Cure the Carol Blahs - PHH 027

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. Now, we harpists all have holiday stories, and I have one that I tell my students nearly every year. This is a story about a performance that I struggled with, a performance that should have been a walk in the park. And there are so many important lessons that I learned from this experience. I want to tell you about it today because it has particular relevance to our topic. It's a story about Christmas carols gone wrong. Well, not that there was anything wrong with the carols, of course. It was all about my preparation. Now, like, like so many stories that we share with others, this one happened in my teenage years, those years when we should know better, but we don't. Probably the kindest spin you can put on this is to say that it was a learning experience.

The story is that I had been asked to share to play some Christmas carols as solo music in the midd of an orchestral concert. It was a community orchestra that I'd played with Since I was 12 and they had very graciously asked me to do this little solo spot. You know, I'd be playing obviously for the audience, but the whole orchestra would be sitting on stage as well. So it was, you know, in its way, kind of a big deal. And I chose the music I was going to play. Five paraphrases on Christmas Carols by Carlos Salzado and. And everything was fine except that I didn't really practice them. Now, there are some reasons for this and we're going to go get into not necessarily my reasons, but reasons I find other people don't necessarily practice Christmas carols the way they should. But I certainly didn't do my homework this time. And here it is the week before the concert and my carols are nowhere near ready to play. Well, it was definitely panic time. Now I'll skip ahead and tell you that the story ends up okay. I mean, I played all right, not great, but it was passable. But the lessons I learned and the way I dealt with that last crunch time, that's what I want to share with you today, because I think this is something that we can all use some help with. Christmas carols are hard to practice, and you need to practice them a little bit differently than you would practice just about anything else. So we're going to talk about how to do that. We're going to talk about how to keep those, you know, same old carols feeling fresh and fun. And we'll talk about how these same practice strategies that we're going to talk about can help you review any music that you want to add or keep in your repertoire. Because truthfully, the strategies aren't that different. So we have a lot to talk about and I hope it feels timely for you. Speaking of timely, you still have time if you're listening to this podcast when it goes live tonight. I am giving a webinar now. It's called Cracking the Nutcracker Code and it's all about learning how to play the Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza. But just like the strategies I'm talking about today, the strategies we're talking about for playing that cadenza are strategies that you likely haven't tried when it comes to learning and practicing any other piece of music. And it's really valuable. So if you can join me tonight for the webinar, I would be most happy to have you. It's free happening tonight, Monday, November 22nd at 7:30pm Eastern Time and you'll find the link to sign up for the webinar in our show notes or you can just go to heartmastery.com and it will be there. But that's not the only Walls of the Flowers Cadenza fund that we'll be having this week. I on Friday, this week that would be November 26, the day after Thanksgiving, we are going to be having a Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza play in. Now we won't be playing the cadenza all together, but there's at noon Eastern time specific time and hopefully like between noon and 1pm I want you to play whatever version of the Walls of the Flowers Cadenza you can play, but do hop over to our website. We'll put that page very clearly on the website how to get there, but I'll put the link in the show notes as well. So you have that, but just hop on over, join me on a zoom call, and we'll talk about the cadenza a little bit more. And most, the most fun thing is we're going to have a map there, an interactive map. So if you have played the cadenza or one arpeggio of the cadenza or part of the cadenza, come on over, join the webinar, and then on that webpage put your name and the place where you live, and it will put a little pin right on our map so we can see where harpists all over the world are playing the wasps of the flowers cadenza. And I think this is just so cool. Imagine just the lovely harp music spread all the way around the world. So I, I hope that if you can join me for the webinar, that's great, but I really want you to join us for the cadenza play in. So that's happening this Friday. And you can find all the information in the link, in the show notes or just by going to harpmastery.com so that's what's really going to be fun this week.

