A Cure For The Spots: How To Solve Those Problem Measures - PHH 107

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Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want me 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. Welcome to the show. If there's one thing you could say with certainty that we all want as harpists, it's being able to play the piece we're working on. That's why we started the harp, so we could play beautiful music on a beautiful instrument beautifully. But we all know the struggle it takes to make that happen. And we all know the frustration of persisting through the struggle and feeling defeated. Because there are two measures smack in the middle of the piece that just won't work. Call them what you will problem spots, Tricky spots, twisty measures, awkward passages, or maybe names that involve four letter words. These spots are like a teenager's pimples. They appear at the worst times, and no matter what you do, you can't really cover them up. They seem to last forever, and the more you mess with them, the worse they get. Fortunately, pimples do eventually go away, but problem measures won't necessarily. Now, I know that doesn't seem like the positive kind of outlook you're used to hearing from me, but the plain truth is that if the practice you're doing now isn't fixing the problem, doing more of it won't either. No matter how much of it you do, you need to do something different.

Today's show is all about those pesky problem spots, not pimples, the musical kind, and how to actually fix them. We'll look at the hidden cost of continuing to hammer away at those tricky measures and the surprising ways you can shift your focus. Solve the problem this is an issue we all face every day. Every piece we learn has Something just a little different from anything we've had to do before. So we're going to learn some tricks that are just a little different themselves so we can put those measures behind us and get on with the music.

Now, I mentioned that there were some hidden costs to, to practicing and slaving away over those problem measures. One of those hidden costs is the loss of motivation and the loss of momentum that we experience in our practice. And so before we get too involved in fixing those problem spots, I want to mention, as I did last week, the course that we have available right, in Harp Mastery called the Momentum Miracle Intensive.

Now, the Momentum Miracle, as great a little mini course as I believe it is and as powerful as many of our Heart Mastery people have found it. It's not about fixing problem spots. It's not about those practical tips the way we're going to be talking about in just a moment. The Momentum Miracle is designed to clear your feelings and the things that you're doing that are getting in your own way, out of your path, so you can make progress. For momentum to happen, you have to actually see a possibility in front of you. You have to feel that possibility and that possibility is your progress and your success, right? If you don't feel that your practice will create the progress or the success that you want, then you're going to lose momentum because. Because you don't believe in your work. Now, this isn't some woo woo kind of thing. The fact is that it's always, you know, practice is something we can do. Practice is easy because we can get in there and do it. But if it's not getting our results, then we don't know what to do. We lose energy without that energy, without the belief in our ability to get something done. We don't have momentum. When you have the energy to bring to your playing, you can feel your progress. Progress fuels the energy which creates momentum. And that's what the Momentum Miracle is all about. It's about giving you the tools. Some of them are sort of really kind of heavy duty sort of tools. And then we've got a checklist of just 10 quick ways that you can inject momentum fuel into your work with your harp every day. There's a lot in this course. There's the seminar video, there's the workshop video, things to play along with. You've got all the PDFs, you've got the videos, everything's downloadable. We've got the guide for note taking. There's a lot of stuff here and it's a really inexpensive course. It's one of the most inexpensive courses we offer. It's $25 for the Momentum miracle and it' going to help you clear your head and see what's in your path and learn how to get back on track. So if you're, you know, if this sounds like something that would help you, and there's a time when, when all of us need a little bit of refueling and, and re energizing. If this sounds like you, especially right now, then please take a look at this course. You'll find it in the courses page@heartmastery.com we've also put a link to that course in the show. So the progress requires that energy to keep it going, to keep your momentum going. What we're talking about today is a much more practical and smaller piece of this equation. Right. Those problem spots that may just be a measure, may just be a chord, maybe just two measures or a line, but they seem to destroy the entire piece for you. That's what we're gonna be talking about. And I'll give you some really practical ways to fix those problem spots. But combining this with something like the momentum miracle could really be a huge energy boost for you. So you might want to give that a try. Now you can check out the momentum miracle in just a little bit, but right now, unless you want to pause and then come back. But right now we're going to talk about the hidden cost of those problem spots. Let's just imagine that you have a two measure section in a piece that you've been learning that just doesn't want to go right now probably let's, let's say you can play the rest of the piece just fine. It's maybe not up to tempo yet, it's not quite polished, but you can play the whole piece pretty passably, except for those two measures. And you drill them every day. You throw every practice technique you know at them and they still don't seem to resolve themselves where you can play through them and have them work. So in terms of cost, what are those measures costing you now? I can't put a dollar figure on it. You could try that if you want. But let's talk about practice time. First of all, think about all the minutes, maybe hours that you've spent on those couple of measures. Taking them apart, putting them back together, seeing if it's going to work, finding out it doesn't work, taking them apart, putting them back together ad nauseam, right? It's a lot of practice time spent on a very small portion of a piece. But it's not just your time, it's your energy. Because you know that with every repetition you do, when you come back the next day and it still doesn't work, it's disheartening, it's discouraging, it's frustrating. This also not just only saps your energy, but drains your confidence. You start wondering if it's ever going to work, if anything is ever going to work.

