Could Your Practice Today Actually Be More Fun? - PHH 211

Thinking about creative practice and fun practice makes some people a little uncomfortable. I mean, that kind of thinking just isn't in their wheelhouse. And I get it. But I want to tell you this. The kind of creative and fun practice we're talking about today is not a silly idea. I mean, you could do silly things with it, but it's not a silly idea. We're actually doing very intentional work, and it's not wasting your time. We don't have enough time to waste. Certainly not enough practice time. What we're talking about today will make your practice more effective. It's not a substitute for the careful work that you're already doing. It's an addition.

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 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 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.com join now. That's harpmastery.com joinharp hyphen now. Welcome to the show. Every time I talk about putting more fun into your practice, I hear feedback like, I enjoy my practice or I really like doing the challenging work or my favorite part of practice is my exercises and etudes. Now, all of those harpists are enjoying their practice, and that's terrific. But that's not exactly what I mean. Much of what we do in our practice can accidentally disconnect us from the music we want to make. We identify and correct mistakes. We drill our technique. We repeat passages over and over again. That's all part of practice, and it is part of what enables us to play well. But there's so much more that we could be doing in our practice, so much more that is truly aligned with, with why we are playing the harp. Now here's an example that may help you understand what I mean. A young person wants to be a doctor because she likes helping people. So she goes to medical school where part of her training involves working when she's physically exhausted. And another part of her training helps her learn the ability to detach from her patients so she can view their cases objectively and clinically and so that she doesn't burn out emotionally. So is it any wonder that some doctors lack an empathetic bedside manner? I mean, those doctors may be gifted physicians, but they also may be in danger of losing the human connection to their patients. Now, that's a broad brush, very fictional kind of example. And I certainly have had doctors who were both gifted and compassionate. But I hope you see my point as it applies to our heart playing. If all we do in our practice is critique, correct and repeat, we put ourselves at risk of losing the connection to what brought us to the harp in the first place. We risk losing our joy. So today, I would like to help you put more fun playing into your practice. I'll share a few of my favorite ways to help recapture the rapture and put more creativity and, yes, fun into every day you play the harp. Remember, it's not about right or wrong. It's about the music. On today's show, we're going to be talking a lot about connection, about connections between your practice and your playing and making music. And I want to Remind you, or at least tell you if you haven't heard this before, about a couple ways that you can connect with us. One of those is our free Harp Mastery app. It's free for Apple users, free for Android users. You can find it in the Apple App Store in the Google Play Store. And it's a free phone app like any other app you'd have on your phone. What can you do on the app? Well, one of the big things is you can access our Harp Mastery Hub. That's our social media free social platform where you can talk, ask questions and just communicate with hundreds of other harpists from around the world. So the hub is a terrific place to start, but we also have great courses, things you can learn on the app. We have resources for you to download. We have a video 2 minute tip that is new every week. We have access that you can get to the live Monday warmups, which I do usually every Monday. It's a little bit lighter during the summer, so as we head into summer, I'll be taking some Mondays off, but usually every week. And our practice labs, which we do usually twice a week, but a little bit less during the summer. And we have challenges that are in the hub. We have my little AI clone. If you want to ask questions directly of my clone, I have uploaded everything I've written, everything I've spoken into a database and the clone pulls from that information and can help you answer questions. If you've got a question like what can I do to strengthen my fingers? You can ask ask my clone. We call it the An Serbot. I know you can ask my clone and you can get the answers to those kinds of questions that are pulled directly from my own writings. It's not searching the web for stuff, it's stuff that I have actually written or spoken about. So that's kind of cool. There's so much that you can do with the app and I urge you to download it. It's a great way to connect and then to follow up on something I talked about first last week on the podcast. If you are a harp teacher, I'd like to offer you this special way to connect. We are, as you know, in the process of putting together a Harp Teachers fall break retreat. This is just for harp teachers and it's all about connection, connecting with other harp teachers, giving you a chance to reconnect with your own playing. I mean, if you just want to come to the retreat and get some practice time in, that's fine too. This is at the beginning of October. We'll be in the Orlando, Florida area, and it will be a small group, 12 people, probably maximum. My certified coaches will be