3 Techniques That Matter - PHH 265

What if playing the harp felt easier the way you thought it would be? Not because you practiced more, but because you finally understood what was getting in your way. I'm Anne Sullivan, and welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness. Here we tackle the real challenges harpists struggle with: the sticky passages, the tricky fingerings, prepping for performance, and all the ingredients that go into making music sound the way you want it to. I've studied with world-class harpists, taught at a top conservatory for 20 years, and I love playing the harp. But what I love just as much is breaking down the real challenges harpists face and turning them into clear step-by-step solutions. The same ones I teach my students and use myself. So if you're ready to play the music you love with more confidence, clarity, and joy, you're in the right place. So let's get started. Welcome to the show. Let me start by saying that technique was a struggle for me. You may have heard me talk before about how my double-jointed fingers wouldn't do what my teacher wanted, let alone what I wanted. I'd been playing the harp for nearly 10 years before I was able to develop proper mechanics to make my fingers play with the form and the strength that's necessary for the level of playing I aspired to. Now granted, I was still a teenager at the time, so my fingers have endured decades of technical work beyond that. But I want to tell you that harp technique is still something I work on daily. Not because I want to, but because I have to. It's true that our technique gets stronger and more reliable over time. That's the good news. The more we focus on developing the proper mechanics along with flexibility and speed, the more dependable our technique becomes. However, the results of our technical work can leave us in a moment. There's a well-known quote attributed to the celebrated violinist Jascha Heifetz about this very thing. He said: Heifetz said, "If I don't practice one day, I know it. Two days, the critics know it. Three days, the public knows it." Granted, most of us aren't playing regularly in the same concert halls that Heifetz was, but we notice the same disheartening phenomenon: our technique requires constant attention. I'm going to make a big assumption here that you don't have hours every day to spend on your harp technique. Frankly, I don't either. I have to put time into my technique daily, but it's never as much time as I'd like or as much time as my technique really needs. But having spent years working through my own technique challenges and guiding students through the ones they face, I have 3 specific aspects of technique that many of us don't spend enough time on. These are 3 very specific and actually very 3 basic technical skills. If you pay attention to these 3 things, you will be on your way to solving many common technique glitches that prevent your music from flowing the way you want. These aren't cure-all remedies. They are 3 basic skills that truly matter to your playing. Most exercise books include them, but they don't tell you why they matter, and that's what I want to tell you today. Because here's the thing: if I simply told you what the skills were, you'd probably dismiss them thinking you already know how to do them, or at least you know how to do 2 of the 3 of them. The difference comes once you know why they are so important, what they really mean for your playing. Even better, when they show up in a piece you're learning, you'll spot them and you'll know exactly how to make that tricky passage smooth. So are you intrigued a little, maybe a lot? Well, I hope so. I'm gonna tell you right up front that I'm not giving you a technique plan today. I am talking about 3 specific things that you can do. They'll take you just a few minutes to remind yourself about, but my idea is that by telling you why they matter and what to look for and how to really practice them, They're gonna make the difference for you in your playing. They have for me. These are the kinds of things that we have dealt with and talked about on the Live Monday Warmups. Now, if you're missing the Live Monday Warmups, if you were used to attending those and, uh, now all of a sudden they have gone away for you, I need you to know that we have moved the Live Monday Warmups inside the My Heart Mastery membership. Frankly, I was doing so much teaching on those warmups that I really thought this was something that belonged to the members exclusively. So we have moved that inside the membership. It is free for all the My Heart Mastery members. And unfortunately, if you're not a My Heart Mastery member, you don't have access to those anymore. I apologize for that, but I would invite you to join us in the My Heart Mastery community. It has so much richness in it, and not the least rich part of that is the community itself. The, camaraderie, the community that we have on the Monday night calls, it's really unparalleled in my experience, particularly for an online community. And I think that you would be greatly benefited by it, particularly if you were a fan of those live Monday warmups. So I'll put a link to that, of course, in today's show notes. There are some other resources that I've put in the show notes for today too, and I'll reference those as we go along, but I do want you to consider my Heart Mastery Membership. We get a chance to talk about topics like these in so much more depth than I can cover on the podcast here. So that is a resource that you probably need for your harp playing. I think you'd enjoy it. So consider that. I'll put the