10 Ways to Counteract Harp Chaos - PHH 173

We want to combat the uncertainty that we have with action and with attitude. There are things that we can't control, things that we can't contain. I'm thinking of performance nerves particularly, but we can challenge their power over us.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann 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 My Harp 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 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.comjoinnow. that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. Do you remember the story of Chicken Little? This is a classic children's story, like a lot of the classic stories. There are multiple versions, but the basic story goes something like this. An acorn falls from a tree and and hits Chicken Little on the head, which leads Chicken Little to conclude, erroneously of course, that the sky is falling. He decides he has to hurry and let the king know about this huge calamity. Along the way, he collects some of his bird friends. I love these names. Henny, Penny, Lucky, Ducky, Goosey, Lucy, Turkey, Lurkey, who are similarly terrified by the idea of the sky falling. And they join him on his journey and to see the king. The classic story then comes to a climax. In classic gruesome children's story fashion, the birds meet up with Foxy Loxy, who pretends to join them, but actually lures them to his den and eats them. I don't think any of us are going to be eaten by Foxy Loxy today. But Chicken Little's flurry of anxiety is not that different from what many harpists experience in their practice and performance. Chicken Little's misperception of a perfectly natural phenomenon, the acorn falling, created widespread panic, which could have been averted with just a little understanding. The panic, anxiety, or even chaos that we can feel when we're overwhelmed by performance nerves, or when we aren't sure that our practice is getting us anywhere, then that can be relieved too. All it takes is looking at it differently. Today I'm going to talk about 10 things that may be causing you anxiety, hopefully not panic, in your practicing and in your playing. I'll give you simple ways to change your thinking about each of these, along with definite action steps to counteract the chaos. Trust me, no matter how nervous or or overwhelmed you feel, the sky isn't falling. Every one of those painful acorns could actually grow into a mighty oak that will support your playing if you decide to plant it rather than run from it. Today we're going to be going through 10 things that might cause you that anxiety and chaos. But I wanted to offer you another look at this same same idea. There's a blog post that I wrote way back in the middle of the pandemic and I've linked to that in the show notes. It's called Fluxability. Staying Focused through the Next wave. There's a link in the show notes and it's a blog post that you might find helpful to look at some of the.

Nervous feelings, feelings of frustration or feelings of uncertainty that might be affecting you. And so that blog post might be helpful. As I said, it's linked in the show notes, notes and just might be something that you're interested in. Also in the Show Notes is a link to Ta Da, a brand new free webinar coming up in just a couple of weeks. It's coming up on Wednesday, September 25th at 8:00pm Eastern Time, and it's called Learn It. Tonight we are going to be working on one piece and we're going to work on it together. And you might even finish that piece in in one night. It's the Flower Duet from the Opera Lakme, written by the French composer Leo de Lieb. And it's my arrangement. And if you are a My Heart Mastery member, you already have that music. It's in our website. If you're not, we're offering a special deal for you to get it for half price from our shop. What we'll be doing on this webinar is we're going to review everything you need to know about the piece in order to play it well and to learn it more easily. We're going to work on the specific techniques in the piece, talk about the expression of it, and we're going to practice the piece together. So you should be at your harp at this webinar. Don't worry, nobody's going to hear you, but you'll be able to play through some of these things along with me and you'll be able to, you know, really ask questions as we go so that I'll be able to help you every step of the way. And you know, you may even, even have this piece ready to play by the time our class is over. So there's the the PDF of the music, obviously that you will need. And I will be giving you an additional PDF that's a practice strategies guide to help you through everything. So you'll find all the information on the registration page for the webinar and you will find it either linked through upcoming events on the homepage at Heart Mastery or you can use the link in today's Show Notes. And of course, if you don't see the Show Notes in your podcast app, go to Harp Mastery, go to the podcast page and look for episode 173 and that's today's episode. And you'll be able to scroll to the Show Notes there and click right through. I'd love to see you on this webinar. It's going to be fun. It's free and it'll be a lot of, a lot of good learning, good practice strategies that'll take you through lots of pieces, not just this one.

