Author Archives: Jen

Should you have a lesson if you haven’t practiced?

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No practice?

There must be something in the air (besides pollen) because last week a disproportionately large number of my students sent some version of this message:

“I think I should skip my lesson this week because I haven’t practiced at all.”

I get it – I even remember uttering those same words myself.  It’s easy to think that.  After all, when you have had a “week from hell” (that seem to occur more and more frequently), you won’t have had time to practice. 

But this is incredibly wrongheaded.  Why you ask? Well….

It comes from thinking of your lesson as a mini performance.  But if you think of your lesson that way, then you do need all the practice you can get to be ready to be on that stage with the critic sitting in immediate proximity!

But that’s not what a lesson is! 

A lesson (especially if you’re an adult) is an opportunity to glean knowledge and information from someone who is guiding you to grow into the musician you profess to wanting to become.  I sum it up this way,

“I’m telling you these things so you can avoid my mistakes and I expect you to go on and make your own, new, original mistakes!”

A lesson couldn’t be farther from a mini-performance for your worst critic (you) and your perceived harshest critic (your teacher).  It is meant to be a learning opportunity.  In fact, if you come into your lesson and play flawlessly, then what’s the point?  It’s in the lesson you want to fail – spectacularly!  That way you can receive additional instruction that moves you forward.  You’re not a dog, you don’t need a pat and a biscuit – you need constructive feedback and tuition, so you can keep moving!

In addition – playing the harp isn’t just about flinging out the sounds of choice, is it?  Of course not!  There is so much more to being a musician and all those things can also be a part of your lesson when, due to other circumstances, you’re not prepared to play tunes in various states of dishabille.  What, you might ask?  Here’s a long but not exhaustive list of things you could work on:

  • Reading and Notation
  • Theory
  • History
  • Listening
  • Composing and Improvisation
  • Harmonizing
  • Rhythm
  • Effects
  • Tuning
  • Techniques
  • New pop tunes*

So, the next time you’re not feeling prepared, or feel as if you’re going to be “wasting” your teacher’s time, or like you are setting yourself up for humiliation, remember that there are loads of things to be taught that might not get covered when you are more prepared to play a piece and the focus is on learning or perfecting.  Also remember that your teacher has many things to teach to and share with you and this could introduce time to cover some of those (especially since there’s never enough time in lessons to cover everything). 

Have you ever canceled a lesson because you felt like you were not prepared? Have you ever thought you should have, but then had a great lesson in spite of your misgivings? Do you remember a time when you were dreading going to your lesson but it ended up being a great time?  I’d love to hear your take – leave a comment!

 

PS – Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate!

* No really, your teacher is still a person and might actually have other interests…but you’ll never know if you only ever talk about harp!

 

Pencil me in

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Pencil me in

There are some mistakes that get made all the time by an awful lot of people.  And some of those are the ones that leave you shaking your head because the solution is so simple and so easy.  But despite how easy the fix is, it still doesn’t happen, for some reason.

No, I’m not talking about something complicated like putting the coffee and water into the maker at night before you go to bed so the morning is smoother.  I’m talking about something even simpler.  Something that can make you a better musician.  Something you can do with the stroke of a pen.  Well, a pencil, actually.

MARK YOUR MUSIC!

You’ll be amazed at how simple your life becomes when you embrace this fix!  It has three steps –

First, make a copy of your music (Do Not write on your original!).  If you have a download, print a couple. Or use your home printer to copy it.  Or go to the local big box office supply store and use the self-copy machines.  There is no excuse! (Of course, this is you making a copy of music you have bought for your use – no violating copyrights!).

Second, now that you have extra copies to write on – find a pencil.  Not a pen!  Any ol’ pencil will work (or buy some while you’re in the big box office supply store making copies). 

Third, and this one is a biggie – use the pencil on the copies!  Mark anything you need to have marked.  Forgetting a fingering? Write it in.  Not used to reading all those ledger lines?  Mark them. Missing a dynamic? Circle it.  Any time you have a hitch in your reading, leave yourself a note so that you have a smoother experience as you continue to play.

Why not a pen?  Well, you want to be able to correct errors in your marking. But you also might change your mind as you continue to work on the music. Or you might completely change your understanding of the music and decide to mark it differently.  Or you might no longer need the notations.  There are a ton of reasons that at some time in the future you might want to erase what you’ve written.

