’t think they are creative to be creative. It is a way to collect the things that inspire you in one place so you can be reminded what your goals are and possibly see linkages between ideas you have. I stole this idea from the home decorating shows on television (yes, all that good information and all I learned was inspiration boards can be very helpful!)

    If you check on line there are plenty of ways to make this complicated.  But I would suggest something simple. First, use a means that works for you. Many people make a collage from photos that represent things they want to achieve. I have a three ring binder that I filled with sheet protectors (the kind you use to put music into binders) and with both lined paper and manuscript paper.  I collect articles, photos, bits of TAB or musical notation, quotes, and other stuff I have found.  I just stick them in the binder. You can actually set up a bulletin board or make an on-line collage, or put things into a box. The form is irrelevant – it’s the function that is important. Collect things that give you ideas and put them somewhere that you actually look at them – so you can gain inspiration – and generate more ideas!

    Your inspiration board is for you. You can share it (as many online sights push) if you like, but you don’t have to – you can keep it where only you can see it. It’s your board, and your inspiration – you can do as you wish with it. Its also important to remember that the board is a tool – just like a tuning key. It can be helpful but it is just there to help, not to become a new vocation. So put as much (or as little) into it as you need to identify what inspires you – and build your goals for the coming year from that inspiration. Use the collection, not only to identify your goals, but also to document them so you can refer to them in later months (when the January clarity has dimmed). And enjoy looking at your goals and inspirations in a new way!

  • Self-Care

    Winter is a time of colder temperatures with brisk, dry winds, and rain, ice, snow and combinations of all of them. I’m sure you don’t need a weather report from me. We all have to get through the winter season where we live. The winter does bring some challenges for us as harp players. We have to take self-care seriously to assure we don’t get hurt. Here are two areas that will help you get through the winter successfully.

    Start with the skin. Your skin is the largest organ in your body. It protects you from a lot  including your harp – and other, bad stuff. It is your first line of defense. It protects you from disease. It is sturdy but delicate. You need to give it appropriate care. Being sure to wash your hands frequently is good for your health. But putting moisturizer on frequently is really good for your skin. Just like we get thirsty in winter because cold air and heating systems dry the air, our skin is also thirsty. Moisturizer will help keep your skin supple.  A shea butter, cocoa butter, aloe vera or other moisturizer you know works for you is good to have on hand all the time.

    Moving on to your hands – keep them warm – physically. Wear your gloves or wristies* There are lots of free patterns online if you want to knit your own or you can buy inexpensive versions in knits or fleece. They are very helpful, even in warm weather, for keeping warm before performances.

    While I always tell you the importance of warming up, in the winter it is essential to warm up before you play. Just like the rest of you feels the cold, your hands and forearms and their muscles will feel the cold. And if you are a more experienced human (read: older) you may feel the cold even more keenly. So that warm up to start your practice is even more important than at other, warmer parts of the year. In addition, consider adding a warm up to your office work in winter. Typing, writing, and other small motor activities (think texting) can also take a toll on your hands so think about warming up for those as well.

    I’m also partial to holding a good cup of hot tea!

    *”Wristies” is a patented and trademarked item, developed, according to the website, by a smart and enterprising 10 year old Girl Scout! Not an endorsement – I’ve never worn Wristies ™ but I like the idea and the story. Here I am suggesting any sort of fingerless warmer that helps you preserve your muscle warmth).

  • And now, the Rest of the story

    We’re working our way through the holiday season. There are things to do, gifts to wrap, gigs to play, cookies to bake, parties to attend, and we haven’t even gotten to New Year yet – yikes! You know what you need to do throughout all this, especially if you’re going to play your best – REST!

    What does rest mean? For some it will mean take a week off. Don’t play, don’t think about playing, don’t do any goal setting or planning (bet you never thought you’d hear me say that). Just Rest. Maybe have a professional manicure or a massage to help care for your hands and their little muscles. Take a little “me” time for your harp too – you could  have your harp regulated or change the strings if they need it. I’m happy to recommend my favorite local luthier if you don’t have one (just send me a comment and I’ll share that with you).

    We all know the importance of rest, even if we ignore it. Rest helps us recharge. It helps us get some distance from what we normally do – our everyday lives. And rest encourages us to return to our harps with a fresh perspective gained from missing our heart throb.

    Use your rest time well. Schedule it when it is best for you. Now is a good time because we’ve been playing a lot, but you may have another time that is better for you, maybe at the end of the flurry of summer learning experiences when you have a lot in your head? Then the rest gives you a chance to sort through what you’ve learned and determine what to keep, what to shelve to work on later, and what was a good learning experience but not something you need to keep.

    You can use your rest time to do other things – talk to your family members or read a book. Remember that these pursuits can also improve your playing by helping to broaden your perspective (and to rekindle relationships you’ve left slide while practicing – are those your children?!?!)

    A little rest will do you good. And when you’ve finished resting you’ll be refreshed and ready to get back in, work hard and improve your playing.

  • Make way for the New

    Wishing you and yours a Happy, Healthy, Harpy New Year!  See you in 2012

  • Happy Christmas

  • Repertoire building

    Now that you’ve begun to develop the habits of warming up and cooling down (I know you have started building these habits and that you’re not waiting to start this as a set of New Year’s Resolutions!) you can move your focus to other parts of your practice and development. We practice to improve our ability to play and to develop our repertoire. You can never have enough repertoire – just when you think you have all the music you need ready to go, someone will book you for one half hour longer than you can go or you have so many tunes that you can’t possibly practice them every day…you’ll get to the point (if you haven’t already) that you can’t practice them each week. And if you don’t practice them – I promise you, they will desert you in your time of greatest need.