You may have heard of the Butterfly effect. That's the phenomenon part of chaos theory that says that the most insignificant circumstance could have huge effects. It's called the butterfly effect because the meteorologist and mathematician Edward Lorenz, when he created this model, he illustrated the model suggesting that the mere flapping of a butterfly wing could create a tornado, could change the weather. So this idea that insignificant seeming things can have these huge effects is really what I want to talk about today. Because sometimes we have thoughts or actions that seem very, very small, but are making a huge impact on our playing. And this is where this chaos can come into our playing. So likewise, of course, the small changes that we make can relieve that chaos, can make that big difference, and that's where we're going today. We want to combat the uncertainty that we have with action and with attitude. There are things that we can't control, things that we can't contain. I'm thinking of performance nerves particularly, but we can challenge their power over us. That's what we're talking about today. And we're going to look at five things in your practice that could be that kind of challenge, that has a little bit of uncertainty in it, could be slightly frustrating. And we're going to move into five things that are perhaps affecting your performance as well and causing some chaos there. So let's start small, let's start simple, and. And let's talk about the practice chaos. Believe it or not, one of the very simplest and most basic frustrations that I've heard is harpists who just don't know what to do. They sit down to practice and they don't have a clue where to start. What should I do? I don't know. Am I supposed to do this? Do I do this? Do I do this? And really, that just comes down to not having a plan, right? It comes down to not having decided ahead of time what you're going to do. The problem is that when you don't know what to do, you end up really creating so much random practice that it's not directed or focused toward anything. And so the results that you're getting aren't predictable. The results that you're getting aren't even perhaps noticeable because you're not developing consistency and you're not sort of thinking ahead of time. The brilliant thing about this is that it doesn't take any amount of time to figure this one out. You do not have to create a detailed plan and you do not have to worry about what the right thing is to do in your practice, because frankly, it doesn't matter. As long as you start. You don't have to start with your technique warmup. You don't have to start with a specific warmup, a specific piece. There's no definite one way to do your practice, but you do have to start. So if there's something that's preventing you from sitting down and doing something, or if you feel like your practice is a little bit random, here's the very easy cure. I call it the music stand rule. Are you ready? The music stand rule. What I want you to do is at the end of your practice today, take all your music off your music stand, except for one piece, whether that's one exercise book or one piece you want to work on. But you can only have one thing on your music stand. And then when you get to your practice tomorrow, that's the place you start. The beauty of this is that there's no thinking, there's no extra planning time. There's no, you know, I have to create the perfect plan. No, it's just one thing. So you finish your practice and you put that thing on your music stand that you're going to start with and take everything else off.

This will really help you focus and get you into your practice much more quickly. Now, if you haven't practiced today, go to your harp music stand right now and put one thing on the music stand. Or more likely, take everything else off and just leave one thing on there so that when you go to sit down, you're ready to go. It's a tremendous psychological relief. So if you haven't tried this yet, I advise you to do it. That's the music stand rule. Second, cause of chaos. Not knowing how much to do, not knowing how much time you should be practicing, not knowing how many repetitions you should do of a hard part or a hard passage. This is an easy one to cure, too, because I'm going to just tell you right now, there's no perfect number. There's no perfect amount of time to practice. What matters about practice time is that you do it consistently, as in, you know, every day. Okay, I'll take five days a week. That's really good. But everyday practice for 20 minutes for five days a week is way better than two or three hours of practice on one day a week and no practice the rest of the week. It's about consistency. The same thing for number of repetitions. Some people like to say, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it 10 times, or I'm going to do it 20 times. I had a roommate who did something 100 times. But the number isn't important. And frankly it works the same way as practice time. Fewer repetitions done more consistently is going to give you a better result. So when it comes to practice time, when it comes to a number of repetitions, I want you to choose. I want you to decide on your number. I want to do 20 minutes, I want of practice. I want to do a half an hour. I want to do an hour, I want to do two hours. You pick what you want to do. But pick something that you can do consistently. Doesn't matter either for a number of repetitions. Actually I tend to like five to seven repetitions generally. But whatever you do, however many repetitions you want to set for yourself, or however much practice time you want to set, set that number and then stop. That's the secret. Don't keep doing more. Decide on your number, achieve that number and stop. It's about consistency over time. It's not about fixing it today. Remember that we're working on that gradual fix because that's how we learn. There's a quote from Lucretius. The fall of dropping water wears away the stone. Your practice is like that dropping water. It's not the deluge that happens one day that wears away the stone. It's the drop of the water. Okay, Chaos number three.