there, and this will be an opportunity for an exchange of ideas, for some brainstorming, some learning, maybe some ensemble playing. Wouldn't that be fun? So, lots of things that we can do as a group of teachers. If this sounds like something you might be interested in in. We don't even have the details for this published yet because I'm still building it. I want to make this retreat something that would be really useful and really helpful, maybe even inspiring to you as a harp teacher. So if you think this might be interesting for you, I'd love you to go to the link in the Show Notes. There's a short questionnaire asking about what you might like to learn or do at a retreat like this because I want to build it so you want to come. So that's what I'm looking for. And just a few questions to let me know what you would be really interested in. If you don't see the Show Notes in your podcast app, wherever you are listening to the podcast, you can just head over to heartmastery.com, get to the podcast. From there. You're looking for episode 211, which is today's episode, and you'll see it in the Show Notes right there on the website. So if you're a harp teacher, that's a new way to connect with us. You can connect through the app or, and I should say you can keep listening because that's what we're talking about now. Connections. Connections to your playing in a different way. As I mentioned at the top of the show, thinking about creative practice and fun practice makes some people a little uncomfortable. I mean, that kind of thinking just isn't in their wheelhouse. And I get it. But I want to tell you this. The kind of creative and fun practice we're talking about today is not a silly idea. I mean, you could do silly things with it, but it's not a silly idea. We're actually doing very intentional work and it's not wasting your time. We don't have enough time to waste. Certainly not enough practice time. What we're talking about today will make your practice more effective. It's not a substitute for the careful work that you're already doing. It's an addition. Now, I will tell you what. We're talking a lot about playing as opposed to practicing today. And this is where some people can go too far the other direction and just opt for playing. Oh well, Ann Just gave me permission not to practice and not to do all the hard correction kind of stuff. She just says to just play. I don't have to do the detail work. That's not what I'm saying. But we do need to have both. If you're only doing the detail work, you're missing something very important. Likewise, if you're only just playing through pieces, you're likely not getting them correct and polished to the level you really want. We need to do both. So creative and fun practice is a way to get past the detail work. But trust me, it's still going to be part of what you need to do. And creative and fun practice isn't cheating. I mean, your practice doesn't have to be hard work and challenging and or boring or frustrating or repetitive just to make the progress that you want. So creative, fun practice isn't cheating. It's actually why you are playing the harp. And it's very directed at the results you want to get. Without something like the kinds of practice I'm talking with you about today, without something like that, you're not really going to get to the musical results that you're looking for. You're going to get stuck in the details. After all, we often train ourselves out of being creative. We know we need to correct. We know we need to make things right. And so we train ourselves out of some of the joy making music. We actually might forget why we're really doing this in the first place. Your music won't sound like music if you don't practice to make it sound that way. That's part of what we're talking about today. I want you to be able to enjoy the music that you play, to feel like your practicing is creating music, not just fixing mistakes. I realize you still might have some objections. You might be saying, but I have to get it right. The music has to be right. The notes need to be right. Yes, I agree. I totally agree. We want it to be correct, but you don't have to have all those correct details in place before you get to the music. The music, the expressive qualities we're looking for need to be baked in at the same time as everything else. We want the details and all the musicality and to be part of the picture right from the beginning, along with just playing through the piece. After all, that musical flow is part of what we're looking for, right? So why not practice that right at the beginning? That's not something you put on when you think everything else is right. We want you to get it Right. But part of getting it right is getting the music right too. Or maybe you're saying, well, I'm not a very creative person. Now I would challenge that because music speaks to you. That's why you're playing the harp. If music didn't speak to you, you wouldn't be doing this. And that's creativity. That's, dare we say, artistry. That's part of the creative expression of you. That's why you're here. So let's just give you permission to be creative even if you don't think feel like you are. But let's look at it this way. If music speaks to you, then you have the opportunity, you might even have the obligation to give the music its voice through your playing. Think about that again. You need to give the music its voice through your playing. I realize that sounds very grand, but. But in truth, it's very practical and it's already part of your nature. The music speaks to you and you can communicate through it. Ooh, that's a big one right there.

