Do You Fall Into the Practice Gap?

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 today's show. On today's show we're going to be talking about the practice gap and more specifically, how to avoid or bridge or cross or just plain old get rid of the practice gap. What is the practice gap, you ask? Good question. You may have been there occasionally. I certainly have. It's that place you get to where your practice takes. Doesn't seem to be making the difference. You're working on a piece of music and you practice and practice, but somehow it just won't finish. You can't get it to that place where you're comfortable with it. The same stuff keeps happening and it's just not working. It's a really frustrating place to be and it can be devastating. If you can't figure out how to bridge that practice gap, you start wondering things, don't you? You wonder if maybe you just picked a piece that's too hard or if maybe you're not practicing enough. And if the situation goes on, you may be wondering if it's just you. So I'm here to tell you that there are a lot of ways that we can bridge the practice gap and it's likely not you. This is a fixable thing and we're going to talk about how to fix that. We're going to talk about specifically how you can get where you want to get to from where you are right now. I have a story that I'll share with you real quickly about that. It's one of those family stories that has just become iconic. My mother in law was not generally a very adventurous person. Now she did some very adventurous things in her life. She was German and she came over to this country and in her 20s, all on her Own, which is clearly adventurous. But in most things in everyday life, she was not an adventurous soul. And when it came to driving, she had a limited repertoire of destinations. So, you know, she knew the stores she liked to get to and she knew how to get to those stores and church and all the other things. And, and she had one way she was going to get there and she did not deviate. Well, one night we were driving with them. There were the four of us, my husband and me and my in laws and my husband was driving and we were going to one of her known destinations but my husband turned off the road that she would have taken and she started to almost panic from the back seat and she said, well, you can't get there from here. And. And in fact, she was so convinced that my husband was just leading her into the wilderness that it flustered him to the point where he actually made a wrong turn and almost proved her correct. But we did get there. The point is that there are other routes and if you're stuck at the practice gap, not being able to make that bridge across across to the finish point, then there's another route you need to explore. And we're going to be talking about three possible ways to bridge that practice gap today. And I'm sure that at least one of them is going to make the difference for you. Before we get into that, I do want to say that if you're interested in having help bridging the practice gap at this point, as of the date this show airs, we still have room for some students in our certified coaching program and you can work with one of our certified coaches who are experts at not only getting you across the practice gap, but avoiding it for you in the first place. And if you're interested in having somebody show you how to do this, I would suggest that you hop over to our coaching page and register there today. It will only be open for a few more days, but if you're listening to this when it goes live, do take advantage of that. You'll find that it's a real time saver and you'll. You're going to love working with our coaches. So let's get on with talking about the practice gap. Let me tell you about the poster child for the practice gap. Do you remember your Greek mythology? Maybe if you do you remember the legend of Sisyphus? Now, Sisyphus was a king and not a particularly honest one. He was pretty sneaky and without going into too much detail, he managed on two different occasions to trick those in charge of the underworld and thereby cheat death. So there were two different occasions on which he figured out how he could get out of the underworld and go back to the land of the living. Now, this so angered the God Zeus that when Sisyphus was finally imprisoned in the underworld forever, his punishment was to eternally roll a huge boulder up a mountain. And just when he was about to get to the top, the boulder would roll back to the bottom and he would have to roll it up the hill again. Now, doesn't this sound like somebody in a practice gap? They're continually practicing rolling that boulder up the hill, but they're not able to get to the top. And just when it looks like the piece is improving and is going to finish itself, boom, they're back. Well, maybe not quite at the bottom, but they're certainly not done their labors. They're still trying to get that piece to the finish line. That's the practice gap we're trying to close. And we're going to be talking about the three most common causes of the practice gap. The first of those being the problem with the finish line itself. What does a finish line look like in music? It's really hard to tell, isn't it? And that's partly because of the fact that when we play music, we play it new every time. So the practice gap will really start in the way we think about the finish line.