That's trying to do too much in your practice. Trying to do everything every day does not work. If you've tried to do it, and I think most of us have at one time or another, you figured out that that just doesn't happen. Does this go against the consistency thing that I just talked? Not really. It just is a rhythm that you can set up for yourself. Suppose you have a daily warm up you want to do. Okay, that's probably part of your daily routine. That's the idea. Then you have technical work you want to do, pieces you want to learn. Maybe you want to do some practice on music theory or on sight reading. Maybe you want to do some review. I want you to think of it like school. Do you remember when you were in school and you had those core subjects like English and math and, and you did those every day. But then there were the, the specials. Art and music and gym. And you had those just once or twice a week. That's the way to think of your practice and your harp education as well. There are certain things you're going to do every day. Your warm up, some technique work. Doesn't have to be the same technique work and you don't have to do everything every day in your technique, you're going to balance it out over a week. So maybe one day you do a little bit of sight reading, another day you do some music theory review, and maybe you set aside one day a week to do repertoire review so that over a week you're getting everything in. But you don't have to do it every day. You can set up rotations for the pieces you're working for, the technique, things that you want to do, all of that. But think in that slightly longer term, and that will allow you to be consistent. All right, so our cure here is just thinking about your core things and your specials that you're going to put in and distributing them over a week. Next cause of chaos in your practice, just not knowing what to do next. I get this question from harpists all the time. What's the next piece I should do after this? What's the next skill I should learn? What's the next next thing? Well, you know, there's no specific absolute next. If you're thinking about skill building and you're looking for that next skill, there are any number of ways you can solve that problem. If you're a My Heart Mastery member, it's easy. You just go to the scale of success. That's what that scale of success is for. It's for helping you see where you need to level up. But if you're looking to see what you might work on, that's really specific to you, well, take a look at the last piece you played that had a sticky technical issue in it. And then drill that. Drill that passage. Find an etude that uses a skill like it, and drill that. So that's an easy way to identify what you really need to work on. And even though it seems like, well, I already worked on that, it's going to lead you to the next skill you need to work on. And you're still going to need to drill it. Trust me, those kind of technical issues hang around for a while. Now, if you're looking for the next piece that you want to learn and you're not sure what to look for, choose five pieces from that pile of pieces you have sitting someplace. I know you have one. You've got a stack someplace. It's in a drawer, it's in a closet, it's on the floor. Maybe it's on your music stand, in which case you need to go back to Chaos One and get rid of those that pile on your stand. But pick five pieces that you think might be eligible Candidates for being your next piece and have a sample day when you just spend about 15 minutes or so playing through each of those pieces. Work at it a little bit, see what you think, and then choose one. It's that easy. All you have to do is choose one. Remember, there's no single one right piece. There's no perfect order for doing it. What is important is that you play a piece you like. So play through some and choose one, and that's your next right piece. And our last practice chaos. Cause is not closing the door, being so distracted, either actually distracted or just sort of focused distracted, so that you're not able to really start your practice and sit down and focus on it. Your practice, we want it to be a special place and a place where you can, you know, take everything else out of your life for a little bit and just concentrate on your music. That's what we're looking for. Sometimes it's very hard to do, so start with the easy things, right? If those physical distractions, those actual distractions are a problem for you, make sure that you don't take your phone into your practice room with you. Make sure that it's on silent, that you don't have it, or your computer beeping notifications at you while you're trying to practice. If there are distractions from other people in your house, you can set up sort of fun rules for them. You could put a little sign on your door if you have a door to your practice room, or you could just put it right outside your practice space. But, you know, ask for the focus time you need and eliminate those physical distractions. Granted, those are the easy ones to deal with. It can be much harder to free your mind from some of the everyday stuff that might be cluttering it, like what you have to do after your practice. All of those things can weigh on our mind and keep us from really focusing on the work that we want to do. So give yourself a ritual that you do every time you sit down to practice. It might be, I tune, then I warm up with this thing, Then I play this particular favorite piece of mine, or this review piece, or this particular favorite exercise. But something that's, oh, maybe even as much as 10 minutes long. I know that can feel like a long time if you just have a short time to practice, but if it saves the rest of your practice from being scattershot and from not being