Divide and Conquer: How to Practice a Piece in Sections - PHH 072

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, the 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. Have you ever wanted someone to just give you a system for learning a piece of music? A system that would work for every piece every time? Me too, but there isn't one. Well, okay, don't give up on me yet. I do have one that will work for most pieces most of the time, and I'm going to teach that to you today. Why are we always looking for that single system, that magic bullet? Well, my idea is that it's because learning music is so complicated, with so many considerations and moving parts at the same time. As we're dealing with all this complexity, we're trying to make the music beautiful and expressive. Something that transcends mere notes and rhythm. Not a small task, my friend. I found a quote the other day that really spoke to me. It's a quote from a Danish computer scientist who teaches at Columbia University. His name is Bjarne Stru Stroop. I know I did my best with the Danish. I think I was drawn to this quote and some others of his because his sense of humor reminded me of my dad's. My dad was also a computer programmer and I saw the similarity instantly. The quote I want to share for the purposes of our discussion today is this. The most fundamental problem in software development is complexity. There is only one basic way of dealing with complexity. Divide and conquer. Now, if you substitute the phrase learning music for software development, it works perfect, perfectly like this. The most fundamental problem in learning music is complexity. There is only one basic way of dealing with complexity. Divide and conquer. That's our topic for today and the basis for the system I'm going to share. The best way to learn a piece of music is to divide it into sections. Now, I'll bet you do this already. But there are some super effective ways to do it, and. And some that are less so. And we're all about effective practice here. So I'm going to teach you what I believe is the best system for using section work to divide and conquer almost any piece of music. But before we get into all our serious stuff, remember I told you a moment ago that I loved Dr. Stroustrup's sense of humor because it was so much like my dad's. Well, here's one of the quotes that really made that connection for me, and I just have to share it with you. Here it is. There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true since I no longer know how to use my telephone. Isn't that great? Don't you love it? I also wanted to say a quick thank you. I am so thrilled to see how many of you have signed up for our webinar next week. And why am I so excited? Well, because I know that each of you who signed up is going to come away from that webinar with a new perspective on your music, a new way to practice or play, a way to get beyond that barrier that maybe seems insurmountable right now. I mean, your harp playing is important to you, and you shouldn't have to feel stuck or like you're the only one who doesn't know the secret. I mean, let's face it, nobody, not even me, has secret sauce that's going to turn you overnight into the world's greatest harpist. But. But I can make sure you have all the information you need to get off that stuck place. Or even better, not to get stuck there in the first place. So if what you're doing isn't working for you, we need to change what you're doing. It's that simple. And that's what this webinar is all about. The webinar is happening next week on Thursday, October 13. Three good habits that you need to break.

