7 Quick Fixes so You Can Play Your Stress-Free Best - PHH 236

We want to be able to play confidently and beautifully. We want to be able to eliminate those worries, those spots in a piece that we're really worried about. We don't want to have to flinch or dread what's coming up on the next line. Those kinds of things can derail our performance, can make us more nervous than we want because we're worried about them. And that's an important thing to relieve ourselves of. We don't need to approach our playing, particularly at this time of year when everything's more stressful. We don't need to approach our playing from that place of fear and worry.

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 place. 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. It's time for a confidence boost. You've been practicing your holiday music, feeling like you're making good progress, but it's not quite there and the performance date is coming up soon. Your music is mostly fine. It has up days when everything goes perfectly and down days when it feels like you've never played the piece before. Maybe it's not quite up to tempo, or maybe there are just a few measures, maybe more than a few, that are resisting all your attempts. Learn them and play them smoothly. Whatever the issue is, it's starting to be a little concerning because time is getting short now. If you're worried that I'm somehow coming through your computer and looking at you and reading your mind, that's not it at all. Of course, I've experienced the exact same things, and that's the place I'm talking to you from today. Let's face it, we never want to feel unprepared or less ready than we would like for a performance. But sometimes it happens. Despite all our planning and preparation. Believe me, I'm the last person who would try to tell you that you should have started learning the piece sooner or practiced it more. I know all too well from my own experience that sometimes music just takes longer to come together than we expect. But since we can't change the performance date, we can't wait for the issues to resolve themselves. We have to figure out a way to make everything work. That's something every professional harpist knows. There's a time when more practice is not an option. You have to look at where the music is today and make some choices. It's not giving up, and it's definitely not staying up late to cram practice. Trust me, that never works. So what I want to share with you today are seven things I have done when I have needed to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. These are things you can do which will save you stress and worry and allow you to take a breath and relax. Even better, they'll let you play beautifully with confidence. You may have tried some of these, or maybe even all of them yourself, but if you have a performance date coming up a little sooner than you feel ready for, consider this a reminder. It's also permission you don't have to make this hard on yourself. That's not what music should be about, and it certainly isn't what Harp Happiness is about.

So take a breath, sit back, take a sip of tea, and let's dive in. I also have a free PDF that may help you with some stress relieving tactics. Not quite the musical tactics that we're talking about today, but certainly valuable ones. It's called 20 Ways to Crush the Rush and I'll tell you how to get that a little bit later in the show. And I'll remind you again, as I'm going to remind you now that our Early Bird pricing for our retreat ends very soon. So if you want to come to our getaway retreat in February and you want the best price, the best price is still going, but only for a few more days. So you need to get in there and get that done. I'm not trying to add extra stress to you at the moment, but I do want to put these opportunities in front of you. So I'll tell you more about those when we get to the end of the show. Right now we'll talk about our seven quick fixes so you can play your stress free best. So with these quick fixes, there are two objectives that we're keeping in mind. The first one is perhaps the most important to us. We want to be able to play confidently and beautifully. We want to be able to eliminate those worries, those spots in a piece that we're really worried about. We don't want to have to flinch or dread what's coming up on the next line. Those kinds of things can derail our performance, can make us more nervous than we want, because we're worried about them. And that's an important thing to relieve ourselves of. We don't need to approach our playing, particularly at this time of year when everything's more stressful. We don't need to approach our playing from that place of feeling fear and worry. This is different from being nervous, of course, right? Nerves are another issue, but this would add to our nerves when we think that, oh gosh, we really are worried about. I don't know. That line on page two. I never get that right. I hope it goes okay. Who needs that kind of worry? And that's what these fixes are designed to eliminate. But the other part of it is perhaps even more important, and that's because this requires a perspective shift. What we really need to present in our music is not perhaps what we think. This is a conflict between what is important to