A Behind the Scenes Look at My Practice Week - PHH 233

In my own copy of the Spark Journal. What I do for something like this is I take those three weekly goals that the Spark Journal wants me to identify and that's where I make my notes. Okay, these are the ones that need the deep work. These are the ones that need some spot work. These are the ones that just need playing. That's where I put those.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happ 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.comjoin-now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. Over the years, I have had questions about my practice, how much practice I do, what I do in my practice, and so on. There's also been the occasional request to sit in and listen to my practice. I've always thought that my own practice routines and what I do on any given day in my practice wouldn't be useful to share with most harpists. The reason being that the demands on my time and on my playing are vastly different from what the majority of harpists experience. And I've never believed that anyone could really benefit from watching me practice or listening to me practice. But gradually I have been led to rethink that opinion, and my thinking started to change with the introduction of practice labs in our Harp Mastery Hub. In case you don't know what our practice labs are, I will fill you in. They are online meetups that any of our Hub members can join, and all that happens is we practice in the same virtual space for an hour and a half. Our cameras are either on or off, and our microphones are off so that although we can see everyone else on the call, we can't hear them. We're all just practicing together. It's a little like a practice study hall where we're all doing our own work, but together. We hold these practice labs twice a week, on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons. The point of the practice lab is that it creates a scheduled practice time with a little nudge of accountability. No one takes attendance. You show up when you want to, if you want to, and stay for as much of the time as you like. Sometimes we have a good number of people, other days just a few. I don't make all of the practice labs myself, although I show up most days, and it was on the practice labs when I began to notice that some people wanted to show up just to watch me practice for a little bit. It didn't make sense to me at first, but now I have a different perspective and that's why today I want to share this behind the scenes look at my practice. If this sounds like a why would I care about this topic to you, I get it. But if you have any curiosity about what I practice, when I practice, how I practice, and most importantly, why I practice, then you will want to keep listening. Before we get going though, I want to let you know that registration for our annual getaway retreat in Florida in February is open right now. The dates this coming year will be February 27th. That's 2026 to March 3rd, 2026, and this is our annual offering where we just give harpist a chance to get away, to spend time with other harpists, to just relax. That's always part of it. But we've got workshops, we've got ensembles, we've got one on one coachings. All the things that will help you in connect to your harp playing. And that time right there at the end of winter, the very beginning of spring is a great time to do it. It's a good renewal time, isn't it? And of course in Florida that's just a terrific weather time usually. And it's also strawberry season, my favorite. But we have a house where we all are. We've got 10, I believe that's the number 10 en suite rooms. So you have your own room with your own bathroom. And we are able do everything together. The house has a swimming pool so we've got all that kind of stuff. And we've made a couple really nice changes for this year. One is that if you can't bring your harp, we will have harps there for you. You'll be able to share a harp with one other retreater. And don't worry about, you know, not being able to get to the harp and use it. We'll be dividing into groups so that you can, you can have the harp when you need it. You'll have plenty of harp time, I promise you. So that's our retreat. As I said, we have 10 rooms, so it's a small group. And I will be there of course teaching. Our theme this year is purpose, progress and passion. So I know that sounds perhaps a little high powered for a retreat, but really these are why we play. And that's what the retreat is all about. Reconnecting to why we play and of course how we do it better. So the special early bird pricing is available for the next couple of weeks only and then the price will go up to full price. But we have openings and I would love to see you there. So that's February 27th to March 3rd, 2026 in Kissimmee, Florida. That's the Orlando area. And I certainly hope that you plan to join us. You will find the link either in today's show notes or. Or you can go to heartmastery.com and look under upcoming events and you'll see the retreats page. Okay, well, let's get back to my practice now. In case you haven't heard me mention this before, I was not naturally a dedicated practicer. I was not one of those young people who was really good about putting in their practice time. I fought it from the time I was 4 years old until I was well into my college years. It took me that long to figure out exactly what the point of practice was and how I could use it. Instead of treating it like a chore or drudgery, something that I had to get to. I realized that if you're listening to this, that's probably not you. You're probably one of the dedicated ones or certainly one of the converts, as I am, to the power of practice and particularly the power of consistent practice. That idea that practicing every day or almost every day is going to give you the progress that you want. Because we all know practice is the key to progress. Without practice, there isn't any progress, and regular practice is what makes that progress happen. Okay, so it took me a long time to learn that lesson, and I hope it certainly didn't take you a long time to learn that lesson. But, but because of that, because I know that that's what I want, that progress and that