Breathing is essential – we all know that.  So, why is it that so many people don’t breathe when they get behind their harp?  Most people don’t even realize they aren’t breathing.  Of course, you don’t see people turning blue, but you do see people just not breathing enough.  So, how do you keep the wind in your sails?  Here are three things you can do.

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!).

I find many parts of making music are relatively easy (that is, easier than calculating cubic roots in my head or determining the most simplistic way to present the unified field theory to a kindergartner). But less experienced musicians often express frustration and dismay over how hard it is to play the harp.

To these less experienced people, ease seems to be either a sadistic ploy to make them feel badly about their level of experience (it isn’t, I assure you – we’ve all been there at some point) or a cruel twist of fate that leaves some people finding it easy, with others finding it impossible. I will not take up the nature/nurture question vis a vis musicianship but I will tell you something that will (upon reflection) not surprise you –

That apparent ease is a result of…you guessed it…PRACTICE!

The more you practice something, the more often you perform an act, the easier it becomes. This continued, focused practice results in what is called Automatic Processing. The more you practice something, the less you have to consciously think about it to make it happen. And it comes about through practice. If you practice anything accurately you will become better at it (of course if you practice inaccurately, you will become better at doing something incorrectly!). If you practice counting, you will get more proficient at counting. If you practice reading you will become better at reading. If you practice making hand shapes and blocking, this will become second nature – it will become just the way you do it.

You have already mastered many activities and made them automatic – complex tasks like walking, jumping, writing, etc. all once required a great deal of concentration and effort but are now automatic. If you think this is not the case, I recommend you spend more time with very young children – you can watch them find behaviors and practice them. When walking is new, you don’t just wish to walk better – you walk and walk and walk, and fall down, and get up and walk some more – until you can do it all by yourself!

So, if you are working hard to play – whether it is counting, or blocking, having consistent fingering, sitting up straight, or reading – you now know that you just need more practice with those basic behaviors. Strong practice of these basic skills – making them automatic – frees up your brain to do other hard work, like learning new pieces, adding appropriate dynamics, or writing your own!

So, go practice!

It is definitely summer! Long days with clear skies that just beg you to come outside. And why not – it can only do you good to get a little fresh air (in the shade!).

We get so used to playing in the same room, in the same spot, in the same light. But moving around could be a big help. You might be surprised how much your perspective will change.

Just by moving outside, you’ll get a different appreciation for a lot of things about playing. You’ll learn a lot about light, sound, temperature, and space. Things you might forget to think about if you always sit in the same spot.

Of course, you’ll also get to think about mundane things like how much a harp weighs, how unwieldy a triangular object can be to carry, the challenges of remaining balanced on an imperfect lawn. But each of these things also provides opportunities to learn.

Think about the challenges of playing from your deck and the slats beneath the strings. Or a brick patio that swallows up your Cs!

You’ll start to see the seams in your playing – pieces you thought you had down might be more challenging if you’re squinting. Yes, it is hard to concentrate on the next note or phrase when you detect sweat trickling down your back…just like it does at outdoor summer weddings! It’s really hard to hear yourself when the closest surface is not just 10 feet away, especially if it is a tree not a wall. And when planes fly overhead or the neighbor kids go by screaming on their bikes, you know it will be just like the distractions you overhear wherever you play.

But you can play through all that – and give yourself a fresh perspective on your music.  And if you give your neighbors an impromptu concert – all the better for all of you.  Who knows, you might just have fun!

So, go outside to play – and see how it helps you to improve.

I get inspiration in the oddest places. I write arrangements for traditional tunes based on my appreciation of Depeche Mode’s arrangements, Robert Frost poems, or squash casserole.  And I get ideas for what to share with you from sources just as diverse.

I saw a billboard today that said, “It’s not an obstacle, it’s a challenge” and I thought – “wow” (not very erudite, but sometimes basic is best!). Mostly the wow thought was due to the heartbreaking accuracy of the concept.

Do you ever open a piece of music and just get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of ink they left on the page? Or have you ever heard a lush arrangement of a meaty trad tune and just gotten lost in all the notes in the air? Either of these experiences usually leaves you thinking, “That’s fantastic…I LOVE that…but I’ll never be able to play it”.

But the reality is that you can play anything you like. There is no warning label on complex pieces. There is no gatekeeper on tunes. There is no catalog of pieces that only “really good” people can play but no one else can. If you want to play it, you can.

Of course, some things are out of easy reach. Note I said “easy reach”.

You can reach though, if you want to. You might have to work hard and you might have to practice a lot, and you might have to take more time than you want to admit to having to spend.  And you may have to be patient with you. But think about the reward.

Nothing is out of reach. It just presents a challenge…So ask yourself…when you think, “I can’t play that”, how much do you want to? Are you willing to do the work?

I’m looking forward to hearing your piece – when you have mastered it and are ready to share!