First of all, let's realize that practice does not lead you to the finish line itself. Practice happens at every point along the development of a piece and after you have begun to perform it. Right. Practice is not just endless correction before you play the piece. It's actually continuing refinement as you play the piece. So the piece doesn't just get to done state. You know, the timer goes off, right? It's not just done and then it's done forever. It's always going to be in process. And because of that, you need to understand that you set where the finish line is. And there are some very specific considerations to take in mind as you set that finish line. You need to be realistic about a few particular things. First of all, be realistic about your expectations for your performance level. They need to suit your playing level. If you are a beginner, you will play that piece a certain way as best you can, no doubt, but you will play it several years from now quite differently. So be sure your expectations suit your current playing level. Be sure your expectations suit your experience level as well. This isn't just in terms of the way that you play, but in terms of your experience with the venue, the opportunity that you have to play the piece. If you've never played a solo in church before, for instance, the first time you play is going to be a new experience. You're going to learn some things, discover some things that there was just no way for you to particularly anticipate. So be sure that your expectations for that performance, that first time you play your solo in church, allow for that inexperience. Allow for the fact that this is a first time for you and that there are going to be things that you aren't prepared for, no matter how well you try to prepare. Right? So you, your experience level is something else to take, to take into consideration. And so are your audience's expectations.

Right. If you're playing for a couple of family members, their expectations might be very different than if you were playing a formal recital in a recital hall.

So think about what your audience is expecting. Are they expecting note perfection? Because then you don't have to expect that of yourself either. Is your audience expecting just a nicely flowing piece that they recognize? Then that's the expectation you need to meet. So don't go overboard trying to make a piece perfect if perfect is not what's required at this point. Keep your expectations line. That will help you set your finish line appropriately. So now if you know where you need to go, you still might find that that's not enough to get you across the practice gap.

Most people find that the best motivation to get them to the finish line is a deadline. The accountability that a deadline enforces is extremely powerful. Yes, we can work without a deadline, but that relies on our inner drive, our inner motivation. And I don't care how motivated you are, you need fuel to keep that motivation going. And there's nothing that fuels that need to practice or need to get a piece done like having a deadline. There are different kinds of deadlines. Obviously a performance that's on the calendar is a very real deadline. But if you're not the type of harpist that likes to perform or does perform for anybody else, then you're going to need to set your deadline a little differently. I do think that the best way to have a deadline that has some power to it is to set your deadline with someone else. So whether it's setting a deadline with your teacher and you say, okay, on this date I will play the piece for you, my teacher, and after that we, you know, put the check mark on the piece and, and we can put it on the review pile and begin to review it and refine it. But that's our finish line. You could set a similar finish line with a friend and play for a friend, or you could just do an archival recording for yourself. You don't even have to watch or listen to it. Just say, this is the day I'm going to record my piece and I'm going to save it and I'll come back to that recording maybe a couple years down the road when I'm playing the piece a little bit differently and see how much I've improved. But give yourself that sort of gold star day, that day when you know that, okay, my piece needs to be across that finish line. It needs to be done by that day. Approach the day, finish it. You'll find your practice goes a little bit differently when the clock is ticking. So I would say that the shortest bridge, not always the easiest, but the shortest bridge across the practice gap might just be to have a deadline. But that might not be the thing that's keeping you on the wrong side of the practice gap. Another common cause of people getting stuck on the wrong side of that gap is a lack of practice strategies or tools. We all know it's best to use the right tool for the right job. And that's just as important in practice as it is with any kind of construction job, plumbing job. I mean, you wouldn't want your plumber to be putting a hole through your pipe with a drill when he really should be putting the pipes together with a wrench, right? The same thing applies to your practice. There are different tools to use for different things. They're just not always as clear cut. So you, if you're suspecting that one of the reasons your practice isn't making any progress is because the same things aren't getting fixed between one practice session and the next number of practice sessions, then it might be time to look at the tools you're using. And here is the way I would suggest you go about that. First, identify the biggest obstacle that you have right now in playing the piece. Is it the three measures in the middle of the third line? Is it the fact that you can't get it hands together? Is it the fact that there's this one passage that won't speed up? What is the biggest obstacle that you have? Be as specific as you can and write it down.

Then underneath that, I want you to think of three practice techniques that you could use that might help you solve that problem. Three things that you haven't tried that you think could work. Do not write more than three. Certainly do not write Fewer than three. You just need three.

The magic about the number three is that if you have three techniques to try, you know that there's always something else. And you can work on all three of them to at the same time if you want, and rotate between them. But you don't just have one last ditch effort. You've got three things to try.

