Do You Hear What I Hear? Listening with Your Ears Open - PHH 210

Think about your own playing for a moment. No matter what level you are at your playing, whether you're a student or a teacher, a professional, whatever, think about your own playing and think about what you like about your playing. What do you do? Well, if I asked you to come up with three things, could you do it? I admit it's pretty difficult. We run up against all kinds of hard feelings, don't we? Well, I don't want to brag about myself. Well, don't worry about that. I need you to be objective. Not just about the things that you want to fix in your playing, but I would like you to be objective about the things that you do well in addition to those things you want to fix.

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. Let me tell you a story. Four friends went to an orchestra concert. Afterward, they went out for dessert and they compared notes on the concert, talking about what they heard. And here is what they said. One person heard the person in the row behind crackling a cough drop wrapper. One person, who happened to be a flutist, heard that the clarinet wasn't in tune with the flute. One person, a harpist, of course, heard that the orchestra drowned out the harp solo. Typical, right? And one person heard that the piano soloist was humming to himself while he played. Oddly enough, when the review of the concert appeared in the newspaper the next day, it seemed the critic had gone to a completely different concert. The critic described the pianist as being an impassioned player with a fiery technique and the orchestra as present, presenting a colorful, well balanced and nuanced interpretation. There was no mention of out of tune clarinets or inaudible harps or even noisy cough drop wrappers. Okay. Yes, this is a fictional scenario, although I've been part of very similar discussions. I wanted to relate this to you today, though, to highlight the way we channel our listening. We pay attention to the things that distract us, like noises or mistakes. Now, that's not in itself a bad thing. It's part of being observant. Often, however, our listening stops there. Think about how you listen to yourself. You pick out the flaws, the things that you wanted to do better. How often do you take time to identify what you've done well? Would you even be able to identify what you're doing well? Well, today we're going to talk about listening for growth, not for comparison or fault finding. I'll help you discover how to listen with open ears and an open mind so that the next time you listen to that amazing harpist play the piece you're struggling to learn, you can find the precise elements in that performance that will help you make your own playing sound the way you want it to. And we'll talk about how to listen to yourself so you don't end up down in the depths of despair. It's all about what you listen for. Before we get started, I want to give you a quick Reminder that summer is coming up and it's a great time to work with a Harp Mastery certified coach. The beautiful thing about the program, the way we reimagined it this year, is that you have come control over when you have your lessons, how you spread them out, how many you take, and you could actually make your own summer coaching course just working with a certified coach. So if you have some time this summer and you think this is the summer I really want to get this done in my harp playing, our certified coaches are ready to work with you and you can head over to our coaching page. You'll find it under the Our Programs tab at Harp Mastery. You'll find a link on the Harp Mastery app as well or right here in the Show Notes. So do take advantage of that and do it before all the spots fill up because there are people taking advantage of our certified coaches time this summer and I want to be sure that you don't miss out if that's something that you want to do as well. So go ahead and get signed up for that. I also have an exciting new program that is geared to toward harp teachers. If you are a harp teacher. We are going to be having a fall break retreat just for harp teachers coming up at the beginning of October after all your students get a fall break. So why shouldn't you? This is going to be a chance to get together with 10 or so other harp teachers and talk about the things that are important to us as teachers. A little bit of pedagogy, a little bit of specifics, just working with students and just a lot of brainstorming. Sort of like a mastermind for teachers. And we're going to be doing this in Florida in October. You work hard to teach your students and I think you deserve a break. And I would like to give you a break that not only is fun but is also useful for you too. So if you think you'd be interested in coming to our fall break retreat, send me an email, let me know. There's no commitment to anything at this point. We haven't released the details, so it's not like I'm asking to sign up for anything. I just want to know if this sounds interesting to you and why. What would you like to do at a fall break teachers retreat? So send me an email. You'll find my email address in the show notes, but it's ann a n e harpmastery.com and I would love to hear from you in my own teaching. One of the questions that's inevitable. A student Will finish playing something for me and they'll often ask, well, so how was it? I have to say that my gold circle students that I teach have learned not to ask me that question. They have, they have more subtle ways of doing it because they know that if they were to ask that question, well, how was it? What did I think of it? I'm going to come right back at them with a question because I want to know what they thought of it. It's hard to listen to ourselves, and we all need that outside opinion to help us get a different perspective on what we're doing. We get so bound up in our mistakes, but this is what makes it hard to really listen. We need to learn how to separate our doing from our listening, not only in our own practice, but when we're listening to our recording of ourselves or when we're listening to a recording of somebody else or a live performance by somebody else. How can we turn off that mistake meter, right? That, that little scorecard that's like, oops, that was wrong. Oops, that was wrong. Oops, that was wrong. And so one of the things I like to try to give my students is a way to look at their own performance, to listen to their own performance and to judge it without having to just count up what they've done wrong.