And of course, it slows down all your progress, doesn't it? Because when you're spending tons and tons of time on those two measures, you're not doing anything else that's moving you forward. And the worst part about it is that we can't let those measures go. We know we want them to be right. We know we need to fix them. We know they need to be at the same level as the rest of the piece. But at the same time, we can't wait for those spots to fix themselves. You know, okay, I'll do 100 repetitions today and 100 repetitions tomorrow, and 100 the next day, or 10 or 20 or 13 or whatever it is you want to do. But we can't wait for that kind of practice to have results. It is in our best interest to act and act quickly to take care of those problem spots. Now, I'm not trying to make this sound like a huge crisis or urgent, but I do want to impress on you that there is a way more effective strategy than playing that spot a hundred times a day. One that's not going to take nearly so much time or have you banging your head against a wall in boredom or just in frustration and impatience. Believe me, I've been there. I've never been one to be that patient with that many repetitions.

But you have to have things right. And you know that I have yet to meet a harpist or a harp student anywhere who says, oh, well, that's just good enough.

No, we want it to be right. We care about what we play. But there's an easier way to fix these problem spots, and that's what I want to share with you today. And we'll talk about it in terms of three steps. Well, okay, three steps and a bonus step. Okay, but we're going to talk about it in terms of three steps. Find the spot, focus on the spot, fix the spot, and then fit it in. Okay? So we're going to find, focus, fix, and fit. That's how this process works. And I know it doesn't sound necessarily a. Just from that little forward Description much different from playing the thing over and over again. After all, you've found it, you are focusing on it, you're trying to fix it, and you're hoping to fit it back in. But I'm going to look at each one of those components just a little bit differently from what you are probably doing right now. And we're going to start with the first one, how to find the spot. Because I bet you that you're not finding the spot the way I think you could be finding the spot. And if your trouble spot is more than one measure, you haven't found the spot yet. Okay, hang on, I'll explain. In almost every case.

The real issue with a problem spot comes down to a very small moment in the music. And there are just a few number of real problems that might be making that problem a problem spot. Now remember, every piece that we. That we are going to learn is likely to have some kind of little iffy moment, some kind of tricky, twisty passage, something that's going to require more attention in it. And most of those things we're going to be able to fix through practice. But that spot that won't fix through practice, that thing that, you know, decides to just loom and become a problem spot is becoming a problem spot for one of maybe only three or four reasons. The possibilities for that moment being a problem spot are these. You might need more familiarity with the notes. And by this I mean you might not actually know what the notes are go through. Take a look. Can you, you know, can you actually read the notes? Can you say the names of the notes? Have you paid attention to what they are? Do they form chord patterns or arpeggio patterns or scale patterns, things that you can identify.

Rather than just playing the notes that are on the page, really paying attention, learning and getting into those notes might be what you need to do. That might be the issue. You just don't really know what the notes are. I have found this to be the case when a piece comes together pretty quickly and then there are those two measures, and I find I'm kind of, as I'm playing through them, I'm kind of skimming over something in them. And, you know, then as the rest of the piece starts to get better, I realize that these measures aren't up to par with the rest. And I realize it's because I haven't really paid enough attention to exactly what notes I'm supposed to be playing. And it just needs a little bit more attention. Now, sometimes it's an easy fix, sometimes it's not. We'll get talk about that too. Another issue you may be having, and this is a common one, is with placing, right? What fingers go where when. The placing issues are always with us. And placing is so important for us as harpists. It's an important part of our technique because we're playing in the middle of the air. And so, you know, we can't. It's hard to just sort of grab a note on the fly, as it were. We like to have our hands in contact with the harp. So placing is important. And of course, the order in which we need to place fingers, the order in which we play them, can vary greatly from one passage to another, even when the note patterns seem pretty similar. You know what I mean? You've. You've experienced these, you know what I'm talking about here. So this placing issues would be another kind of issue that we would discover. Sometimes it's actually a playing issue, which usually comes down to technique. You know, if the, the arpeggios in this eight bar passage aren't working, possibly we need more arpeggio practice, not just on those notes or that particular spot, but we need to work on our technique a little bit to get it ready to play those arpeggios. Sometimes it's something as simple as pedal technique or a technique we haven't learned very well yet, like trills or harmonics or something like that, in which case the technical drill is going to be what we need.

