Category Archives: Memory and Thinking

Do you HAVE TO practice?

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Do you HAVE TO practice?

Nope, that’s not what I mean.  Of course you NEED TO practice to maintain your current level of play, to keep your tunes in your head and in your hands, and to continue to grow.  After all, playing an instrument is a complex task that requires a great deal of memory.  So, yes, you NEED TO practice.

But that’s not the question.  The question is, do you HAVE to practice?

And the answer to that is question is…

 no

You don’t HAVE TO practice.

You GET TO practice!

You have the rare privilege to have daily harp performances in your living room – DAILY!  And you don’t even have to buy a ticket! What a deal!

Yes, practicing is an obligation – but it’s an obligation you have set for yourself.  You have a block of time already set aside by you, for you.  A lot of people have the intention of doing something for themselves, but you have already made that commitment.  And each day that you practice, you GET TO benefit from that commitment.

And that GET TO probably leaves you grateful to yourself for making that time for you. 

GET TO is a choice that you make (just like HAVE TO is).  GET TO is a mindset you select.  Just like you select what to practice, you can select your mindset going in.  When you GET TO experience the practice you NEED, your growth will HAVE TO show! 

What is your mindset?  Do you define your time at the harp as something you GET TO do?  Or does it still feel like something you HAVE TO do? Let me know how you see it – in the comments!

Not SLOW again?!

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I saw it in the eyes. I thought that maybe while teaching online I wouldn’t see that look – the “oh no, she’s going to make me play it even slower – how can I play it s-l-o-w-e-r?  I can’t remember it that slow, pleasepleaseplease don’t say to play it slower.  Crap, she said it!”

I get it.  We want to play more, we want to advance, we want to achieve.  And now that most of us are at home, we are being sent subtle (and not so subtle) messages that we should be achieving great things with all this free time we have now (that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish – because I don’t know about you, but I seriously am working more that I was before!).

You might have heard this same thing from your teacher*.  So, what does “practice it slower” really mean?  Well there’s the obvious – just play everything at a lower tempo.  But does that really serve you?  What is it that you’re meant to learn while practicing slower?** 

Here are six things you can get from practicing slower:

  1. Get the notes.  I’m not kidding – sometimes when we feel the need for speed, we are so busy going fast that we don’t realize that we don’t actually know the notes!  You have to know what comes next – not just by momentum, but each and every note, and the relationship of each note to the notes that come before and after.  Can you start in the middle of a phrase or shape and play?  If not, perhaps you don’t know the notes as well as you think.  By slowing down and focusing on the notes – and only focusing on the notes, you will be able to learn and remember them, individually and as a group.
  2. Get the rhythm. Once you have the notes and you’re not struggling to remember what comes next each time you run through, then you can focus on the rhythm. This is actually another way the notes are related.  But since you know what comes next, you can instead focus on how long, how short, how they fit together to make the rhythm.  And you can focus on being accurate – get the snaps right, give the half notes a-l-l of their time, etc.
  3. Get the harmony. Now that you know how the tune goes, and you’re able to play it fairly strongly, you can add the harmony.  (If you’re reading, you might want to treat the LH part as a different sort of melody – working on each hand separately to get the notes and the rhythm.  If you’ve done that, at this point you’ll be that much farther ahead).  When you’re learning a tune and arranging it, it helps to first know where you’re going – what’s the chord progression you’re hoping to end with?  You really can begin to develop that with just 1 finger.  You’re playing the melody, the rhythm is good, you don’t want the whole thing to fall apart while you try desperately to remember what comes next in the harmony!  So just use one finger – if you’re going slowly (this is one of those places people speed up – after all you know the tune right?) you’ll have time to remember what the chord progression is and get one finger there – on time.  As you get the progression in your head, you can expand the harmony to bigger and more complex chords – but go there in stages.  It always seems to amaze people that going from one finger to two in a fifth is hard, but it can be, so give yourself the time – by going slowly – to get there.  Only later will you be able to comfortably move into more complex chords.  And that’s ok. (caveat – on fast tunes, things that work here were you’re going slowly may not work as well at speed (and vice versa) so keep that in mind as you develop the accompaniment…of course practicing slowly and carefully coming up to tempo will allow you to work this out)
  4. Get the feel.  Ok, no one likes wooden music.  No one.  Even Pinocchio doesn’t like wooden music.  But you can’t really get the feel in there until you actually know the music.  So, once you’ve got it together, then you can (slowly at first) add the feel – dynamics, idiom, articulation – all those are things you have to remember, so add them in slowly and learn them.
  5. Get the tempo.  Now that you actually know the music, NOW you can begin to increase the speed.  I suggest to my students that you start “stupid slow” by which I mean a tempo that will challenge you to keep it together – that is so slow you have to subdivide your subdivision (e.g. something like one-tak-ee-tak-and-tak-ah-tak) just to get through the slowness between metronome beats.  There’s a reason there’s a 40 on your good old fashion Seth Thomas!  Imagine how much better you’ll be able to think when you’re done with that!  My rule of thumb is to play it at a stupid slow tempo and then move the metronome one tick (on an mechanical metronome) or four clicks on an electronic metronome (e.g. from 40 to 44).
  6. Get the polish. This is the thing we all want to get to!  We think it’s the prize, but really, it’s the culmination…you cannot polish what you don’t really know yet.  But when you’ve worked slowly and built the tune up to tempo, you actually have something to polish.  Because let’s be honest, typically when we say we’re here, we’re typically not really polishing – we’re still fixing and learning.  But by going slowly, when you get here, you’ll actually be polishing.

