Beyond Dynamics - PHH010

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want.

The way they want.

But as a harpist who nearly flunked.

Out of one of the most prestigious.

Music schools in the world, I although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your.

Piece'S performance ready, or just learning to.

Enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show.

We all want our playing to be more musical, to be more expressive, to be more us. After all, playing music is a creative endeavor and this is a very necessary part of our self expression. When we start studying music, we're taught to to work with dynamics, the softs and the louds. And that's where our musical expression starts. But it shouldn't be where it stops. So today I'm going to invite you to think about musicality not just in terms of dynamics, but in terms of dimension, how we can bring more dimension to our playing. We'll talk about some aspects of musicality that are very often, oh, underrated, ignored or just passed over in the quest to just get the notes out. So we'll talk about some dimensions there. We'll talk about whether or not you are an experienced player or just a newbie, how to bring more of that self expression to your playing. And of course you'll make an interesting discovery, or at least I hope you will, about how following some of the principles I'm going to talk about today can actually solve some of the challenges that you might be putting down to notes and fingering and solve some of those tricky spots in your pieces. Now that sounds like a win. I think so. We're talking about musicality, we're talking about expression, we're talking about not just dynamics, but dimension. And I think you're going to get a lot out of this whole topic today. And in case you want to follow up at the end of the show, I'll give you a resource that has plenty of plenty more ways to follow up on incorporating more expression into your practice and your playing. So let's dive right in. I'd like to start today with an illustration, actually an illustration about illustration. I'm sure that you have seen those cells, the. The drawings that come from animation, like maybe a still drawing of Mickey Mouse. That was. That was just one frame of a cartoon that an animator drew, right? And you've seen them and they're framed, and you know that one cell, and it's a wonderful drawing. So picture that Mickey Mouse or that Bugs Bunny or whatever you want to see, and think about just that singular drawing. Maybe it's in a. It's in a frame. Everything you need to know about that cartoon character in that drawing, it's got line and it's got form, it's got a personality for whatever character it is. The animator has already put all of those wonderful ingredients into that drawing. But the drawing doesn't become the cartoon character until the camera brings it to life, until it is animated.

There are a lot of parallels here. I feel, for us and our music. The music that we see on the printed page is like that cell, that drawing. Everything is there. The composer has put everything on the page already. It's just waiting for us to bring it to life, to instill that energy, to instill the actual music that brings the printed page to life. But everything's already there. So that when we limit our musical expression to just looking for the indications on the page that say, soft or loud, speed up, slow down, we're only looking at part of what is on the page, and we're not examining some of the more subtle aspects that really play into our musicality. I think that this is why I will often have harpists come to me and they say, well, I just don't know. My playing doesn't feel or. It doesn't sound musical to me. It doesn't sound expressive. And I've got the dynamics and I've got all this stuff in there, but it just doesn't sound expressive enough to me. And that's when I start talking about the other. Other dimensions of musicality. And there are lots of them. But we're going to focus today on three big dimensions, three things that I think every harpist in particular needs to focus on. And these are things that I think we often don't focus on. At least a couple of them we don't talk about often enough in the way they play into our expression. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, this dimension, this thing that's going to bring that printed page to life in its fullest form. So I'm going to head on over to the harp because I want to play some examples for you. So why don't we get started with that right now? All right. I have chosen a piece for demonstration purposes for our. For our chat today. So I'm going to play it. I'm just going to play eight bars of it. That's all we really need. This is a little excerpt from my arrangement of the Flower Duet from the opera by Dalib called Lakme. And it's a familiar piece. You'll recognize it. It's all over advertising and everything else, but I think it's going to be a good one to. To use for our talk today. So here are a few measures from the Flower Duet.

It's beautiful music, isn't it? This is definitely music you would want to play expressively. So let's talk about the first of the three dimensions that we want to cover today. And that first dimension, beyond dynamics, is projecting the melody. I think this is particularly a challenge for harpists because we don't have on purpose sustain. I mean, every note we play is beautifully sustained by the harp itself. But since we can't sustain a note on purpose and for a specific length of time, the way a violinist or a flutist could, or a singer.