And another common issue would be speed, right? The rest of the piece goes fine at tempo, and these two measures just. They go fine slowly, but they're not coming up to tempo with the rest of them.

So what you want to do is you want to find what that issue is. What's going on here? Is it not knowing the notes? Is it not getting the right fingers on the right strings? Is it just that it's too hard to play? Or is it about going fast? Maybe it's something else altogether. Those are just the most common ones. So figure out what the issue is, find that issue, then.

We'Re going to find the smallest possible place where that issue exists.

So I told you that if you had a passage that was longer than a measure, you probably haven't found the problem spot. Well, there's an exception to that. And that would be if there's a technique that you need to use that's extended over a period of time and your technique isn't up for that. Like you have a whole set of downward arpeggios and your Downward arpeggios are just too slow or too uneven. And that's what the problem is. And that's a technical fix. And so you're going to go back in that case, you're going to go not just work on those notes, but you're going to work on some exercises. There are so many wonderful exercise books and method books and go and drill every single exercise that you can find. That's similar.

Similar, but different. Because the more experience your fingers have in the different patterns, the easier they'll find the ones that are in the piece.

So that would be the exception to the smallest possible place. In that case, your smallest possible place is pretty big.

But often the real issue, the real spot that's a problem spot, isn't where we think it is. We have that problem spot as two or three measures maybe marked off on the page with little sticky notes or highlighters or stars or whatever it is you use. But in most cases it's not all those measures that are the problem.

Most often it's just two beats or maybe even between two beats.

There are small, small spots where if we knew what was coming next, if we could make the right decision to get the right finger on the right string at the right time, that wouldn't be a problem.

So here's an experiment to try. If you have a problem spot, think about what that issue might be. We're going to go back to that find thing, right? We're going to find the issue, find what those notes are, are, or is it a playing issue? Is it a placing issue? Is it a speed issue? What's going on? Why is this not working? Maybe it's just I'm not making that one leap properly. I can't find my place in the music. When I look to make that leap, I can't go back to the music that might be the issue. And then once you know the issue, then you know how to address it. But we're going to find, then having found that technique, we're going to focus on exactly where that moment is. In the case I just described, where you have this leap and you're looking at the strings to find the leap and then you can't find your spot in the music, that's not a two measure problem, is it? That's maybe a two beat problem. You know, we have to look away here, we have to look back there.

So you're going to find that smallest possible place. It's that laser focus that we're looking for. Now if you're not sure and you can't automatically see, oh, okay. It's not really these whole two measures, it's just that one little spot. If you can't find that, here's a great way to try to find it. Start from the last few beats of the last measure of the passage you've identified and play from, you know, the last two beats of it to the next measure or the last three beats. Work backward that way, playing the end of the passage until you get to the spot where it fails.

And then play from the beginning of that spot as far as you can until it fails. If you have a three measure start, a three measure spot to start with, and you apply those techniques, I'm almost certain that when you're playing backward from the end and you're playing forward from the beginning, that problem is going to be someplace that's a very smaller chunk of time than those three measures. It's likely toward the beginning of that problem spot, maybe not the very beginning, but maybe just three or four beats into it. Because what often happens is we'll be playing a spot, playing through a passage, and we'll get to a spot where stuff starts to go wrong and then the stuff after it goes wrong because we're playing catch up and we're not able to focus on the next notes in the right time the way we normally would.

So that's why I'm suggesting start from the beginning. Yes. And notice when it starts to go astray. But also start from the end and work backwards and find out if the end of that passage is really a problem if you start there.

Because often it's only really a problem because you couldn't get there properly to start with. And that's going to help you identify that smallest possible place. That's the laser focus that we're looking for.

All right, so we've figured out what the issue is. We've done the finding part, we've put that laser focus onto it so that we've found the smallest possible spot that we need to fix. Now, right here, this spot. Once you've gotten that far, this moment should give you a lot of energy. It should be almost like a little ray of sunshine over this problem spot because it's now much smaller. You know what's going on and you've really shrunk the problem. You can see exactly where it is. And now we'll get to our third word here. Now you can begin to fix it. This is where your practice techniques come in. This is where you can do your rhythms and you know Play your chords as arpeggios, your arpeggios as chords. Try playing one hand, singing the other, doing all those kind techniques that you were doing all along.