I think it's time to get back to that Christmas carol story and tell you exactly what happened. So I told you that the concert went all right. The truth is that I managed to play those carols, and that, I think, is the key word. I managed them. They didn't sound great. They sounded okay. Now, I don't choose to, you know, I'm not looking for any medals for playing less than my best, that's for sure. Particularly when the entire effort, practice wise, was lacking on my part. But there are some takeaways I want to share with you. And here's the first one. Carols are hard to practice for two reasons. Now, it's not that, you know, I mean, they're, they're cute little songs, most of them, right? Some of them more complicated than others. There are a bazillion arrangements of them. So you can certainly find one that's appropriate for you. So that's not the hard part. The problem with these is that we think we know them. First of all, they've been playing over the radio and they've been playing in the stores since, you know, the beginning of October. So we hear them over and over and over again. But that doesn't mean we know them. I mean, just because I know every word to every verse of Good King Wenceslas, yes, that is one of my hidden talents. It doesn't mean that my fingers will fly through A set of variations on it, right? Knowing how it goes and having finger security with the notes are very different things. And just because we know those carols so well, there's a part of us that feels like we know them well enough. That, my friends, is dangerous thinking.

So that's. First, we think we know them. But the second reason that carols are hard to practice is that when we practice them, we. We often use what I will call interpretive hearing.

Let me explain. So imagine this. You're sitting at the harp, and you get out, you know, Silent Night. And you're going to practice it because you have to play it at church again this year. So you get it out and you practice it and you play along. But at some point, you go onto autopilot. I mean, you know this carol really well. You know, you should be working on it, but you just can't really push. Put your whole brain to use when you're practicing it. So what happens is that our brain is thinking about something else. And so we don't really hear the mistakes that we're making because our ear is ready to hear the correct notes. And for some reason, we think we've played it correctly, even if we haven't. So it's just sort of very convenient hearing. It's a little bit like when you're used to seeing something every day. You almost don't notice it, right? It just becomes there. And then suddenly something happens, and you see it with new eyes. It's the same kind of thing here. So we can begin to practice Christmas carols or other familiar music. And we'll get to that in a moment with that same inattention, that assumption that what we played is what we meant to play. The problem occurs in a performance, of course, when our awareness is heightened and we notice all the mistakes. And then it's too late to fix them.

And then, of course, there's the infamous Christmas carol conundrum.

We don't want to practice them because we feel like we've practiced them plenty. But on the other hand, we don't want to play them wrong, right? Because the thing that's really tricky about Christmas carols is that not only do we think we know them, but everyone else knows them, too. So we know that when we're playing them, we've heard every mistake that we made. And they've heard them, too. Plus maybe one or two more that we actually missed. Yuck. So back to my story for a second. Here's what I did to play my Christmas carols. Now, remember I'm back in this concert. I'm, you know, I don't know, 15 years old. It's the week of the concert. I mean, I, you know, I could count the days to the concert on one hand. And I haven't practiced these carols at all. In fact, I really remember my mother telling me that, you know, aren't you going to play those? Don't you think you should practice those? And, of course, you know, you can imagine how much weight a mother's words like that might carry, right? So. But she was right. Naturally, I should have been practicing them. And the thing was that I thought I knew the carols, so I figured it was going to work. They were all short. Those paraphrases are only two pages a piece. But they're not easy. And I had seriously overestimated my own ability to navigate the notes. I mean, they are, you know, salzato paraphrases. Right. There's nothing elementary about that. I should have been practicing them all along. Obviously, that would have been the smart thing to do. But with, you know, five, six days before the concert, it's, you know, it's too late to worry about that. You just have to come up with an emergency plan. So that was what I did, and this was it. I just felt that the only way I was going to be able to get through them. Now, remember, I can't change the music. It's already listed on the program. So I have to play these things. There's no way to cut them because they're short enough as it is. And I had a specific time limit I was trying to fill up. There was really no way to take out notes because they sounded pretty. That was sort of the whole point. I just had to play them. So my emergency strategy was to play them all slowly, not abysmally slowly. I was never known for playing slowly, particularly as a kid. But to play them more slowly than I would normally think. The carol went at, you know, kind of a moderate tempo rather than a good clip. Now, even so, there were places in each carol that, you know, one false move and I'd be, you know, over the precipice, as it were. So this was a strategy that was going to allow me to get through them. It didn't mean I was going to play them very well. But. But in order to remind myself that I was going to have to play them slowly, I crossed off one word in the title of every carol. Now, see, this is another step in my preparation. I didn't do right. I probably should have had these prepared enough to play from memory. But I was playing from music and that probably gave me, you know, was part of the reason I felt so confident about my ability to play them. So knowing I was going to play for music, I crossed out one word in the title of each carol to remind me to play them slowly. So my copy still has that. Because I wasn't going to erase them. I wanted that to be a reminder to me that I wasn't going to do this again. So my copy of these carols still reads, it came upon the midnight slow. We slow kings of Orient are angels we have heard on slow. Which makes no sense, but there you go, slow sleeves, which is kind of silly. And oh, slow town of Bethlehem. So.

