Etudify Your Pieces with the Technique Stacker - PHH 128
30 Oct 2023 · 36 min
Anne Sullivan presents the Technique Stacker, a method to fix technical problems in pieces by identifying the skill you need, choosing relevant exercises, then applying seven concrete strategies: hands separately, varied tempos, transposition, rhythmic variation, hand reversal, alternate fingerings, and octave shifts. Three core habits prevent roadblocks: Accustom yourself with regular exercises, Add technique through rhythms and keys, and Apply etudes as musical labs.
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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. Welcome to the show. If you attended my Cut to the Chase webinar a couple of weeks ago, you'll remember that we were talking about some harp hacks, shortcut outside the box types of solutions for common heart problems. Well, we're going to talk about another one today. Now, imagine that you're learning a piece, and it's going along pretty well. In fact, you may even be excited to think how much you've improved because you're learning so quickly. You may even let your mind wander to the sorts of pieces you can tackle next with your new and improved skills. And then it happens. You hit the wall. You found the passage you can't play. Now, it may be a new technique that you've never tried, or one that you aren't very comfortable with. It may just be a combination of two skills that you haven't combined before. But whatever it is, you can't do it. Your technique isn't up to this particular challenge. So you do what we all have to do. You take out the passage and you work it separately. You turn it into an exercise and you drill it. You etude ify it. As we like to say, I have some wonderful harp mastery certified coach who loves to use that word etudify, turning it into an etude, right?
And when you etudify that little passage, you probably wish that you had learned this skill a little bit earlier. Now, young students are usually taught in a very systematic way. The teacher introduces new skills gradually and helps the student work on the skill first. Then they move on to using the skill in the context an Etude, or a piece that can work like an etude, and then finally the student is ready for the piece that absolutely requires that skill. It's a very thoughtful, orderly progression. Adult students often don't have that same methodical approach. Either they're mostly or partly teaching themselves, or their teachers, understandably, don't want to slow down their progress. What this means, of course, is that a lot of their technical development happens on a mission need to play basis. I need to play this now. It's a kind of emergency response system. And although it can be effective, it can also be frustrating because it stops you right in the middle of learning. Now, on today's episode, we'll talk about how to make sure you're developing the techniques that you need, how you're practicing the right exercises and etudes, and that you know how to etudify a passage effectively. I'll also show you the Technique Stacker. It's the combination of exercises and etudes that can help you with the pieces that you're learning now, and it's how to create that combination for whatever it is you're working on. So wherever you start from, whether you start from the exercise or you start from the piece, the technique stacker will help your fingers learn what they need for the music you're playing. Now, as always, in the Show Notes for today's episode, I have a blog post that will give you another look at this topic too. It's called Etudes the Case for and Against. And that will just be something interesting for you to check out from our blog archives. And the link is right in the show notes. Also in the Show Notes, you will find a link with your last chance to join us for the Theory Essentials Intensive. That Intensive kicks off today, meaning today, the day this episode goes live, which is Monday, October 30th. So if you haven't joined us yet for the Intensive, it's not too late. You can hop in and join us. If you're early enough, you can even make that first call. If not, no worries. That call will be recorded and we don't have another call for a couple of days. So you can jump in and you can stay still, get everything, all the materials, everything that you need, all the learning. Remember, the Theory Essentials Intensive is about just the core information that we as harpists need in order to play better. It's a very practical course. I know it talks about music theory, and theory is so interesting, but it's a huge topic and the fact is that we really only need to know a few things. And, and to know how to apply those few things to our heart playing, to really get the benefit from understanding music theory. So that's what this course is about. It's taught by one of our certified coaches, Naomi Hofmeier, and it's a fabulous course. If you haven't joined us, please hop in there and do this now. There won't be another chance. We're not offering this again. At least we don't have plans to do that. But, but even if you feel like, oh, my schedule's kind of full right now. If you join the intensive, you'll have two full weeks after the intensive ends. It ends this Friday, so you'll have two weeks after this Friday to have access to all the materials, the workbooks, the recordings, the theory forum, the challenges that we have going in the theory forum, the discussion, all that stuff you have access to for a full two weeks after the intensive ends. So there's plenty of time to get in there and get it done. But we will be clos registration, so you really need to get in there now. So the link for that is right there on in the show notes for today's episode. And you can also find it on the Heart Mastery homepage under upcoming events. It's actually also featured right on the homepage so that if you just log on to heartmastery.com and scroll down a little bit, you'll see it featured right there. So just a last minute plug for that because I don't want you to miss it. If this is something that you think could really help you and I can tell you this is great material and it's going to make some connections for you. So I encourage you to join us for that. But right now we'll get back to talking about Etudes etudeifying and the technique stagger. Just a moment ago I talked about those two very different processes of learning, especially when it comes to techniques. Technique, right. One is that usual student process where you start by learning the skill, usually through exercises, then you begin to integrate that skill, which is where the etudes come in. And then finally you use the skill in a piece. It makes sense. It's a very logical progression, which is why from an academic, you know, from a pedagogical standpoint, it's really the ideal. The problem with it is that it does take time. And when we're talking about young students, we can take the time to make sure that they've got the foundation in place and that they know how to integrate it and that then they can use the skill and they usually are patient enough to go along with that kind of process, even if the way I did, they hate the exercises and oh, those exercises are so boring. And why can't I just play a piece? They, you know, you can usually have them work through that process.