Coming up with more than three things can actually sort of confuse and dilute the efforts that you're going to make in your practice. So I think that three is just the perfect number for this. Let me show you how this might work. Once again, you're going to come up with your biggest obstacle, three practice things that you could try, and then you're going to obviously go and practice those, right? So here's an example. Suppose that there's a passage in your piece where you're having trouble with lever or pedal changes. All right? Your first step was to identify that, and you say, all right, it's the fourth line of the piece where all those lever and pedal changes are. It throws me every time, and that's the biggest thing for me to fix, or at least for me to fix first. All right, good, we've got the obstacle. Now let's think of three fixes, things that we haven't tried yet that we could try. And here are three possibilities. First thing you could take, you could put the metronome on and count while the metronome's going. Do this maybe at the tempo that you want your piece to go and count, and then just push your levers or petals in time while you're counting and while the metronome's on so that you get the sense of exactly what, where it falls, and you're being very precise and correct with your pushing of levers or petals. All right, so there's technique one, you're going to just do the levers and petals with a metronome on while you're counting. Okay, Technique two, what if we do some slow practice? We're going to use the metronome again and just work hands separately and then name the the lever or pedal as you prepare to push it every time, not after you've pushed it, but just before. Maybe when you reach your hand up to the lever or move your foot over to the pedal, but you're going to name it as you push it or just before. So we're going to put the metronome on, do slow practice, hands separately, naming the lever or pedal as we push it. Okay, Technique two, Technique three.

Going to work Backwards on this line, measure by measure. Now, what's interesting about this is that every measure on our theoretical line of music is going to require different levers and pedals to be set at the beginning of that measure. So that as we practice going backwards through this line, measure by measure, we're going to get lots of practice at setting and resetting those levers and pedals. So we're going to learn them in a completely different way than we've learned them before, much more thoroughly. We're going to get a lot of extra practice in. This is going to be really powerful. So now you've got three wonderful practice techniques to try, and you can start working at that right away. So coming up with different practice strategies, practice techniques, and then employing them very specifically is a great way to. To get you across the practice gap. Now, if you're feeling like you don't have a repertoire of practice strategies and techniques, I would urge you to go ahead and check out the Harpist Playbook. That's one of the places that I write a lot of practice techniques down. Or just explore some of the free writings that I have and resources on our website. Listen to instructional videos by other harpists. There are always things to learn, but collect those practice techniques and make sure that you have a toolbox filled with them so that when you need them, you can pull them out. Okay? That's a very powerful way to make sure that your practice is getting you results so you can get across that practice gap. The third, third thing it's a little bit more tricky to handle is the question of time. When a student comes to me and tells me that they are experiencing the practice gap, that they just can't finish their pieces. Certainly we talk about motivation and deadlines and practice techniques and strategies, but one of the questions I always ask them about is their practice time.

The first thing to look at is are they doing consistent practice if practice isn't consistent? If you're not practicing five days a week, for instance, or four days a week, but if you have a piece that you're really trying to finish, five days a week is a pretty good. Pretty good plan. If you're not practicing regularly, then it's much more difficult to actually make the progress that you want to make. You need to be consistent. So looking at a consistent practice schedule is the first thing we'd look at. But there are a couple other things as well. Sometimes students give themselves too long a time frame. You remember Parkinson's Law, right? That's that work expands to fill the time allotted to it. So here again is a deadline thing. If you don't have a deadline, oh, I'll just finish it when it's ready. It's going to take you every bit of that time and more.

Because you haven't put a limit on the time. And so it's going to take all that time to do it. So this comes back to a deadline. Too long a time frame is not a good plan, but neither is too short a time frame. If your expectations are not realistic, you might be trying to do too much at once, right? Even if the piece is appropriate for your level and all that sort of thing, if you say, well, gosh, here's this nice long piece and I'm going to finish it in two months, but maybe it's a long piece and maybe two months really isn't enough time for you to do it, you're trying to bite off too much at once. And if you're trying to do too much at once, then it doesn't allow you to do this deep learning that you need to do to really have the piece sort of become part of you, to become thoroughly familiar with it and comfortable, have it be secure and be able to play it confidently. So too short a time frame doesn't work either. So how do you assess exactly what's right? Well, once again, this is where a third party, like a teacher or a coach, could be extremely helpful. But if. If you're trying to figure this out on your own, here's a method that you can try. I call it the hundred times experiment. Now, you can take this with any piece that you've been working on and any piece that you want to finish, particularly one that you think is close to the finish line. It's close, but it hasn't made it across that practice gap yet. So give this a try every day. First of all, you're doing consistent practice, right? So you're five days a week and a reasonable amount of time. I can't tell you what reasonable is. You have to judge that one for yourself. But what I'd like you to do is in your practice time, practice your piece as needed. Whatever parts need to be practiced, whatever problems you're still trying to iron out, then practice it that way. In addition to the practice that you do on a piece, play that piece all the way through five times each day for five days a week for four weeks. Now, if you're doing your multiplication properly, that's five times a day for five days. That's 25 times each week for four weeks is playing that piece 100 times. Now, that's playing the piece all the way through without stopping, a hundred times over the course of a month, in addition to the practice that you're doing on it.

