It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas –

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Jen

It’s barely begun to cool down, the days have hardly gotten any shorter and the trees haven’t really begun to show their colors. It’s October! But it is also definitely time to start preparing for Christmas! From parties to church services, from fundraisers to celebrations, ‘tis the season to be asked to bring a little joy to people by playing for Christmas. Will you be ready? Here are 8 things you can do to be prepared this season:

Start now – Christmas is right around the corner, but the holiday season is even closer. Holiday decorations had appeared in big-box retailers before Labor Day and the Christmas events will start after Thanksgiving if not before so you need to start now to be ready.
Make a preparation checklist – write down those things you need to do to be prepared (some of the items in this post might be helpful for that). Use your checklist to help yourself prepare.
Budget your time – be sure to manage your time effectively – refreshing tunes you’ve learned before, learning new material, whatever you need to spend your time on – arrange to have that time available.
Select your tunes – know what you are preparing for and use that information to generate a solid set of tunes (and specific tune lists).
Schedule practice – not kidding. The holidays are notorious for days filled up beyond reason, earlier than expected, and with way too much to do. Be sure to schedule your practice time in – or you won’t get any!
Use your practice time wisely – because your practice time will be at a premium, be sure you plan for that time so you can get the most out of every moment. No shillyshallying at the harp, no unfocused playing through – actually practice when you’re practicing.
Make notes for next year – some of your preparation will be very good, some will be no help whatsoever. Make notes to yourself for next year so have even better preparation in the future.
Enjoy yourself – the preparation is challenging, and the added stress of performing may get to you, but be sure to enjoy yourself. And also be sure to acknowledge any improvement in your performance, the level of difficulty of the music, the speed of refreshing tunes you had learnedin previous years – all those positive indicators that arise from your preparation.

Christmas comes but once a year – fortunately, it stays for a while and provides you a great opportunity to prepare and to play for family, friends, and customers.

Community Ties

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Jen

One of the things I like best about the harp community is that it is a community – with lovely people. There is a specific joy from coming together to share music and laughter and friendship and experiences. To that end, there is a lovely opportunity to get together with other harpers coming up soon. If you can make it, you should not miss the Washington Area Folk Harp Society Getaway (WAFHS).

The instructors this year are Seumas Gagne and Emily Mitchell. The annual WAFHS Getaway weekend will be November 7-9, 2014 at the Wyndham Gettysburg hotel in Gettysburg, PA.

Seumas Gagne and Emily Mitchell, photos unceremoniously snatched from www.wafhs.org

The registration fees are $105.00 for WAFHS members and $125.00 for non-members. There is also a reduced rate for non-adutls (see the website). There is a package deal with the host hotel that includes meals during the weekend (including the banquet). Check http://wafhs.org/getaway for updates.

Summer weekends are not all for the beach

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Jen

There aren’t very many weekends in the summer and most of us do our best to have fun on every one of them. But you can only spend so much time at the beach. If you have already wisely chosen to spend one of those weekends at Harp Camp with me and Kris and another at OSAS, you will want to spend another one at Somerset Folk Harp Festival!

Somerset has only been going on for a few years but it definitely has a place on the well rounded harper’s calendar. There are loads of interesting workshops taught by amazing harpers many of whom you might never even dreamed of getting to spend time learning from.

There are so many workshops that it is often difficult to decide which one to participate in in each available session. And then there are the concerts, the vendor hall and the opportunities to see old friends and make new ones. And Scottish Harp Society of America will have a table!

What more could you possibly ask?! See you there?

Listen, listen, listen

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Jen

If you’re reading this, it is likely that you are primarily playing traditional folk music. One of the beautiful things about trad is that is has always had a significant aural component. There was a time, according to the historians, that all harpers learned their music by ear. In fact, they learned everything by ear – the tunes, the words to songs, the epic poetry, the histories – all in the aural (and oral) tradition.

This makes excellent sense – after all, music is aural – we all, musician and appreciator, participate in music by listening. We know that how it sounds is essential. In fact, when we make a mistake, we know it because it sounded wrong. Not very many people will tell you they knew they made a mistake because it felt wrong!

But how are you to know how it should sound? How does someone new to the music learn how to give it the lift, lilt, or jaggedness to make it sound right? If you grew up in one culture, how do you know how to make a tune from another culture sound like it should? How do you make your Irish tunes sound Irish and your Scottish tunes sound Scottish and ensure that only your Welsh tunes sound like they came from Wales? How do you know where they came from???