Because we can't do that, we have to work extra hard to create legato, that smooth sounding melody, to create the arch of the melody, and in fact, to just connect those melody notes together so that they sound like a sentence rather than just a collection of words. Right, Just a collection of notes. So to project the melody, you really need to start thinking about the horizontal dimension in our music. Think about how we practice. A lot of the time we see our music vertically. We're looking for chords, we're looking for those up and down moments, how the right hand and left hand fit together. And we can train ourselves unintentionally to start thinking in those discrete, separate vertical chunks that are beats or measures or whatever. So to reverse that process is necessary. We need to hear horizontally and think horizontally to create the melody. So think about the difference for a second between a melody that is. And I'm going to pick one of these measures from Lakme. So.

All the notes are there. It's a plain old melody, but it's not thoughtfully crafted in terms of the way a singer would sing it, the way a flutist or violinist would play it, the. The way you want to hear it. It's more of a monotone. And I know you're probably not playing that way. This was Just an example to help you contrast where you. Where we don't want to go and where we do want to go. So if that's where we don't want to go, think about how different it is. If we play it with the idea that it's going to start from the beginning of the melody, swell up to the middle and then come back.

It has a little bit of an arch. It's almost not enough to consider it a crescendo and a decrescendo. It's just a little bit of the sense of movement, of going somewhere and coming back the same way. A sentence starts sort of low and then as you speak it, it gains momentum and then the momentum falls away as we come to the end of the sentence. This is very much the same thing. And while it sounds like you need to think about it on a note by note basis, you really don't. Projecting the melody is much simpler and more basic than you might think. It's just that we don't often think about it. So what I suggest is that when you have a melody, or find the melody in your piece and sing it.

Sing it in your head if you're not comfortable singing, or sing it out loud, or just play it if you need to, but go through the melody of your piece and find those phrase points, Find those moments with where there is a breath, right? So you're going to sing it.

And there's a rest. So that would be a breath, right? Okay.

And then here it moves.

Okay, there we have come to a stop, albeit a temporary stop. So that's a phrase point. When you sing it, when you listen to it by itself, you can find those phrase points, we often call them points of articulation because that's where a comma would be, a period, a breath, something like that. So start by singing it, then arch it. Find that arch. We're trying to prevent that monotone, all the notes sounding the same sort of thing. So give it that little arch, that beginning, the middle, the end, let it have its sentence. Every melody does this and all you need to do is follow it. So find that arch. Where is the peak of the melody in this little. This little snippet from Lakme?

It's at that high point.

As it is with lots of phrases, Lots of phrases will go to the high point and then come back. It's a natural sort of thing. Don't. You don't need to look too hard or to force it. Just think about it. So once you've sung the melody and Found the phrasing. Once you've arched it, found that high point, then let it breathe. Breathe it as you play it. I, you don't need to actually physically breathe it. I don't want you to hyperventilate. Although breathing can help. Sing it with your playing if you can. That will be helpful. I won't subject you to my singing, but do think about the breathing as a way to pace the melody, to give it direction, to prevent the, the monotone, you know, series of vertical sonorities idea. So that's how you're going to pace the melody. So our first dimension is to project that melody by. You're going to sing it, you're going to find the arch, and then you're going to breathe it. I suggest that you take any piece you're working on, take a melody and practice it. It's, it's. It could be especially easy if you have a piece that you know is a song where that melody is very apparent. With harp pieces, sometimes we get into pieces that, you know, have a lot of arpeggios and, and it can be hard to find the melody, but you can still apply the same idea of an arch across some phrases. Think of it in terms across some measures. I mean, think of it in terms of phrases instead of just patterns that you're playing and you'll be able to find that same arch. So sing it, arch it and breathe it. Okay, that's dimension number one. The second dimension we're going to talk about today is, is balancing the hands, the left hand and the right hand. Sometimes balance is a very simple matter. We've got a right hand melody and we have a left hand accompaniment. And it's quite clear that we want the right hand to predominate and the left hand just to be an accompaniment. Now the purpose of an accompaniment, of course, is, is to.