link in the show notes and let's start talking technique first. I have to say that these are 3 techniques that truly matter. They absolutely matter to your playing. Obviously, they are not the only 3 techniques, so I'm not suggesting that you can just practice these 3 things and your technique will be fixed forever. It doesn't work that way for me, so I'm guessing it wouldn't work that way for you either. But these are sort of bellwether techniques. They're things that if you can do these well, or once you can do them well, so many other things are possible. And that's why I chose these, because lots of times I know the idea of technique, the field of technique, the endeavor of technique, if you want, that it's so broad. There is so much to do. There's an exercise book that I picked up at a harp conference some years ago. It was sort of in the decrepit music that people are giving away piles and it is pretty decrepit, but it's a book of 50 daily exercises, and it's by Magistretti, the Italian harpist and composer and arranger. And, and he says 50 daily exercises. Well, 50 exercises is a lot to do in a day, and each one of these exercises is quite lengthy. And for me to go through that entire book would take several hours to do all the exercises and the way he has written them out. That is a noble ambition as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps it was his daily routine. For me to have 3 hours just to spend on technique would be an unthinkable luxury. I can hardly imagine it, but it would make a difference for sure. But most of us aren't there. That's not what our lives are like, so This is not a shortcut that I'm trying to give you. It's not a way to get around all the technique work that we have to do, but these are things that will help you do what you need to do on a daily basis. Do you still need to do whatever technique work you usually do? Yeah, but these 3 things are going to be so powerful for you to just check in with. And here's the first one, and it's going to sound so basic because it is, and it's octaves. Octaves, you say? Why should octaves be so important? Think about when you first were learning the harp. One of the first things you did after you got all your fingers sort of on the strings, you started playing two notes together, and you started probably with 1 and 2, and then you did 1 and 3, and then eventually you got up to 1 and 4. And eventually your hand was stretchy enough that you could really reach an octave with 1 and 4. By the time we get to octaves, we have a lot of other stuff going on in our playing. We have lots of other notes we want to learn and other music and other techniques, and we're working on all kinds of other things. And I think sometimes we give octaves short shrift. I know as a teacher I'm very focused on how my students play octaves because it is important for their hand. Not just the health of their hand, although that's important too, but it's important for the structure of what they're able to do with their hand. So let's take an octave, consider it for a second, and you can possibly do what I'm doing right now. I'm just putting my hand in front of me and stretching out 1 and 4 as if they were reaching an octave on the harp. I don't have a harp in front of me, I just have my hands. But as I'm looking at my hand stretched out to be an octave, I'm looking that my thumb is nice and high, it's not scrunched up to my fingers. My 4th finger is extended, my pinky is probably extended too, but no further than my, my 4th finger. I mean, it's Probably not curved like my 4th finger. It's sticking out a little bit. 2 and 3, those fingers are pointing toward my hand. They're not into my palm. They're not touching my palm, but they're not sticking out either. And this applies for both a right-hand octave and a left-hand octave. I know that we sometimes play left-hand octaves open hand, but left hand needs to be able to do closed hand— is what I'm calling it— octaves too, where 2 and 3 are pointing in toward your hand rather than up into the air. And this is the kind of octave that I want you to use for the purpose of explanation here. So if you look at that octave and you look at your hand, think about what's important about it. First of all, your hand should be balanced. It should feel like 2 and 3 are right in the center of your hand. 1 and 4 feel equally spaced. And if you're doing it away from the harp, they probably are. Test the spacing, the centering of your hand by putting your fingers back on the strings and see where your hand gravitates. Is your 4th finger so stretched out and straight that it can barely reach the note you want it to get to? Well, your hand is probably pulled too far back toward you. Move your arm, turn your hand a little bit, recenter it. We want your hand to feel like 4 and 1 are, are the, the end points. 