focused, it's totally worth it. Remember, this is the kind of thing that those pro athletes do before a game, right? They don't Just sit down, you know, get dressed and sit down on the bench. They've got their ritual. They get dressed in a certain way. They do a certain set of stretching things and warm up things. This is what they do to prepare. You don't have to spend hours preparing to practice, but just having those few things that you do every time can help you create that focus. It's just a mental trigger, an emotional trigger that says, okay, now I'm prepared and now I'm going to play. Now, those were the easy ones. The chaos in your practice. Thinking about the chaos in your performing when you're playing for others is really tricky. And I'm going to have to go through these more quickly than I'd like just to fit them all into today's show. But these are ones that we can spend more time talking about another time. So here's the first one. And I think it's allowing your hyper focus to take over. When you're just trying too hard and you're focusing on every note or every mistake as you're playing. That hyperfocus really gets in our way and keeps us from actually playing the way we know we can play. So what I'd like you to think about is I want you to practice letting go of those things in your practice. You know, we talk about flow a lot, right? Musical flow. But think about the flow of a river. Those water molecules that make up that river. We don't see those, right? We know that they're there, but we see a river flowing in front of us. We see that beautiful flowing river, not the little teeny molecules that make it up. The same with music that you're playing, you're creating that entire piece of music when you play it, not just a collection of notes, whether they're perfect notes or imperfect notes. So you need to practice letting go of those wrong notes in your practice. Sure, we want to make things right, but you have to practice letting go. So I want you to think of this as you're saying, now let go for flow. If you want the flow, you've got to let go. All right, so that's where we go for that. Now, next. It's very easy to be distracted when we're in a performance situation. And it's that hyper focus thing, too. We're very much more aware because of the adrenaline in our body. We're very much more aware of everything that's going on around us. We're under stress, and so our body creates the adrenaline which sharpens all of our senses, which means that things that ordinarily wouldn't distract us are super big distractions. When we're already stressed, we can't make the adrenaline go away, but we can build up our distraction muscle if you want, or our focus muscle. Now this is something you do for when you're practicing playing through a piece. It's not for your practice where you're drilling down on things, but it's for your practice when you're playing through. Try distracting yourself on purpose. You can have the television on and watch the television while you play your piece. Or, and this is something I like, find a loud timer, you know, like a kitchen timer with a loud bell and set it off to go off at some point in the middle of the piece as you play it through. First of all, it's going to end up creating some adrenaline, particularly if it's like a ticking timer. It's going to be a little bit annoying. You're not going to know when it's going to go off. And so it's going to make you a little bit anxious to start with. And then when it finally goes off, it's going to startle you. Your object is to keep focused and stay playing despite that little edge of adrenaline, despite that ringing that's going to startle you. You want to practice keeping your place and just playing on through it. So creating some intentional distractions when you're practicing playing through a piece can really help you build that focus muscle. But distraction doesn't only come outside us. Sometimes it comes from inside us. And this can be a huge source of chaos. So what happens is, of course, your brain is in high gear when you're playing for somebody. You're worrying, you're anticipating, you're trying to control everything, and your brain feels like it's kind of going a mile a minute. This is when you need to give your busy, busy mind something useful to do. Because the worrying, the anticipating, the trying to control everything is not useful. You want to make the music your focus. You want to sing it while you're playing it, sing it in your head, maybe make up words to it that you follow along with as you play, have a story that you tell yourself while you play it, but you want to keep your mind off of the playing itself. You want your brain to not micromanage your fingers. You want it to be thinking about the music, about the expression that you're putting into the music. Now, this is probably already what you do when you practice. So that's something that is very natural to us when we're not stressed. What you want to do is systematize it and make it a habit so that you can repeat, repeat that when you are stressed. So you need to make that story, those words, that thinking about the expression and the music, that's part of what you practice so that you can repeat that and have your brain do exactly that when you're performing. That's how you deal with that internal distraction. Next source of chaos. I call this one feeding your nerves. I mean, we all know we're going to be nervous. Those nerves are going to be there. There's not much we can do about them. But you don't have to feed them. They're, you know, a true, honest physical reaction to the stress of playing for others. Acknowledge them, even celebrate them if you want. They, they mean that you care. If you weren't concerned about how you played, if it was just like, yeah, I