3 Exercise Books You Should Know and How to Use Them - PHH 212

And that reminds me, I should probably tell you about this particular trap. Don't get stuck in trying to make every single exercise perfect before you move on. If we're looking for conditioned response in any finger response, we're looking for variety. And if you get very good at exercise 27B just to pull any number out of the hat, if you get very good at that one exercise, and then you're going to be very good at that exercise, we want you to be good at all kinds of patterns because exercise 27B isn't the only pattern that shows up in the music you play.

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 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.comjoinnow. that's harpmastery.com join now.

Welcome to the show. Since you're here with me today, I know you are the kind of harpist who knows that technique matters. You take your warmup seriously. You have exercises and etudes that you play regularly, maybe even religiously. You subscribe with me to the motto, if your fingers can't play it, you can't play it. But there may be times when you, even as dedicated to your technique, work as you are, need a new direction, some more motivation, inspiration, and know how to move your technique to the next level. So here's the thing we don't want to think about. We have our favorite exercises and they fit perfectly into our practice routine. We know how they go, so we don't have to struggle with notes and we can focus on our fingers. Unfortunately, if we are that comfortable with them, they probably have lost some of their value for us. Now, I'm not going to tell you that you have to abandon the exercises or drills that you love. I'm just like you. I have my favorites and I am not about to give them up. But I am going to suggest very strongly that you need to switch them up with some that will provide you with a little more challenge. When I started doing this in my own practice, I found that it sharpened my technique not just because my fingers were learning new patterns, but also precisely because I had to pay attention to the notes for a change. I was even more focused on what I was doing. No chance to go on autopilot, even for a minute. So today I'm going to share information about three exercise books you might not know, but that I think you should forget. Why? Because your technique work should be about leveling up. And if you're doing the same old, same old, you definitely aren't leveling up. I've also included links to each of these books in the Show Notes so you can find them easily. But you can purchase them from any retailer you like. I don't get a commission from these links. They're there purely for your convenience. Now, also in the Show Notes for today, I have included a link for you to join the Hub. Now. Now, in case you don't know, the Hub is our social media free social platform. It is proprietary to Harp Mastery. So in other words, you have to sign up for it. It's totally free, but you can join us. And it's just all of us Harp mastery folks and getting a chance to get together. And there are lots of things that we do that you can access in the Hub, things like our live Monday warmups, our practice labs, and we have challenges and all this sort of stuff. And it's very easy to join if you download the app. So you can go to the App Store or the Play Store, and you can download the app right to your phone, and you can join the Hub, and then you'll be able to be in the Hub right on your phone. Makes it so easy. And the reason I'm mentioning this is because next Monday, we will kick off our 2025 Super Summertime challenge in the Hub. And each week for. Oh, I Forget if it's 11 or 12 weeks. So through most of the summer, we'll be having a weekly challenge. And all you have to do is log into the Hub, go to the Challenges tab, and look at that week's challenge, and then incorporate that in your harp playing during the week. Now, I mean, nobody's policing you, so if you're away for a week, you can catch up and do two. But the idea is to do each one of these, you know, during the summer, and it's easiest to spread them out week by week because you'll get different ways to think about your practice and your playing and different fun things to do during the course of the summer. And if you participate and mark, you know, check that you've done each one of these challenges, there's a way to do that right in the app. So if you complete each one of these weekly challenges, your name will be entered into a drawing for a little Harp Mastery bundle of goodies. So we'll be doing that at the end of the summer. Kind of a nice way to celebrate things. And all you have to do is participate in the challenge. I mean, you'd be playing your harp anyway, right? So why not? So, as I said, if you're not a member of the Hub already, you will find the link to join the Hub right in today's show notes. If you can't find the show notes in your podcast app, hop on over to the podcast tab@heartmastery.com or you can get there right from the link in the app, if you have the app, and you'll see the show notes there. This is episode 212, and you can find the show notes, and you'll have all those links right there. So I want you to have fun and enjoy the summertime challenge that we have for you. It's totally free, of course, and it's totally fun. So you'll be able to join us there and have fun with us along with everything else that we do at heart mastery. So that's all about the fun. And I don't know if you think technique practice is fun or not. I do. I certainly didn't always. And that's why I think today's topic is so important. Whether you think technique practice is fun or not, the idea is that it has to move us forward. It needs to make our music easier to play. Right. We expect that if we improve our technique, our playing will get easier. And it does. It does work that way, which is wonderful. But I want us to be really clear today about what the connection is. That not all technique work is created equal. That not all technique work will allow you to make the progress in your playing that you're looking for. So you really need to be intentional about that. I mean, just working through a book of exercises doesn't do that. So if you have your favorite exercises, that's