But for an adult student, it's almost always sort of the usual emergency response triage process where, yeah, we're working on technique and we're going along on technique, but we want you, we as teachers want you as students to play as much as you can play and to play it as soon as you can. So we're not quite as patient with the process, which means that, yeah, we're developing technique, but we're moving through pieces. And so what usually happens is that there's that spot in the piece or a technique that is crucial to that piece. And it's a technical challenge. It's something that you haven't played before. And so we have to take it out and drill it or etudify it, right? And that's okay. The problem with that is that while it's fast, it doesn't. It's not as slow as that usual, you know, young kid kind of process. It's faster, it's a shortcut, which, as you know, I like. The big disadvantage is that it slows down our learning, right? When we want our learning to speed up, it's that hard hit on the brakes, right? We're going along, motoring along, and then all of a sudden something comes in front of us. You know, picture yourself driving in the car, right? And then, you know, the squirrel runs in front of the car, so you put the brakes on and, you know, then it takes you just a moment to recover before you can go on. Well, in harp playing terms, it may not be a squirrel that's in front of us. It could actually be something that is a little bit more challenging so that we're going along and we're learning a piece and then we get to something. It's like, argh, I really can't do this. And it slows down everything. While you're developing that skill, you can't move forward with the rest of the piece the same way. In fact, if it's a technique that's really be incorporated into the entire body of the piece, it can slow down your progress to the point where you don't even see it because you've got to work on the skill. You've got to train your fingers to do it. You've got to train your eyes to see it. Whatever it is. And then you can finally get back to the piece and do it. And that, I think, has a little bit more possibility for discouragement and frustration. And it's just plain annoying to think, well, here I was, I was learning this piece, and now I have to put the brakes on. I have to call a halt to everything while I quickly figure out how to do this. And we've all had this experience, if not with our heart, playing with something else, right? You think, okay, this is a great process. I mean, maybe you're setting up a new phone or working on a new computer, and you think, yeah, this is great, and plug and play and everything's working. And then you get to that one moment where you think, oh, I have no clue how to do this. How come these pictures didn't transfer to my new phone or whatever it is? And you've got to slow down and you can't use that new device until you get it set up. Frustrating, right? So that's the kind of thing that we want to avoid. So while I don't like to have my students slow down to the point where we have to cover every pedagogical step along the way before we get to the pieces, I want to be sure, wherever possible, wherever I can predict it and prevent it, I want to be sure that we don't have to stop in the middle of learning, that we've got the skills in place that we know, and that's where that lovely middle ground comes in, that one that allows you to keep playing. And it's based on very good basic principles and habits. And these are the habits that are part of the idea behind my little technique stacker. So what I'm going to talk about first, we'll talk about those principles and habits that you want to have in place and the things that you should be doing every day. Don't worry, they're not going to add measurably, at least I hope not, to your practice as you're already doing it. But it's going to be sure that you're focused and clear about what your technical work needs to be doing for you and what kinds you need to do. So we'll be talking about those basic good principles and habits. We'll be talking about the best ways to etudify, the best ways to take that passage out of your piece and what you can do with it to help gain more facility with that particular passage, as opposed to maybe the skill behind it. And then we'll work through the technique stacker with a few different techniques, pieces that use those techniques and how you can use the stacker to work through it. So if you're ready, we're going to get started by talking about those basic good habits. There are three, and here's an easy way to remember them. They all start with the letter A. The three words, the three principles, habits that we're talking about are accustom, add and apply. So here I will explain. So accustomed we want to accustom our fingers to the basic foundational skills. We want them to get really used to the stuff that they need to play most often. So these are essentially the scales and arpeggios and intervals and chords. Anything you find in an exercise book, the patterns, the twistier kinds of patterns, things that you'll find in those thicker exercise books. And that's really what is needed here. To accustom your fingers to the foundational skills. You need to be doing lots of exercises regularly. The more patterns your fingers play, the fewer surprises they will have. As you work through your pieces, they're gonna. It's gonna be like, okay, yeah, that's right. I know how to do that. I did it over here. And of course, the more ex. As you work through, the more likely it is that you're going to recognize a pattern. You might even know what exercise it came from. But it's less likely to look like a random combination of notes. You're going to be, oh, okay, I see what that is. So working through exercise books are fabulous. Now my