    So you need to build your repertoire. And for this, as in all things, you should have some sort of plan. It can be a loose plan – but you still need some sort of plan. If you are studying regularly with a teacher, your plan may come down directly from your lessons. If you are not regularly studying with someone, you need to take more responsibility for planning. How many tunes do you want to learn this year? What types of tunes? What kind of set lists are you trying to build (are you working toward weddings? Parties? Stage sets? School presentations? Storytelling? Teaching? Therapeutic settings? Regardless of the venue and audience, you need to build a repertoire and you should also be adding to it over time. Even if you don’t play a regular gig, you need to keep your repertoire fresh so you can keep yourself fresh.

    Write down your plan and your goals so you can refer to them.  You want to make sure you don’t get off track. Be sure to check your progress. It’s ok if your goals are modest – most of us need to be reasonable. Use your overall plan to select the tunes you’re going to add to your repertoire. If you have limited time, focus on the music you “need” to fill holes you may have in putting a gig together. If you have unlimited time, learn what you like when you feel like it.

    And of course, insert learning, refining, and perfecting your new tunes into your practice schedule (and goals) so that you make consistent progress toward your goals. This will help you build your repertoire so you can join the ranks of people that say, “I played for six hours before I had to go back to the beginning of my rep”! (just kidding!).

  • Cooling down

    Last week we talked about the importance of warming up – a necessary activity each and every time you sit to play. But when you’ve finished your practicing, you need to close with a cool down. Cooling down is always included in a good practice session.


    The cool down helps the body recover (remember that musicians are the athletes of the small muscles!). In extreme cases, the cool down helps avoid muscle soreness. It also brings your practice to a controlled end (rather than a frenzied rush off to the next activity on your list) which may help you remember what you’ve learned throughout the practice session.

    You may know how to cool down from athletics (running slower or walking or stretching) but how do you do that at your harp? It won’t take more than 5 – 10 minutes and it is just as important (and maybe more important) than the warm up was.

    To begin your cool down – play more slowly and less loudly. You are still looking for a good closure of your hands to get the relaxation of the muscles that comes from playing with good technique. Finish up your practice time by playing something you like and know every well – something that doesn’t require practice. Relax. Keep your technique strong while you let your play unwind. When you are ready to stop playing move on to stretching.  Be sure to stretch as your hands and arms, as well as your neck, back, and legs.  We spend so much time focused on our hands that we forget that our entire body is contributing to our playing and needs to be included in our warm up and cool down.

    It is important to build your own practice for cool down.  When you have build the cool down that works for your, you can perform it like a ritual after each practice session and after each performance. Using a ritual-like approach will help you leave your practice or a performance thoughtfully.

    And sometimes, especially during the holiday season, you just don’t have time to spend at your harp. On these days, your practice could be condensed to just a warm-up and cool-down. At least you’ll have sat down to your harp which is better than missing the day entirely.

    Cool down and stretch so I won’t have to write you a blog post on icing injuries!

  • Baby, its cold outside…

    Warming up is one of those things we all know we should do.  But we want to get to the fun stuff, to playing tunes, so we skip warming up.  Or we give it short shrift and move on to more fun things. We might even feel guilty about skipping the “work”, but we skip it anyway. After all, we don’t have a lot of time to practice and we don’t want to waste any of that valuable time doing something that doesn’t really help us play any better.

    Unfortunately, this is a penny wise pound foolish approach. Every moment we spend warming up will contribute to our playing better. Warming up assures that our muscles are ready for strenuous work. Taking a gentle approach also helps us to do more with a reduced probability of injury from overuse of cold muscles and connective tissue.  The warm up improves our flexibility in our hands and arms.  If dancers just launched into practice without warming up, they’d be on ice, anti-inflammatory pain relievers, and bandage wraps.  We are like dancers.  But while they are working large muscles, we use those muscles (albeit differently) AND we use some of our very small muscles.  And we don’t want to end up on the ice/aspirin regimen, do we?

    Warming up is key if you are young or old, new to the harp or expert, in a well heated space or in a freezing rehearsal hall. The things you do to warm up with help you be more flexible and limber and will help you improve your form and tone as you work on the music you so desperately want to practice.

    So before you sit to play, be sure to warm up. If it is cold in the room, wear a sweater and wristies or fingerless gloves (think of them as the legwarmers for hands that they are – fashionable and practical). Go slowly and build warmth in the muscles and tendons of your hands and arms. And don’t forget that you are a whole – so warm up your back and legs, as well as your core. Gentle stretching will also help once you have begun to be warm. Some excellent ways to warm up your hands and arms include playing scales and arpeggiated chords in your favorite key. Start slowly and quietly and as you get warmed up you can increase your speed and volume. Watch yourself as you do these to assure that your hands are performing (thumbs and hands in a nice position, close your fingers to achieve release at the end of the movements, breathe, head up, spine erect). This is a time for contemplative performance – monitor yourself, being mindful of your actions, while allowing your body to warm up to the expectations you have undoubtedly set. When you’ve had enough of scales, move into etudes or other simple pieces that you know well.  Keep monitoring your play and work to warm up not to perfect the music.

    And enjoy this time you set aside for yourself. Know that these “useless” activities are the foundation for the rest of your practice, an investment in your rehearsal time, an insurance that you’ll get to keep playing!

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    As I look around the area I live, it is clear that the harvest is complete.  This is the week that we are grateful and celebrate our good fortune.  As harp players, we have much to be thankful for – a gorgeous instrument that is held in trall by many and is gentle with us, the dedication to playing it, the talent to bring to it, and the desire to share the contents of our hearts through it.  Enjoy the holiday (or its spirit if you are in a different country).  Take a moment to reflect on kismet bringing you here!

    Happy Thanksgiving!