And lastly, you might be thinking, well, I don't know what to do to be creative. I don't know how to bring fun into my practice. Does this mean I have to wear a silly hat? Well, not unless you want to. But that's okay. If you don't know what to do, I've got you covered. That's why we're here. And if you can follow directions, I'm going to give give you the step by step. So have no fear. Now, if fun still sounds a little uncomfortable for you, let me boil it down just a little bit more. This is what we're actually talking about. We're talking about letting go of self correction at least for a little while. Maybe even just learning to let go of self correction when you want to. After all, when you are playing a piece of music for someone, you don't want to be thinking about the mistakes that you might be making along the way. That's not the time to do it. So you need to learn how to let go of that kind of self correction and this kind of practice. The couple of ways we're talking about today are going to give you some very concrete methods for going beyond self correction and getting to the music.

We're also talking about exploring the music in a deeper way. One that's going to help you connect to it more viscerally almost, and it's going to allow you to express it more naturally. The things that we talk about in terms of details like dynamics and you know, okay, here's a crescendo. You know, we do that and we do it very deliberately in our practice. But when you have this deeper level of connection and intimacy almost with the music, then your expression is more natural. And you don't have to be quite as self conscious about the dynamics that you're choosing or playing, because it's part of what you feel about the music. I know. There I go. It's sort of that touchy feely thing. But here's the third thing that's much more objective and maybe more comfortable for you. You. This is about resetting your priorities. There. You feel more like you're on solid ground now. Okay, I know sometimes the creative stuff can feel very mushy and not very comfortable, but resetting your priorities is very definite. And that's what we're doing today. We're resetting your priorities to be the music first, then the notes, not the other way around. I'll say it again. The music first, then the notes, not the other way around. It's not that we're going to ignore one for the other, but we're going to make sure that all the learning that we're doing of the notes is pointing us in the direction of the music when we need to do that level of detail work. And we're also going to figure out how to just.

Be involved with the music at the top level, where the music is, rather than in the nitty gritty. This is where you find musical flow. This is where you practice your ability to play past mistakes. Because the mistakes are so much smaller than we make them in our detail kind of practice, they count so much less. So this is where you learn that kind of a skill. This is where you learn to present the music as an idea, as a communication, as a mood, as a story, whatever the piece of music is for you and whatever you want it to be for a listener. So keeping that idea as part of your practice and making that a priority, what you do, even if it's just temporary, is going to be extremely beneficial for you. Because if you don't practice that, you don't ever get there. So I have three ways that we're going to talk about finding that creativity lever in your practice. And I've put them in three different categories, so I'm hoping that one of those will match with your own personality style or learning style, and you'll say, oh, okay, I can do that. So I've put these three together and I think they're kind of fun. And we'll get started with the first one right now, the first one is for the researcher. I think this is a fun one because I'm a person. I'm an inveterate Googler. I mean, you know, somebody asks a question, I want to find out the answer. I come across something I've never heard of before. I'm on my phone looking it up on Google. I love to know things. So if you're that kind of a person, then you might be the kind of researcher I'm talking about. We're going to create your own survey course. You could call it a music appreciation course or a music history course, but you're going to look at some pieces that connect with maybe a single composer or a kind of piece or a time period or a place. Maybe these are pieces you've already played. Maybe they're pieces that you've heard about that you want to just take a look at. But this is the kind of thing where you can dive deep into one particular area of music that really interests you. I mean, it could be a particular musical style too, if that's something that's kind of fun. Maybe all of a sudden you're into waltzes. Well, let's look at waltzes from different kinds of times. What is a 19th century waltz like? What's a 20th century waltz like? Did they do waltzes in the 18th century? I don't know. So you know, all that kind of thing. Right? So that's an idea. You can choose one of those sorts of areas, say, all right, I want to look at music by French composers. Okay? So choose a few and find four relatively easy, easy for you, that is, versions of several of those pieces. Maybe you're looking at French music and you really want to play Debussy's Clair de Lune. And there are some pretty hard arrangements of Clair de Lune out there, but there are some pretty simpler ones too. Ones that, okay, they don't have all the notes, but that also means