But without the clarity that you've gotten from these first two steps. In this process, use your practice techniques. Throw everything you can at them. But. And here's the big. The big but, as they say, don't spend too much time at it. Give yourself a limit on the number of repetitions that you're going to do of that little moment, and you can make it a smaller number than you think. Limit yourself. See what happens if you do five repetitions or seven repetitions or three repetitions. Keep it under 10. This is going to save you time. It's going to keep you from sort of getting lost in the Black hole of Calcutta here. As you're working on this small problem spot, we don't want you to go down that wormhole. We want you to stay here. So just a few repetitions. However, make every repetition have a different focus. Do each one differently. Do the first one in super slow motion. Do the second one where you're watching your technique. Do the third one where you're playing through the spot in rhythms. Do the fourth one where you're playing one hand and saying the other. Do the fifth one where you're taking a little coffee break in between. In between a couple critical beats. Of course, you'll find a lot of those practice techniques that I just talked about in the Kaleidoscope Practice ebook that we have, or in the Harpist Playbook, which is a downloadable workbook with a ton of practice techniques so that you know those. This is the place for your practice techniques. But here's where I want to throw in a very important reminder. You might have heard me talk about this before, but let me describe it to you first. All right, You've got this problem spot. You're playing through the entire piece. La dee da de la dee da. And then the line before your problem spot, you feel your inside start to clench. Your brain starts saying, okay, oh, no, I've got to gotta. I've got that spot coming up. I've gotta remember to place this. I've gotta remember to get my foot here. I've gotta remember to think this. I have to get my second finger over here. I've gotta remember this spot always works. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. I'm gonna talk myself through it. I'm gonna. Oh, shoot, it didn't work.

Right. But you spend those few measures before Maybe even more than a few measures before that spot even comes up. Psyching yourself out of it, preparing to sort of gut your way through it, and at the same time creating a whole bunch of tension and a whole bunch of mental flurry that is not going to be conducive to the kind of calm focus you need to get through that particular passage. Yeah, it's a double bind. I know that without that. That energy, the pat. The problem spot might not work. But at the same time, you're countermanding the kind of energy that you want by being all worried about it. Measures and measures in advance. I call this the flinch. Right. You're gearing up. It's kind of like imagine you're. That, you know there's no hot water left and you have to take a shower. You have to take a shower. You have to take it now. And you know there's no hot water, so you turn the shower on, and you're standing there stealing yourself to get into the shower. And your whole body's tense before you get in the shower, and it just makes that cold water feel so much worse. You flinched. Right. This is the same thing. You're going to get to that spot and you're going to flinch because there's so much negative energy built up around it.

This is a thing. You know it is, because you know this has happened. I know this has happened. Happens to me. Right. Oh, that spot's coming up. What do I have to do? What I have to do.

So part of your practice around this spot is going to be that fourth F. It's going to be fitting it in, and we'll talk about some of the more normal ways that it needs to fit in in a moment. But. But I want to talk about the flinch first, because this spot is never going to work if you're always tense when you get there. So the technique that I recommend, that I swear by, that I teach for avoiding the flinch and starting to release that negative energy from around this problem spot is the technique I call time warp. So as part of fitting this problem spot back into its place in the music, you're going to pick a good starting place several measures ahead of your problem spot, and you're going to play all the way through it, and you're going to pick a stopping spot a measure or two after your problem spot is over.

And what you're going to do, start playing at that starting spot you identified at a perfectly normal tempo, the one that you're working at right then. Right. Whether it's the. The goal tempo, the actual tempo for the piece. Or maybe you're working still at a practice tempo that's a little different. Whatever your practice tempo is at that point, that's the tempo you're going to start. But as soon as you get to the problem spot, you're going to go half that speed. You're going to go into a time warp. You're going to go into super slow motion. Okay, that sounded terrible, but that's exactly what you're going to do. And it's going to sound terrible. It's going to feel very artificial. But what we're trying to create is the knowledge, the feeling that you are in control when you get to that problem spot, right? Because the worst feeling in the world is knowing that that problem spot is going to come. It's going to come and you are not going to be able to do anything about it. It's either going to work or it isn't.

Now, that's not actually what happens, but that's how we feel about it. So we need you to avoid the flinch. So you're going to start at your normal tempo. Then right as you get to that problem spot, you're going to go into this super slow motion tempo. And it can be any tempo you like as long as it's a steady tempo for itself and a tempo at which you know you can play every note in that tricky spot correctly. So you can play la dee da dee da di da. And then all of a sudden, la di da di da di da. And as soon as you get to the end of your problem passage, you can go back to the other tempo.