great. What we're talking about today may help you use them better. But I also hope to give you some ideas for experimenting with new and different books. Because there's value in just mixing things up a little bit. Now, I realize that the books that I'm going to be talking about today may not be ones that appeal to you. You might like one, but not the other two. You might like all of them. You might like none of them. But I hope we can agree that there's a book out there for you someplace that's going to help you move forward. And that it's worth investigating and trying. So if you're ready for. That's where I want to start with this topic today. I want to start with why we do technique practice, what we want from it, and why certain exercises and certain types of exercise books are going to help us get where we want to go faster. Let's start by thinking about what we want from our technique work that is beyond the very basics of mechanics. I mean, we hold our hands this way. We have our fingers move this way. We know that that's where we start. But as we progress in harp studies, we're looking for more from our technique work. We're looking for accuracy, I think, first and foremost, getting the finger on the right string and getting it there promptly right at the right time. Getting it there cleanly so we don't have a lot of buzzing. And having it be in playing position. When it gets on the string. So there's really quite a lot to just that basic accuracy. And in fact, this is where I go back to kind of this stage of my technique practice. If I find that things just aren't kind of working right, I just look at, you know, are my fingers landing on the string the right way? Are they landing there cleanly in playing position? Is my placing accurate? So accuracy is a great place to start. And then beyond that, the next level up, if you will, is to really be building in speed. Now, that's not to say that we're not working at these things at the same time, because I think we are, right? We're looking for all these different angles of what our technique needs to do, and we're practicing them at the same time. This is why I think whatever kind of exercises you're doing, you want to do them at slower tempos so that you can check your accuracy and at faster tempos and in fact, at a range of tempos so that you're building in the flexibility to have your fingers respond at any speed you want to play. In fact, if you are having trouble getting your fingers to move fast enough in the music you're playing, look at your technique work. Are you doing your technique work at the kind of speed that you want to develop in your fingers? Because that's where it's going to start. Okay, so the first couple things we're looking for from our technique work are accuracy and speed. Beyond that, I think we're looking for two more subtle things, and they're kinds of responses from our fingers. The first one I call a conditioned response. And by that what I mean is, essentially, when I see this, my fingers do that, see this, do that. I don't know if you've ever had this experience. Many people do. But maybe your reading experience isn't quite like this or not like this yet. But when your reading is working at the same speed as you're playing, you almost have the sensation of your eyes looking at the page, and then it just comes out of your fingers without you having to think about it. You're not thinking about the fingering. You're not stumbling over it. It's like your fingers are reading the music. That's what we're looking for. And that kind of conditioned response happens in two ways. It happens, obviously, we practice music. We're practicing a piece, and we practice it over and over and over, and we learn it, and that's how that happens. But that also happens in our technique work, and that's why a variety of patterns and having a lot of variety in your technique work is very helpful because we want to give you and your fingers as much exposure as we can to these different kinds of patterns that show up in our playing. So that if you have this set of exercises that you love and you do all the time, that's great. But getting outside the box will enable you to essentially enlarge your fingers vocabulary. And they're going to be able to look at a pattern and know how to play it without you having to work out the fingering. That's what I'm talking about. And I know how good that sounds if you're not at that point yet. This is one of the ways to get there, the kind of stuff we're talking about today. So that first response is the conditioned response. The see this and do that. I see it and my fingers do that. Okay. The second one I call any finger response. And this is about the fact that you have enough independence in your fingers and each finger is trained so well individually that it gives you lots of fingering choices. Because any finger can pretty much do any other finger's job. It's not like, oh, well, I always play this interval with thumb and second finger. So I can't use another pair of fingers to do it because I always do it this way. Or I always use this one scale fingering. And so I can't use this twisty fingering because I stumble over it. We want to get beyond that point, obviously. We start with the, the usual, the idiomatic characteristic, if you will, fingerings for scales and arpeggios and intervals and triads, because they're the ones we use most often. But we don't want to stop there. We want every finger to be able to step up and do the job of any other finger just because they can. Because it gives you fingering options. And in fact it can even help you out of an inadvertent stumble in a performance. It's like, oh, screwed up the fingering. Well, that's okay. My fingers are going to, you know, they're going to just cover for each other. So this is a pretty subtle thing, but it comes about through a variety of technique practice, or a better way to say that would be from adding variety to your technique practice. All right, so our technique work is supposed to help us develop accuracy, speed, conditioned response and any finger response. So now I want to go to the three books that I've just chosen to talk about today. Tell you a little bit about what the book is like why I like the book, why you might like the book, how it