It was only. The only thing I could do was before post it notes came along, right? Or I might have tried that, but it was the only thing I could do to remind myself of what I needed to do to manage the performance. Because there was no way it was going to be stellar. There was no way it was going to be what I would have wished it would be because I hadn't put the work in. So that was my emergency triage plan and it's not what I'm recommending for you. I'm hoping that you are much more organized and disciplined than I was at that age and that you are, you know, preparing what you need to do ahead of time. So that kind of emergency strategy is not what I want to talk about today. What I do want to talk about are some specific strategies so that you can practice your Christmas carols so that you don't get bored with them, but yet you do make them correct and secure like you would with any other piece. One of the things about Christmas carols is that, you know, they're the same tunes every year. One of the things you can do to keep things interesting for yourself is to choose one or two carols to find a brand new arrangement for every year, right? You don't have to swap out every piece you have because you don't want to load yourself down with notes to learn at the beginning of your holiday practice. But a new arrangement or two will help keep your practice skills sharp because you actually have to learn them and it will keep you interested, right? So that's a great thing to do. Now, once again, this is something you have to do when you have enough time to learn them, right? You can't pick this up at the last moment, or maybe you can, and that would be great, but. But this is part of Your planning you can do to, to find those new arrangements. There are bazillions to choose from. And so, you know, you'll, you can find one that works well for you, that keeps you interested and, you know, makes you feel good about playing that same old carol that may have ceased to become of one of the, you know, to be one of your favorites over time. Now this is something that I do too. I love new arrangements of carols. And in fact, that's one of the reasons that last year we at Heart Mastery hosted a 12 Days of Christmas music promotion. Because it left it Let me write 12 new arrangements of Christmas carols and share them with all our Heart Mastery fans. And here's a quick heads up. I'm not ready to release anything yet, but we're going to be doing that again this year starting on December 1st. So when we have that ready to go, I will get you all the details and they'll be coming out in your newsletters and on our website too. But I love new arrangements. Make those carols different every year. And that can be fun. Okay, well, so that keeps things interesting, but you still have to get down to, you know, get to practicing them. It's nuts and bolts. It's, you know, it's the work. You have to put in the work. So this is a great time, I think, to consider your general practice strategy. I mean, without worrying about Christmas carols or what you're practicing, think about what you do when you learn a piece. I mean, what do you actually do? What are the steps that you follow? What system do you use? What tricks do you use? How do you like to approach something? So this is a great time to sort of think about your practice strategy. And then, you know, when you are learning a piece, once again, not necessarily a Christmas carol, any old piece, right? When you're learning a piece, think about the one or two things that you do in your practice that make the biggest difference for your music. These are the two things. They're the go to techniques. You do them every time because you know that when you do these, your piece is going to come together more quickly. I mean, maybe it's hands separately practice, maybe it's slow practice with the metronome. Maybe it's working in sections. Maybe it's spot practice. What is it that you do? Find those one or two techniques, practice ideas that you do that really make you feel confident about your music. Whatever your two biggest needle movers are, be sure you do those with each carol you need to work on. In fact, plan it right. Make a note of those two big needle mover things that you do and say, okay, well, today on this carol, that's what I'm doing. And tomorrow on that carol, that's what I'm going to be doing so that you can plan those out, but use the strategies that, you know, work and apply them to whatever carol you need to work on. What this will do for you is not just help you learn the carol, but it's going to help you be much more.