Support a melody. So any accompaniment pattern, whether it's a simple chord accompaniment pattern like that, or maybe an arpeggiated pattern or something else, an accompaniment needs to be.

Needs to have the same meaning that you want the melody to have. So if the melody of a piece is very energetic, your accompaniment needs to have the same feel. Of course, we don't want it to be louder than the melody. We don't want it to be so soft that it doesn't support the melody because it can enrich the melody as well. And remember that often, but not always, when, when that melody does a crescendo, the accompaniment can do a crescendo to support that. We don't always want that. Sometimes there are. You will find indications in music where one of those lines has a particular dynamic change and the other one does not.

Which is sometimes a tricky part because we don't always practice that. We don't always practice intentionally balancing our hands. Now, you notice.

As I was talking, I was really working hard to try to avoid saying your right hand melody and your left hand accompaniment, because it isn't always that way.

Right.

And you may have found, you may have had difficulty when you've had.

Some sort of gentle right hand pattern and a left hand melody that you want to articulate that way, and rebalancing your hands so that your right hand is soft when your left hand is louder, you might have found that to be a challenge. But balancing those hands is an important dimension of your musicality and your expression. So you want to think about your hands being. Even when they have to play a chord, are all those fingers even think about if you have a right hand melody.

That your bass notes have the same meaning as your right hand melody? They might be gentle and, you know, they might be pointed and accented.

Now let me go back to Lakme for a second and sort of show you some less good and better examples. So if we want Lakme to sound this way.

Those first low notes in each of those measures have to not only have the same character as the melody, but that low note comes first. It needs to establish the character for the piece. So we don't want it to be over loud and accented, because that's not going to be the way the piece goes. We want it to be gentle and expressive, the way we want the rest of it to be.

And of course, you'll balance the dynamic as well. Do you want it to be just a little bit richer so that we have that sort of sound?

Right.

Or maybe even more gentle?

And that's an expressive choice. Don't you love having choices? I do. So that's one way in which you want those bass notes. You want to be very aware of. Of your bass notes and that they are. That they are in accord with the idea of the piece, the expressive idea overall that you want. But balancing the hands comes into play otherwise too. We talked about instances where the right hand has an accompaniment and the left hand has a melody. In Lakhme, it's even more interesting because we have this moment.

Where the hands have to sound equal. Now in real life, in the opera, these are two women singing and the voices would be very close like that. I've separated them just for ease of playing here. But in so doing, I've created another balance issue, because this register of the harp is often richer than this register of the harp. So if you want those lines to sound more equal.

You might have to work just a little bit more carefully in order to make sure that your left hand is not overshadowing your right hand, but is still on a par with it. And of course, you can always check this. That's what recordings are great for, right? So you can always check that with a recording and see if that's. If it's coming out the way you intend. So balancing the hands is really important to just give some thought to. There are places where it may not be much of an issue at all, but often it can make a big difference in how your melody projects, whether or not your melody is supported well by the accompaniment, so that it can express itself without feeling like it's out there trying to work too hard. Because maybe your accompaniment hand is underplaying or overplaying. So, you know, it's a. It's an interesting question and worth paying, worth taking some time to experiment with. And I think that even more than working on a particular piece, although all those details are important, you might try this fun little experiment. Try taking a piece where you have a nice right hand melody and left hand accompaniment and their functions are very clear. And try reversing the hands. It will be hard to play, but just do it for a few measures. But see if you can have your left hand play that same melody with the same expression that your right hand usually does. And see if you can get your right hand to tone itself down a little bit and step back from its usual lead role and step into the role of accompaniment. It's an excellent exercise because there are pieces in which you will want to do that. So that would be a good way to give that a try. All right, so that's the second dimension then, balancing your hands. Are you ready for the third dimension that we're talking about today? The third dimension of musicality that I think is important for us to talk about is tempo. We are accustomed to thinking of tempo as a number. Now, of course, before metronomes were in widespread use, there were only tempo indications like an andante or a presto or a largo. And they didn't come with numbers, they often came with conventions. What was considered the appropriate tempo for something like that at the time? In fact, in music of the baroque era and before, you know, things like Bach and Handel, Telemann, you won't often see even that much of an indication.

