10 Tips for Terrific Thumbs - PHH 157

So your thumb is long and it's going to be strong when you can use that entire length. So that's what thumb technique on the harp is all about. It's about using the length of your thumb so that it can be strong and can play not only with strength, but with control.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Anne Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the Miharp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists and anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join us just go to harpmastery.comjoin-now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. I I was going through some old music the other day and came across a notation that made me smile. It was written in my best elementary school cursive script and it read Thumbelina's having trouble with her thumb. I don't even remember what piece of music it was on now, but it could have been on just about anyone. I always had trouble with my thumbs. In fact, most of my music has the word thumbs up in my teacher's handwriting somewhere on the page. I am double jointed, not to any circus freak level, but in the more or less usual way my thumbs bend backward at the first knuckle. It's not a big deal. Not unless you're a harpist that is. It took me until I was 16 to finally learn how to control my thumbs and have them play properly. What I learned in that process was exactly how crucial our thumbs are for our harp playing. Our thumbs act actually have the ability to free our fingers to be relaxed and supple. Used another way, our thumbs can just about immobilize our hands. They can play ringing melody notes or trip us up in a scale. And a simple repositioning of your thumb can make all your other fingers sound better. So we are all thumbs. Or maybe it would be better to say everything you need to know about your thumb. Today we'll talk about how the position of your thumb affects the rest of your fingers and how a long and strong thumb can make everything you play a little easier and a lot prettier. And I'll share 10 things you need to know about how your thumb works and how to make it work better. I want to give a quick shout out to everyone who joined me for the unveiling party last week. The unveiling of our new My Harp Mast site. Now My Heart Mastery is our membership community and it's been going since 2014. So it's it's 10th year anniversary this year and we've updated the website a couple of times but this time in honor of the anniversary we did a huge redo of the website. It is totally refreshed, so easy to use. A couple of extremely cool features that we were thrilled to be able to introduce and and lots of you. My Heart Mastery members and non joined me for the unveiling party online the other day and as I said it was a lot of fun. I had so much fun sharing all those new things with everybody and if you didn't get a chance to join us at the unveiling party, you can still see the replay. We've left the replay posted in the Harp Mastery Hub. So you can get to it from the Heart Mastery Hub. And it's kind of fun to watch. And also a reminder about the challenge that we have going this month in the Hub. We are working on my arrangement of the the Passion Chorale, the chorale that most of us know words to, at least in the English speaking world, as oh Sacred Head now wounded. This particular chorale, the melody by Hans Leo Hassler, most often harmonized by Bach and in this case arranged by me for harp, we're working on that arrangement and we've got a challenge going on that in the Hub, along with a contest that if you do the. If you want to learn the chorale and you send us a video of you playing at least one page of the chorale, you'll be entered in a random drawing to win a 30 minute conversation or coaching call with me. We can, we'll be on the call for 30 minutes. You can do whatever you like with that call time and we'll arrange that. As I said, this is a random drawing. We're not judging entries. So if you send us the video of at least the first page, then we will enter you in the contest. All the rules are in the Hub. You'll find everything right there on the challenge posts, including the sheet music. And we'd love to have you join us for that challenge. So without further ado, let's see what we can do to make your thumbs sound the very best they can.

Our thumbs are so important to us and, and every method has a little bit different way of talking about them, but the things that we're talking about today aren't method specific. Now, in the Salzido method, which is how I was trained, having your thumb up is one of the most important facets of technique, hence that whole thumb up idea. So having your thumb up was part of what we were trained. Uh, and Salzato in his writings describes the thumb as needing to be supple. And what he focuses on is the idea that your thumb needs to close over to that middle knuckle of your second finger. And what's important to him in his description is that the thumb moves down to the fingers, not the fingers moving up to the thumb, just something interesting to think about. Now, Renier, Henriette Renier, in her method book, she talks about the thumb and describes it somewhat differently, but the effect is the same. She talks about having the base of your thumb sort of moved out and away so that there's a nice space between your thumb and second finger, a nice curved space. We often describe that as sort of a C, and it's that curved space. And that's pretty much what Salzado's talking about too, except that they both use their thumb just a little bit differently. But, but the basic principles are the same. That thumb needs space to move. And yet when I look at a lot of people who are learning the harp, that's one of the hardest parts of technique for them to understand. And it's because we don't think of our thumbs as long and strong. They are long and they can be strong, but you need to sort of change your thinking about thumbs. When I was talking about Thumbelina before, you know, we use the, we think of thumbs as being a small thing, right? Tom Thumb was small, Thumbelina was small. We talk about, oh, just a thumb. You know, it's a small thing. But if you look at the entire length of your thumb from the base where it connects to your wrist, all the way to the tip, that is long. And in fact, it's probably as long as the longest finger of your hand. It's not short, it just is set back from the other fingers. And because of the way it's connected to the hand, we don't always perceive that length. So your thumb is long and it's going to be strong when you can use that entire length. So that's what thumb technique on the harp is all about. It's about using the length of your thumb so that it can be strong and can play not only with strength, but with control.