2 and 3 are right in the middle, and your hand is centered there. Why is this important? It's important because it means that 2 and 3 can get to the strings they need to get to quickly. They can come right out of your hand, and they'll be in a perfect position to play a 4-note chord if that's the next thing that, that they have to do, or an arpeggio. Or even work in a scale passage if 1 and 4 aren't necessarily on an octave. But it's centering your hand that keeps your hand in balance, prevents your hand from getting too stretchy, keeps your 4th finger from getting all straightened out to the point where it can't play, and it should relax everything in your hand. When you put your hand on the strings to form an octave, you should be able to release all the tension from your hand and just feel your fingers on the strings, relaxed, your hand centered, your posture good. Nothing feels stretched out or tense. This is how we want our octaves to be, and it is so often not how we actually place and play our octaves. Of course, playing an octave is also the perfect opportunity to listen to the equality of sound between 1 and 4. Whether we're playing a chord or an arpeggio in real life, that balance between 1 and 4 is so important because that gives us the outline of that arpeggio or chord. So an octave, when your hand is centered and you can feel 1 and 4 playing with an equal amount of strength, and relaxation, then you're gonna have the same level of sound between 1 and 4, which is what we're looking for. So think about this in reverse. If you have chords or arpeggios that you're struggling to reach the bottom note, your hand probably isn't centered. Or if the tone of 1 and 4 isn't equal, well, your hand might not be centered again, and you might not be relaxed. The The octave is where those things start. So that's one of the reasons I consider octaves and practice of octaves a technique that really matters. Now, I have put plenty of resources in today's show notes for you, and I have linked to a blog post that I did quite a while ago about octaves, and that may give you some additional information or a slightly different perspective to help you with octaves. So that's one way that you can continue your study after today. And we're going to move on to technique number 2. This one I know is going to be something that you struggle with from time to time, at least, because we all do. I certainly do. And that's crossovers and cross-unders. Think about a scale. You're playing a simple one-octave scale going up. Well, that middle moment in the scale where your thumb plays and your fourth finger has to cross under, and then you replace your fingers, or on the way down you play 4 and thumb is crossing over. Those junctures, the cross-unders and crossovers, they are the most dangerous points in any scale. Happens in arpeggios too, correct? If you have a, you know, one-hand arpeggio that spans more than one octave, those are the weak points. That's where we can fumble. It's where the scale either works or it doesn't. We know that if we get the cross-under or crossover correct, Then we can place the next group properly and cleanly, and the scale will continue flawlessly. But those cross-unders and cross-overs are always a little bit of a weak point. It may have occurred to you that we just talked about 1 and 4 in the nice expansive context of an octave, and here we're talking about 1 and 4 but all scrunched up and twisted the way they are when they cross under or over each other, right? So it's another 1 and 4 moment, but think how different this one is. Instead of stretching out, we're all scrunched up and twisted over. But a couple of concepts remain the same. Your hand still needs to be centered so that when you're playing up a scale and you cross under with 4, you're going to re-adjust your hand. So you aren't just reaching under with 4 and keeping your hand in the same place. You're going to move your arm back a little bit so that hand centers more or less over those two strings that you're playing. And to do that, you really have to move your arm. If you just try to move your wrist or move your fingers, you won't have the equality available to you. I know that sounds like a funny phrase, but if you're looking for your fingers to sound equal and even— and who doesn't want that in a scale or an arpeggio— then you have to make that equality available. And you have to do that by keeping your hand centered so that each finger can play at its best. If your hand isn't centered, one of those fingers is going to be too stretched. And as you know, there's something already awkward about a crossing like that, and you don't need an extra impediment. So by keeping your hand centered, by moving your arm so that your hand is centered between those two strings, you have a much better chance getting your fingers to play properly. Also, you want to watch that your thumb isn't too scrunched up, right? Your thumb has to have room to play. I know this feels squishy, but think about placing your 4th finger a little bit lower. If it feels like it's too low on the string by the time you have fully crossed and you're ready to play all 4 fingers in the next part of the scale, then you can slide up the string a little bit if you have to. But create space so that your thumb has room to to play. This is on the way up, right? If your hand— if your second finger is too scrunched up against your thumb, it won't be able to play. You won't get any sound out of it, and you're going to try very hard, and it's going to add tension. So make sure that your thumb still has space to play. There's another consideration, isn't there? If you're playing a scale, that's one thing because those notes are right next to each other. But if you're playing an arpeggio those notes that 1 and 4 play could be a third apart, they could be a fourth apart. So they could be more distant. So those are cross-unders and crossovers to practice as well. Think about the facility this will give you to know that whether you're playing a scale or an arpeggio, you have those crossings even and secure. So once again, these are techniques that are covered in just about any exercise book. Pull out one you've got and I'm sure you'll find it because it's a basic concept in the scale and of course in one-hand arpeggios as well. But to practice what is in the exercise book is just the start. You can use those