So that you can play the music the way you want. I know it seems counterintuitive. I get that. But if what isn't working for you isn't working, then we need to change it. So, please, if you haven't signed up for this free webinar yet, please do that. You're really going to enjoy it. Come prepared with questions, because it's going to be that kind of a webinar. I'll give you all the information you need But I want to make sure that it really works for you. So you can register for the webinar either by using the link right here in the show Notes for this episode, or going over to heartmastery. Com, look under Events, and you can sign up there. It's going to be very informative, of course, but it's going to be fun. I'm really looking forward to sharing all this information, and I hope you are there to share it with me. But right now we're going to talk about working on your music in sections. So why don't you grab a piece of music and a pencil and let's start dividing so that you can conquer. Now, I'm sure you already practice in sections and you know the value of that. And let's just review why sections are so helpful. A piece of music, or at least almost every piece of music, isn't a random collection of measures and notes, right? The piece has patterns, repeated parts, recurring themes. It holds together, it hangs together and is unified because of the structure of the piece. And understanding that structure, which we also call form, is very helpful, right? Because when you know, oh, look, this section that I played over here comes back later in the piece. Well, in a real practical sense, it's very helpful because, you know, oh, guess what? I've already practiced that. I know what it's like. It's not going to be new notes that I have to learn when I get over there. Maybe, you know, a little bit of difference because composers like to mix things up, don't they? But it's really pretty much going to be the same. So you can save yourself some learning anxiety by just saying, okay, yep, already seen this. I know how it goes, know how it sounds, couple little things to work out, but that's it. But it also contributes greatly to your understanding of the piece. And when you know the structure of a piece, you can start to create that big musical picture. That's where flow starts, right? F, L, O, W. That's where musical flow happens. And that's where expression comes from. The expression is derived from that musical form and musical structure. Think about when you see a section between two repeat signs in a piece. Sometimes you might want to have that repeated section be at two different dynamic levels because it's repeated. Well, that's what I'm talking about. So understanding the form of a piece, those big sections can really be helpful. So if you have a piece of music in front of you now, I mean, if you're like driving or on the exercise bike, don't do that. But. But do come back and do it later, right? So if you're looking at a piece of music, you want to look at those big sections. And by big sections, it might be a page, could be a page and a half, could be just a few lines. Depends on the kind of a piece. But look for what happens at the beginning. Does it have an introduction? Does it have an ending? Does it have something that we see a few different times in piece? But maybe it has a middle section that's totally different. Well, I like to. When I'm looking at a piece like that, I like to label those sections with letters, you know, like rehearsal letters, almost. A, B, C, D, E, F, whatever. I like to label them that way because that gives me a big handle on what's there. Now, if you don't see the sections in your piece, one good way to get around that is to hear the sections in your piece. Listen to a recording, see if you hear something coming back, what do you listen? It's a great way to use our ears, right? It's a good way to do that. So think about, you know, listening to the piece or play it through and see what you can experience. What do you hear? What do you see? Sometimes, just looking at a piece of music, those notes can sometimes just look like random dots on the page. And when we play it, our fingers and our ears and our eyes start to recognize patterns that we weren't able to see before then. So you can look at the piece, you can listen to the piece, you can play through the piece, but you want to find those big sections. And that's the first thing that I like to do when I'm working on a piece. Because now I know what it's like. Now I know what I'm going to be working with. And I've experienced the whole thing beginning to end. I may not have played through the whole thing, although that's what I like to do. I like to start playing through the entire piece and seeing what it's all about. But the thing is that if. Whether you've just looked at the piece beginning to end or you've actually played through it beginning to end, you have a perspective that is much more based in reality and seems much more achievable than if you just start plowing into the piece. Okay, let me work on the first four measures. Okay, now let me add the next four measures. Well, you don't have a context for that. You know, those measures don't necessarily mean anything by themselves. And you're going to know those first four measures and the next four measures pretty well. But those measures that come at the end of the piece may be a total surprise to you. So the big sections, looking at the form and, you know, getting a basic idea of it before you start diving into the piece can really give you the perspective you need to make sense of what you're learning.

I do this at the very beginning now, you know, make those marks in pencil because you're allowed to change your mind if you decide that the form of the piece is something different than you thought, that's great. And you can get as detailed or non detailed with this as you want. There's no one right or wrong way to label this. You need to label it in a way that makes sense to you, because this is for you to help you understand the piece. So it's got to make sense to you. All right, so we're. So we started with big sections and form. That's where those come in. But as you probably know, those aren't the sections that are going to really guide your day to day practice. Those are going to. Your day to day practice is going to be guided by the little sections and little sections.