A quick point – consider using colored pencils to highlight different items.  I usually use black for fingering, yellow for lever changes, red for dynamics, blue for repeats, etc.  This is your system for you to play your best so do whatever it takes for you to feel comfortable and confident while looking at your music. 

If you’re not a strong reader, then make two copies and use one as a “note speller” which will help you read the music and will improve your reading (because like everything else, reading gets better with practice too!). My students suggest putting the note speller copy in a sheet protector and use a dry erase marker so you can read, reread, and rereread – as often as needed until you build your reading strength. 

Remember, it’s not a library book.  You can write all over the music – it’s your copy!  Feel free to mark it up, erase it, mark it up again – as often as you need.   And if you want to, you can even leave yourself a sticker for doing a good job!   If you’re one of those people who tries to remember what you were doing before (and forgotten) – are you ready to mark your music now?  If you already mark your music – what do you do?  Let me know in the comments!

National No-Brainer Day

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No-brainer

Sometimes, things just line up. I just broke my computer and frankly, I’m too lazy to type an entire blogpost using my thumbs.

Then (on my phone) I got an email reminding me that this week (Monday to be precise) is National No-Brainer Day. That brought two thoughts to mind. First, that sounds like an excuse to spend time just playing to have fun! And what better way to get that into your day than to spend your regularly scheduled practice time having fun? That’s right, there is no better time! And second, what a great way to get a blog post out without having to do all that typing – make a graphic to remind us to have a little fun!

It was…
A No-Brainer!

So, sorry not to bombard you with words this week. Instead we have a graphic I could gin up with my thumbs (good thing they are prehensile).

If you love the little graphic let me know, it can also be a poster (which I would be happy to send you to enjoy).

How will you celebrate National No-Brainer Day? Let me know in the comments!

And please forgive any egregious errors, my thumbs have a mind of their own!

Dancing a tune

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Dancing a tune

Do you ever think about how your fingers dance over the strings? When you watch a really good player, their hands really do seem to dance among the strings.  They place surely and there is a fluidity to the movements that belies all the thinking that goes into those fingers in the moment.  But maybe more importantly, that fluidity is built on all the thinking that happens before the playing ever begins.

Early in learning a tune you might be focused on learning the melody, but you also need to work the fingering.  This is true regardless of your means of ingesting the tune.  Whether you learn it by reading or by listening, you still have to get your fingers on the strings. And in a way to makes it sing!

And this is where some of the trouble begins.  Because we need to think about a bunch of things.  And also think about a bunch of “groups of things”.   Groups of things are also known as Patterns.  And music in simply patterns. * 

What things?  Well, there are things that are easy to detect and we can easily find the patterns –

  • we can hear the pitches (and where they go)
  • we can hear the rhythm
  • we can see the dots (and where they go)
  • we can see the grand staff
  • we can see the bar lines
  • we can see the strings
  • we can see our hands
  • We can feel our hands

Not only are these things easy to note and each is a dimension of the tune.  What is more challenging to find is the relationships between all those things.  Because the pitches and dots, and the grand staff and the bar lines are related to the strings and where the fingers go (duh, I know that you know that I know that you know that).  But sometimes they don’t quite line up, like when

  • there’s a pickup at the start of a long line of notes (the bar line can distract you)
  • the phrasing makes is seem like there’s a break but really the fingers need to keep on going
  • there’s a place where you haven’t fully accounted for the notes in a particular direction (or how many ups for how many downs leave your fingers tied in knots – yikes!
  • there’s a note on one clef and you think you must take it in the hand for that clef

To avoid the unpleasantness of running out of fingers, having a finger fumble every time, never getting that eccentric note, or getting weird phrasing – because your fingers are not ready to take on the pattern you’ve encountered – take time to really notice what all the patterns are, first in each “dimension” of the music (sound, rhythm, staff placement, etc.) and then try to find the higher level patterns that may be concealed if you focus on only one thing.

Keep at it.  Don’t let it defeat you – it’s like a Rubik’s Cube only way more complicated (and a lot more entertaining).   Once you draw your focus away from the individual patterns you’ll be able to suss out the multidimensional patterns that will define the fingering for you.  And then your fingers can dance over all the strings!

What pattern gives you fingering fits?  Is it a particular tune, or a specific single pattern, or series of patterns that just won’t fit together? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

* I can’t take credit for this wisdom.  I learned this way of thinking from Kris Snyder, and I have unceremoniously stolen it from her.