And for a week or two, or anytime you need it, you're going to use this time warp technique so that you get used to feeling like you are in control of that passage. You need to take the reins back. Right? It's not in charge of you. You are in charge of it. And this is how we're going to do that. So use that time warp technique to help release the flinch. And then you can. You'll be really working on that fourth step in this system which is starting to fit that passage back in. Okay? So having fixed or worked on right, fixing is is a process. But having worked at fixing that problem spot, you always need to get it back in into the piece. So in order to create that seamless feel that we're looking for in our music, we need to work at the transitions. So you're going to take the measure or two before that spot happens. Oh, One measure is enough, and you're going to work at that, going from the measure before your problem spot into that first measure of your problem spot or the beginning of your problem spot, however long that happens to be. So you're going to go from the measure before into the problem spot and work at that transition. Make sure that it is smooth and seamless. Then you're going to do the same thing with the end of your problem spot. Take the last measure of your problem spot, or the last few beats, if that's what you want. But that measure of your problem spot, the last one. Play from there into the next measure and work at the transition out of the problem spot. So spending extra time working at those transitions will help you fit this passage back into the context of the piece. Now, you also may need to adjust the tempo for this problem spot. I know that for Time Warp, I'm telling you to take the tempo way down. But if you. One of the issues about your problem spot is that it just doesn't go fast enough yet, then that's something that you can drill using things like the tempo pyramid and this kind of thing to get that problem spot working. But as you work on that tempo pyramid or anything else, be sure that you are not just focusing on your problem spot, but that you're including the measure before and the measure after. So you create that transition, and you work at making it a seamless thing. Now, when you combine that with Time Warp, which is giving you that sense of control, that sense of being able to slow things down just as much as you need to so that you can get it right, you will start feeling in control of your problem spot by spending fewer repetitions at it, but making those repetitions count more. You'll be taking back a lot of your practice time and taking back a lot of the energy that you've put into drilling this passage over and over again. But remember, we made good use of the fixing time that we were working with by first identifying what the real issue was. We found the real issue, whether it was not knowing the notes or the placing or the fingering. And. And don't just make an assumption about this. You know, it's so easy to say, oh, I just. The fingering isn't right, when maybe that's not the issue. So just take a look at it and really try it and experiment to see if that really is the problem or if you're just sort of assuming that it's the problem. So identify that problem, find it, then focus on that smallest possible place that's saving you practice time and energy right there, finding out where the real problem is. Okay, great. This passage works up to the third beat of that measure, but the fourth beat of the measure is where stuff starts to happen. So let me see if I can fix beat three into beat four, and then maybe I'll try to fix and start in beat two and go to the next beat one, see if I can't get that lined up. It's a much more efficient and effective way to cure those problem spots.

So does that sound like a more workable system for working on a problem spot, something that feels like it might actually end instead of just go on forever with you drilling that problem spot, it's to going. Giving you a way to get it back into the piece and to stop worrying about it. Right. And I think that that's where so much of our energy and motivation and confidence all comes from. Knowing that we can take charge of our music, that we have some control over what happens, and we're not continually at the mercy of whatever seems to be on our plate that day. Right. Whether our fingers are working or not, or whether we're nervous or, you know, there are things we can't control. But a problem spot we can fix and we can control and we can practice that control.

So if you take these techniques and you combine them with just a little bit of extra work on your momentum, as I was describing earlier with the momentum miracle course, just think what you could do. Could be amazing, right? Think that all those things that have seemed so difficult might just be way easier. You might find ways to finish some of those pieces that you've put in the box just because of that passage that wouldn't come right. Well, now you have some techniques you didn't have then. Might be a great idea to go back and see what you can do with them.

Okay, well, I will leave you with that happy thought. Let me remind you that we do have lots of courses that you can take a look@@heartmastery.com so if you're on the courses page looking for the momentum miracle, you'll have to scroll kind of way down to the bottom, I think, but. But there are lots of other things there that might interest you too. So don't be afraid, don't be shy, take a look at those and see what you think. Next week on the show here we have a quick fix episode. We're going to be talking about buzzing and how to not buzz. Buzzing is just such a persistent problem for many of us, and sometimes it's, you know, we think it's because our fingers are too short or too long, but we're going to be talking about how to avoid buzzing, the different kinds buzzes of what to do about them, how to practice so that you have fewer of them. Doesn't that sound like a good thing? I think so. So that's next week on the podcast Quick Fix episode. In the meantime, as you practice and gain momentum through your week this week, 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 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.