consistent practice, I've had to be very strict with myself about fitting it into my schedule. As you can imagine, my schedule is pretty busy. I'm sure yours is too. And I absolutely live by my Google Calendar. I love my Google Calendar as opposed to a written calendar because it's on my phone, it's on my computer, it's always available in front of me. I used to keep a written diary, you know, a journal kind of thing or, and a date book. And I have one of those now too. But I use that mostly for my daily planning and my daily notes. My schedule, My calendar is all on my Google Calendar. And one of the beautiful things, at least for me, about that calendar is that I can schedule blocks of time. And those blocks of time are movable and they're color coded. So my calendar has special blocks that are green for me and those are my practice times and a couple other key things that I want to remember to include in my daily work or in the work that I do over a week. Things that aren't necessarily time bound. I mean, all my appointments are in there, the lessons that I teach, the commitments that I have, but my commitments to myself are on that green calendar. And my practice is one of those. And there is a block of practice time every day on my calendar. Those are the times that I intend to practice. They're not always the times that I do practice. And this is another feature that I love about my Google Calendar. If I'm scheduling something and maybe I'm working with a Student and we have to schedule a lesson, and we need to do some juggling of times to get that in. And the lesson would fall on a practice block for me. I can take that practice block and I can actually just move it, drag it up or down so that my practice starts earlier, starts later, or because that practice block is on my schedule, I can. I get to make the choice and say, you know, that day won't work for a lesson for me because I know that I have to practice, so it allows me that. I don't know, like a guardrail, right. I can see the practice block and say, oh, nope, can't put anything else in there because there's no other time for me to practice. That, for me, is a lifesaver. If I have those blocks in, and for a long time I didn't, my practice would be the last thing that would fit in my day, if it fit at all. Because you know what it's like, right? A day fills up. But if I have those practice blocks in my calendar, I'm constantly reminded that I need to fit them in, that it's important to me. I have to say that that particular statement that my practice is important to me made a huge difference for me. It allowed me to accept that practice was a priority. It wasn't something that I could be lax about. It was something I needed to be really dedicated about. Despite the fact that I have so many other things to do and so many other responsibilities, making that practice time a permanent fixture in my calendar has enabled me to keep going with my practice and my playing and to keep that fresh even when my schedule gets completely overloaded. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that I have enough practice time. It doesn't mean that I have the practice time that I would like if I had to do nothing else. I mean, let's face it, if I had to do nothing else during a day, I would love three to four hours of practice a day. I would feel like I was really moving ahead as well as keeping on top of the things that I needed to do that would be ideal for me. But that isn't happening, at least not at the moment, that's for sure. So that's why I did a lot of practicing in college and in those years right after college, because that was the perfect time to do it. So if you're listening to this podcast and that's the time of life you're in, do your practice now, because it's going to be the foundation for everything that you do later. All right, so what do I do? I don't have enough practice time. And here's what I had to practice last week. So in the next few weeks, that would be actually sort of the month of November. I am preparing for three different chamber music programs, two solo performances, an orchestra performance, and plus I'm learning a brand new composition. So there are a lot of pieces that I have on my plate, a lot of pieces that I have on my music stand, and there's a lot that I need to do, and it does not fit in to my usual practice time. I usually get in an hour and a half of practice a day, but you can imagine that's not enough to get to everything every day. So for me to be sure that I'm moving ahead, that I'm meeting all these responsibilities, I need to set in place a system for rotation. So after having made my practice a priority, the rotation is the next most powerful piece of my practice. The basis for that rotation isn't getting to every piece in order or even going through all the pieces all the time. What it is is about deciding which pieces need a lot of work, which pieces need a little work, and which pieces really don't need any work, they just need to be played. And when you can organize your music that way, or at least this works for me, when I can organize my music that way, then my practice looks manageable, because I don't have 20 pieces that I have to fit into an hour and a half. And I know that if I can do some deep work on a few pieces in that hour and a half that I have to practice, then the next day I can devote some deep work to some other pieces and just kind of review the work that I did the day before. My goal with the rotation is to make sure that everything that needs deep work, everything that needs a lot of practice, I play every day, whether I'm working on it or just reviewing the work that I've done, because they're the things that need the most frequent touches, the things that need almost no work, just playing. I can put those in a rotation where I play through them every other day, every third day, or whatever I need for those pieces. And then the pieces that are in the middle, that need a little bit of work, they might just need some touch up on a few places and then playing every once in a while. So that's the kind of rotation that allows me to get everything done without doing everything every day. When I work with my students to help them set up a rotation like this, we