We love a challenge

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We love a challenge 

What is it about a “30-day challenge” that makes them so popular?  Maybe they are attractive because we seem to be addicted to making ourselves better people.  And we also know that to make ourselves better (different might be a better word) we have to make changes.  Change is hard, and maintaining a change is even harder.  And we usually think a month isn’t so long, so you can endure whatever it is that you’ve decided to tackle.

Enter the 30-day challenge!  These are not magic – they are just structure.  And better – they are structure that someone else devised (so we fool ourselves into thinking that, because someone who knows something (maybe) generated it, that it’s better than anything we might come up with).  If someone else came up with it, it will be harder to dismiss partway through.  Besides, structure imposed by someone else isn’t self-improvement, it’s just improvement.

These plans are prescriptive.  They tell us to make a change, and then tell you how to make that change – in small ways, over time (i.e., 30 days).  To help us along, the challenge usually includes some means of noting and documenting the changes we are making (like a calendar).   It really is an adult star chart (because do we really ever outgrow the star chart from our preschool days?).

And because someone (not us) has defined this process as a “challenge” we honor it, and our commitment to it.  We don’t try to get ahead of ourselves – rather, we identify that we need all 30 days to make this change, so we need to allow it to happen over time, but we also can’t rush it!  The authors of the challenges also remind us that it’s ok to miss a day or two, so it is ok to not be perfect.  And we dutifully complete the challenge because we committed to it.

But maybe most importantly of all, these challenges build over time.  My personal favorite – the 30 day burpee challenge – starts out so painlessly that even I could do it.  Day 1 – you do one burpee* and then it builds incrementally over the intervening 30 days until you’re doing enough burpees to tackle anything.

Kidding aside, you can set your own 30-day challenge for anything you need to work on. Not getting to practice enough? Make a 30-day practice challenge!  On day one you might confine yourself to 5 minutes of practice, and increase each day – but also committing to the minutes you complete are also focused on what you want to be working on, not checking facetagram or adjusting your bench, or drinking your tea or any of the many ways we can sidetrack ourselves.  Or you could create a 30-day tuning challenge?  Sight reading? Warmups and technicals? There are so many things you might consider making a challenge to ensure they become part of your everyday life.

What would your 30-day challenge be? Here’s a tracker (download).**  Write in what you’re focusing on and make little increments for each day. Write those in the blocks and check each one off as you accomplish it.  Let me know what you decide (and how it turns out!) in the comments!

 

* If you don’t know, a burpee is a fitness exercise that is a combination of things no one liked doing in PE in school – it’s a pushup mashed into a squat thrust with a layup mixed in that you’re supposed to do really quickly. It builds both strength and cardio. And if you’re not sure, if my sarcasm is too subtle, I usually spend my time reading about 30 day burpee challenges, but do I do them? Ha! No.

 

**Think of it as your little reward for reading to the end!

February

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February

It’s already February which means that January has slipped past us (not sure how that happened, but I double checked – it’s definitely February).  Did you think I was going to let the beginning of the year slide by without bringing up goals and having a plan for the year? Ha!

So, have you identified your goals for the year?  If you did, how’s it going?  If you are like many people, you might have set some goals for the year back in December of early January, but you might not have made too much progress.  However, the year is early yet, so there is still time to catch up!  And if you haven’t set any goals for the year, here’s your opportunity. 

Where to start?  Well – what is important to you that you accomplish?  Is there a tune you wanted to learn? Or is there some technique you struggle with or that you still need to learn? Or maybe you want to be ready to perform for an event?  Some sort of “stretch” you want to try?  Those are all goals. 

What’s important is that you identify something that’s important to you and that you want to do.  It’s not complicated!

Once you’ve set some goals, we’re all caught up and we can get started (or re-started!).  What next?

Well, we need to commit to working on those goals. That means committing to it now.  And tomorrow.  And the next day.  Next month and throughout the year.  So often I tell you to write things down and this is no exception.  You write these down so that the day after tomorrow, when there are loads of other things on your mind, you will still remember that you have a goal, what it is and that it’s important to you that you get there.  Otherwise, it’s easy to get trussed up in the day-to-day and lose sight of it!