This should close the practice gap for you. It will. I'll tell you. It will either close the practice gap, or it's going to show you very clearly what isn't being addressed in your practice. What might be a hidden obstacle, something that you haven't considered as really a problem for yourself, but is showing up in this process. It's going to show you what you really still need to actually work on. And you need to create a new practice strategy for that, or three new practice strategies, if you like. Right.

So this is the hundred times experiment. You're going to practice your piece daily. Practice whatever you need to practice on it, whether it's review something, hand separately or, you know, just whatever it needs to be in addition to your practice. Play the piece through, beginning to end, without stopping, five times a day, each of five days during the week for four weeks. There's your hundred times. See what happens there? It will either push your piece across the finish line, or it will show you exactly what you need to do to work on it. It's a fascinating experiment, and I think that if this gets you the results that you wanted, if this gets you across the finish line, there are going to be some serious takeaways for you that you're going to be able to apply to any piece that you're working on, and you can get across that finish line sooner, maybe avoid the practice gap entirely. All right, let's do a quick recap. So for a quick recap, we talked about the motivation that comes from having realistic expectations and setting a clear deadline with an actual marker, like a performance date or an archival recording date, something that marks that occasion for yourself so you know where the finish line is. We talked about using different practice tools and strategies to mix up your practice to be sure that you achieve results for the biggest obstacles that are standing between you and finishing the piece. And then we just talked about time, about making sure you have consistent practice time, setting the right kind of time frame. And of course, the hundred times experiment. Playing your piece through five days a week. Five times a day for five days a week, for four weeks. See if that does it. And it likely might. But remember that it's important not to get stuck in the practice gap. I mentioned in the introduction before we started talking about how one of the most frustrating aspects of the practice gap is that it starts leading you to question if the problem is you, if maybe you're not cut out to play the harp, if you're just not going to be able to do it. We want to solve this problem before you get to that point. But I will tell you right up front, it's almost certainly not you. Most people who start the harp and persist with it for any length of time have the ability, the talent, the dedication to be able to play the harp the way they want. But sometimes what they don't have is the knowledge about how to do that and the knowledge about how to do that on their own. That's where a teacher comes in, that's where a coach comes in. And that's why I'm so proud of the work that our certified coaches do. They work with students to help them avoid the practice gap entirely by setting out clear goals, deadlines, markers for achievement, benchmarks all along the way. They know the practice tools and strategies that are going to solve problems while they're still little problems before they become huge problems. They know how to make sure that your practice time yields the results that you want. And they're the best cheerleaders that I have ever seen. So dedicated to working with their students and to helping their students achieve what they want to achieve. As I said before, our coaching program is still open for this session when this episode goes live. But you only have a few more days to hop in and register. And of course when our coaches rosters are filled, we will close the door. So if you're interested in that, you will find the link to the Show Notes. You can just go to the heartmastery.com page, click on the link that says go deeper and you'll find the link to register for coaching there. I think you will find, if you haven't tried coaching before, that this is incredibly powerful and that you will make incredible progress in a short period of time. But either way, whether you're doing this with a coach or doing it on your own, do what you need to work with these techniques. Don't get stuck at the practice gap. Okay? Now next week on the show we start our month long series on goals. We'll be talking about setting goals, achieving goals and how to make a practice plan that allows you to to achieve. We'll talk about different styles of practice plans, different levels of goals. All that is happening through the month of September here on the podcast. I will also be having a special guest during the month talking about her ideas about achieving goals. And you're really going to love that. Next week, I will be talking to you about the four levels of goals. We'll talk about how goals divide themselves into into sections so that you can apportion your work, but we'll also be talking about the different types of goals and what is an appropriate goal to set, what might be not a big enough goal, and what might be too big a goal. So we'll be talking about that on the podcast next week, and I look forward to seeing you then. As always, have a wonderful week and I will talk to you next week. 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.