Do yourself a favor and slow down! You will know your music better and you’ll be more comfortable playing it.  You will also, whether you mean to or not, learn what gives you the most trouble so the next time, you can give it the time it needs while you’re learning…by going slow. 

How Slow Can You Go? Let me know you’re great slow going experiences in the comments.

* Not everyone agrees with this approach and I am sure some may read this and clutch their pearls.  And that’s ok.  I like to see people succeed in learning and breaking the music down into small pieces and working on the parts systematically has worked really well. Probably because at each step you are only focusing on learning one thing.  It won’t work for everyone, but isn’t it worth a try to see if it will be a good fit for you?

** I am a-l-w-a-y-s telling my students to practice slower.  Heck, I am always telling myself to work slower.  Even I get tired of hearing myself say it (I do still say it, because it works).  In the time of Coronavirus, blog posts ideas are being shuffled and I found the notes for this post on a sticky note on my desk.  I can tell by the color of the sticky that I made the note months ago.  So, after I wrote the post, it occurred to me that I may be this brilliant…or I might have read something or listened to a podcast by someone else and that’s where I got the six points.  It all sounds like the sort of thing I do and teach, but if I have inadvertently stolen someone’s idea, unfortunately, I didn’t write down whose.  But, I do not intend to plagiarize – if if you recognize this – please let me know so I can attribute credit.

 

COMMENTS BELOW THE LINE

For good or bad, photos don’t “fit” into the comments – but I LOVE when you share them, so I’m going to start incorporating “Comments Below the Line” in posts so there’s a place for them to show.  You will have to email me the photos, but that’s ok, I’ll get them up here asap.  Thank you so much for always helping me learn more!

From Helen:

Play SLOWER stickies

Memorize or learn?

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A few years ago, I set myself a goal of having enough music in my head so that I could play a three-hour background gig without sheet music.  This was largely driven by my innate laziness –  I just didn’t want to have to pack up and carry a music stand, a binder of music, a lamp, an extension cord, laundry pins, and whatever else I might have needed to read music to fill the time.  And, to be honest, I also liked the clean look of just a set list, no music stand cluttering up the place.  But mostly I liked not having to carry all that stuff.

Some of you have asked me how you could memorize all that music.  And you’ve likely seen the questions of memorization come up repeatedly in forums.  So many people believe that they must have sheet music.  That they cannot possible hold music in their heads.  One or two of you have indicated that it is impossible for you to memorize music, that you must read, you cannot depend on recalling anything. 

Memorize or learn?You say that you can’t memorize, but clearly you can memorize some things – e.g. how to spell your name, how to spell my name!, the recipe for your favorite cookie, the names of the days of the week, the rules for bridge, etc.).  It has been my observation that often what you think is a failure to memorize is often something very different.  

Memorization is the ability to recall information from memory.  Learning, on the other hand, focuses on the content of the music, the relationships between the notes, and the structure of the tune. 

Memorization is fragile.  Learning is resilient.

Memorization, because it is fragile, will desert you when you most need to be able to rely on it!  this can lead to gaps in your ability to deliver a tune when you’re stressed (like on stage!).  Sometimes failure to memorize is actually just a crisis in confidence.  In lessons, when I turn the music over and ask you play, often you do a good job – maybe not perfect, but usually fairly accurate.  That suggests that you actually do have it memorized, mostly, you just think you don’t. 

Sometimes it’s a crisis in speed.  When I teach tunes aurally, we always want to go faster.  When I ask if you know it, I ask in two different ways.  One is that, even though your fingers aren’t keeping up, you know where you mean to go (and if you’d slow down a little, you’d be fine!).  This is a lack of confidence.  The other is that you have no idea what comes next!  So, you haven’t learned it yet – easily fixed by spending more time.  This is a lack of information.