But goals are kind of big, so we need to break down each one (this is another place where writing it down can be helpful – we’re about to make a list of tasks!).  No matter the size of your goal, usually it can be broken into smaller tasks – each of which we can finish…and then celebrate!  We just have to keep focused and consistently doing what’s needed and moving on to the next step.

And we need to be kind to ourselves.  If you miss a day or a task takes longer than you thought – ok, it takes longer. Just keep at it.

What are your goals this year?  Do you know how you’re going to get there? Want to share an example?  Let me know in the comments!

Practice Hacks

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Practice Hacks

Everyone is passing along hacks for everything that happens in life.  Whether it’s a no-brainer like putting a paperclip under the tape so you can find the end the next time or a head scratcher like using Doritos as kindling when you need to start a fire (think that one all the way through), hacks are advertised as little things that make life easier (and the implication is that you should have thought of it already).  By extension, they make you smarter (for doing the weird easy thing).

There are even people talking about Practice Hacks.  But here’s the thing –

There are no practice hacks!

Yup, I said it.  There are no practice hacks.

Wait, before you become forlorn because I’m not going to give you cheap and easy ways to improve your practice, and before you start looking for ways to prove I’m wrong…

While there are no practice hacks, there are a number of ways to make your practice better!  These are all easy and cheap (or free).  And nothing I’m about to reveal should be a surprise! 

What are these mysterious methods that aren’t hacks?  How do you make your practice better? Here are a few things you can do/try/add to your daily practice:

  • Think – Structure your practice time so you spend a little bit of time thinking about what you want to do, what you need to do, and what you left to do from the last time before you actually start to work.
  • Plan – Based on your thinking, plan what you are going to do while you practice. Don’t leave it to chance.
  • Write – A practice journal in some form allows you keep track of what you have done, how it went, what you should do next, questions to ask at your lesson, and any other thoughts you have during your practice. This really is just for you so feel free to write anything you like here.
  • Listen – When I first started playing, I was working so hard to play the notes that I didn’t actually hear them! I had to learn to listen while I play – and you can learn that too. Sometimes when I practice, I focus on making the sounds and sometimes I set aside time to focus on listening so I can hear what I’m doing.  If you find you run out of brain space before you get to listening, then use your phone to record and listen to it separately – you’ll be amazed by what you learn!
  • Be present – Practice is often painted as drudgery.  But really, your practice time is time you’re spending on you with you. And you deserve it.  So be there for you. Put your phone away, turn off the tv, close the door, and be present for yourself.
  • Be prepared – If at all possible, have your instrument ready – out of the case and in front of the bench. It is always amazing to me how off-putting the harp can be if it’s enrobed in its case!  Also, have your journal, some pencils, pens, and post-its at the ready.  Make your tea ahead of time.  Preparedness is not just for Boy Scouts and the Coast Guard!
  • Be (time) Wise – Don’t think you must have 2 hours every day to make progress. Even if you only have 10 minutes here or there – those 10 minutes can add up.  And on “those” days if all you get is 10 minutes – use it!  Don’t talk yourself out of practicing because you don’t have a long stretch of time available.  By the same token, don’t write off an entire week because you missed a day or two.  Although we think about time in days, weeks, and months, these are artificial constructs.  In this case those constructs are not helpful.  The reality is that time is continuous – so you can continue too!
  • Chill – It is easy to get caught up in comparisons. Everyone you know has already learned that tune.  Or everyone is playing it way faster than you can. Or you have a simple arrangement, but everyone else’s is complicated.  Chill – it’s not a race! You do your thing, enjoy the successes of others, and play!
  •  Actually Practice – Practicing can encompass a lot of things, but the one thing it must include is that it is a time to knuckle under and do work. Focus and pay attention and do the things you need to do.  As mentioned above – it is time you are investing in you, so make it worth your while!

Like I said, there are no hacks.  There are no short cuts.  There are no ways to avoid the work.  But there are ways to use your practice time well and make progress – but you probably already knew that!  What are your “practice hacks”?  I’d love to hear – let me know in the comments!

Put it away

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Put it away

Do you have those tunes that seem to be made of rubber?  The kind that, no matter how hard you work on them, bounce right out of your head.  Boing – right out of your hands!  In fact, these tunes seem to have some sort of negative charge – the harder you work on trying to learn them, the farther from being learned they get.  Or maybe it’s just me that has worked and worked and worked and when I can’t stand it anymore, I <still> can’t remember or play it.  Grrr.  Worse – it’s almost always a tune you really want to play. Double grrr.

