Put on your thinking cap

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I don’t know about you – but when I’m excited about learning a new tune I want to get right into it. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, just start playing. I want to sink my teeth into the music and hold on for dear life while I learn it.

How dumb is that?

There is a smarter way – an approach which would probably allow me to learn the tune faster and get past the ugly stage sooner so I really could get to the part where it’s pretty much just a joy to play. How, you might ask, would that work? I’m so glad you asked!

Analyze your music

Well, you can think first! By spending some time focusing on analyzing the tune, you can save yourself a lot of grief and be playing sooner. Now, this isn’t sexy and it might not be fun, but it sure does work.

You can analyze a lot of things about the tune, all of which will help.  Identify the time signature.  What scale is the tune in? How does the tune lie on the harp? What are the big patterns? What is it telling you?

And do not assume that this can only be done for written music. Although the analysis is done differently – by reading the dots or by listening, the bottom line is the same. Find the patterns, where they repeat, how they move, and more.

Put on your thinking cap, do that work up front and you will be able to move into new tunes more quickly and maybe even more confidently!

Box it up!

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Being organized will help you get more from your practice time by allowing you to spend more of your precious time at the harp rather than trying to find music. There are many ways to get organized – lists, practice journals, etc. will all help you focus your attention so you can spend the limited time you have to practice on practicing. But once you learn tunes, then what? How do you keep them in your head? You can have a Tune Box.

Organize your musicThis is a DIY project – you can be as creative (or not) as you choose on this project. You can make it fit your décor, your time available, your favorite color, or you can leave it as you found it – it’s up to you!  Here are the Step by Step Instructions:

  1. Get a packet of 3 x 5 (or 4 x 6) cards and a recipe card box (sized to the cards).
  2. Paint and decorate the recipe card box as you like (or leave it plain if you’d rather have more time to practice).
  3. While the box is drying (assuming you’ve painted, decoupaged, or glued things to the box), for each tune you know, write a card. On the card put:
  • Name of the tune (as well as it’s “real” name if it is in another language – if you’re squeamish, also include the phonetic pronunciation of the name).
  • Key signature (or write out the key in which you play the tune) and mode (if you know it)
  • Time signature
  • Type of tune  (or how you tend to play it – air? song? march? reel? jig? etc.)
  • You can also copy (and shrink) the first few measures and glue that onto the card to help you remember how the tune starts (if you only know a few tunes this seems silly….until the time you start to play Tune A and belatedly realize you’re actually playing Tune B which can be a bit disconcerting!)
  • Other tunes with which you might put the tune to make a set
  • Other items of interest you care to add – they are YOUR cards after all!

I’d suggest you put the cards in alphabetical order just to make them easier to locate in the box – I typically file by the way I think of the tune title (for instance, although the tune is Amhran na Leabhar, I think of it as The Song of the Books, so it is filed under Song not Amhran. But you can do them however you choose (I had them sorted by tune type but that didn’t work for me, so back to alphabetical).

After polishing but before you play your reward tune, pull a card at random and play that tune*. As you learn more tunes this will become more challenging – but it will help you to remember what you have learned and to refresh (to keep in your fingers, not concert ready) all the tunes you have worked so hard to learn. And you can also see physical proof of how much you have learned as you have worked so hard at the harp – it’s all in the Box!

*hopefully the tune (the melody at least!) goes swimmingly, but if it goes pear shaped, then you know you need to work on the tune some more, so you can leave the card out to remind yourself to give that tune a little extra practice so you remember it the next time

Quote of the week

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Typically, I see or hear things that lead me to think about everything else. This week isn’t like that! This week, the quote pretty much speaks for itself.

We’ve talked before about the importance of being kind to yourself in your practice and in your performance. But this quote takes it another step closer to the origin of the thinking. Here’s the quote:

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams

You’ll recognize the source – the creator of Dilbert. He usually has an incisive, if cynical, take, but this quote is certainly spot on – it couldn’t be more right!

Make Mistakes

There is an craft to making art and it stems from your own willingness to make mistakes, and then to pick up those mistakes and lick them, and keep the ones that taste good (you know, the sonic taste) as you keep going in the music.

My early teachers who taught me two important things with respect to this, although it took me a while to appreciate these gems. The first gem was that, no matter what string you land on, you are never more than one string away from a sound you might prefer! The second nugget was that we don’t make mistakes, we make impromptu improvisations.