us in our Music, the kind of stuff we practice and what really matters to a listener. And having to make that perspective shift from behind the harp on the bench to in front of the harp in the audience. And consider the difference in priorities and what's really important, what we expect to get out of it. That difference is essential. Here's an example of what I mean, it's not a musical example, but I think it makes my point really well. I had prepared a slide presentation for a class I was giving. This was years ago, and I had worked very hard on the slides. I was new to the technology at the time, so that lets you know how long ago this was. And I had prepared all these slides. I didn't have an assistant who's an excellent graphic designer the way I do now. I was doing it all myself. It looked a little bit hokey, but I was pretty pleased with it. And I spent hours on it because I wanted to get every teaching point right. And so I was putting them all on the slides. And in fact, I had been advised that for this particular presentation, I should have something on the order of 50 to 60 slides, which seemed incredible to me. But that's what I was working on. So it took me a long time to do. I had it all ready. Had it ready to go get to the evening of the webinar. And I started to give my presentation. And my. My program failed. I don't know to this day exactly what happened, but I couldn't get the slides to show. It was probably operator error. I probably was doing something wrong. I thought I'd rehearsed it, thought I had everything, but I couldn't get the slides to show. And so I had to give the entire webinar without my slides. Now, I still had done the preparation. I knew what my teaching points were. I had a printout of everything I had done. So I, you know, I knew what I wanted to teach, but I didn't have all the visuals that I had planned to rely on. And you know what? It wasn't the visuals that mattered to the people who were on that webinar. It was the teaching points. I had been focusing so much effort on getting the teaching parts right and then putting them on the slides, that the slides became the focus for me. And the slides were really just a tool, weren't they? They were just a medium that I could use to share the teaching. But the important part was the teaching. That's what the listeners cared about. So sometimes we get lost. Our perspective shifts to things that don't have as much significance in the real world outside our practice studio, as they do for us when we're trying to practice, for instance, a wrong note or two. Not a big deal for a listener. I know it doesn't feel good for us, but people listening to it don't have the same experience we do. And, you know, a buzz or two. If we buzz, not a big deal for a listener, we know we don't want to do it. A pedal noise, a missed lever, one of those things we know their mistakes or things we didn't want to have happen. But listeners are not as aware of that as we think.

So I'm not offering this, in this case anyway, as a cure for nerves, But I want you to consider that a listener's perspective is different from ours. And that's part of what's going to make these quick fixes a little bit easier for you. And you'll be able to be a little bit more relaxed about your playing. It's not just perspective either, right? A listener is looking to enjoy the music. So anything that we do that takes away from that enjoyment is something we want to eliminate. And while a missed note isn't a big deal, if a listener senses that we're struggling through four measures in the middle of the piece, the that makes it uncomfortable. So why are we struggling through those four measures? That's where I want to go. I want you to think about things that we can change so we don't have to struggle. That's where the secret of these quick fixes is. Once again, some of these quick fixes might be things you already know. In which case, consider this a reminder, a little tap on the shoulder to say, hey, you remember, you don't have to work this hard. Maybe you haven't tried these and you've thought about it, but you need a little bit of permission to actually do this, to take advantage of these tactics. So consider yourself as having gotten permission. I'm giving you permission right now to take advantage of these. So what are they? Well, let's start diving in here. Okay. Option number one is the cut it out sort of option. Whatever it is that you can't play. Is it that four measures on page two? Is it the third verse of the. Of the hymn? Whatever it is, cut out what you can't play. Just cut it out, leave it out, and you can repeat or substitute what you can play. So, for instance, if the third verse of the Christmas Carol is just too hard to play, well, then take out the third verse and do the first verse again. Or do the second verse again, maybe with a different dynamic so it sounds a little bit different. Or play the first verse twice and then play the second verse as a third verse. You get to make those kinds of alterations to preserve the integrity of the music. Right? You're doing this to serve the music because nobody wants to hear you struggle through the third verse, but they'd be perfectly happy to hear the second verse again. So cut out what you can't play and then repeat or substitute what