It could be anything from two measures to four measures. Certainly not longer than eight measures. Of course, this all depends on the difficulty of a certain set of measures or how many beats are in a measure. Right. Eight measures of four. Four is going to have a lot more notes in them than eight measures in two, four time. Right. So, you know, you can use your judgment there as well. But the little sections are really there for your practice. This is to help you learn how to play the piece. When you learn. When you're learning a piece and practicing it and, you know, learning those notes for the first time, you really need to focus on the details. And so your small chunks allow you to get that laser focus right. Think about a laser, right? It's intense, it's concentrated. That's what the laser is, concentrated light. And so that's what we're bringing to this. We're bringing our focus and our concentration to a small chunk. It should almost always be more than one measure because we're trying to get a sense of context here too. You might have a trouble spot that comes down to one measure or something even smaller. But let's not label that as a section, at least not yet. Make your sections. Oh, maybe four bars is a place to start. And you can always divide them. And I label these sections by numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever. And I just number them. So my A section might have sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. My B section, my big section, right, might have sections 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. So I have two consecutive labeling systems. I use the labels of the letters for the big sections. And you probably, you know, you might have four or five, maybe six or seven, eight of those. In. In most pieces, longer pieces will have more obviously. And then you have numbered sections if you think your piece is long enough that you might run out of numbers or you don't want to start writing section 57, then you can renumber your sections, starting with every new letter, right? So that your A section could have a 1, a 2, a 3, a 4, a 5, and then b 1, b 2, b 3, b 4, b 5. And that's fine. That works, too. Remember, this is your label, right? But labeling those little sections and not just thinking about them, but actually labeling them will give you a way to organize and systematize your practice so that you're getting to everything and that you have a way to track where you are in the piece. And we're going to come back to a couple other uses for sections. But that's the basic principle behind labeling them big sections to identify the articulation points in the form or the structure of the piece. And those little numbers to give you small practice sections that are workable chunks. They don't have to be equal in length, right? Those little practice sections, you know, this one might be four bars, this one might be two bars, Then you might go back to four bars. So that's fine. These are just your practice sections that will allow you to laser focus. Now it's time to share my golden rule of practice with you. This may go against the grain a little bit, but hopefully it will open your eyes to a lot of possibility. Here. Here's my golden rule of practice. Don't practice anything. You don't practice, have to. I'm going to say it again. Don't practice anything. You don't have to think about this for a minute. What I'm talking about is that there are some parts in your piece that are not going to be difficult for you to play, and you can pretty much play them. And if you look at those little sections that you've just identified, you can. If it's. If you've marked them in a piece that you've already worked on some, you can probably pick out any number of sections where it's like, oh, everything in there is fine. Everything in there is fine. I don't have a problem in there. I can play that. I can play that. I can play that, right? There are lots of places in your piece that are going to be okay. They might still be slow, but you don't actually have to practice them. And compare that to the other sections that do have tricky fingering or tricky notes or tricky rhythms that you actually do have to practice. So if you aren't supposed to practice anything, you don't have to practice. How does that work here? Well, let me explain. On the very first playthrough of a piece, I told you what I like to do, right? What? I like to play through a piece to see what the. What the form of the piece is like. And that's how I put in my. How I label my big sections, okay? So on that very first playthrough of a piece, I'm experiencing the stuff that is. Is tricky, right? All of it is new to me, but some of it is like, okay, yeah, I get that. That's not bad. That's. Oh, but look at that part. That's going to be really hard. So I've already gotten an idea of where the hardest parts are and where the parts that aren't so difficult are. So then I label my big sections.

Then as I start to practice the piece, take a big section anyone will do, you know, start at the beginning. Why not, right? Take that, section A and play it all the way through. Now, granted, this is new, so it's going to be full of fumbles, and it's not going to be great. But in that section A, I can. I'll be looking at all my little numbered sections that I've got. And I can see that, oh, you know what? As I play through that A section, section one and two aren't going to be a problem. Section three is tricky. Section four, five are okay. And section six is tricky again.