Aware of the actual things that you do in your practice. Right? It's not just repeating notes. It's not doing it over and over again. What do you do that makes a difference? This is a great time to think about that, you know, so why not use Let it snow, Let it snow, let it snow as a time to sort out a practice strategy? I mean, what a great use of your time, right? So I would urge you to do that. Now, obviously, this particular strategy is a great idea to help you learn any piece, not just Christmas carols. And in fact, a lot of the strategies that we use for reviewing repertoire in general or preparing music for performance are excellent for working on Christmas carols, too. A lot of the time when we are playing our favorite arrangement of this Christmas carol and we love it and we take it out every year, that's in fact, what we're doing, right? We're reviewing something that's in our repertoire. And it's likely, being as it's Christmas, that this is something that you're going to have to play. You're going to have to either maybe perform it at a church or share it at a nursing home, or just play it for friends. But this time of year, more than any other, is likely the time that you're going to play for other people. So these strategies are really good for that. Now let's look at some review strategies and some practice some performance practice strategies and see how they might apply. So I have what I think is a pretty basic review strategy. When you have a piece that you're trying to, you know, get the. Get the rust and the dust off of, right? You've taken it back out of the drawer and you're going to resurrect it, as it were. The thing that I like to do is I like to start by playing through the piece. The whole piece, just play it through. But then I get into a routine where for the first week or two, I play through it once a day, and I do that for two days in a row. So I'll play through it on day one, I'll play through it on day two. And then on day three, I'll fix the spots that I seem to, you know, that aren't coming back quickly so that, you know, I'll look at. I'll look at this spot and I'll look at that spot, and I'll work at that fingering again. And then for the next three days, I'll repeat that same rotation. I'll play through it on day four, and I'll play through it on day five, and I'll do spot practice on day six.

This is a great way to, you know, to bring back a piece where you feel so that you feel like you're not starting from scratch. And you probably aren't if it's a piece that you played right. So, you know, you're not starting from scratch. You're giving yourself sort of the benefit of assuming that some of that work you did is going to come back by working on the playthroughs. But, you know, you're going to have to fix stuff. And maybe those playthroughs are going to be quite slow at first. They might not be playthroughs at tempo. Right. You're going to play through it at a very slow speed. To remind yourself with one student, I've called this the WD40 technique. Because we're getting the rust off. We're just shaking the rust off. It's not worth burrowing into the notes yet. Let's give it some time to come back. Right? So that's what those play through times are for, just giving it some time to come back. And you can do this with Christmas carols too, when you're taking back those carols. And you know, if you enjoy playing Christmas carols for yourself, this might. On the harp, this might be a great way to do it where you just have a book of Christmas carols and play through some on day one and maybe, you know, maybe play through three carols on day one and do some spot practice on a couple others. And then day two, the ones you did spot practice on, let's play through those and let's do spot practice on the ones you played on day one and rotate like that. Or maybe even put a third day's worth of Christmas carols in the rotation. But it will give you a way to play them and to fix what needs to be fixed without spending a lot of time practicing something that doesn't need to be practiced. All right, so that's my basic review strategy for any piece, and it's excellent for Christmas carols. But if you're going to play the carols for somebody else, you really want to be preparing in a way that allows you to play it or to perform it instead of just practicing. And that's different. So play through that carol or whatever it is you want to do, but play through that carol and focus a little bit on the phrasing of. On the dynamics, on the tempo. And then practice it back to front, front to back, right? Start in the middle. Start in all different kinds of places so that you aren't always going onto autopilot when you play it. You know, if you're going to perform it, you need to know it a little bit better. Don't do what I did with my Christmas carols, right? So be sure that you really have it prepared and playing, you know, starting at random sections, random spots in the music help you stay focused and get those landmarks that you need to be able to perform a piece really well. Also, if you're going to be performing, keep things in, you know, keep things in mind that might happen, especially at holiday concerts, you might be playing in dim light. So see, you know, you can either practice playing in dim light or you can be sure that you know how you're going to have enough light for your. So that you can see the strings, so that you can see the music. By the way, Christmas concerts, you know, especially when they tend to be candlelight concerts. This is one time I love to play from my tablet because I don't need a separate stand light. My tablet is backlit, right. So that my music is always visible. I don't have to worry about a stand light fading or, you know, not having an outlet for it. Cause I'm playing from my tablet. So that's one of the things that's great about, you know, reading music electronically. You can stay concentrated on the carols you're practicing by singing those words in your head. They can help keep your place, right? So if you're going to be playing the carol, practice those strategies the same way you would for any other piece that you were going to perform. Be sure you know it backward as well as forward and from the inside out. Think about what the words say, what those words mean. Can you differentiate between the different verses just by using different dynamics?