make lists Some of my students are people who like spreadsheets and we can do it that way. Other times, it's just a list. I have been doing this for myself for so long that I just use piles. I have my music organized in piles for every program that I'm doing. And sometimes those files are kept in a folder so that I can see them. Sometimes there are a few folders. I try not to leave piles on the floor, although I've been known to do that. I can't deny it. But those piles allow me to see all the music for all my programs at once. And I know instantly which ones are the pieces that I have to work on and which ones aren't. So the pieces from those programs that I need to absolutely hit every day, they're the ones that live on my music stand. And then every day I go through one of those programs, pick out the easy pieces, the ones I just need to review, and do those too. So I sort of do instant on the fly planning. And when it really gets to be crunch time, when I have, as I do this month, when I have a lot going on, I will make a list and I will also use my Spark Practice Journal. The Spark Practice Journal, as you might know, is one of the practice tools that I developed. And you can get the Spark Practice Journal by going to our Heart Mastery Shop. You'll find it there. But in my own copy of the Spark Journal, what I do for something like this is I take those three weekly goals that the Spark Journal wants me to identify, and that's where I make my notes. Okay, these are the ones that need the deep work. These are the ones that need some spot work. These are the ones that just need playing. That's where I put those. And then as I go through every day, I note on my Spark Journal, yep, I did this, did this, did this. And then before I'm done or right when I'm done, my practice, before I leave the harp, I make those notes for the next day. What do I want to work on the next day so that when I get to my practice time, I can get right into my practice time and I don't have to re strategize. So that's the important part of the planning for me. I need to know what I need to work on. I need to know what I need to play but don't need to work on. I need to prioritize those things. I need to see the lists and or the piles and I need to be sure that I know what I'm doing before I get to my practice so that it's planned out at the end of my practice the day before. That, for me, is key. Now, there are a couple of key principles, key beliefs that make that rotation work. Obviously, the setting up of that rotation, not just the strategizing of the pieces, but the planning for the practice time. Right? Those blocks that I put in my calendar, those are key to make the rotation work on a practical level, but to make it work on a playing level so that I can feel like I am preparing properly for everything I need to do. There are some key beliefs. That's what I mean. One is this, that I can trust myself, that I have done this enough, that the pieces I know I don't need a lot of practice time on, I really don't need a lot of practice time on. Those are things that I have come to understand about myself. Granted, if you're balancing a lot of music and this isn't something you're used to, this is something you're going to have to learn, in which case you could just sort of trust the process and experiment with it and see that it works. But for me, that's the first thing I have to know that, yep, this is how I can make this work. And it's going to work. Trusting that process, trusting myself, that's really important here because otherwise I would worry all the time. And I can't allow myself to be so caught up in worry that I don't have the practice time I would like. I don't have my four hours, I have my hour and a half most days, not even every day. And I've got some emergency plans for that I can tell you about. But I have to trust that it's all going to work. It's worked before and it's going to work this time. I can't afford to be worried, I can't afford to be regretful or anything else that I don't have the practice time that I would ideally like. It's going to work. And this leads directly to the second belief. I touched on this in a recent podcast too, when we were talking about planning holiday music. I have to believe that the time I have is enough, because it's all the time I have. So I have to strategize and use the time that I have. But I also have to understand that since it's all the time I have, it's got to be enough time, and I don't have to worry about that. I just have to use my time well. The Time I have is enough time. Now, if it truly isn't going to be enough time, then I've done some poor planning and I'm going to have to double up on my practice time or make some other changes. If something came up for me right now, and it was another playing opportunity that I really wanted to take advantage of, I would have to think pretty carefully before I consented to take it on, because I'd have to look at my schedule and see, do I really have the time to practice for this?

And if the answer was, well, no, but I might be able to find it, and it was something I really wanted to do, then the first thing that happens is that practice time goes in my calendar. But for right now, I know that, and I believe firmly that the time I have is enough to get everything ready. And once again, that belief allows me not to panic. It allows me to stay calm, because it's all the time I have, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to prepare. I'm going to prepare the way I know I have to prepare, and it's going to be enough.

And then the third thing, I don't even really think about this so much anymore. Until I work with a student who gets caught in this trap. In my daily practice, I can't be so focused on perfection, so focused on fixing something and getting it exactly right that I don't get it done, that I don't get to finish. I have to understand that my time is finite. Even though it's enough time, it's all the time I have, and it needs to be parceled out carefully over everything that I need to do. I can't be so intent on getting one thing exactly right that I don't get to everything else. So if I've done five repetitions of a particular passage that I knew needed some extra, extra going over.