drills as practice, But remember what it is you're trying to achieve. You're trying to keep your hand centered. You're trying to keep space for your thumb to play. And when you cross over with your thumb, be sure you're not turning your hand forward so that your 4th finger can't play, right? This is on the way down. If you cross over with 1 and if you turn your hand to accommodate your thumb, like pivoting forward toward the column of the harp, your 4th finger is going to come off the string. You can't change the angle of your hand. You just have to cross— cross over, rather, so that your 4th finger can still play. You can experiment and see what works for your hand. Everyone's hand is a little different, so do take the time to experiment. And remember, your right hand and your left hand are likely to be different from each other as well, but you're looking for a few things as you're experimenting with your cross-unders and crossovers. What you want to achieve is an even sound between the two fingers, and you want to do it so that you are relaxed. Then to achieve the sound you want, you want to be sure each finger has enough room to play. That's why we talk about keeping your thumb high or your fourth finger low. Each finger needs to have the room to play. And your hand needs to be centered over those strings that you're crossing, right? So that your— each finger has the best opportunity to play with its best sound. So keeping your hand centered, remembering to move your arm as necessary to do that. It's not a twist of the wrist, it's a motion of the arm. So be careful about that. That's what you're looking for in a cross-under crossover. So find the exercises that work for you and concentrate on those. That's a wonderful skill to be really adept at, to have really honed well so you don't have to worry about it when those passages come up in the pieces that you're playing. So the first two of our techniques that matter dealt with 1 and 4 and the centering of your hand and the equality of sound and the relaxation and and the difference between spreading your hand and having it open for that octave or having it kind of scrunched up and, uh, working at the crossings between 1 and 4 as you do scales and arpeggios. The third technique is all about your third finger, and that's getting your third finger to work independently. We want our fingers to be very independent. 1, 2, and 4 usually don't have much problem, but our third finger. That can be the weakest link, and it can have a lot of difficulty working on its own. I'd like to remind you, in case you don't know— and I'm no physiologist, I'm no expert on this— but I do know that that third finger, that middle finger, shares a tendon with the fourth finger. And this shared tendon can mean that your 3rd finger doesn't move very well on its own. And you know, you can move your 3rd finger and have your 4th finger kind of move too. They work better together, but that doesn't work so well for us for our harp playing. We want all our fingers to be equal and independent, so we have to create that independence. And it takes a little bit of work, but it really matters. Think about those times you've been playing a piece and your fingering options are limited because your 3rd finger just won't do what you might want it to do to be able to play that passage well. Or maybe your 3rd finger and 4th finger need to play together and they just won't fire at the same time. They won't play together nicely. We need to get your 3rd finger as independent as the other fingers. It may never stop being the weakest one of your 4 fingers, but we can make it so much more independent and so much more capable than it is right now. I know that my own 3rd finger— I look at my 3rd fingers all the time. I train them all the time. Because they're the ones that are— they're just more awkward. They're too long. They kind of get in the way. And I need those third fingers to, you know, step up and do their job. Think about all those things that would be easier if you knew that all four fingers could work beautifully on their own and in any combination. Probably that's exactly what happens for 1, 2, and 4. But probably your 3rd finger just doesn't want to work at that same level. So this is where you need to spend a little bit of time. Many exercise books, but not all, will give you exercises for this, and you can tell because they place accents on the 3rd finger. Whatever pattern is there, whether it's a scale, an arpeggio, or those things I like to call twisty patterns, they have the 3rd finger in an accented position. Your 3rd finger is the little wallflower, right? It doesn't— it's not used to stepping up and leading, and giving it that lead is part of developing independence. You'll find exercises where 3 and 4 have to play together, perhaps without the support of a thumb or 2nd finger, or where 3 has to play in combination with 2 or with 1 and, and take on a more prominent role, right? It needs to lead. So these are things that you might have run across in music that you're playing. You might have seen patterns like this, and you might have adjusted the fingering that was in there so that you didn't have to try to get your 3rd finger to do what it didn't naturally want to do. We want to give you the option of using your 3rd finger. Think how many more choices would be open to you. Think how much easier some of those passages would be if you knew that it didn't matter what fingering you used because all your fingers were going to cooperate and do exactly what you wanted them to. So 3rd finger independence is definitely something that matters and