don't care, you wouldn't be nervous. They mean that you care, but you don't want to worry about the nerves themselves. Will my hands shake too much to play that kind of thing? When you do that, that feeds the nerves. Remember, your nervousness is trying to protect you. It's there to make you cautious. Those nerves bring up the what if questions. What if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? Your job is to provide those answers and calm those nerves with very sensible talking. And that's very sensible self talk. So here's what I think you can do for this. Make a list of all those what ifs. What if I lose my place? What if I push the wrong pedal? What if a string breaks? What if somebody drops their keys while I'm playing? What if the light is too bright? What if? Identify everything you're afraid of and come up with an answer. Come up with a solution and then once you have your list, review it frequently. It's going to be a way for you to remind yourself that this is your plan. If any of these things happen, you know how to deal with it. This is taking away the energy from your fear and from your nervousness instead of feeding it. A huge chaos reducer. The last and perhaps hardest to deal with bit of inner chaos when it comes to performing is worrying about what your listeners will think, worrying about how they will judge your performance. Even if you've talked yourself around to understanding that they're not there to judge you, that they're there to listen to you, it can still be really difficult to internalize this. That's because we make our performance about us. It's understandable. And it's natural. We're putting ourselves on the line. Of course it's about us. We know it's about the music, and we know it's about sharing this music with people who want to listen to it. But it still feels so personal and so scary. It can help to think about it this way. For a listener, it's not about you, it's about them. As much as our performance is about us, for us, a listener's experience is about them. They're listening and interpreting the music that they hear through their own personal filter. They're there to enjoy it. They're there to listen to it. It's their experience, which is very different from yours. This is an entirely different way than most of us think about our performing because we're worried about us, but the listener isn't worried about us. They're there for them. What can be helpful in helping you turn your thought process around so that you can take the pressure off yourself and think more about what you're communicating and what you're sharing with a listener? What can be really helpful here is to think about how you want to receive the applause or the compliments from an audience. For instance, it doesn't matter how you feel about your performance. It is your job as a performer to receive applause gratefully and gracefully, with smiles, an elegant bow, and a graceful exit. No running off the stage in shame. It doesn't matter to the audience how you feel about your performance. What matters is how you make them feel about your performance. I want you also to practice the way you receive compliments. For instance, always when someone compliments you, the first two words out of your mouth are thank you, and then you're not allowed to follow it up with a but, thank you, but I forgot what I was doing on the second page. Thank you, but I forgot this pedal. Thank you, but I played it better at home. That's not part of their experience, and they don't need to know that you think you gave them, even by accident, second best. They enjoyed your performance, and it's up to you not to tinge that enjoyment with your own concerns or regrets about your performance. No buts. Thank you. I enjoyed playing for you. It was my pleasure. I'm so glad you enjoyed it all. Acceptable. Similarly, you're not allowed to say, oh, thank you so much. I was so nervous. Also, not a good thing to say because you're making it again about your experience, not about theirs. I know that every one of you listening to this right now is a good person who's concerned about what other people think. That's part of what makes us concerned about our performance. And that's okay. But when you look at how you react to someone else's compliment about your playing, your response can either increase their enjoyment or not. And that's one additional gift in addition to your music, one extra gift that you can give them. So I urge you, practice your bows, practice your compliment. Acceptance. I promise that this will start taking the pressure off of you and helping you enjoy sharing your music even more. We've covered a lot today and covered it pretty quickly. Any one of these little chaos causers could have been an entire podcast episode on its own. And if actually there's one of them that you would like me to dive into more depth on, please send me an email. You can shoot it over to podcastartmastery.com and I'll get it scheduled for you. Do remember to register for the Learn It Tonight webinar where I'll be teaching you the beautiful Flower duet. That'll be a lot of fun coming up in just a couple weeks so you can go and get registered using the link in the show notes or on our homepage. Next week on the podcast, I'll be talking about five good habits that actually cost you time. Things that you're doing that are the right things to do, but really aren't serving you as well as they could. So we'll talk about what those good habits are and how to turn them around so they aren't costing you practice, time and energy. Until then, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to yourself, spirit, and all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening. Now go cure the chaos 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.