So I don't need to practice sections 1 and 2 and 4 and 5 as much as I'm going to need to practice sections three and six. So I play through the big section because likely that's almost all the work I'm going to need to do at this moment. On those easier sections, I might review sections 1 and 2 and 4 and 5 and just, you know, get them gone. But sections 3 and 6, I'm going to want to put some concentrated focus on so that I can really drill them. So the mistake that I see some people making is that they'll say, okay, I've got my little sections. I'm Going to do each little section 10 times. I think that's not the best use of your time. If a section doesn't need it, don't do it. Once or twice is fine. If you can play through something, let's just do that, you know. And if you can play through sections one and two and they go pretty well, don't play them separately, play them together. You don't need to break apart anything that doesn't need it either. Those small sections, you can combine them at any time. But those small sections, also three and six, oh, gosh, they need work. Well, let's use the time that we saved on those other four sections to really focus on sections three and six. Do that hand separately work, do that fingering work, the extra slow work, whatever it's going to take. Work on those sections. Then go back to the big section, all of section A in this example, and play through it all beginning to end. Granted, sections 3 and 6 are still going to be rough, but you're going to be keeping that bigger picture perspective, which is incredibly valuable. The moment that you lose that big picture perspective, your piece starts to slip into note land instead of music land. You know what I mean by that, right? The notes become more important than the music. The notes are only part of the music. The music happens with the notes and the rhythm and the expression and everything else. The music is bigger than just the notes. We don't want to just have it slip into noteland. So even when you're working on those little sections, don't forget to play through the big sections. They may be rough, but that's okay. You'll still be working on that big picture of the piece. So you never want to abandon the big sections for the little sections. But you may need to start combining the little sections. Especially if there are a bunch of tough ones right in a row, you may need to combine those together. So if you. Sections seven and eight are both really tricky. Practice section seven, practice section eight, then practice sections seven and eight together. And then play through that whole B section, if that's where you are. Right? But you're always working at putting it together. Remember, I said that in the title to this episode. I called it divide and conquer. And that's what we're doing. We're dividing and conquering. But in the process of dividing, we solve the complex problems, we solve the details. But in order to get back to the music, we have to put it back together. Because it's how all those things work together that make the piece work. So we've got the entire piece. We've got the big sections of the form, We've got the little teeny practice sections. So here's how I like to do it. I know I promised you a system, and this is the system that I like. I like starting with that big overview, playing the piece all the way through, labeling those sections, seeing what I don't have to practice, and identifying what I do.

Now, remember that the stuff I don't have to practice, I'm still going to play through it. I'm not going to just ignore it and save it for later. I'll play through it, but I won't spend the same kind of practice time on it that I will on anything else. Then right after the overview, I start working in the big sections, playing through the big sections and seeing how much of it I don't have to practice.

Even if I have to practice everything in that big section because it's really, really tough, I'm going to play through it because the more I think about that section as a whole, the less intimidating it is and the more I stay connected with the music. So I'll play through the big section. Yeah, it's going to be roug.

And I'll dive right into those little sections and do that detail work. But always coming back to the big section, taking those little sections that I've worked on in the course of a practice session, taking those little sections and combining them back into the big section again. Never leaving it with just the detail in the notes, but giving it its context back. So that's how we're going to do it. Divide it to conquer it, and then put it back together. This is the essence of the system that I teach in the 30 days to done course. And the, you know, it may take you more than 30 days to finish a piece to get that piece to done, but the idea is that it doesn't have to take so long if you continually come back to that big picture. So this is the essence of that system. Start with the overview, label those sections, use the big sections to keep your connection with context, use the little sections to get the details right, and only practice what you need to practice. Okay, now, there are other ways that these sections can be really helpful. For instance, they can be really helpful if you're learning a piece to perform it, whether you're going to be using it, using music for your performance, or playing it from memory. Take those numbered sections and write out all the numbers on index cards, put them in a hat, pull out that section, and Start there and play from there. So. And you can even pull out more than one at a time, too, right? But you can take that section out and suppose that section says section 15. Okay, start at section 15 in your piece and play to the end.

So that you get used to the idea of starting anywhere. How is this helpful? Well, if you're memorizing your piece, it's really helpful because you know instantly where that is. And you'll never be without a landmark, without a point where you can regroup and restart if your concentration slips in a piece. But if you're playing from music, it's also helpful because you'll learn to look at any of those section spots in your music and be able to start from there so that. Similarly, if your attention wanders and you lose your place in the music, grab onto a section and start there. If you've ever had the experience in a lesson where your teacher points to a spot on the page and says, okay, can you just start there? And it's like, whoa, I can't start there. That's really hard. Well, that's a danger signal in a performance, right? If you get lost and you're looking at the music, trying to find your spot, and the notes don't even look familiar to you, it's going to be really hard to continue from where you are or to just pick a measure and start there and go. But the worst thing is to say, oh, I have to go back to the beginning. I have to start over. That we don't want to do. So being able to start anywhere, to start at the beginning of any of those sections in your piece is incredibly confidence building. Right? You're going to know that no matter what happens, you know how to start, you know where to start. You can find a place even if you can't find your place. So those sections will give you an incredible amount of security when it comes to actually playing your music. And if you're memorizing your music, and this is what I do, put those index cards in the. You know, in the bowl next to your. Next to your music stand. And then without the music on my music stand, I'll pull out three index cards at random and it might say, Section 4, 9, and 2. And that's what I do without the music, I'll play section four, I'll play section nine, I'll play section two. Because when I have a piece really memorized, I know it so well that I know my sections by number. I know where I can start. I can start anywhere. And that is where all that security and that confidence comes from. You may. You're still going to feel nervous when you're playing, and that's fine. But this gives you a lot of confidence about how to play. So that's one of the big benefits of being this systematic about labeling your piece in sections. Once again, the big system. Keep looking at the big picture. Those small sections allow you to practice the details, but always connect them to the big sections. And of course, when you're ready, you need to connect those big sections to the entire piece. And remember, nobody's telling you you can't play through the piece beginning to end, even if it's still really, really rough. That's okay, that's all right. Nobody's gonna hear the really roughness. But it is such an incredible feeling to think, wow, this piece is eight pages long and it took me 20 minutes to play it, but I played through the whole thing beginning to end. You know, that's the same kind of feeling as running a marathon. Even if the piece is still.