addresses these different kinds of levels and how you might use it. So let's get started with the first book I'm going to recommend today. That's the Big Book of Exercises for Harp by Isabelle Fruvel. Now, to be absolutely transparent, I do not use this book myself, but I wanted to include it here and I think it's valuable. And I have found it valuable for some of my students because it is a big book, it's got a lot of stuff. And this is the easiest of the three books I'm recommending today. It starts at a beginner ish kind of level and certainly works through intermediate. So wherever you are on your harp journey, you're going to be able to find something that you like here. Why I like this book is that it's got a lot of exercises in it. They're very carefully ordered too. Just like lots of exercise books, all the best ones are with, you know, okay, do these exercises, then these, then these, then these. So you're building from, you know, single notes to two notes to three note chords, to four note chords, to bigger scales and are arpeggios. She makes sure that you work all over the range of the harp. She even includes some pedal exercises if you are a pedal harpist. But you don't need to be a pedal harpist to use this book. So it really has a lot of, a lot of pluses because it's so big and it gets you working in all kinds of different keys. Also a plus. Not every exercise book does that. So there's a lot in here that I think is valuable. And frankly, there's just a lot in the book. But so let's talk how it really fits with what we're trying to do in terms of levels. I think the exercises are very clearly geared, especially early on, toward helping you develop accuracy. And then she does want you to work with rhythm and building up to speed. That's something, of course, we can do with any set of exercises. But there are so many different patterns and so many different things that are included in this book that I really think you're going to get a lot of variety and a chance to really work on those conditioned response and any finger response things. As I said, this book is at an easier level than the other two. So if you feel like you're not ready to make a big leap into more difficult exercise books, then I would start here. Now, that's not to say that this is the Only book that does that. But what I like about it is that it's really big and it's very friendly. It's very well set out. So I like that a lot. What I would do if I were starting on this book would be to get the book and say, all right, well, let's see, I don't need necessarily to do the single finger exercises. Maybe I'll just sort of read through those first few chapters. And then when it starts working in three fingers and particularly in four fingers, that's where I'm going to start putting my effort in and I'm going to really work on those and be sure that I move through them.

And that reminds me, I should probably tell you about this particular trap. Don't get stuck in trying to make every single exercise perfect before you move on. If we're looking for conditioned response and any finger response, we're looking for variety. And if you get very good at exercise 27B, just to pull any number out of the hat, if you get very good at that one exercise, then you're going to be very good at that exercise. We want you to be good at all kinds of patterns because exercise 27B isn't the only pattern that shows up in the music you play. So we really want you to be able to get through a lot of exercises. So while you want to focus on playing them well and really getting your fingers to move around them, start by saying, okay, this is an unfamiliar pattern, and I'm going to spend a little bit of time, think about accuracy, maybe do it for a day or two, just working on that. If it's very unfamiliar, then I'm going to try to add some speed to it, and then I'll do it for another couple of days. But, you know, that one page or that one exercise that you're working on, don't spend more than a week on it. Probably, you know, we don't want to really focus on that one and then exclude everything else. We want to keep on moving. So don't fall into that trap. It's a big book. See if you can get all the way through the book. That's going to be more helpful than just making one of those exercises. Exactly right. One other heads up. This book isn't available everywhere. So if you find it online, if this is something that you think you want to try and you find the book online somewhere or in a store someplace, then go ahead and get it, because as I said, it's not the easiest book to find. But I think it's really worth it. On the other hand, if this is the kind of book you think you want, but you can't find it, then certainly work through something like the Grossi method book that has all those early Pozzoli exercises in the back. That's very useful, too. And once again, go through the whole book. Don't get stuck too early on, but I'd love you to try the Fruvelle. If you think that this is just your speed, then go ahead and try that. But if you're ready for something more difficult. Aha. I would like to recommend, and I hardly can believe I'm saying this, I would like to recommend the exercises and etudes by La Riviere. Now, Edmond La Riviere was a French harpist and composer who settled in London around in the 1830s, and he composed quite a number of works for harp, either for harp alone or maybe with piano accompaniment. But this is the work that everyone knows. It's a book of exercises and etudes for harp. Okay, enough said. But why can't I believe I'm recommending this book? Because when I was a young harp student, this was the book I couldn't stand. This was the book that I. That just drove me crazy in the same way that the Hanon exercises on piano drove me crazy at that age. I have a lot more patience for this kind of thing now and certainly way more understanding about the value of this kind of work. But there's nothing friendly about this book. You know how other books, even the Isabelle Fruvel book comes with a pretty cover. And, you know, she wrote a really preliminary book for kids called Charlie the Kitten. You know, it's got all this friendly stuff, all this warm and fuzzy. Nothing warm and fuzzy about La Riviere. Just plain solid French technique exercises. They work.

