Category: Practice

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!

So, another year, another new start! What’s your resolution? Have you vowed to practice more and to do so more often? Do you have a plan? Experts tell us you won’t succeed in achieving your resolution without a plan. So, let’s make a plan to improve that practice.

First – no one gets a free ride

How are you different from Joshua Bell (aside from instrument selection) or Harpo Marx (arguably the best known harp player of the 20th century)? You aren’t. While talent or innate ability may help you enjoy playing the harp or might even have made it easier for you to learn at first, that talent won’t carry the day in the long run. Only hard work will.

It will take hard work

Once you’ve decided to work hard, all that’s left to decide is how to accomplish that. Over the next few weeks we’ll look at improving your practice deliberately – pushing the boundaries of the time you spend and how you fill that time. 

In the interim, if you have a specific question about your practice you’d like a look at, just send it to me in a comment and I’ll work it in.   And until then, make sure you’ve written your goals down and that you refer to them often – to keep yourself on track!

Interestingly, when I looked for a graphic for “hard work” almost every item included a hard hat – so find your mental hard hat and Let’s Go!

Happy New Year!

Well, it’s about the middle of the year – that time when most of us are looking at our calendars and wondering how it could possibly be nearly June! But, clearly it is – the honeysuckle is blooming, the birds have more to say than the news media Talking Heads, and its getting a mite warm.

So, back at the winter holidays did you write down your goals for this coming year? They didn’t have to be big goals – could have been to learn one new tune every month, or to teach at least one favorite tune to someone else so you could play it together, or to master rolling chords down smoothly, or to practice at least a little each day, or to actually count when playing, or — as you can see, the list of goals is nearly endless.

I’m sure you headed my suggestion and did write down each of your goals. At this near midpoint in the year, it is the perfect time to review those goals and assess your progress on them. Are you making progress? Did you forget about some of them? Is one of them really giving you a hard time? If you’ve captured your goals and if you review them periodically you have the basis for a self tune-up or the makings of a good lesson with your tutor or the potential to take a private lesson when one of the “names” comes into town to give a workshop.

In addition, as you review your goals and your progress, make needed modifications. Goals are not chiseled in stone – this is a good opportunity to identify which of your goals was too easy, which are going to take more time than you initially thought, which goals were burning bright in the winter but now are not so attractive (yes, you can break up with some of your goals – just be sure you don’t break up with every goal!). Note the modifications you make to your goals and in an interval (maybe at the next solstice?) review and adjust again.
And remember that this grand goal setting is essential to see progress, but just as important is the small goal setting you need to do each and every time you sit down to practice. Be sure that those small daily goals will align to help you meet your big goals so that you are able to see progress.
And don’t forget to set and meet the goals to enjoy playing the harp and to share your gift with others.

No one is born with so much talent that they don’t have to practice. We ALL have to practice. And the real difference between those people we admire so much and the rest of us is usually the amount of time spent practicing. I once heard someone tell a group that playing the harp came so easily to (another person) and that she just sat down and started playing.  That was a very hurtful comment – No one who plays well does so without practice (they just make it seem that way!).

We spend a lot of time practicing. And those people we admire practice even more.  If you get consistent practice you might spend between 5 – 20 hours a week practicing (I know, 20 hours might sound like an impossible dream for most, but it is not unreasonable – really – if you seek to gain mastery). There is a popular statistic going around that it takes about 10000 hours of practice to gain mastery of anything. If your calculator is handy that is 417 days of practice – 24 hour days…if we make it “work days” instead – it’s a much more reasonable 1250 days ( or 3 ½ years – no days off of course) and if you think of it as work years (including vacations and weekends, and holidays) its just about 5 ½ work years….ouch!

So, it is essential that you use your practice time well (since it will add up – but only slowly). And to acknowledge that true mastery will take a while (remember that 10000 is a hand-wave – not a minimum). And work slowly and steadily toward mastery through practice.

In a later post we talk about specific techniques to improve your practice.

Since it was Marting Luther King’s birthday this week, its seems opportune to pinch one of his quotes and twist it to our purposes!  If he was a harp player he might have said something to the effect that:

the quality, not the longevity, of one’s practice is what is important*

Often, if we “make” the time to practice, we think it sufficient simply to sit to the harp.  And sometimes, we are lucky just to do that much.  But it is important that we infuse our practice time with Quality not just a quantity of minutes. 

But, if we are to improve and become more accomplished, it is essential that we add not just time at the harp, but that we add QUALITY time at the harp. 

This means we have to have a plan, a “schedule” if you will, for what we’ll be doing while we’re there.  And we have to know and understand what that plan will bring to our improvement.  We don’t just rip through music to check the box and say we’re done. 

What is your plan for practicing?  How do you intend to get better and how do you structure your practice to do so?  How does your plan move you toward the goals you set or your resolutions?  Drop me a comment, let me know.

* I believe the original quote from Dr. King was, “The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.”  That too bears reflection.