something you need to work at. If you can't find exercises that work well for that, and I'll give you just a couple, then start with scales and put the accent in those scales on your 3rd finger. Do 3-finger scales: 3-2-1, 3-2-1, 3-2-1. Or do 4-finger scales but just put the accent on your 3rd finger: 4-3-2-1, 4-3-2-1, 4-3-2-1, 4-3-2-1. And see if you can get your 3rd finger to step into its role as leader. I like to work on passages that have a little bit more complexity to them. The second conditioning exercise in the Salsetto Conditioning Exercises is all about your 3rd finger and putting accents on that. And then of course in that same set of exercises, exercises 4, 5, and 6 use your fingers in combination, and your 3rd finger will get a workout with those as well. Well, if you don't have those exercises, no worries. Just look at your exercise books that you do have, and most of them will have third finger centric exercises. That's what you're looking for. As you work on these, your third finger isn't going to want to play. Perhaps it's going to feel very awkward, and I would like you to resist the temptation to put a lot of force behind it and to try really hard. That can be the way to injure yourself. We don't want to put too much force into it. We want to teach it gently. So pull the dynamic back. If you find that this is at all challenging for you in terms of coordination, as it is likely to be, then pull the volume back so that you're just piano. Make the tempo very slow. Keep everything relaxed. Make that your goal. Think about how your third finger needs to play. It needs to have that lovely arch that you have in your other fingers. It needs to close all the way into your hand. Think about how it needs to move and teach it to move properly. You want it to behave, not try so hard that it it, you know, plays however it has to play. So play softly, stay relaxed, coax your 3rd finger into playing. Don't beat it into playing, if you know what I mean, right? We wanted to just ease into this role. It's not used to it. You are not used to it. But you can find those exercises, take them slowly, take them gently, and your 3rd finger will become independent. You will be amazed at the difference that makes in your playing. The options that you have, the security that you have, the facility that you have. Everything will become just a little bit easier when you know you can count on your 3rd finger. So those are the 3 techniques that matter that I wanted to share with you today. And what I hope you got from this is a different way to think about your technique practice. To realize that what we do in our technique practice is very specifically designed to serve our playing. And that these 3 techniques that I talked about serve your playing in very specific and important ways. In ways that we often don't have another opportunity to think about other than in our technique work. So that balance of 1 and 4 that we find in an octave, the chance to balance our hand and relax, the difficult and twisty coordination of the cross-unders and crossovers that are so much a part of our playing even when we're not just playing scales and arpeggios but we're playing the patterns that show up in a piece of music. And of course the independence of our 3rd finger, which means that we now have 8 independent and cooperative and strong fingers that we can play with instead of perhaps just 6, right? We're already challenged. We already don't use our pinkies. We need our 3rd fingers to work. We can't be that limited. So those are the ones that I picked out because I think they will be so impactful for you if you haven't done this before. I hope you give them a try. As I said, there are some more resources in the show notes. I've also linked to a podcast episode that I did quite a while back on scales. That's podcast episode number 64 called Spice Up Your Scales for technique. And My Heart Mastery members, you have the Build, Extend, Advance course in your library. Many people who aren't My Heart Mastery members also bought that course when it was offered. It is no longer offered separately, just a part of the membership. But if you want to work at finger independence, the advanced level of Build, Extend, and Advance is perfect for that, and I've linked to that in the show notes as well. So some resources for you to pursue just a little bit more about this. Now on next week's show, I have another conversation. You might remember that last week I talked to my flutist friend Joan Marsh, and we talked about our our collaboration and how that's going to be a major part in the, uh, the classes that we're offering as part of the Chrysalis Workshop in September in New Jersey. And next week I'll be talking to the composer who is the third part of the collaboration there, Louis-Anthony D'Elise. And my friend Louis is going to talk with me, and I'll tell you, we recorded that this past week, and they're Lots of good stuff in there, lots of stuff that you will find interesting, and I hope that you listen to that because he's got some really interesting insights on composing and arranging and working with instrumentalists. So lots, lots that I learned from that call, and I think you will too. So that interview is coming up next week on the show. In the meantime, until we talk then, please remember that 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. Enjoyed today's episode? Then share it with a harpist friend, subscribe for your weekly harp happiness boost, and check out harpmastery.com or the Harp Mastery app in your app store for more resources and ways to connect. I'll see you next time.