you can. If it's those four bars in the middle of something. Well, if it's the four bars in the middle of the second verse, look for the same four bars in the first verse or in the third verse. Look for them as you can play them. Look for ones you can play and put those in instead. Voila, it's a fix. And think how much more comfortable you'll be knowing that. Oh, I don't have to worry about those four bars because they're the same as the four bars in the first verse, and I know I can play them. Absolutely. Make the switch. No. 1 but you will know. Quick fix number two. If the pedal changes or the lever changes are causing you grief and causing you anxiety, see if you can eliminate them. Look at the notes that the pedals or levers are trying to are referring to. Which accidentals are you adding? And see if you can eliminate one of them. See if. Okay, well, look, that piece wants me to put this lever up and then this lever up, and it's the same note in a different octave. Well, do you really need both of them? What would happen if you left one out? Or. Well, okay, this needs an F sharp and a C sharp, and I can't do both of them at once. My pedal technique, I just can't do it. So what would happen if you left out the circle and you just didn't play the C sharp? Or what would it sound like? If you left it as a C natural, what would it sound like? Try it out and see. Don't be afraid to experiment with this. You can perhaps eliminate it just by eliminating the note. Or maybe you just don't need the pedal change at all. One big example of this is what child is this? Which is Greensleeves. It's the same tune. That tune is played so many different ways. Sometimes it has accidentals in it, other times it doesn't. And so you might be able to make a switch and still keep the feeling of the piece totally intact, where, once again, nobody would know you'd made the change. But you get to heave a big sigh of relief because you don't have to try to find that lever and push it up real fast. Leave it out. I know leaving it out may seem like you're not following the rules, but the rules are yours here. Or another way to look at that is that the rules are the listeners, because their experience is what matters more than yours in this case. So making the piece sound the way it is supposed to sound with a little bit less struggle on your part is following the rules. Different way to look at it, right? Quick fix 3, a little bit less drastic. Try just thinning out the notes. Maybe those four measures that are hard. Wouldn't be so hard if you left out some of the notes in the left hand or simplified the chords in the right hand or in both hands. If you just took out a few of the notes, would you still keep what sounds right about the music just make it easier to play. Sometimes just, you know, a little bit of whiteout can make all the difference. So that's quick fix number three. Quick fix number four. Try eliminating your page turns, sometimes turning pages, and this applies to paper pages or digital pages. Sometimes that's just more anxiety than you need. And sometimes those pages work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes that foot pedal works, sometimes it doesn't. We've all had fails on both of those things. I certainly have had epic fails turning paper pages. And I've had, you know, digital page mess ups too. So sometimes it can help to just say, all right, you know what? I don't need to play this piece with that page turn in the middle. If I put three pages out on my stand, it's going to make all the difference. Or if I cut and paste my four pages so that I can see them on two pages, that will be really helpful. That, of course, is applying to paper music, digital things. Well, you know, maybe you want to just give yourself a little bit more time to turn pages. So if you're looking at your iPad and you've got a page turn coming up, what if you put your iPad on an actual music stand and at the place where you have to make that quick page turn instead of just worrying about what's coming up on the next page, perhaps you put a paper copy of that next page or right next to your iPad so that if something happens and you don't get the page over in time, you have some extra time to look at the paper page right there while you make the page turn. Anything that we can do to eliminate the worry and the panic that happens is going to make your performance that much smoother and, of course, make you that much more relaxed, which is the point. So consider those page turns. Quick fix number five. You've been practicing the piece. You've been practicing this really showy, spiffy version, and it's a little bit too difficult. Well, maybe it's time to rethink this. What if you played an easier version of the piece and you took some of the fun stuff from that harder version and spiffed up the easier version? You'd be playing an easier version, which should make you a little bit less fearful and less worried about what you're going to play. But you'd still be adding some of those, oh, I don't know, maybe arpeggios or glissandos or bigger chords or something that you like from the harder version, but not as many as you'd need to play the harder version. You can just spiff up the easier version. Maybe you add, you know, a very simple, plain first verse from