Obviously, when we're talking about control, we're talking about technique. And technique is where you need to start with your thumb to really think about exactly how it needs to work. And so we're going to start our tips with tips on mechanics, exactly how your thumb is constructed and how it needs to move for the harp. So the first thing I want you to consider about your thumb is that base knuckle, that knuckle right where it's joined to, to your wrist. And I want you to think about that base knuckle as the, the power fulcrum, if you will, of that lever that is your thumb. That's where the, the motion is going to begin from. That's where the, the, the pivot point is. So to experience this, the easiest thing to do is to just take your hand as if you were giving somebody a thumbs up so that your, you know, your fingers are closed into your palm the way they would be and your thumb is sticking straight up. Yeah, thumbs up. Then from that thumbs up position, Move your thumb forward to where it's going to close like you were playing the harp. But it's going to close over that second knuckle, that middle knuckle of your second finger. And look at it, and look at the motion that it needs to make. That fulcrum at the back of your thumb, that pivot point, that's where your thumb motion begins. That's the generator. That's where your thumb motion is. And when you start looking at your thumb and thinking about your thumb moving from there, that's, I think, the real moment when you realize that your thumb is long. And that's where the power of your thumb comes from. It's also where the subtlety and the control of your thumb comes from. Because if your thumb can't move, it can't express all those things that we want. So that bass knuckle as that power pivot point, there you go, there's some alliteration for you. As the power pivot point is the first thing to consider moving up your thumb, we come to the middle knuckle. I call the middle knuckle the spacer. The middle knuckle is important for keeping your thumb long and strong. It needs to not collapse into your hand. So once again, have your hand in that thumb up position and then just bring that middle knuckle toward your fingers a little bit. And you can see that you've lost all that range of motion in your thumb because that middle knuckle has collapsed. So that middle knuckle needs to stay strong, needs to stay straight, and needs to be part of that whole motion from the back of your thumb to the tip. So that's the spacer. Now the tip of your thumb I call the articulator. After all, it does the articulation. This is what actually plays the string. And so we want the tip of your thumb, we want that top part of your thumb to be able to play loudly and softly, to play accents, to play beautiful ringing sounds, to do all those things it needs to do. And for that to happen, it. It needs to have some flexibility. Now, I'm not talking about double jointedness. Remember, I am double jointed. So I'm going to deal with that in a second. So, but just bear with me a moment and I'll get there. So do your thumbs up again with your hand and then just wiggle the tip of your thumb and let it point just a little forward and move your entire thumb. Look how that tip of your thumb bends forward as it reaches for that second finger. Knuckle where it's going to close. That's the way we want your thumb to close. Now if you're double jointed, then you can bend your thumb backward the way it goes and then try to close it. You can feel how much more difficult that is and you don't get the same range of motion as at all. So we don't want your thumb to be bent backward and that's why. So you'll need to practice having your thumb bend actually a little forward. Now, it's nice when your thumb is straight, but to help counteract the double jointedness, cocking your thumb a little bit forward, making that knuckle bend forward so your thumb, the tip of your thumb points a little bit more toward the column when you close it. That's really what you want to do. This is part of the problem. If your thumb is double jointed and you play with it in that, you know, bent backward position, you're always trying to push it and you have very little control over the string. It also immediately collapses your middle knuckle, which is trying to create space, but it can't create space because you've taken away the tip of the thumb. So that's how those three joints of your thumb work together, or at least how they should be working together when you play. Now, the fourth tip has to do with that shape and that space again. So I already mentioned that your thumb needs to close. It needs to have that pivot point at the back move your entire thumb, because it's the motion that allows you to create a nice big sound or with very little effort. And it's what gives you control over that sound, whether it's dynamic control or speed control, both of those things. And so it's the space that you create and the shape of that space that is really important. So the space again is between your thumb and your fingers. And the easiest way again to think about that is with that thumbs up sign. That's where what we want. That's the space so that your thumb should be playing from a distance so that it can close. It needs space to close. If your thumb doesn't have room to close, it tends to get tight and it creates tension. It doesn't have a lot of sound and it can't be very flexible or play very fast because it's always kind of scrunched in on itself. So you need that space in order to be able to close. Now your thumb, because of your, your technique might be different than the Salzada method that I grew up with. So your thumb might not be straight up in the air, your whole hand might be more slanted, but the space still needs to be there. Remember Renier talked about that space as well. So you need to have the space for your thumb to close just the way you have space for your fingers to close. Your fingers close into your hand and your thumb will close over that knuckle the same way. And it needs the same space.