It'S so tempting, isn't it, to just, oh, I'll just do it once more. If I do it once more, I could do this well, I'll just do it once more. I don't have the time to fall into that trap. I've done my repetitions. I've done the work that I know I have time to do. And now there's something else that needs my time and attention. Making those decisions in your practice, oh, that's so hard. Wrenching your attention away from something that you know you're doing good work on and you're. You're making progress, and just a little bit more will make more progress for you, taking your attention away from that, refocusing on something else and is very difficult to do. And this is something that once again I discovered because I had to, because I had so much else going on. But the real power in this is that this is what allows you to harness the power of time. Remember that we make progress over a certain amount of time. We don't make progress in one practice session. I mean, we might make something better, we might fix it, we might find the flaw. But that progress, that improvement that we made is going to settle in and become part of our music over a longer span of time. So rather than do 20 repetitions today and then not be able to get to the next thing, that also needs that work, I would rather do five repetitions today and five tomorrow and five the next day so that I can do the same with another piece. Those fewer repetitions over more days, that's going to give me a better benefit. It's going to give me more long lasting results, more progress over time, more security, more confidence. Doing it 20 times today and then not being able to do it tomorrow, or maybe only doing it once tomorrow does not give you the same kind of progress. So holding myself back from, oh, I can just do it once more, I can do it a couple more times, I don't have the time for that. I know that over days those five repetitions will pay off for me, whereas the 20 repetitions today might not. You can see I've got a lot to do, not a lot of time to do it in. I have to make those choices. You might not be quite so strapped with your practice time. You might have a little bit more leeway. But I would encourage you to use that same idea because that's where our progress comes from. It comes from over days. It doesn't come all on one day. And then we parcel it out. This is the ultimate practice lesson, isn't it? The power of consistency, those consistent touches, those daily practice sessions, that's where we make progress. That's where the growth comes. And for me, in my practice, particularly right now, when I've got a lot on my plate, I know that that's what I need to do. I need to be very careful about how I use my time. I need to parcel it out. I need to divide it so that everything gets the appropriate amount of, the appropriate number of days of touching so that it's not all on one day and then not at all the rest of the week. But it's those little touches over time. Like compound interest, that's what pays off. It's our consistency that is going to give us the results we want. I have learned that sometimes the hard way over the years I've been playing, you can't cram practice. And so those small touches are the ones that make the difference for me. So this week that's exactly what I was doing, saying, okay, I need to do these sections for of these pieces every single day. I need to look at these pieces every other day because they're only being reviewed. And actually there are a few pieces that it's like, okay, if I look at these once a week, that's going to be enough. They're not coming up till later in the month and I don't need to do it. On the other hand, these are coming up this weekend. So now I know that I need to do this and this and this and, and this every single day so that they have the polish and the front of mind kind of attitude that they need. Right? They need, this is their moment. They need all the extra that I can give them without sacrificing the time for the other pieces. Gosh, I hope that makes sense to you. And that's why writing it out can be very helpful over the years. I've got my shorthand. I described that to you, right? I've got my piles, I've got my quick lists, and I can do this very quickly. But if this is a system you're not used to, this is where you need to start. Write it down on a list every day, every other day, every third day. Look for spots, look for whole pieces that just need playing through and use those and just avoid the trap of, oh, I'll just do it once more. Oh, I don't have to get to that today. Maybe you don't really have to get to that today, but make sure that that's a decision that you'll be happy that you made when you come back to your practice tomorrow. But what about those days when everything goes wrong? I certainly have days like that. I know we all do those days when, ah, I've got my plan for the day and it's all terrific and then something happens and the plants fall apart. You've got to change things. And for our topic today, that practice time disappears. You know those things where all of a sudden somebody needs you or somebody gets sick or something happens and your car breaks down, something happens and your whole day just is out of control. So for days like that, it's important to have an emergency plan. I Have a standard emergency plan that I use for days when my practice time disappears. And that is I will play the conditioning exercises, the salzado conditioning exercises. First of all, I feel very virtuous because I'm doing exercises. And so, you know, I give myself that little pat on the back. Oh, I'm doing exercises. But I know that those particular exercises, which I do very often, those exercises really keep my fingers in shape. And that's what I want. I don't want to have to come back after a day when I didn't get to practice and feel like my fingers are a little sluggish. So those conditioning exercises really help my