the easy version, and then just take some of the harder version stuff that you can play and put that on the end. So this is almost the opposite from what I started with. Right. That first fix was all about making a harder version easier. This is about making an easier version a little bit harder, but not as hard as the hard version. And that can be a really nice way to do it, too. It's like, oh, well, I'm really happy with this easy version, but I love this way. This one starts the introduction with the harmonics. That's really cool. And I like playing that. Add that to the easier version. That's right. Easy peasy. That's the point. Okay, quick fix number six. Rethink the tempo. Yeah, I know. We spend a lot of time hoping that our tempo is going to work out and that we're going to be able to play it fast enough. But if this is a solo, then the tempo is your choice. I mean, if you have to play this with a group or with a choir or something, they have to sing it. And their tempo then is the one you have to take. You don't get to choose that. But if you're playing a solo piece, let's rethink the tempo. If you're not comfortable playing it near the metronome mark that you've set for yourself as a goal. Here's what I mean. Could the whole piece go a little slower? I mean, what if you made it a little bit more meditative? So appropriate for Christmas, right? What if you made the whole thing maybe more like a lullaby so that it could go more gently and you didn't have to push it so much. Or maybe the tempo isn't an all over kind of thing. Maybe you could use some of what I like to call strategic rubato and to get you through that sticky spot. For instance, if it's that four measures in the middle of the the verse, maybe if you just played them in a slightly more expressive manner, you could not have to keep the tempo up there and that might work. Now, that's a tricky thing to do because you don't want it to sound like all of a sudden you're playing twice as slow. That can be disconcerting for a listener. Yeah, but it might be if you just eased your way through it a little bit, that would make enough of a difference. This is a little bit like the time warp practice technique that I talk about, where you're practicing at tempo and then you get to the hard spot and you just suddenly go into slow motion and then you go back into your regular fast tempo again. Now, we don't want that part of the Christmas Carol to sound like it's slow motion, but just a little bit slower and a little bit more expressive to go with. That can sometimes work. As I said, you have to be careful with it. Otherwise it just sounds like you're slowing down on purpose. But if you can make it sound like you're slowing it down to be musical, that's strategic rubato, and that can be very helpful. So that's Quick fix number six, and let me get you to the final one, Quick fix number seven. This is the most drastic of all, but it's an option and I want you to remember that you can consider it. And it's this. If that piece is giving you too much trouble, too much anxiety, if you're too worried about it, we'll play something else. Play something else. Change pieces entirely and play what you know well. We always play better when we're playing something we know well. And, you know, when you're talking about Christmas stuff, that's the best kind of stuff to play pieces that you know well. And so this might be the time to say, well, okay, I thought I was going to be able to play oh, Holy Night, but it's just a little bit too challenging for me. It's not ready. So you know what? I'm going to play Silent Night instead. Okay, you get to do that. There's almost no circumstance in which you can't change pieces. Obviously, one would be if you're accompanying a choir. But even if you've told the choir director at the church that, oh, my solo is going to be this, if you decide to play something else, I would urge you not to decide at the very last moment because that's not comfortable for you probably either. But, you know, you decide a week ahead and you say, oh, I know you might already have the bulletins printed, but I need to change my solo to this. You can do that. People do that all the time. So feel free to change pieces entirely if it would take away some of the burden, some of the stress, some of the worry from playing the piece that you've been working on. So those are my seven quick fixes. I know that they may seem a little unorthodox if you've never tried these before, but trust me, they're not cheating. They're just fine. They are totally allowable. Master performers make cuts and alterations all the time. And it's so much more important that you are comfortable playing because that's what's going to make the listener's experience the best. They're going to be able to lose themselves in the music without the distraction of anything you might be struggling through. A performance is not the time to be extra courageous and valiant. It's the time to present something you know you can present well. So this isn't cheating. This is good musicianship. So don't be afraid to employ one of these quick fixes on that count. Remember, too, there are no shoulds or musts in music. Just because it's written there means you have to play it. No, it doesn't. It hasn't for time immemorial. This isn't, you