You. You might not see an allegro or an andante. It was just understood that this particular kind of piece, like a minuet, went at this particular kind of tempo. And you can imagine that there were probably.

Incensed musicians and music critics of the time who said, oh, he took it way too fast, took it way too slow, just the way we do today. Right? But remember, that tempo is a choice and tempo is an expression, expressive choice. One of my favorite tempo stories has to do with the pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who did, toward the end of his life.

A compilation recording of pieces that he. That were particular favorites of his and ones that he was particularly known for having sort of the definitive interpretation of. And in this big, you know, it's a. I have a CD set of it and, you know, it's. It's sizable. And one of the pieces he recorded was the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata.

And he, you know, after the recording session, he was listening to the playback of that day's sessions, and the performance he had given for the recording was one that moved the producer and the engineers just to tears. They thought it was so inexpressibly beautiful. Interesting word to choose in terms of today's topic, but that's okay. So it was. It was so beautiful and they loved it. Horowitz came back the next day and asked to re record it because he thought it was just a little too fast.

And they were, you know, skipped, stunned and astonished. But of course it was Horowitz, and they let him re record it. And everyone was just as. As pleased and mesmerized by this performance. But for Horowitz, the choice was.

Maybe one tiny, you know, one half of a metronome notch. It was just a little bit, but it was part of his feeling for that piece.

So without necessarily going to those kinds of extremes, I want to urge you to consider your tempo as part of your expression of a piece and most definitely your choice. Now, I know that there may be a metronome number on the page for, for the Flower Duet from Lakme, which we have been playing for you today. There is no such metronome indication.

But make the tempo one that suits you. And when I'm talking about suiting you, I'm talking about suiting you, not only in a musical sense, but in a practical sense. Remember, you are going to be playing the piece, and so the way you play it needs to reflect not only your sensibility about the piece, but your ability in terms of being able to play the piece, because that's what's going to reach a listener. A listener is going to be less impressed by a correct tempo with a lot of fumbles. And I use the word correct in quotation marks there, then they will be by a tempo that's appropriate for you, where the piece is played well. So I'd like you to be perhaps a little bit less number bound with your tempo and start thinking about it in terms of a choice. We want it to be comfortable for. For you, appropriate to the music and able to communicate to a listener all three of those things. So I would urge you to start by taking a look at whatever tempo indication there is. If there's one of those lovely Italian words like allegretto, then, you know, pay attention to that. Figure out what it means and what it means in terms of this particular piece. If there's a metronome marking quarter note equals whatever number, look at it and evaluate it. See if you like it. You might listen to different recordings of the piece that you're playing. They will all be at different tempos, I'm sure, and listen to whether you like them when they're faster or slower or in between. You get to choose. Now, let me give you an example with Lakme here, about some choices that you might make. So I've played pretty much the same tempo for you today.

And it's a lovely tempo. I think it's restful, I think it's serene. I think it suits the harp. And my little bobble aside, it feels comfortable to me. You will most often hear singers sing it faster. Well, why? They have to breathe, right? I mean.

That's.

That's perhaps on the slow side for a singer.

But I think being a harpist, I think we get to luxuriate just a little bit more in these beautiful sonorities. So I like it. At least today I like it a little bit slower. I might change my mind tomorrow, like Horowitz.

But. But for today, I like it just. Just a little bit slower.

With every piece, there is a range of tempo that is going to suit it, right? Something that's too slow for this piece.

Now, why do I say that's too slow?

Because I don't think we get the sense of flow, the sense of smoothness, the sense of.

The exotic garden in which this duet takes place. I don't think we get that sense of just seamless, tranquil beauty. When it's too slow.

I think we lose the flow.

It's a great practice tempo, but it doesn't feel feel like the music to me. It might feel like it to you. I think that tempo's too slow. I think this tempo.