When the tune falls apart (when the music is turned or you have no idea what comes next), it’s easy to move on and continue to work – the tune is not yet learned!  But we often skip the learning step.  In a wild-eyed zeal to memorize the tune, we brute force our way through it. We repeat and repeat and repeat.  And we bash it into our hands and our heads.  But we don’t actually know it.  And when you come back tomorrow, you’ll have learned a part of it, but you’ll just have to keep bashing away to get more of it in your head.

What if we spent more time learning the tune?  Figuring out – for ourselves – where it goes, how it gets there, why it works?  This would allow time to think about the tune as a whole (or at least large sections) rather than focusing on each individual note.  We can learn the relationships between them rather than each individual note of the right hand and each note of the left hand.

Be honest with yourself – have you learned your tunes?  Or have you just bashed them into your head?  Have you given yourself the time to be thorough and careful, to identify the relationships and to make them meaningful to you?  Have you used your time to identify how the harmonies work and what you like (and don’t like) about them?  Come at them different ways and build strength in the learning so you have a cogent foundation.

Start today.  Build a collection of tunes you have learned, not memorized.  From that you can build your go to set list that can be as long as you need for each event.  You can even go back to tunes you know you have bashed into your head and specifically work on learning them.  You’ll be surprised how much easier they will be to play!  Be comfortable that those tunes will be there when you need them – and you can lose your music stand too!

Stay between the lines!

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I was driving down the highway the other day. I was going about 1000 miles, so on one particularly long, straight stretch, I started remembering when I learned to drive.

For me, one of the hardest things to learn was staying in the middle of the lane. When you start to drive, you know you need to stay in the lane – and between the lines. The lane is defined by the lines, so I looked at the lines – constantly. But you know how that goes – the more you look at the lines, the farther you are from your desired position – in the middle of the lane. The best advice (or training) I got was to look down the road – look way down the road. After I (finally) learned that, staying in the lane was so easy. Now, as an experienced driver, I don’t even see the lines close to me and keeping the vehicle in the middle of the lane is something I take for granted.  It seems that I just go where I meant to be.

The reality is, no matter how good a driver you are, you will never stay in your lane to get where you’re going if you don’t look ahead.  So, what does that have to do with playing the harp? Everything!

When you’re learning a new tune – what do you do? I don’t know about you, but when I’m having trouble getting a tune into my head, I naturally narrow my thinking down to just what comes next – what’s the next note. But this doesn’t actually help me learn the tune. It just frustrates me (thus drawing my focus away from what I’m trying to do – learn the tune). If I lift my head and keep my focus “down the road”, then I can think of the phrases (as phrases, not as a trickle of sounds). When I can hear the tune in my head, the notes that come next become so much easier to remember.

When you’re reading music, the notation (the lines and everything else) are helpful – but can be distracting. Again, sometimes just having all that ink only serves to draw your attention to the individual blops – and you lose track of where you are on the page, in the phrase, in the music. When you lose your place, your hands may not end up in the right place, or they might be going the wrong direction or be overstretched! Keeping the long view will allow you to read the music rather than focusing on the ink and better allow you to be more able to play.

When you’re playing, you have learned the tune or become familiar with the dots on the sheet. When you’re playing, you want to be “in the moment” – and that is important. But remember that music isn’t static or fixed.  Music is serial, it comes out over time – like the road!  It can’t come out all at once (although there are some composers who clearly do not agree with me on that!). So being in the moment has to include the plans for this moment, and then for the next moment, and then the following moment, and on and on until the end of the piece – as a flow. This is not contradictory, rather, you need to hold the music in your head as a piece rather than as a set of notes. Looking at the whole of the music, rather than on just it’s representation (that you learned or are reading), will help keep you on track.

When you’re performing, you really are taking all that you have learned and putting it out there in the world to share. This is more than just playing in that now. Because now, in addition to being in the moment with the music, you must also be present with the listeners. Whether there are 2 or 200 or 2000 in the audience, your focus has to be “farther down the road” to include not only the music but also the hearers and what your message to them/with them is. Here, your long view includes them, the music, and the presentation.  Keeping an eye on where you want to take them with the music, what it is you want to share, and how you mean to do that will help give you a smooth ride.