Now the shape, that C shape that I'm talking about, if you take your left hand and you hold it up in front of you so that it looks like a letter C.

That'S the shape that we're looking for. Now, of course, your thumb and your second finger are on the same level, which they wouldn't be if put that on the harp string. But if you turn your hand, keep that C shape and turn it into a more like a playing position, your thumb will go upward a little bit. It won't be on the same plane as your second finger. And that's the C shape. And you do the same thing with your right hand. Of course it's a backward C, but this means that your second finger is curved and arched and that that the line of that arch continues from the tip of your second finger all the way to the tip of your thumb. That's the C shape that we're looking for. And that's where the space is. Now when you create that C shape away from the harp, once you have that letter C, you can really tell where that middle knuckle comes into play. Because that's an important part of that shape. It stretches out the webbing of your hand. That webbing right there between your thumb and second finger, it stretches that out. That's what we're looking for. And your thumb has all this room to move now. And that's why these mechanics are so important. It's because of tip number five, the motion that we want. We know that closing is important for our fingers. When we play a string, we close that finger in into our palm because we're finishing the motion. It's like a follow through. It also releases excess energy and tension so that the energy that we've put into playing the string gets released as we close. So that motion is very important. And it's easy to see with your fingers. Your fingers close easily into your hand. It's just not so easy to see with your thumb. Remember that the way we use our thumb on the harp is not very much like the way we use our thumb for anything else. We don't worry about the space between our thumb and our fingers, but we want our thumb to be more or less equal sounding to our fingers. And so this motion is really important. So when you think about closing your fingers and you can feel your fingers close, your thumb needs to close the same way, and that goes back to that pivot point at the back of your thumb again and moving the whole whole thumb down to that knuckle so that it closes. We're not approach, you know, we're not scrunching your hand up in order to close it. We're bringing your thumb to your second finger. And it's the motion that creates relaxation, it creates speed, and it creates the possibility for expressive tone color. You need to have the thumb motion.

So so far, we've talked about the three different knuckles in your thumb and what they're important for. We've talked about that space and the C shape and the motion. And now I'd like to talk about some more expressive things that you need to consider with your thumbs. First, I want you to think about the sound of your thumb, and I want you to think about how you think about it. Do you think about your thumbs as plucking the string?

If you do, you might want to consider these words instead. Think about your thumb as pressing the sound out of the string or as pushing through the string. So that I think both of those words have really good imagery behind them. They're not about pulling the string, but they're about releasing the sound from the string and. And once again, moving your entire thumb through the sound. So you might want to experiment and you can have put your hand on the strings and get your thumb in a nice strong, long and strong position. And without even playing very hard, think about pressing through that string.

Letting the entire thumb play the string instead of just the tip, which could be like this.

Or instead of all scrunched up, where this is all you can do with your thumb, that long and strong thumb is going to be able to push through the string. It doesn't even have to push hard. It'll just push through.

And you'll feel that entire thumb moving forward to meet your second finger knuckle. You should have a nice amount of space and all that should be good. What's important about this is that when you think about how your thumb plays, it changes the way you try to play it. When we think about plucking, we tend to use a small part of our thumb. When we think about pressing forward, it's easier to cast that energy back Back to that pivot knuckle again and let the entire thumb work. So, you know, play around with that a little bit and see what you think about just pressing forward with your thumb. Of course, that lovely sound that we get from pressing through the string isn't the only kind of tone color that we want. And your thumb can have lots of different musical personalities. It can have that lovely, rich Huang sort of sound from pressing through, or. Or it could actually be more of an accent.

Once again, play from the back of your hand. Don't try to let the tip of your finger handle that all by itself. It can have a light, airy sound. Your thumb is still moving, still moving from the back, still there. So all of that thumb articulation that that tip of your thumb does creates the different tone colors that you can get. You might even try playing a scale just with those thumbs. You know, maybe alternate your left and right thumb or maybe just right thumb and then just left thumb, and see what you can do to create different tone colors and see if you can make that tone color consistent through the entire octave. That's a terrific way to practice the tone for any finger or all your fingers together. But certainly for your thumb, having a range of tone colors is great, but sometimes your thumb just needs to match the other fingers. This is a special challenge for your thumb because it's playing in the opposite direction. I know it doesn't seem like such a big deal until you think about it. All right, we know that your thumb is as long as your finger. We've given it all that range of motion. We've talked about the tone. We know it can create all kinds of wonderful sounds. So why should it have such a difficult time matching your other fingers? Well, think for just a moment. When you're playing your fingers, you are actually pulling. When you're playing your thumb, you're pushing. So that's going to contribute to a difference. Now, when your thumb is long and strong, it's going to minimize that difference, but it's still there.

Second of all, and sometimes even more importantly, on the harp, it can make a difference which direction you play the string. So we see this on lever harps, mostly. When the levers are down.