For a long time, I really didn’t believe them – I thought they were being “nice” because I made so many mistakes. But over (a very long) time I learned that they weren’t just being nice – they were giving me gentle permission to make mistakes and to learn not only which ones to keep but also to learn my processes for selecting them. They were helping me to learn to do my own taste testing so I could select what worked and toss out what just didn’t speak to me. They were showing me that being willing to make “mistakes” was the point. That this was how I would make my art – by transitioning these excursions into elements of my music. That while safe was comfortable, and it might be creative, it certainly wasn’t moving my art.

So, go make some real whoppers, some complete stinkers, some small and some large mistakes…and see what you can make of them!

Make yourself practice – do some good

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If I were to be honest out loud, there are more days when I have to force myself to practice than I care to admit. There are always so many other things that need to be taken care of and which require my attention. And often sitting and playing feels too decadent to be work – making it even more difficult to practice and do the work. I know many of us have this same challenge. (And we know this is different from the occasional, “I just don’t feel like practicing! <whine>” malaise we sometimes find ourselves in!)

I recently came across a quote that is modifying my perspective on all this. This is an excerpt – it was part of a talk delivered by Karl Paulnack, Music Director of The Boston Conservatory*. I thought he made a good point – about taking ourselves seriously. He said

Karl Paulnack our value as musicians

“If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.”

And he’s right!  There is little more rewarding than chatting with an audience member after a performance and learning that you have created an experience that touched that person very personally and specifically.

He goes on to say more, about our value as musicians, the effect we can have, the good we can do. All of these are important – and we need to remind ourselves of these truths. No matter our level of play or our amount of experience, we have something to contribute, a good to give – and we have to work to bring our best when we are sharing.

So, go practice – the world is counting on us to do our craft.

* read the whole address here

Give it a new twist

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When you learn a new tune, there is a lot to learn and to remember. You are trying to keep a lot in mind as you play – what are the notes of the melody? What are the needed dynamics? What about the phrasing? And then there’s the accompaniment and harmonization!

You may recall that I am a big advocate for laziness and efficiency. To that end, I try very hard to reduce the amount of stuff I have to learn, memorize, recall, and reproduce. So it becomes essential to create a set of tools that allow you to wring the most playing and performance time out of each tune you learn.

One of my favorite tools is to stick to a basic chord progression – with a twist! What is the twist? Inversions!

Inversions

Not sure what an inversion is? It sounds complicated, but inversions are only a twist on a chord.  And with a little bit of practice, inversions can become second nature.

How do you play inversions? Here’s an easy tutorial:

  1. Place a root position C major chord*. [Lost? The root position is the 1 – 3 – 5 chord with the scale name on the bottom (in our example here it is a C – E – G chord). This is the Root.]
  2. Now, twist that C off the bottom of the chord and place it on the top (so now you have a chord in the shape E – G – c) – that’s the first inversion.
  3. To move to the second inversion, take that E off the bottom and twist it to the top (so now you have a chord in the shape G – c – e) – that’s the second inversion!
  4. And, you guessed it, one more twist and you’re back to the root chord, just up an octave!

As you play along (I know you rushed right over to your harp while you were reading!) you can hear that, while the chord is the same, each inversion is also different.  These differences meant that the inversions each give the tune a slightly different character!

Work on your inversions – practice them so they become second nature – and use them make subtle (but easy to remember) variations to your harmonies for the tunes in your repertoire and watch your repetitions become more interesting!

*I’m using the C major chord here but this applies to chords in any key – once you learn to do them, you can use them all over the place!

Reading is fun – duh – mental

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I’m a big fan of learning by ear – it is easy, portable, social, and exciting. Because of this, I often encounter people who expect me to tell them that they do not need to learn to read music or that there is no need to develop proficiency in reading.

Nothing could be farther from the truth! Reading is  Fun – Duh – Mental!

Reading is Fun-duh-mentalReading is Fun: First, never forget that reading music is just like reading a book – there’s a story in there, intricately coded in a way that only those who know the cypher can understand, just waiting to give you a bucket of new emotions! There’s Romance, Mystery, Biography, History, from anywhere on in the world – something for everyone! What could be more fun than uncovering the story within?

Reading? Duh! Reading is a necessary tool for every musician. Music captures and retains those patterns that make the music.  And although people are typically very good at remembering patterns, you will be able to remember more, better if you have multiple ways to access them. So, if you have learned the tune by ear, you have all those audio patterns (including pitch, rhythm and tempo). But when you add printed music, you also have the visual patterns (including direction, shape, an structure) that really help solidify what you already know (or help you retrieve what you already have stored but ….just……can’t ……………reach……………….in your memory).