I want them to listen with open ears, ears that are open to everything, not just open to mistakes. Think about your own playing for a moment. No matter what level you are at your playing, whether you're a student or a teacher, a professional, whatever, think about your own playing and think about what you like about your playing. What do you do? Well, if I asked you to come up with three things, could you do it? I admit it's pretty difficult. We run up against all kinds of hard feelings, don't we? Well, I don't want to brag about myself. Well, don't worry about that. I need you to be objective. Not just about the things that you want to fix in your playing, but I would like you to be objective about the things that you do well, in addition to those things you want to fix and to listen with those kinds of open ears. Oh, I really did that well, requires an open mind. The kind of mind that is not just fixated on those things that didn't go right or that you want to do better, but on those things that were just part of your performance that you can acknowledge without necessarily saying, good, bad, good, bad. We want to listen a little bit more objectively, a little bit more non judgmentally because before you can really make any changes in your playing, you have to be able to assess your playing realistically. And I think the place to start is with why you are listening. What's your objective when you played that particular piece or passage? What was your objective in playing it? That objective is going to give you an easier way to talk about what went well and what didn't. It's going to make it easier to be objective about your own performance right there. So let's think about why you might might want to listen to yourself. You're going to play something, you're going to make a recording of it, because you want to find out how you sound, right? So I think that's legitimate. You want to find out how your piece sounds, how it's going well. What might you have as an intention when you listen back to it? What kind of categories might you use? Imagine for a second that your a judge at a competition. Now, I'm just going to use the word competition only because it's an easy frame of reference. But we're not being that kind of judgment judges here. We're not really trying to say good or bad, but we want to think about categories. Most judges at competitions have a rubric where there are certain categories of things that they are going to evaluate and comment on. For instance, one of them might be expression. So perhaps one of the things you want to listen for as you're listening to your piece, maybe that's expression. What did you do? Well, what could you have done better? Ah, that crescendo was great. That retard was a little bit abrupt. That diminuendo. I didn't even hear that. And that change of dynamics I didn't really hear. But you know what? I made a beautiful phrase there. Expression is a big category, right? It's got dynamics and phrasing and all that sort of stuff. So if you want to evaluate that, you can spend quite a bit of time, do quite a bit of detail, as much detail as you wanted to put into the piece. You can look at all of those things. What I recommend is that if you're playing through your piece with the idea that you want to include all that expression, because you're going to see how it comes across on the recording, then let's do it just for that. So don't worry about the note mistakes because that's going to distract you from your expression. Don't worry about those other things. Approach your playing with that single intention. Then approach your listening with that intention as well. So that's one thing, you might want to evaluate your expression. Maybe you want to listen to hear how many mistakes you actually made. Now, approach this carefully because, of course, I just told you that listening to mistakes was sort of negative. Well, sometimes you can focus on listening for mistakes you didn't notice. When we're playing along, lots of times we know when we've done something wrong. Argh. That was a wrong chord, a wrong note. That was a missed pedal. But sometimes there are things we don't notice. Like, oh, hey, I added a beat there. I didn't realize I stopped there.

I played the wrong rhythm, or oh, I didn't realize that I flubbed that scale. So there are different things. You can be an objective observer of mistakes without just making a tally up. Did another thing wrong. Oh, did another thing wrong. But listen. With that as a focus.