The best way is to listen! Listen to the music. And of course, really listen – find the nuances. How does an Irish tune sound relative to one from Cape Breton? What lets you know when the tune is from Scotland? Can you tell your favorite harp players apart when listening? (Being able to identify my friends by their playing on their cds was a turning point for me – when I finally “got” how important listening is!).

And, of course, you have to do a little homework – it will help when you start causing yourself to listen to have some information handy (to know where the tune is from). Once you get comfortable with actively listening to music then you can move on to listening while not knowing, guessing where the tune (or the player) is from and then looking it up to check your work. Just be wary of tunes that are played everywhere (they’ll be tricky – these are typically very old or very popular!).

And don’t forget to enjoy the listening while you learn how to bring those sounds into your own tunes.

Teaching helps make you a better learner.

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Jen

When you are in a workshop, the instructor seems to have the easiest bit of the day – that person already knows the tune – it’s the participants that are trying desperately to learn the music being shared. But is it actually easier to teach than to learn? And what could be more fun than sharing a tune so you’ll have more people to play it with? To get to that point, you’ll have to teach it!

Still, many of us have experienced the very real challenges that teaching to someone else poses. Trying to share a tune with someone else highlights just how well we know it ourselves. To teach a tune, you have to have a complete understanding of the tune. Well, at least it helps.

And so, sharing a tune with someone else will help you make sure you have that tune down rock solid. If you want to teach it well you will also have to think through all the patterns, the fingerings, and the intervals. You will have had to think about the phrases, how they related to one another, how many there are, how similar or different they are to one another, and whether those phrases are reminiscent of other tunes (thus, of course, increasing the confusability quotient!).

Wouldn’t be easier if you started out that way? What if you took approach learning the tune as though you will turn around and teach it? To get to that, you’ll have to be sure to really look and really listen. Find the patterns or repeats, note how many phrases there are, look at their structure. And think from early on how you’re going to teach it on to someone else – soon!

Choosing new music

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Jen

There is so much great music in the world and many of us want to play it all! However, at some point you must select the music that you are going to choose to learn and acknowledge that it is not possible to learn it all. When you select a tune, whether it’s for competition, performance, weddings, healing or simply to amuse yourself, you should think about a few things to assure that you select the right music for you.

Do you like it? Early in my harp career I got excellent advice – don’t play music you don’t like! Just don’t. Life is short, enjoy the music! (If you are booking weddings, this does have the unintended consequence of requiring you to know more music so you have something to suggest to counter a request you don’t like.)
Does the arrangement work for you? We all have strengths and weaknesses. We have “tricks” we like, while there are others that just don’t fit our hands. Make sure you select arrangements that are a good match to you…or arrange the tunes to make that match.
Does it match your comfort zone? This goes both ways – if you are seeking to add to your repertoire, staying in your comfort zone will make learning the tunes easier and faster. However, if your goal is to learn new things while learning new tunes, work outside your comfort zone and stretch!
How are you going to play it? What’s it story to you? There is more to playing than getting the notes in the right order – what do you want to do with the tune? You can be forming those ideas while learning the notes but coming to the tune with the story in mind might make it easier to learn.
Is it over-played? If everyone is playing a particular tune (especially if you’re choosing a “party piece”) do you want to be playing the same music? Select the tunes to catch your attention. [Note – this does not include session tunes, in which case the entire point is to learn tunes everyone is playing!]
When you play the song for the first time, does it seem easy? One of my favorite indicators that a tune is a good fit is that it comes “falls into my hands”. Don’t beat yourself up learning a tune that will not come together in your hands. There are so many to choose from. And if you really, really love the tune – come back to it later – it might just surprise you.

And don’t forget to have fun while selecting new tunes. Enjoy the process!

There is no substitute for having a teacher

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Jen

This may be sacrilegious in some quarters, but I’m going to say it anyway. There really is no substitute for having a teacher. Now, before you write this week’s content as self-serving drivel from someone who makes money teaching, hear me out. There are so many things about playing the harp that are challenging, why not learn someone who can save you the difficulty of learning those things the hard way?

Here are ten things teachers will do that will help improve your harp playing:

Give you wisdom, gained at the knees of their teachers.
Give you the benefit of their experiences.
Provide you timely feedback that will help you spend less time learning (and then unlearning) things that are not productive.
Provide you positive feedback that will allow you to focus on growing rather than have you smarting from falling backward.
Although there are some very good books available, nothing is the same as having someone who’s walked the road before you to show you the ropes.
Inspire you to grow to your full potential rather than letting you fester where you happen to be.
Encourage you to stretch and grow, to achieve your potential and reach your goals.
Coddle you when you hit the inevitable plateaus that are so disheartening.
Give you their knowledge – they’ve been in your seat and left it behind…wouldn’t you like to move along too?
Work with you, to help you develop yourself.