Very raw and full of mistakes and errors and stopping and starting and not up to tempo and all that stuff.

Just being able to get through it is an incredible accomplishment and one that feels really, really good. And section work is key to getting yourself there. I'm going to remind you once more. Don't get caught up in if you've labeled your sections right or not. There are only a couple of guidelines that you need to follow. One is that your big sections are going to be those big, I call them articulation points, but you'll know what I mean. When it feels like one kind of thing is ending and another kind of thing is starting. That's where your big sections are. And know that the more accustomed you get to labeling them, the more you will understand how any piece of music works and you'll get better at it. It. So don't worry about whether it's right or wrong. Just sort of listen for those points where it's like, okay, the next chapter's starting now, and label it that way. Okay? So that's the way to do that. And the little sections, there are no rules for the little sections. You label those in ways that seem convenient for you to practice. That's what those little sections are there for. They're there to create your laser focus sections. And so if some of them are two measures, some are three, some are, are five, some are seven, that's great. Um, in general, you want them to be short because you have big sections, right? The little Sections are going to be helpful for allowing you to focus on what you actually need to focus on. And going along with that. There's my golden rule of practice. Don't practice anything you don't have to. I hope that gives you a lot of permission to ease up on some of your I must do this kind of 10 times sort of practice practicing, right? You don't have to. Don't practice anything you don't have to practice. What do you think all these hours of practice are for? They're to help you get better. You've put in weeks, years, months of practice already on other pieces, right? And that's given you a level of experience that you can use to help you at this stage, wherever that stage is for you right now. So use the work you've already put in, use the expertise you have, and allow that to work for you, to let you spend your practice time on what really needs it instead of what doesn't.

All right, now quick thought here, too. Just because practicing in sections is good, you've seen ways that it may not work for you, right? Little sections don't always work. We need to put it back in big sections. There's a right time for every kind of practice, and that's what my webinar next week is all about. What you should be doing in your practice and when you should be doing it. So if you're beginning to suspect that your practice is taking you around in circles instead of propelling you forward, this webinar can change that for you. Remember, it's the webinar with the crazy title, right? Three good practice habits that are keeping you from playing the way you want and how to break them. All right, we're not breaking your good habits, but we are showing you when other habits are going to work better for you. So I promise that this webinar can help move your practice forward. So it really takes you where you want to go, gets you to playing the music you want to play the way you want to play it. I guarantee that it will help you with that. So. So be sure as you come to the webinar that you come prepared with questions, too, because I want to make sure that this is helpful for you. Um, so once again, the link to register for that webinar in the Show Notes today or over under the events tab@heartmastery.com it's free. There will be a replay. So I. I would love for you to join us live, partly because that's how I can answer your questions. But if you can't join us live. That's okay. Go ahead and register. We will send you the replay so that you have that available for you. Um, I really urge you to be there. It's going to be a lot of fun as well as being informative and helpful, of course. So next week on the show, it's a masterclass episode all about tuning. We're going to talk about the right ways to tune your harp, several different methods for tuning, and how tuning your harp can really help you learn to listen. A fabulous concept, right? It will turn your tuning from drudgery into an interesting part of your musicianship training. So that's next week on the podcast. In the meantime, 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. See you next time. 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.