Reading is Mental: Just as paper music can help you remember music as an additional pathway, the act of reading music is also a great mental exercise. Again, just like reading the letters to generate the words of a story, reading the notes to generate the phrases of the music in the visual domain provides another means of working along with the other modes including motor and auditory. All this mental work is, well, work. However, this work will really help you develop as a musician.

So, go read a good book (of music). And if it helps you to read better, try reading loud – that is read along with a recording before you ever sit to your harp…because Reading is Fun- Duh! Mental!

What makes a good musician?

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One can be a good musician even if one is not a full time professional . What makes a good musician? If you’re a regular reader, you might think that this is where I would say, “practice, practice, practice”!

But there is so much more to it than that! You see, musicianship is a journey not a destination – which is cool because it always gives you something to work toward! In that vein, here are six things that make a musician different from someone who just plays an instrument:

Musicianship

  1. Persistence and Practice. One could argue that practice is the working definition of persistence. But really, persistence involves more including focusing on continuing to grow, finding new music that inspires you, and pursuing places to play that fit your goals and still let you grow.
  2. Knowledge and Learning. There is so much to learn to be a better musician and real musicians are always learning. Whether it is gaining new tunes, mastering a new technique (coupled hands anyone? solid harmonics? you get the idea), or studying music theory, gaining knowledge can only result in stronger playing.
  3. Community. Even soloists are part of a community! We have communities of harp players as well as the greater communities of musicians (orchestra, sessions, workshop participants, etc.) and the environments in which we play – those communities help us grow and provide milieux in which development can be nurtured. Communities give us a base for our other developments.
  4. Listening. Just as we make sounds, we listen to sounds (music) from others (and ourselves). And as we listen, we learn more about music, what we think of it, what we like (and don’t like) and other perspectives on the music we make – you cannot listen to music enough!
  5. Be willing to take (and use) critique. Whether it is family members, audiences, or judges, gaining feedback, analyzing those inputs and using that information is a sure way to become a better musician.
  6. Enjoy the challenges you set for yourself – related to all of these is setting challenges for ourselves and enjoying stepping up to them. These challenges don’t have to be big – they just have to be yours (and they do have to be challenging!) so that we can learn and enjoy them.

So, the next time you think you’re not a musician, check to be sure your wrong! And just keep being you while you continue to develop into a good musician.

Greeting from OSAS!

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Ok, really I did put this together ahead of time so I could completely focus on OSAS.  I’ll post updated pictures soon.  Until then, a “postcard”!

OSAS

Make a move: Tranposing

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One of the skills musicians need (for a whole lot of reasons) is the ability to transpose tunes. Transposing is when you move from playing a tune in one key to playing it in another. For instance, If you have learned to play Happy Birthday in the key of D but when you go to the party everyone else is playing it in C – you either have to transpose it or you have to sit out. And who wants to do that? No one, that’s who!

So, it is clear that being able to transpose is fairly important. It is also somewhat intimidating to learn to do it – typically because we wait until we’re at that party to give it a try…and we know that everyone else can hear us either playing in the wrong key or desperately searching for a tune we already know in a key we never even thought to play in!

Tranposition

But, how do we learn to transpose?  Well, you already know – we practice! And as usual, I suggest a small steps approach:

  • Play the tune in the key you know. Might as well build up a little confidence to get started.
  • Next set your levers to the next key down (for instance if you always play a tune in D, with two sharps, you’d move into C with no sharps).  Now play the tune just one string down from where you normally play it. This is one of those times you’re going to wish you played without looking, because almost every time you make a mistake it will be because your eyes are getting in the way.
  • I also suggest you just worry about getting the melody. Give yourself a break and just get the tune down first.  Add the left hand later.
  • PRACTICE doing this – at first, focus on a single tune. Work on playing it on the new key. Eventually transpose the left hand too (same thing, move down one, be gentle with yourself).
  • Once you’re comfortable in the new key, work on moving back and forth between the two (yes, this is a little kludgy, but it works to get you confident and solid on both keys!).

Once you feel comfortable going between these two keys, you can practice transposing all the tunes you know (well, you know that might be a little bit of hyperbole – but practicing will make it easier and you will get better at it). Then you can also move to bigger jumps (for instance moving from G to D) which will strain your brain a little but will be easier if you have practiced the smaller moves.

So, keep practicing your transposing and soon it will be so second nature you can do it on the fly at all the birthday parties!