Yes, they work. But the book itself can be very daunting. First of all, you're looking at exercises that are one measure long. And then he just wants you to do that measure a whole bunch of times. And it's got whole bunches of different fingerings over it. I mean, I'm looking at the first measure in this book, and it's just four 16th notes. C, D, C, D. Right hand and left hand. You can do them hands separately, hands together. But he wants you to play them with two. 1, 2, 1, right. Four notes. 2, 1, 2, 1, C, D, C, D. A little kind of a trill thing. Or do it with 3 and 2, 3, 2, 3, 2. Or with 4 and 3, 4, 3, 4, 3. Ooh. Talk about any finger response. This is where it lives. This is how you develop that. This is fingering, flexibility just over the top. Every exercise in this book has those kinds of options, or at least a pretty repetitive pattern. In fact, on the first page and a half, there's nothing longer than one measure here. But they're finger patterns, and you go over them and over them. And in fact, if you were to do the first page and a half in this book, you'd probably get as much benefit from this as you would from an entire exercise book that was a little bit more warm and fuzzy. As I said, this is going to really work your fingers. And the way to work, the way to use this book, rather, is to say, all right, I'm going to take a couple of lines and I'm going to do each pattern several times. I'm going to try it with each fingering. He says, I'm going to do it hands separately. When you get more used to it, you can do it hands together and just get accustomed to the different patterns. Some of them are going to be very easy and you could add speed to them right away. Others are going to be trickier and you're going to have to figure them out. He does some things right here in the first line that are going to be real finger twisters for a lot of you. And they were for me years ago until I learned to do them. So if there are ones that you can't do right away, just kind of try them and then skip and move on to the next one. But give everything a try. Now, also in this book, he has little, what he calls themes. And it's a little tune with chords in one hand and octaves in the other. And then he gives you variations. So imagine you're looking at, oh, I don't know, 1624 measures of chords in one hand octaves, and the other just a nice simple boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Well, nothing simple about it. First, he has you. You play it as written. And so that means you have to learn some notes. But then the hand that has those chords to play, he gives you dozens of variations. In fact, he gives you four dozen variations for the right hand chords in this first of these themes. And so you play the chord instead of playing it just as a quarter note chord, you're going to play it as four 16th notes in all these various patterns that you worked on in the exercises before this. So it's a way to sort of test these out, a little mini etude thing. And it's very Repetitive. It's absolutely just exhaustive. It might be exhausting, too, but it's covering everything. So if you want your fingers to be more nimble, if you want them to learn how to just get around the strings, this is a book you could try and just take it easy. Now. Don't go through. You know, don't feel like you're going to go through all the exercises at once, because you won't. You don't have to do the etudes to get the benefit from this book. I mean, he's got several etudes in here that are pages and pages long, and you don't have to do those. Stick with the exercises, but make your fingers learn these different patterns. I guarantee, if you've never done anything like this, it is going to be an eye opener for you. You're going to be like, whoa, I didn't even know my fingers were supposed to ever do this. Someplace around page five or six, he starts with exercises where the two hands are doing different things. As much as these first exercises were working on independence of the fingers, he's now working on independence of the hands as well. This is such important work, and I think that this is a book that, if you have the patience for it, if you feel like this is really something you need to do, it's going to make a huge difference for you. And this is coming from somebody who really has trouble recommending this book, because I know how much I hated it, but that's because I was much younger at the time. I know the value. This is a book that I use, and it's wonderful, worth it, no matter what level of harp playing you're at. Well, probably not if you're a raw beginner, but if you are an intermediate player, this could make the difference you're looking for in your playing. So I highly recommend it. The third book of exercises is my personal favorite because it's short. Unlike the lariviere, which takes pages and pages and is exhaustive in its approach to techniques, the conditioning exercises by salzato are just 10 exercises. And in fact, if you look at the lariviere, you