You need to set a schedule. This is gradually lengthening practicing time. You really shouldn’t practice for an hour today and four hours tomorrow. That would just invite injury!  Instead, look at your calendar and give yourself plenty of time to ramp up the amount of time you spend practicing. Add a little more time each day until you’re playing significantly more than you are now.

There are two reasons to look ahead. First, you might have heard, time flies like an arrow (you might also have heard fruit flies like a banana, but that’s not important here). It will be time to go before you know it. If you don’t establish your practice schedule, it’ll be time to leave for your selected event and you won’t have done any of the work you needed to do to be ready. This is potentially heartbreaking because no one wants to leave a workshop or other event knowing they would have gotten so much more out of it if only:

• Their hands hadn’t given out on them
• Their shoulders didn’t ache
• Their backs didn’t throb
• Their heads weren’t so full
• Their arms weren’t so tired
• Their practice didn’t prepare them for this performance! 

The second reason to look ahead is that you may already be busy. And while it is good in principle to say to yourself, “I will practice more each day.” it is very difficult to achieve. What with day jobs and the rest of life’s sundry demands, you might have difficulty fitting in more practice time. I find that the only time I can consistently practice (without everything else getting in the way) is before 6 am. Now, I’m not advocating that for you, but you may have to really give your schedule a shake to get more time at the harp into it!

You’ll note that I have not indicated how much time to add, in what increments or up to what threshold. This is because it will be specific to each individual. If you’d like more guidance, feel free to contact me- I offer ergonomics lessons that focus on your specific performance which will help you determine the amount of time you should be adding to increase your play time and performance without also incurring injury. You know where to find me…

You might be thinking, “well, none of this applies to me, I don’t want to start my new career as a brilliant musician…I just want to play my harp in peace!”

Because all that we’ve talked about so far has been a lot of hard work.  And to some extent you are right – you don’t have to work so hard…but you still need to work at it to become as good as you want to be.  But just like people striving to be “the best” there are number of things we can all do to improve our practice – to make it more deliberate:

First, you have to focus so you can be “present” when you are practicing.   You have to work beyond the easy – stretch!  You have to give it time – spend time on that bench!  The more time you spend at your harp, the more comfortable you will be (even with the hard stuff).   You still have to collect feedback – seek it from your peers and those with more experience.  Feedback helps you grow – even in places you didn’t know you needed work.  But never forget the importance of your own feedback – really watch yourself, and assure you make your goals.

So, no matter if you want to play in Carnegie Hall or if you are just playing in your hall – be deliberate in your practice so you’ll make the grade you choose!

Last time I exhorted you to accept that to become a better harper you will have to work hard. I know that’s the last thing any of us wants to hear, especially because we already know it’s true.

But how do we get past the whining and complaining and get to the heart of the hard work of becoming better harpers? What is the secret? How do we make harp work a little less daunting?

Well, there are a number of experts who have broken this down into some components that will be helpful to move forward. And they all agree with each other on this point –

You must LOVE what you’re doing.

That doesn’t mean view it with fondness or be thrilled by the fact that it’s terribly exciting – you must LOVE it!

And you must be shockingly honest with yourself – Do you love playing the harp or do you just love telling people you play the harp? (there is nothing wrong with loving to tell other people that you play the harp, by the way – however, it will not sustain you to do all the hard work to play the harp better. It will only motivate you to tell better stories about playing the harp) . So examine your response to the question – do you LOVE playing the harp?

If you don’t love playing the harp, that’s not a problem – but realize that without this sustaining love your motivation will fizzle, making it harder and harder for you to put in the time, to do the work, to exhibit the passion that others will. It will, however, free you to play the harp at the level you are able and to put your passion where it belongs.

Me, I’ll be here on my bench…

I love to play golf.  I enjoy just about everything about it – the fine day, the beautiful fairways, the immaculate greens, the twee little flags, the ponds (I just don’t think they are deep enough to be hazards, at least where I play), the sandboxes (again, where I play the sand is not confined like it is in the bunkers on the Old Course at St. Andrews – so I think of them as sandboxes)… and I enjoy taking a relaxed walk with a few good friends through all this wonder. 

It is actually amazing that I love to play golf because I am so bad at it – AND I NEVER GET ANY BETTER…however, you will not hear me complain about my lack of progress – because I know what is required to become a better golfer and I am unwilling to do it.  I have CHOSEN not to become a better golfer. 

Now, playing the harp, well that’s another matter entirely.  I do want to continue to get better at it, and I work diligently to do so.  I CHOOSE to put in the work and the time and the planning and the practice.

As I said before, I do not accept the myth that some people are more talented and therefore get a free pass to greatness.  I know that the brilliant performer, the superb workshop instructor, the blindingly outstanding composer all worked hard – and they have honed their craft.    And to be like them you have to have T-I-T-S — Time In The Seat – that time is required to build your capability.

To get really good at playing the harp, you will have to push yourself.  And really, you have to do this for yourself – no one else will do it for you.  That’s right, all that stands between you and brilliance, is you. 

Give yourself a hand – you’re going to need it!