A slightly more creative way to listen might be to listen to yourself with the idea that you could choose your next steps in your preparation for that piece. Like, okay, how well have I done getting to this level with it? And if I were going to choose the next step toward making this piece sound the way I want, which step would I choose? Would it be adding more dynamics? Would it be changing the tempo? Would it be making it flow with a little bit more grace and elegance? What would it be? But this gives you a chance to listen and to choose. Now, notice none of these things. Whether we're talking about expression or evaluating your next steps, or even listening for mistakes you didn't know about, none of those things are particularly judgmental or negative. They're absolutely just objective things that, yep, I can do this. This is what was there, that was fact. And you're not going to berate yourself for any of those things. You're just going to say, yep, that's what happened. And here's what I'm going to do. Now that I know what happened, here's what I need to do. Another thing you might evaluate as you're listening to yourself, you might want to consider your tone, how you sound. You know, are you getting the kind of sound you want? Now, I want to caution you here that lots of times the devices that we record on, I mean, they're. They're generally pretty good, but that still doesn't mean that they're actual good representations of how we sound. So if you're listening to a recording of yourself that you made on your phone and you don't think it sounds like you, you don't think you sounded that way, go to somebody in your house and Say, is this what you heard? You know, have somebody sit there and listen to you while you make that recording so that you have a live person who can say, oh, no, that recording doesn't sound like what I heard. Or, yes, that recording sounds exactly like what I heard. So in this case, we're getting a second opinion, aren't we? Because that recording may not be a completely accurate representation of how you sound in real. Okay, that covers listening to ourselves. But what if you're listening to someone else, right? You're scrolling through YouTube and there's the video of somebody playing a piece you're working on. And why might you want to listen to that? Well, okay, obviously curiosity, right? And because you love the piece and you want to hear it, but from a research sort of a standpoint, you might want to find out how a piece goes before you start it. Or maybe while you're learning it, you could get some ideas for tempo and expression. You could hear how an expert player sounds when they're playing that piece, or maybe just sounds in general what does is their sound like. You could hear how an expert player plays. What is different about what they're doing from what you're doing. I mean, there are all kinds of things you could glean from that without going into the realm of judgment. As long as your listening is factual and is based on learning and not on scoring ourselves against somebody else, then we can learn from what we're doing. Because really, I think we can be listening for ideas, listening for our own next steps. And that requires us to be very aware of what we should and shouldn't be listening for when we're listening to ourselves or others. So I've sort of arranged this, at least in my own mind, as sort of a little matrix. I mean, if you can picture two columns, one is listening to ourselves and one is listening to others. And then for each of those, we're going to think about what we don't want to listen for and what we do want to listen for. So when it comes to listening to ourselves, we already covered some of the things, some of the places we don't want to go, right? The things that are just overloaded with judgment. But, but here are some real specific things. I don't think we should be listening for mistakes unless that is truly our intention. As I had mentioned a moment ago, if you are listening for mistakes that you maybe didn't realize you made, that might be something that could be an intelligent way to listen. To say, okay, look, yeah, I'm doing what I am supposed to be doing. And I'm not, you know, glossing over mistakes, but in general, don't use listening for mistakes as a scorecard. And that's what I think we often do. Oh, that was wrong. Oh, that was wrong. Oh, that was wrong. That's not what we want to listen for. It's not going to help us. We know we made those mistakes. We don't need to berate ourselves for them. I don't think we should be listening for what makes our own playing less virtuosic, less masterful than anyone else's. Right. We don't need to listen to compare ourselves with somebody else. We are what we are at that moment. Right. Rather than comparing yourself to somebody else, remember that you are at this particular place in your harp journey right now. And it's a stepping stone, is a stepping stone to someplace else. You're not going to stay there. So don't listen with that comparison attitude. That's what's so dangerous, right? So that's not what we're listening for now. If you're listening to somebody else, don't listen to things you can't do right now. Don't listen to their tempo. Suppose their tempo is really super fast. That piece may not have to go super fast to still sound nice. You don't have to listen to their tempo unless you think it needs to be yours. Right now, there are other things you can do to make a piece sound appropriate, sound beautiful, sound lovely, sound exciting. All those things besides tempo. So don't get all bound up in that number, and don't get all bound up in that, oh, it's got to go that fast or it won't be any good. Don't worry about their tempo. Don't worry about their perfection. What you're hearing anywhere in concert hall maybe, or on YouTube, perhaps, you'll hear what sounds like a perfect performance. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But if it's a recording, you don't know how many takes it took to get that right. That may not be just a quick video. I mean, maybe it's a video of a concert performance and it was just once and done, and that's fine. But you don't know how many years of practice, how many months it took working on that piece. What you're seeing is a finished product. And if this is a piece that you're working on, this is by definition a work in progress. So don't compare in terms of what the way they play, the perfection that. That you perceive in their playing. Chances are that they don't perceive their perfection the same way you do, because wherever they are is a stepping stone for them as well. Now, let's talk about things that you can and should listen for in your own playing. Listen for how well you followed your intention for that performance of your piece. Right, okay. Set your intention ahead of time. This is required to get this good result. You don't just want to sit down and say, okay, well, I'm going to play it and see how good it is. Make a focus for your playing. I really want this to be expressive. I want this to flow. I want to see if I can get my pedals in that one section, whatever it is, but have a specific intention. We can't do everything all at once. So if you're doing that kind of test recording, see how well you follow the intention that you set. Perhaps your intention is just to get to the end without stopping. That's a perfectly fine intention. And if you're preparing for performance, that may be the most important one, in which case you can let go of everything else. So when you were listening to that playback, how well did you do what you set out to do? Very specifically, you could also listen for things that sound different than you thought. Like, wow, I thought I did a big crescendo there, but I didn't hear that. Ooh. Well, now, that's something that you could, you know, use the next time you play it. Or maybe, wow, listen to that beautiful accelerando I did right there. Wow, that was really great. Be sure that you're noticing not only the things you want to correct or do better, but the things that you did well. It might pay you, by the way, to write down the things that you did well. They're the hardest ones to identify. And if you make it a task for yourself to actually write down the things you did well for everything you want to change, maybe something that you did well, you'll learn to find them more in your own playing, which is a key to harp happiness, by the way. Another way to consider that is that when you're listening to yourself play, come away from that listening session with one nice thing, one compliment for yourself, one thing that you did well, one thing that you're proud of about that particular recording, it's important to remember to give ourselves those deserved pats on the back. And if the only thing you can find about that recording to praise is the fact that you did it, okay, you're allowed to do that, too. All right? It's not the performance that I was looking for in so many ways. But, you know, I recorded it and I listened to it. So there. That was a win in its own way. That's okay. So do listen for how well you accomplish the. That intention you set out with and things that maybe sound a little bit different than you expected, both the ones you want to correct and the ones you did well, and walk away with that one good thing, that one little compliment for yourself. You can find as many as you want, but be sure you find at least one. Now, when you're listening to others, what should you listen for? I think you should listen for qualities you admire in their playing. Very specific ones. Not just, wow, that was really great. I mean, maybe it was a really great performance, but why? Maybe it was exciting. Maybe they had a beautiful tone. Maybe their expression was very moving. Maybe the piece had a beautiful flow. But look for specific qualities that you admire in their playing that may even transcend that particular piece. Right. Like their tone would be maybe not specific to that piece, although it could be. But it could be something that pervades all of their playing. Listen in that particular performance for expressive ideas that you could consider bringing to your own playing. Oh, wow, look how they do that kind of phrasing. Listen to how they make a retard. Listen to the breaths that they put in their music. I could consider using those things. This is very detailed listening, and you're not listening, again, to judge yourself for not having done them, but you're bringing those ideas into your own playing. You're actually doing some really powerful learning. And I'm going to give you one easy thing to try here. Choose one descriptive adjective, one word that you would use to describe a particular quality of that performance that you admire or that inspired you or that was just part of that whole performance. And I would urge you to be really specific again, not just, oh, it was great or it was wonderful, but.