will find every one of the patterns in Salzato's conditioning exercises in the Lariviere somewhere. So these are exercises where he's just taken 10 core patterns, things that your fingers really need to learn, and said, okay, this is what you're going to do. And if you do those exercises, your fingers are going to be get in condition and stay in condition. And for me, this has been true. I find the first six exercises in there. Particularly useful for students who just haven't developed their finger flexibility the way they want. Exercises 7, 8 are all about dominant seventh chord arpeggios. One hand arpeggios with some little oscillation patterns in them. That may be a topic we need to talk about at some time, but the dominant seventh chord arpeggios are quite, well, they're a little challenging, actually. Quite good for you, was what I was about to say. But they certainly are challenging. And then exercises 9 and 10 are scale exercises.

The thing that you need to know if you do those pairs of exercises 7 and 8 and 9 and 10, is that he's very deliberate, that the first one of those exercises, exercise seven for the arpeggios and nine for the scales, are meant to be done slower. And then the next ones, the following ones, are twice as fast. So he's also working at the speed factor in there. So it's accuracy, it's conditioned response, it's any finger response and speed all wrapped up into 10 short exercises. These, I will tell you, in case you've never seen it, this little skinny volume. He says this is for beginning to advanced harpists. I was certainly first given these exercises when I was a very young student. I was probably 8 or 9 when I was first given them, and I'm still working on them.

They've been a lifelong friend of mine, but I don't really recommend them for true beginners because it will be a shock to the system, particularly if you're not working on them with a teacher. If you're working on them with a teacher or a coach who can help you get through, get through some of the slightly more challenging patterns, then.

That'Ll make everything easier for you. But if you're doing them on your own, let's, you know, get you to sort of an intermediate level before you take a look at them. Oh, go ahead and take a look at them anyway. But if they seem like a little bit more of a challenge than you're ready to tackle on your own, then, you know, call in some help, right? And, and call up your teacher, call up your coach and say, okay, wait, tell me how to do these. And, and that's something that should be true for any set of exercises that you do. It's always good to have the advice of your teacher going into these so that you can be sure that you're doing them in a way that will help your technique and not injure your hands, your fingers, your arms. Nothing in any of these exercises is in itself hurtful. Or injurious or anything you have to watch out for. But we don't want to overstress those delicate tendons. We want to be very mindful of our physical response to this kind of work. So follow your best practices. And as I said, it doesn't hurt to get some advice and have a couple of lessons on them so that your teacher can help you work through them in the best way for you. So those were the three technique books I wanted to recommend to you. As I said, feel free to think about the concepts that we were talking about today, working on accuracy and speed and conditioned response and any finger response with any technique book you have. But remember, that's where you're going. We don't want your technique to be stuck in a rut. We want you to be leveling up and moving forward, because if your fingers can't play it, you can't play it. Next week on the podcast we're going to be talking about how to make any kind of music sound right. You know that sometimes you need to play music from the 18th century one way, in the 21st century another way, and it's just not the same kind of thing. There are different ways to express these things. Sometimes we can use a lot of rubato, sometimes not. Do we roll chords? Do we not? So we're going to be talk about those stylistic differences so that you can consider how you use those in the music you play and how you make everything sound right. So that's next week on the podcast. In the meantime, be sure you are signed up as a Hub member. You can do that by going to the app, or you can do that right on our website heartmastery.com joining the hub is the best way to stay in touch with us. And of course it's going to put you right in the right place to start when we begin our 2025 Summertime Challenge next Monday. So that's totally free and it's just a lot of fun. We had a great time with it last year and I've got a little twist on some of the things for us for this year. So our Summertime Challenge starts next week and I want you to be there. And of course, I'll be back here on the podcast with you next week too. In the meantime, 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 us every day. See you next time.