You'Ll notice that on a lever harp, if the levers are down, your string is open. If you're plucking the string with your finger, or playing it with your finger, if you prefer, you're bringing the string toward the stationary nut at the top so that where that string goes over the little pin, you're pulling it toward that pin. When your thumb plays it, you're pushing it away from that pin. Now, you're not maybe going to see the string move, but the fact is that the string is moving a different direction. It's either being supported by that pin as you play your finger, or being pushed away from the pin as you play your thumb on the petal harp. It works the same way. Of course, if your petals are all the way in flat, you have exactly the same situation as the lever harpist. But when you push the pedals and engage the discs, you're still either pushing the string against the disc or pulling the string away from the disc, depending on whether you're using your thumb, which pushes it against the disc, or using your finger, which pulls it away from the pin at the bottom of the disc. Eas, it's going to create a very slightly different sound. It's very slight, but once you've noticed it, you notice it. So realize that not only are your fingers and thumb doing different jobs, the pulling versus pushing, but they're actually pulling and pushing the string in different directions, and that's going to sound different. So how do you make them sound even? Well, there are wonderful exercises for this. I happen to love conditioning exercises number two and three. This is the Salzato conditioning exercises. They move the accent away from the thumb, they put the accent on the fingers, and they force your thumb to blend with your fingers just a little bit more. They're great practice for that. The other thing you can do is you can play a scale, a regular old scale, and instead of letting your thumb take the accent, shift the accent so that it falls always on your second or third finger and not on your fourth finger or thumb. Just do it with a metronome and move the metronome and you'll see that that's going to help your thumb learn to blend in and play well with others. But sometimes the thumb, particularly the right thumb, is in a starring role. It needs to play the melody. We've all played pieces that have busy right hand. And then there's that marking on the music that says, you know, bring out the right hand thumb melody. And you think, okay, I've got to work extra hard to make that melody heard. And you don't. This is what smart thumb playing is all about. You don't need to play harder, you don't need to accent those notes. You don't need to make them louder. When your thumb is playing well, you can just push through those strings just a little bit more and you'll get plenty of ringing melody. Often you don't even have to do anything at all. And the melody will. It will be so constructed that those notes are high enough. They just come through. Of course, another option is you could always make your fingers play softer. But I think you'll find that if you let your thumb press through those strings that need to be the melody notes, you'll get plenty of sound for the melody and you'll be able to create a beautiful line. Couple other quick tips here. If you're not sure that you're really playing the melody loud enough, try singing the melody while you play it. That will help keep your ear in the right place and it will help project the melody without you even playing differently. What our ear is drawn to, we will play. So if you can hear it, if you can sing it, you will be able to play it. But just remember, you don't have to work harder with your thumb. Just use that lovely sound we talked about before and press through the string. Lastly, I need to give a moment's attention to your left thumb. The left hand thumb isn't usually a melody note, but it can have a very important role. And that role is this. Imagine a left hand accompaniment where your left hand is playing an arpeggio that comes up and your left hand thumb is at the top of it. Or maybe it's even in the middle of the arpeggio. The balance of your left hand thumb is so critical. We don't want that left hand thumb top note to sound extra.

Want that. We probably want the left hand arpeggio to maybe even diminuendo just a little bit as it goes up. We don't want the left hand thumb sound to disappear. It still needs to be heard. It's an important note after all, whatever note it's playing. But we don't want it to be out of control and just super loud. So we need to think about balancing that. And you can practice those left hand arpeggios. Practice them in rhythms if you like, to help remove the from the thumb. You can just play it nice and slowly to help your thumb balance with those fingers. And if you have to cross under after you play your thumb cross under with two or three to continue that arpeggio. Be sure that you've got space for your thumb to close. Now all that's left is for you to put some of these tips into action to look at how your thumbs work, to practice how your thumbs work and then to let them work and to incorporate these things into your practice and your playing. You'll be so glad you did. To free up your thumb and to make it long and strong is going to really make a difference for you in your playing. Now I want to remind you that my Heart Mastery membership is open. We would love to have you. And if you want to see what's been going on and take a peek at our new website, be sure to watch our unveiling party. I've put the link to that in the show notes for you, or you can head over to our YouTube channel and watch it there. We had a blast and I think you're going to really enjoy watching that as well. And we'd love to have you in the community. So remember that your invitation to join is open, so be sure to hop in and and join us in the community. Also, next week on the show, we'll be talking about making your music stick. Now, we'll be talking about this in terms of memorization, making your memorization stick. But we'll also be applying these same techniques to your regular music playing, whether you're trying to memorize or not. And the techniques that you can use which will help your memorization stick will also help your practice and your music learning stick. And that's what we'll be talking about right here on the podcast next week until we talk again. Remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.