they don't have all the complications. So you can get into that French music kind of mood without, you know, worrying about stuff being really, really complicated. So look for versions of these pieces that you can play and get a few of them. You know, okay, I've got a Clair de Lune and then maybe a little piece by Ravel, maybe a piece by one of the French harp composers and, you know, find a few of them and play through one of those every week. This is not in depth practice. This is a survey course. So you're going to sort of play it through as a way to introduce yourself to these pieces, to this style of music, to this particular composer, to music from a particular time period or from a particular place. You're going to assemble your pieces and then you're going to play through them. Now, now, let's go back to the researcher idea. As you're playing through them, I think it would be really great to sort of journal your observations. Let's take our French music example again. And you've assembled, oh, I don't know, maybe half a dozen pieces as you play through the first one. Maybe that's a version that you found that you like of Debussy's Clair de Lune. Write down a few things, not just about the version of the piece you're playing. Like, oh, okay, this was really accessible for me, and I just had trouble with that particular lever. But things about the piece itself. What do you like about it? It's a beautiful, haunting kind of a melody, and I really like the chord in this particular measure. The rhythms were interesting. It really made me think of moonlight, which, of course is what Clair de Lune means. Right. Or maybe you found out more about Debussy and you were interested in his piano version of the piece and how it fits with the other pieces in that suite, because that piece is part of the Suite Bergamesque. So there are other pieces in that suite besides Clair de Lune, at least in the piano version. So this might be something that's interesting to you. So jot down those observations. And in fact, if you think, oh, you know what, I'm looking at French music right now, but I'm discovering this as well, and I'd like to look at this particular aspect of music or this particular other composer or something another time, so you can jot those down too. So you're going to create your own survey course and you're going to play through these pieces. You don't have to practice them or learn them to perfection. This is just giving yourself a taste of all these things. It's going to broaden your musical experience, your musical range of understanding, which is going to inform your playing. So even though it might not seem like it's direct work on your pieces, it's going to help you be a better harpist. And if this sounds like fun to you, I say go for it. But maybe researching isn't your style. Maybe you're a crafter, and if that is you, let's talk about creating a musical collage. I'd like you to choose three or so pieces that are in your repertoire already or are very easy pieces that you know and can bring back quickly. And then we're going to create this little collage. I want you to string those pieces together, you know, 1, 2, 3, in a way that creates a story, or at least a story to you. They don't have to actually create a story. Think of this, maybe even in terms of a musical sonata. You know, a sonata usually, or at least often has three movements, maybe a fast movement, a slow movement and then another fast one. Well, see if you can find three pieces that do that. A fast one and a slow one and another fast one. And these would be pieces that seem to go together. Use your ears the way you would use your eyes. Think about piecing a quilt together, right? You're going to choose fabrics that are different but yet somehow go together. And that's what you're doing here. You're going to take pieces that are perhaps not related at all. Oh, this is a French one. This is a harp one. This is a popular song. I don't know. They don't have to actually go together, but put them together in a way that suits you. Maybe you start with a slow piece and then you do a slightly faster one and end with a fastest one. Maybe you have a major. A piece that's in a major key, then a piece that's in a minor key, and end with a piece in a major key. So this is sort of similar to a sonata or maybe even to a suite. Maybe the titles of these pieces relate to each other. You know, they might all be about nature. Maybe they're all about birds or bells or water. Maybe they're all, I don't know, castles or forests or seascapes or something. If you need an example to follow, you can always think about Gustav Holst's orchestral masterpiece, the Planets, right? He put all these pieces together that represented all the different planets, at least all the planets they knew about in his time. So we've got the planets. You could do something similar, but just of music that you know. So create that little collage. Now, I will tell you, if you want to make this a little more practical, feeling for you, that collage could be a nice set that's part of a performance. If those pieces go together in your mind, you can always explain to an audience how they go together in your mind, and it can help them understand what they're listening to in a new way. So it's got a practical use as well. But think about it as a collage for now. And then play through that collage daily. And as you do it, look for new ways to express the relationship between the pieces. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you have to get so detailed that you create transitions from one piece to the next. You can do that if you want, but you don't have to. Just the same way that movements of a sonata are usually separate, right? One ends, the next one starts. It ends, the next one starts. So your collage doesn't have to have transitions, unless you want to. After all, it's your collage. Once again, the key is playing the pieces all the way through and not practicing them. So choose easy ones. This is kind of fun when you think about ways that your pieces can connect. Once you've done one of them, you're going to find lots of others that might be fun for you to put together. And now for the last category, and this would be for the scientist. It's time for the scientist to experiment. Now, in this particular experiment, we're working with musical expression. We're going to get you out of the notes and find the control, if you will, so that you can really think about expression without thinking about notes. And here's how you're going to do it. You're going to get out the very first heart pieces you ever learned. You know, the really beginner ones, the ones that are sort of one or two lines long, maybe they are only one hand at a time. You know, get out your first two or three books because you're going to go through these quickly. And here's the experiment. I want you to play those baby pieces, the ones that have very few notes in them, you know, just at that hot cross buns kind of level, right? Row, row, row your boat, those kinds of pieces, and make them as expressive as you can. All those things that are difficult for you at, you know, at faster tempos and with hands together and with more challenging pieces. We're taking all those challenging elements out of it. We're working with very simple musical melodies. And think about what you want your more complicated pieces to have in terms of expression. Changes in dynamics, right? Maybe sudden changes or maybe gradual changes like a crescendo or a decrescendo, maybe a retard, maybe some rubato, maybe thinking about legato or thinking about your tone. All those expressive elements that you're so hard to incorporate into more challenging pieces. Let's take the challenge out, and let's take these simple pieces and work at those expressive elements here. So that's the Experiment. You've got these very simple pieces, and you're going to add the expressive elements onto those. It's not easy. It's actually easier in some ways to make a beautiful phrase when you have more notes to do it with. So this is not going to be easy, but it is going to push you in the musical direction you want to go. This is also the place to try playing past your mistakes and really getting that musical flow. Do it with something easy, and then once you find out how that works with those very simple pieces, you can move to the next level. The pieces in the middle of that beginner book that have both hands at the same time. Pieces that are still very easy and very basic. But use those very easy, very basic pieces to practice the more difficult concepts of expression and musicality, the ones that you want to put onto your other music. This is the place to practice them. And of course, it's always a good idea to write down the things that you try and the things that you discover. And then, of course, you'll take your newly honed expressive skills and back to the pieces that you're working on currently and seeing how well they work there. So working back and forth between those very easy ones and your current repertoire will really help you bring your expressive skills up to the level you want them to be. So that's for the scientist. Now, as we wrap this up, I want you to notice that all of these techniques focus on exploration, on connection, on musical expression, and above all, on playing, not fixing. Remember that in order to play music well, you have to practice playing, not just practice practicing. It's so important to learn how to get out of practice mode. So as you're doing these things, resist the urge to level up to harder pieces. That's not what this is for.

You don't need to perfect the ones that you're playing for any of these techniques either. That's not what this is for. Now, you may want to perfect your musical collage to perform it someplace, but as part of your practice, you don't need to do that. When you're ready to play it someplace, yeah, you're going to have to. But I want you to just enjoy this different way to look at what you're trying to do. We're getting out of that practice mode and turning ourselves into the musicians we want to be. Now, how good does that sound? Next week's show, we'll focus on something much more practical, and I can hear some of you breathing a sigh of relief. I know this is hard stuff. We were talking about today. It's going to be about three exercise books that you should know. I'll be telling you about the books, what's in them, how to use them, and how they can help you help keep your technique moving forward this summer. So three exercise books you should know is on the show next week. Please remember to check out the Harp Mastery app. I'd love to see you in there. It's free, so why not, right? And of course, if you're a harp teacher, check out that that little questionnaire about our harp teacher fall break retreat. So check that link out. It's in the show notes. And let me know what you'd like to learn because I'd love to see you there. Until we talk next 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.