Of course, this is a simple analogy.  There are many things on the road that require attention (like stop signs, traffic, pedestrians, etc.).  And just like that, music (written or aural, practice or performance) has details (like dynamics, tempo, timbre, etc.) which enrich the ride and improve the experience.  But, just as staying between the lines becomes second nature, learning, reading, playing and performing can also become second nature so that your music grows, flourishes, and delights. And just like any journey, when staying between the lines comes naturally and effortlessly, you can enjoy the journey so much more easily. What are the lines you have a hard time not looking at? How do you stay in the lane? When you look down the road – what do you see? Leave me a comment and share how you do it!

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

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!

Stealing ideas from the knitters again!

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You might know that I have a real like for knitting.  Of course, it doesn’t show in my knitting because I very unreasonably expect to be able to knit like a pro with no practice or experience!  However, this does not blind me to the great philosophy, knowledge, or understanding that knitters have and share.

I have stolen ideas from my wonderful local knitting lady, Ellen, before and I’m going to do so again!  She recently wrote about muscle memory and how people who haven’t knitted in a long while can, once they get started, knit “from memory” because their hands haven’t forgotten how, even if their mind tells them they have.

We have the same thing you know.  It is called muscle memory – when your hands remember how to play a tune the rest of you is pretty sure you’ve forgotten.  I’m sure you have had the experience of playing a tune you haven’t played in a long while.  You sit and try to find it, and (if you’ve well learned it) it comes back out with just a little coaxing.  This is your muscle memory (ok, it is a little more complicated than that – you’ll also need your auditory memory, but we’ll save that for another time). 

How do you build muscle memory?  You already know what I’m going to say – Practice!

But (just as the knitters would tell you) you also have to be mindful – let yourself pay attention to where you are in the world and in relation to your harp and the strings – how does your elbow feel? where are your fingers? how are you breathing?

One way to help focus on these muscle elements of playing is to practice with your eyes closed. It might be painful at first – you might be so used to looking that you might believe you can’t play without looking – but you’d be wrong! Closing your eyes really lets you focus on how your body feels. It will also make repeating those feelings (building the muscle memory) easier.

Trust yourself to know where your harp is and where the tune is on the harp. 
Of course, practice helps you develop and build that trust!

If you think you can’t go cold turkey playing without looking, I’d suggest practicing by a window at the gloaming.  Let the night come while you keep playing.  Eventually, you will be playing in the dark – just like if you had your eyes closed (this is also especially helpful for preparing for gigs at candle lit weddings and restaurants in grottoes!).

At first, it will be challenging. Start small – playing tunes you know extraordinarily well without looking.  Eventually add more of your repertoire.  Soon you’ll be able to learn tunes without looking at your harp (or your hands – trust me, they are right there at the ends of your arms, no need to watch them!).  But if you keep at it you will get better and you will build strong muscle memories that will allow you to play even things you think you have forgotten!

Failing

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We have all learned that winners are, well, winners. And obviously, everyone wants to win. Winning is one of the ways we define success – and we all want to be successful. Why wouldn’t we?

But we also know that it isn’t from winning that we learn. It is in failure that we take great lessons. That is where we begin to think faster on our feet, find out what we didn’t know before, learn the pitfalls we should avoid, determine how we should prepare next time.

This isn’t to lead you to believe that failure is good – it’s not. It is uncomfortable, embarrassing, and can be humiliating. But all those things also mean that it is very motivating! And it can really lead to making great strides. This is where you learn to innovate, be flexible, find your boundaries.

And like everything else, failure becomes easier to deal with – when you get practice. No one wants to go out and fail, but sometimes it just happens. You’re not as prepared as you should be for a performance. Or you get on stage and everything falls out of your head including well known things – like your own name. Or when you sit at your – that’s right, it’s a harp (– h-a-r-p, yes it is yours and yes, you do know how to operate it) your hands go everywhere except the strings you’re aiming for.

But these failures – the practice sessions, if you will, give you the tools you need to take the risks necessary to grow, to expand and to become more comfortable with the next time you set out – to succeed.

So, I encourage you to buck up your courage and try new things. Every piece can only be performed for an audience the first time once. After that, it’s just another piece in your repertoire! Take a chance, learn a new piece, write your own composition, develop your own arrangement, play a new style of music – take a chance.
What’s the worst that can happen? You might not perform your best?  You might bomb? You might fail – oh well, think of what you’ll learn from that! Failing – it’s the only way to get ahead!

Preparing for the coming year

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Don’t forget to start setting your goals for next year –

– What music do you want to master?
– What technique to do you need to work on?
– What have you always wanted to do at your harp but been afraid to try?
– What gig have always secretly hoped to book and how are you going to book it this year?

Write down your goals and identify how you will meet them (be realistic – the point is to help you chart and follow your course, not to end up unfruitful on the other end of the year). Decide how you’ll know when you’ve gotten there.  Make a plan, enjoy the ride!