So, you know, those are the intentional kinds of things you can do to make your practice more interesting as well as make your playing more expressive. So practicing in the way that you want to play them is really important. Now, I also, when it comes to Christmas carols, these. The pieces are often short, not always, but especially if they are short, practice three of them in a row without stopping. You know, this is my.

You could call it my three Wise men strategy, because we're doing three carols right in a row. So whatever you are going to be playing, do three of them. Carol A, carol B, carol C, boom, boom, boom. And then play those three carols in a row, three times in a row. But putting the carols in a different order each time. What's the point of this? Well, it does sort of help you find energy and stamina. It will also help you practice switching quickly, changing your focus quickly. It simulates a real life situation, too, like a church service, right? So that you know when you may not have time to think about the carols. One of the things I find that when we practice, you know, we, we. We'll play something the first time and then we'll play it the second time. And that second time often goes so much better because we're all mentally warmed up, right? But in a performance situation, you don't get that mulligan. You don't get that do over. You have to do it on the first try. So doing these three carols right in a row, doing them in a different order each time, gives you a way to practice that quick shift, to practice that mental agility that, you know, that gets you in the groove of the next carol very quickly. Now, this doesn't mean that they have to be instantaneous. Changes do follow good performance practice and make sure that you can hear the beginning of the carol in your head before you start it. One of the dangers about Christmas carols is that so many of them are somewhat alike and have similar meters and rhythms and tempos. So it's a good idea to make sure you've got that next carol in your head and how it goes before you start playing avoids that false start situation, right?

Now, if you want to take this technique a step further, you can practice creating a quick transition in between the carols, right? A simple arpeggio on the last chord, which might, you know, lead you into the next one. Or it could be an arpeggio on the last chord of the first carol and again another arpeggio on the first chord of the next arpeggio. Or you could do a glissando between the pieces. Or you could repeat the last phrase of a carol, maybe in the key of the next carol, if you get really into it. Or you could start a new bass rhythm in the first carol in the key of the first carol, and then switch that to the next carol. You know, there are lots of different ways to make really easy transitions. And just a simple glissando or a simple arpeggio can, you know, can be enough to sort of help your listeners mentally turn the page and, you know, go from the first Noel to the Holly and the Ivy or whatever carols you're going to be playing, right? So it can be very, very simple. But just that little transition can be fun. And it. Practicing that in will, you know, give you another. Another little skill that you're practicing at the same time. So that's kind of fun. So that's my. My wiseman strategy, my practicing carols in threes. Kind of a fun thing to do. Now, I have one more tip for you that's specific to Christmas carols or any other piece of music that is a song. Now, there's an aside here. I like to differentiate between pieces of music and songs. While all songs are pieces of music, pieces of music are not all songs. Songs have words and they are sung. So, you know, the Pachelbel canon, for instance, is not a song. It is a piece of music. It is a canon, it is a work of music. It is a piece, but it is not a song. So I like to make that.