favorite one, the skinniest one, I love Salzato's conditioning exercises because it's in 10 brief exercises. It gets your fingers really, really working in lots of different combinations. But those aren't the only exercises that you need. They're my, my go to. I know if I can play those well, my fingers are gonna be in good shape. But there are plenty of exercise books that will give you a slightly larger look at patterns. I love the. The Deborah Frio book Exercises for Agility and Speed. That's book and filled with a, you know, a really great progression of the skills that you need. Something a little bit more in depth. Something that goes. Starts very simply but gets a little bit more complicated. The Grossi Method for the Harp. Um, that's another book that's very methodical, works you through exercises from the easiest ones all the way through. All the kinds of skills that you will need. Plus the back half of the book is a bunch of very simple, well, to not quite so simple to some definitely intermediate level etudes by Hector Pozzoli. And those exercises are really, or those etudes are really good for working through those same kinds of patterns. They call them etudes, but especially the early ones are so short they. They're pretty much exercises in themselves. So those are just a few of the books that I would recommend. But any exercise book that you like that goes through a lot of patterns. My definition of an exercise book is it's got to look really repetitive. That's going to work you through those foundational skills and that's what's going to make your fingers really know what they're doing. So that's the A for a customer. Now, the second A in our good principles list is to add. You want to increase your technique vocabulary so that you have an entire repertoire of techniques for making an effective exercise out of a passage. Sort of interesting. The exercises that we talked about before, those exercises are going to give your fingers the facility, the vocabulary in that sense. But here think about what you can do with, to increase the, the effectiveness of any exercise that you're working on. And you can use these with exercise books or you can use them as you etudify a passage. Well, more about that in just a moment. And there are a few that are really pretty easy. You can play those exercises in different rhythms. Long, short, bum, badum, badum is one of those ideas. So you can add that to your exercises. Or you could add the idea of playing them in different registers in octaves. You don't just have to play them in the middle of the harp. You can play them higher for your right hand. You can play them lower for your left hand. You can if they're hands together, you can play your hands more than one octave apart. So taking advantage of those different registers of the full range of your harp will help your fingers as well. You can play them in different keys. I know they're written. They might be written usually in C major or usually in E flat major or one of those kinds of things. Well, change it up. Mess with your pedals or levers or transpose it and say, okay, well it's in C, but I'm going to play it in G today. This will help your fingers. It will also help your musicianship. Right? It's great for you. So that's one way to increase your fingers vocabulary. Same thing. Play them at different tempos. You should always play at different speeds. When you're working on your technique stuff, don't just play slowly and carefully. That's important. We want to check how our fingers are working. Check those mechanics, make Everything nice and clean. But a medium tempo is a different experience for your fingers. Let them do that, as is a fast tempo. If you are a person who struggles to play faster, be sure that you're including fast practice in your technique work. It's one of the ways that your fingers will learn how to manage this better. And all of those different things that I just talked about are techniques that you will use and will be very effective to help make an exercise or an etude out of a passage that you encounter in your piece. So that's a custom and add. And now we have apply. So this is where actual etudes, etude books come in. These. This is a way that we take the technical skills that we've been working on and put them in that laboratory where in a piece that has sort of limited technical focus, you can take that technique that you've been trying to strengthen and put it in a musical context. Etudes are important because they give you that sort of middle ground in between. It's an exercise and arg. It's a piece of music. The notes are usually a little bit more predictable, a little bit simpler, and the technical focus is pretty, pretty strong so that we know which technique we're working on. So the easiest way to do this is just be sure that you're playing through etude books regularly. The etudes that I talked about in the back of the Grossi book, it's a great place to start if you want to get or are able to play ones that are a little bit more complicated. The Pozzoli intermediate etudes are very good. They're mostly for petal harp, though. But you'll find etude books by Bonnie Shaljan has one that's wonderful for lever harp. There are others also excellent for lever harp. If you're really hardcore, there are the exercises in Etudes by La Riviere. You'll find those. There are short etudes at the back of the. In Renier's method book, she has some etudes toward the back of it's volume one, if yours is in two sets. But they're little studies that go along with the lessons in her method book. I love her method book, by the way. So that's one. One place to. To look for Etudes. But they don't have to be long, they don't have to be hard. They're just very focused. And that's how you'll get that, that sort of intermediate test.