It was very expressive. There was a lot of dynamic contrast. The player made beautiful phrases. I really liked that tempo. It seemed to suit the piece. So find something descriptive. It could be exciting. It could be.

Peaceful, serene, rich, lush, restful.

It could be communicative. It could be chatty. You know, there could be a lot of words. But think about what described that performance or that performer at that moment and find that descriptive adjective. This isn't just important in terms of taking something away from that performance, but it's important in terms of enlarging the way you listen. Now, I hope this has given you some ideas for ways to listen to yourself and to listen to others without judgment and to listen in ways that will expand your own musicality and musicianship and your own understanding of your own harp playing, which is so critical. I'm going to give you one other little tip. It's one of those sort of pithy things that you just need to be reminded of every once in a while. I know I do. Don't say anything about yourself or your playing, even to yourself, that you wouldn't say to your best friend. If your best friend played something for you, you would probably find a way to compliment them to still be honest. But you'd probably find a way to say, gosh, a really exciting performance or I really loved the way you did this. You need to say that to you, too. You shouldn't be saying anything to yourself that you wouldn't say to your friend. And when we can practice finding those little compliments, those little nuggets of truth about our own playing that are encouraging, it gives us a way to build on those, to create more of that in our playing. So I would urge you to just think about listening with that kind of understanding, the understanding that says, I'm going to listen so that I can grow rather than correct, so that I can inspire and be inspired rather than be judged. And so that I can play the harp the way I want to instead of always trying to live up to some standard that I don't even know what it is or who said it or why I'm doing it right. Just playing the harp the way you want to is enough. Trust me, it's enough. For you, for me, for all of us. Playing the harp the way we want is why we're doing this. Next week on the podcast, we're going to talk about injecting some fun into your practice. Things that can make your practice more interesting, things that can get you to think a little bit outside the box. Nothing that's too outrageous, but something that might help you communicate your music better, tell your musical stories better, and get your creative juices flowing. So that will be next week on the podcast. I want to remind you about the certified coaching. If you want to add some coaching to your summer, this is the time to get in. While our certified coaches still have some room in their schedule, you can go to the coaching page and get started there with a planning call with our dean of harpist success, Caitlin, and she'll guide you through that whole process. And of course, if you are a harp teacher and you would interested in perhaps participating in our fall break retreat, I'D love to hear from you so that I can find out a little bit about what you might want included in such a retreat. Remember, this is not an obligation. We're not taking registrations now. I'm just sort of information gathering. So if this is something you would consider participating in. And this is a few days of retreat in Kissimmee, Florida, near Orlando in October. Yep. If you are a harp teacher and this sounds like it might be interesting to you, please do send me an email and let me know and we'll see what we can do. All right, so thank you so much for listening. I will look forward to seeing you right back here next week for our next podcast episode. And 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 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. It.