That differentiation and keep that very clear. So what I'm talking about now is a Christmas carol or another song, something that has words. So here's the thing. If you are playing a song, something that has words, even if you're not singing and no one else is singing with you, if your attention starts to wander in your practicing and you sort of get caught up in the carol and you're not really thinking about it, and you lose your place in the music, try putting the words to the carol in your music and mentally sing along. Use those words to help you keep your place so that you know, if you're playing Silent Night, for instance, and your head is saying, you know, sleep in heavenly peace, but you look at the music and it just looks like a blur of notes. You know, you've gone back to the music and you can't find where you are. If the words are there, you can find them, right? So tracking those words can help you keep your place so that you're not getting lost in that visual blur of notes. Plus, it can remind you of what the music you're playing means to you or to somebody else who might be listening. And it's going to help you express the music at a deeper Level.

Which is really the last thing I wanted to remind you about when it comes to practicing and playing Christmas carols, We need to practice them. Don't do what I did. Right. We need to practice them and we want to play them well. But I think it's just as important to enjoy playing them. If you're choosing Christmas carols to play, choose carols that you love. Don't bother about the ones that don't speak to you right. There's plenty of music. And then once you've chosen ones that you love, play them from the heart. Practice them from the heart. It can be the kind of practice that you never want to stop doing. And it could turn your holiday practice into the most wonderful time of the year. Now, I know we're coming up to a wonderful time of the year, but this is just about the busiest time of the year for us at Heart Mastery. I'm sure it's busy for you, too, but just let me give you a couple quick reminders. First of all, tonight we have our free webinar, Cracking the Nutcracker Code. And we'll be talking about learning pieces.

A different way. And I'll be going through the method that we used on our cadenza Challenge and talking about how that can apply in general to other kinds of music. So it, you know, it's interesting and it's been so much fun to see all the challenges work through this stuff. It's just really great. And then, of course, the day after Thanksgiving, Friday, November 26th, 6th, we have our cadenza play in. Now, I want to just tell you that it doesn't matter if you've never played the Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza. If you log onto that call, you'll find the link in the show notes and we'll be posting it on our website as well@heartmastery.com if you join our call at noon Eastern on Friday, November 26, I will coach you through a little snippet of of the cadenza so that you can play it and you know, you'll be able to play it in the privacy of your own living room while you listen to me coach you through it. And then you can come over to the website and log your name and where you live on our map and you'll be registered as having been part of our cadenza play in. We're going to have harpists I know from all over logging on to do this. So it's going to be just a ton of fun. And I just, you know, we'll sort of be there and watch the pins pop up on the map and we'll see how the whole thing goes. I'm really excited to try this, so I would love for you to be a part. So be sure to check that out. Click that link in the show notes, click the link that will be up on our website and join our Cadenza Play in now. Next week right here on the podcast, we will be talking about musical expression, about form and flow, and about how the structure of the piece offers you a lot of musical choices and how to make those musical choices, how to decide that you know what the piece is telling you and how to make it yours. So we'll be talking about expression from sort of a different angle when we talk about that on next Monday's podcast, and I certainly hope you'll join me for that. But in the meantime, I just want to wish everybody, certainly everybody in the United States who's sharing the Thanksgiving holiday with me on Thursday, but everyone everywhere. I offer this opportunity for us all to be grateful for everything that the world gives us, everything that the harp has offered us. And in particular, I want to just say how grateful I am for all of you, for sharing your time with me and joining us here on the podcast and at all those other fun Heart Mastery things that we do so special. Thank you to the my Heart Mastery members, to my Gold Circle members, to our coaching students, and to all my coaches. So I I am so grateful for all of you. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I hope to see you Friday on our Cadenza Play in and certainly I hope to speak to you right here on the podcast next Monday. See you then. Thanks for tuning into 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.