You need to find the teacher that fits you and there are plenty of really good ones around. I highly encourage you to work with a teacher – you don’t have to commit to unending lessons and in the end, the progress you make will be a function of your hard work. But a teacher can coach you through that progress so you can make good time on it!

Hang out with people who play better than you do.

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Jen

Every once in a while it is gratifying to be the most accomplished person in the room. But the good news that it doesn’t last! There is a lot of pressure on you when that happens. So, the remedy is to hang out with people who are more accomplished than you are – or as we say colloquially, people who are better than we are!

Why? Because research shows that hanging out and playing with people who are better than you are will raise your game and help you develop. Playing with them makes you be better because you have to work hard to try to keep up.

Those better players may be other harpers but it is also possible that they will be playing some other instrument. Either way, you always have a lot to learn, so get in there!

It can be daunting (trust me, I know!) but it can also be exhilarating and just plain fun! It is intimidating but if offered the opportunity, take it! Don’t let your insecurity get in your way. Don’t second guess yourself or fill yourself with fear. Take it as it comes, enjoy the time (it will be fleeting), and learn as much as you can from the experience. Use what you learn to make yourself better.

And when the day comes that you are the most accomplished person in the room, share with the same grace others have shown you – and make someone’s day!

Teaching is the best way to learn

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Jen

Learning tunes is one of those never-ending challenges. The matter how many you learn not only are there thousands more, but great composers keep generating new ones! Although we know we will never get to the end and learn every tune ever, we keep trying.

But what do we mean when we say learn a tune? Do we mean that we have gotten it down enough that we can (barely) keep up at a session? Do we mean we have a down well enough to play to an audience? Do we mean we have it down well enough to never forget it (by the way – no such thing!)?

We sometimes fool ourselves by thinking we know a tune cold. But, how cold is cold? If you want to know if you actually know a tune, try teaching it to someone else.

You may make the mistake of starting to teach the tune off the top your head. This will quickly fail you. To be able to teach the tune, you have to know it – really know it. You have to learn not just the notes, but also the structure, the phrases, how the parts fit together. You will be well served to know which pieces are in the A part and appear again in the B part. Or what motif underlies every phrase? What is the underlying theme? Where will you be going? From where?

These types of analyses of the tune will impact how you choose to teach it. Really doing this work will allow you to teach the tune more easily. And all of this is exactly what you need to do… to learn it in the first place!

This is harder than it looks

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Jen

I just got a fancy new software package. It’s perfect for me – now instead of typing on my keyboard, I just talk to my computer. It really isn’t hard. Except now it is. I’m having to learn to do things completely differently. My little machine listens to me and dutifully writes down everything I say.

This is a problem. You see, I’m not used to saying aloud what I’m trying to write. And actually, it’s quite challenging to write while you’re talking – this is very different. When I’m typing it just comes out. I can correct it on the fly (of course when I’m typing the computer isn’t trying to guess what I said or how to spell it either!). So, I am going to learn how to do something new. It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be.

How many times do we think this when we’re learning a tune? We think it should be easy. It’s an easy tune. Everybody else learned it really quickly. It’s not that complicated! I should be able play this. 🙁

And yet sometimes we run into tunes that make us do things differently. Sometimes what is easy, isn’t. It might look easy on paper. It might have been easy for the person next to us in the workshop. But it’s just not coming together for us. We’ve all been there – we don’t like being there, but we’ve been there. And so what are we supposed to do?

Here are three things we can do to make it easier (whether it’s learning a tune, or how to type by talking):

1. Take it slowly. Whether the tune is simple or if the software says you can use it right out of the box, we need to give ourselves the time to absorb what it is were trying to learn. Zorching off as fast as we possibly can, because “it’s easy,” just makes us frustrated. Take your time. (Yes, I am always exhorting you to slow down…because, usually, this is the solution!)

2. Think – what about the tune is challenging. It’s not likely the entire thing is hard for you. It is more likely that there is just one thing that you’re struggling with. Take the time to examine what’s giving you a hard time and see if you can parse that into smaller elements that you can work on independently. Once you have those down, fit it into the rest of the music – slowly.

3. Quit worrying about whatever everyone else is doing. I saw recently a really good quote that said something about never forgetting that you only see other people’s “highlight reels” while you focus on your own “bloopers”. Mostly people won’t own up the having a hard time…they’re too worried about what everyone else will think…but really – no one else cares. So forget the litany in your own head about how you’re never going to get it and realize nobody else will admit that. Get over it and get back to work.

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