I think that's too fast. It's certainly faster than I want to go in terms of playing the harp. But I think it's too fast to really just, you know, savor the beauty of the piece. So think about that range of tempo where is too fast, where is too slow and make that your tempo range and then see where you fit in there. But don't feel number bound. And remember, there are other musical elements, some of which I just talked about, which will help convey that tempo, right? So you could talk about, you could think about the articulation. Do you want something to be more legato or more staccato? And that might influence your choice of tempo. The dynamics might help support your choice of tempo. For instance, if you play something a little slower, you might want to make it more legato. If you play it a little faster, a lighter, more staccato sound might be appropriate. Or, or perhaps you'll want to change the dynamic. So your tempo can help you can help support other musical choices, or can help you discern what other musical choices might go with it. Think about it like an outfit with a lot of accessories, right? If you decide to choose this scarf, then this necklace might not work, right? But if you decide to choose this scarf, you might have other possibilities for accessorizing. Sort of a, a light hearted analogy there, but hopefully one that you can relate to. So you might experiment with any piece that you have. Try experimenting with different speeds. Find what is too slow, definitely too slow. Find what is definitely too fast. Establish your tempo range and then see what works for you. Play around with the extremes of that. Do you like it a little slower? Do you like it a little faster? And I can tell you that what I have found interesting over the years I've been playing is that I, at one point, you know, I'll, I'll pull out at some point, I'll pull out a piece that I have played years ago and I'll look at the very specific tempo choice that I made when I played it before and think, oh my goodness, that's not the way I hear the piece now. It's not the way I feel the piece now. It's not the way I want to play. Play the piece now. So realize that tempo is a choice. It is not a set in stone number. You get to choose. And the tempo that you choose says a lot about what you feel the piece to be. It's an interesting way to look at musicality, to look at tempo, but I hope that you can see how this particular choice can free you from. From being enslaved by a tempo number that's on a page. It can also just give you the room and the time to be able to play. Some of those passages that maybe are a little tricky might be sort of foiling you. Little things that are a little bit technically challenging. If you pulled the tempo back one notch, does that hurt the piece? Maybe not. Does it make it easier to play? Maybe those are really practical reasons to consider the choices as well. Not just so not just musical, but practical choices. I love it. So those are the three dimensions that we've been talking about, right? Projecting the melody, balancing your hands, and choosing your tempo.

I think this is a fun way to make music yours, and I hope you think so too. We covered a lot today. We covered a lot of different ways to start thinking about incorporating musicality into everything you play. We talked about three particular dimensions. We talked about projecting the melody, we talked about balancing your hands, and we talked about choosing and finding the right tempo for you for a particular piece. And of course, I gave you ways to start practicing those things in your music today, and I certainly hope you give them a try. If you are interested in more ways to practice making your music expressive, I urge you to take a look at the Harpist's playbook. This is a workbook that I designed. It's got weekly practice plans that work you through all five of the focus areas that I talk about. Detail, expression, continuity, control, and connection. And there are specific practice techniques for every point in the development of your piece. And very specific, of course, practice techniques for expression to help you incorporate that work at some expressive things, not just dynamics, but some of the other things that we've mentioned as well. So if you're interested in going a little deeper with this topic, the Harpist Playbook would be something to look at. And I'll put the link to that in the show notes so you can check it out. I invite you to join me for next week's show when I'll be doing a little mini masterclass on Debussy's piece Clair de Lune. This is one of the pieces harpists loved to play, even though it wasn't originally a harp piece. It is a piano piece, but it works so beautifully on the harp. But there are some hurdles, and if you've never played music by Debussy, if you've not tried Clair de Lune, but you would like to. If you.

Have tried Clair de Lune but been daunted by a couple of the things you see there, or maybe your Clair de Lune just doesn't sound the way you want it to, I invite you to join me and we'll be talking about what you need to know and what you need to practice with this beautiful piece so that you can play it the way you'd like. And whether you're a lever harpist or a petal harpist, all of these things will be helpful for you. So I invite you to join me next week for our little mini masterclass on Clair de Lune. Thank you for being here today and I look forward to talking to you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast.

I release a new episode every Monday.

Morning so so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your Harp happiness every day.

See you next time.