Like everything else, when you have this challenge, it’s good to have a strategy to overcome it.  But the “obvious” approach might not be the one you want to use.  Because when, as you sit on your bench, you feel like you should be able to play something, but you can’t – despite a great deal of brain work.  That’s when you might think you should double down and keep working.  Don’t!

It’s the perfect time to put it away.  Yup. Set it aside.  Put it out of your mind.  Don’t give it a thought. And definitely don’t work on playing it.  I don’t mean just a day or two – let it sit for a while.  Let it marinate.

How long is a while? Well, that depends on you.  I know for me it’s more than a couple of weeks.  If I can, I let it wait until it pops up in my head (uninvited – no fair “prompting” it!) and makes me crazy trying to identify it!  But when I sit to play it, I’m often pleasantly surprised!  Most surprising is that the tune that was just not going into my head is quickly worked up – like there never was a problem to begin with. 

So, the next time something’s giving you trouble, put it away and come back to it later.  Have you tried this?  Let me know in the comments!

Why do scales?

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Are scales your favorite part of practicing?  Do you do scales regularly?  Be honest.

It’s easy to be jaded about scales.  After all, you’ve probably been doing them most of your harp life.  But do you know why? 

Well, obviously, scales have technical potential.  They do embody so many important elements – placing, planning, crosses, rhythm, control, and more.  But there are other things about scales that make them so important.

Scales are the embodiment of practicing a small habit every day to build strength and resilience.  Doing your scales every day not only ingrains the technical elements but also gives you a dependable small win each day that you can leverage to keep yourself on track for your big goals.

Scales have a clear functional purpose but they also have a philosophical purpose.  They can help create a bubble in which you can be present and focused.  They also are a simple act of great potential.  They are the type of easy activity that allows your mind to work.

So it is important to do scales.  But don’t just do them – do them right.  Identify what your focus will be, the outcome you desire.  Keep the small goal in sight, but keep the “grand goal” in mind so that all your work one the simple stuff is always pushing you along the path to your selected stop.  Focus on what you can do today, with an eye to where you’d like to eventually get.

So, do your scales.  Do them well.  Enjoy them – examine what you do and what it means as well as what you could do next.  Do what you can do today as a step to where you are going – the journey has many steps – you might as well enjoy them.

Do you do your scales every day? Where are they taking you?  What could you do better?  Let me know in the comments.  

It’s a new year!

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It’s a new year – that time of year when, after heartily wishing you a Happy New Year, I would normally start blathering on about goal setting.
This year I thought I’d give you a bit of a break (gasp! Is she losing it?) (Nope, just taking a new tack).


The problem with goal setting is that it’s fraught with baggage. We think of goals as things we don’t meet. Or even finish. Or we think that we have set lofty goals and then we don’t “grow into them” like we thought we would. All of which leaves us feeling like we have failed.

Ugh.

This year, I’m going to suggest something different. And yes, I’ve totally stolen this from a million other places. This year will be different (for loads of reasons). So, let’s start differently so we can end differently!

This year, why not write a letter to your future self? Not too future – just to the you that you will be in December. That you will be different from the you as you are just now. Be a good correspondent. 

But, how are you going to do that? how do you compose a letter to someone who you have yet to be meet? Well…

Close your eyes and imagine yourself at the end of the year, preparing for a New Year’s Eve party to welcome in 2024. You are so justifiably proud of the year that was. Let’s do the retrospective as we get dressed. Just like in the movies, watch the montage of your year in review.

What have you learned? Where did you go? What have you done? What changes have occurred (both good and bad)? What worked?  What didn’t? What did you not get to that you kinda wish you hadn’t missed?

Write all those things to your future self – make it a nice, long, juicy letter! Give yourself the details of not only what you did but how you got to each of those actions. Take some time to think about what you will need to do to become the you you’re writing to. Don’t forget to include where you are (and who you are) at this point. Remind you where you were and why you wanted to cross the gap between who you were and who you’ll become.

And remember, that person who will read this is very dear to you – so be nice. Be positive. Be kind!  Pop the letter into an envelope and put it in your planner calendar to be opened in December. 

Of course, between now and then, you can keep notes in your practice journal – just to help your future you have a better recollection of the year gone by. 

Want to share what you’re going to tell you? Leave a comment!