know, some 21st century new rule. People have altered pieces, cut them, changed them, rearranged them, always. There are no hard and fast rules. You don't have to play every note on the page. You can change it so that it works for you. And by the way, if you're playing one of my arrangements this holiday season, go for it, change it. I'm okay with that. Absolutely. There are no rules. You're not breaking any by changing what you need to to be able to play the piece well. But most importantly, I want you to think about this. You have to decide when you're going to make that call. How long are you going to struggle with what you're working on before you decide to make the edits, make the changes, whatever they are, that you want to be able to play the piece more comfortably? I would suggest that you make those changes sooner rather than later. Be sure that you're giving yourself at the very least a week to get used to your new version, whatever that is. And two weeks would be even better. So if you have a Christmas performance coming up, this is the time to make that call. Don't keep struggling thinking that, well, it'll be better by next week. Yeah, it might. But are you going to be any more relaxed about it next week? Maybe not. It's your call to make. But I'm just telling you that based on my own experience, it's better to make that call sooner rather than later. Think how much more relaxed your practice will be if you're not still sweating that, you know, middle verse or those four measures or whatever it happens to be. You'll be able to practice in a more relaxed way. You'll be able to play in a more relaxed way. And that's what's important for your making music. I promised before I would tell you how to get a hold of the 20 Ways to Crush the Rush and that's about crushing the holiday rush. I want you to be able to be as stress free as you can this and every holiday season. So this PDF just gives you 20 quick ways that you can relax about the performances that you have to make. So that's something that you may be interested in. It's a free PDF and I've put a link to it in the show Notes of course, and that will enable you to get over there and download it and you can put it right on your music stand or your refrigerator or wherever. It's going to remind you most of what you can do to just breathe easy this holiday season. And then I do want to remind you about the getaway retreat. I keep reminding you about this because I know the pricing deal is going to go away. So if you haven't checked out the discount on the getaway retreat, this is the time to do it because it is going to end in just a couple of days and I don't want you to miss it. I've also added some fun photos to the webpage that just show a couple of activities that some of the harp husbands have done. If you have a spouse or significant other, a friend, a partner, whatever, who wants to come along, they're not a harpist. They want to come along. We don't make them sit through the harp stuff. There are plenty of things to do in the Orlando area. My husband Rudy is always there and he helps organize things and you don't have to go along on group activities. You know, there's plenty to see and do. They can go off on their own, have a great time, and then come back for dinner maybe. And then we've got, you know, lots of time together. So it can be a really nice way to have kind of a vacation and a harp retreat at the same time. So I've put some photos of that on the website just because. And that's something you might want to consider, but consider it quickly. All right, that's it for today. Next week on the show, I'm going to be doing one of my fairly rare interviews here on the podcast. I'm going to be interviewing violinist Leah Kim. Next week's show comes out just a day ahead of what has come to be known as Giving Tuesday. And I wanted to share with you one of the music organizations that I just found out about this fall, and I'm so impressed. It's called Music Angels. And the founder of Music Angels, Leah Kim, is going to come and talk with me and we're going to discuss the story that led her to this path in music and what led her to found Music Angels and the wonderful work that Music Angels is doing in the community. I really want to share that with you just to as an uplifting story because we all need those, right? So that's next week on the podcast. And until then, for those of you in the United States, Happy Thanksgiving because that's coming up this week and we're gonna have a wonderful turkey day here. And I hope you do as well. And for those of you not celebrating Thanksgiving, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. Anyway, please know that I am thankful for each and every one of you because without you, this podcast would just be air. So thank you so much for all your contributions to harp mastery just by listening and particip in the in our courses and in the hub and the app. We are so grateful. I am so grateful that you are here. So thank you for being you. And of course, 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. Thank you extra much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning in to 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.

Thanks for tuning in to 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.