fingers stay in shape and ready to go. It also keeps me from feeling like, ah, I didn't get to do anything yesterday. There's that, that little bit of guilt, maybe that's too strong a word. But I don't like days when I don't practice. And this keeps that feeling at bay. If the conditioning exercises aren't your thing, you might have a favorite warm up that you do, a favorite piece that you play, maybe you have a favorite set of exercises. That's the kind of thing that I would suggest for you if you want to do something like that too. So that's my standard emergency plan. But on a month like this, when I have a lot of music I'm preparing, my emergency plan is probably less conditioning exercises and more spots in the pieces that I'm playing that are technically challenging, that I don't want to let go for a day. And if I can get 10 minutes or 15 minutes just to do those, that's enough for me. And once again, that keeps me feeling like I'm being consistent. I'm working on those things that are going to make me successful with my music at the end of whatever time frame I've got. And it keeps me doing those daily touches on the things that are really important for me. So the emergency plan, I think, is important. And once again, have that emergency plan in place for yourself. Whether it's, these are the exercises that I do on a day when I don't practice, or this is the piece that I'm working on that I don't want to lose track of right now. So I'm going to find 15 minutes, even if it's the 15 minutes before I do the dishes after dinner or before I go to bed or something, I'm going to find those 15 minutes and I'm going to just do that. That's all that I need to do. I did have one of those days this week. And I was able to just do the eight measures or so that are really, really chall in one of the pieces I'm working on. It's the sense en fantasy for violin and harp. And there's just a little bit right there in the middle that's really hard. And that's been my technical exercise for a while now. And that was what I was able to do. Thinking, okay, all right. At least I got that in. Didn't get to anything else, but I got that in. And so there's my emergency plan and how it played out this week. The final thing I want to share with you about my practice is something I discovered in. After I'd been through a period where I was doing a lot of other stuff but not a lot of practicing, and I discovered that I wasn't feeling good about that. And it occurred to me why. And that is, I think of myself as a harpist. I play the harp. It's what I do. And if I'm not playing the harp, then there's a disconnect for me. If I'm not practicing, I'm not doing what harpists do. Harpists practice a practice. It's not like practice for me isn't just about getting something right. It's about the habit. It's about having a practice of playing the harp, not just trying to get something right. It's part of being a harpist. It is what I do. And so when I practice, I feel like I'm living in alignment and that my practice is part of being a harpist. It's not just getting something correct and making it better and improving my skills. It's what I do. Kind of like I eat, kind of like I sleep. It's part of what I do. And I don't want that to be an option in my day. I need it to be part of my day because it's part of who I am. And that alignment between how I think of myself as a harpist and what I do playing the harp, that alignment is critical. And that's the underlying motivation that allows me to spend my energy practicing every day. Even with everything else that I do, that alignment is so important to me. That's part of where my own personal harp happiness is. And I wanted to share that with you today in case you're feeling a little bit of that disconnect too. You can make practice part of your day. Doesn't have to be an hour and a half. It doesn't have to be every day, but it has to be enough that it feels right to you. So consider that, please. That's part of my harp happiness, obviously, and I think it can be part of yours too. If you want to play the harp, then by gum, you should play the harp. So let's find some practice time. Put it in your calendar. So let me just review what's important for me. I make practice a priority. I set up a rotation so that I can be sure that I get to everything that I want to get to. I believe that the time I have is enough time so that I don't worry and fret and add extra pressure to myself. I remember not to be so focused on getting something right that I don't get something done. I have emergency plans for those days when I need to do just a little mini practice and not my full practice. And I rely on the power of consistency, knowing that those daily efforts that I make are going to pay off over time.

That's what my practice is all about. That's how I do my practice. And I hope that helps you, inspires you a little bit, maybe makes your thinking about your practice a little clearer, makes it easier for you to practice, and leads you further along that harp happiness path. Because that's what we do. We're exploring harp happiness a little bit on next week's podcast as well. I'll be talking about some stress relieving practices, how you can get relaxed, how you can play relaxed, how you can stay relaxed while you're playing. And of course, we have lots of reasons this time of year to want to remind ourselves how to relax. So we'll be talking stress relieving practice on the podcast next week. And of course, if you're looking for more stress relief, do consider coming to our getaway retreat in Florida in February. The early bird pricing will last for a couple more weeks. I hope you can take advantage of that and get in. We'd love to have you. I'd love the chance to work with you there. So that's coming up. In the meantime, until I talk to you again next week, 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.

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.