Three good habits, accustoming your fingers to the foundational skills. That means just playing exercises regularly, adding to your repertoire of techniques for working on those with the different rhythms, different octaves, different keys, different tempos, and applying your skills by working through Etude books regularly. Those are things that you can do and take small bites. You don't have to do a lot of these, you know, you don't have to do a lot every day. Just make it steady progress, because that's what we need to do. Now, having said that, let's talk about the difference between working through those things regularly, keeping those good habits going, and the sort of triage kind of thing that comes in when you need to etudify a little passage in your piece. So this is the situation, right? This is the situational practice need, where it's like, okay, I'm playing through the piece and these two measures don't work, these four measures don't work. Or this particular thing that's in the piece, maybe it's a. Maybe it's an ornament, right? Like a turn or a trill. Or maybe it's a particular figure that happens, an arpeggio figure or something, and you need to take that out and work on it separately, because it's something that's not smooth. So it's not just a matter of playing that passage 10 times or 15 times, or, I don't know, 50 times, if you want. It's not just doing it over and over again. Etude Ifying is really being able to extract some of the. That. That piece, that little passage, and then looking at it in a lot of different ways. It's. Remember how I said we're adding, right? So we're going to take some of those things and look at that passage with different. Different focus, sort of, you know, sort of turning it around and just looking at it from a lot of different ways. And that's going to help you not just play the. The technique better, but it's going to give you so many different looks at the passage itself that it's going to help you learn it as well. So I think that's the real key to etudifying. It's not just repetition, it's repetition. Yes, but repetition with different focuses that help you really learn that particular passage. So here are seven different ways there. These are not the only ways to look at it, but this will give you an idea of how you can etudify an excerpt of a piece. So first of all, obviously, some hands separately work. Do your hands separately work in. At your goal tempo, if you can, so that you can check the details and make sure that the. The fingerings you've chosen all those kinds of things work and work well at your desired speed. So hands separately, of course. Great place to start. Play that passage slow, medium and fast. Right. Going back to those different tempo ideas again. So taking that and playing it slowly, playing at a medium tempo, playing at a fast tempo, and is going to give you a different look at the piece. And it's going to help you or that passage going to help you know it better. Try playing that same passage or that same little technique thing. Starting on different notes like, okay, that, you know, it starts on a C. Well, I'm going to take that little pattern, that little arpeggio thing that I can't play, and instead of starting on a C, I'm going to try starting on a D this time. Play the same pattern, but starting on a different note. You can transpose it to another key if you want to. Right. Not just start on the D. But actually, if it were. If the passage were in C major, try transposing it to D major. You may want to do this one hand at a time, or maybe you can do it with both. But the idea is that you're looking at it as a pattern, not just as a specific set of specific notes. And so you're going to get a lot more information about it. When you look at it as a pattern, your fingers will work around it better. Play it in rhythms. Talked about that before. Try reversing the hands. Have your right hand play the left hand part just for a change, and have your left hand play the right hand part. You don't have to do it hands together, but once again, your hands will learn more. Particularly if the technique challenge, for instance, is in the right hand. Give your left hand a chance to play it. It's going to learn something so much by learning that line, too. Try playing your passage with different fingerings. I know we sort of think that if we have one fingering and we do that all the time, we're going to be, you know, absolutely bulletproof. And that's not the case. It's totally wrong. Your passage will be more bulletproof when you have options. So while we might have a particular decision that we need to do, like, you know, this passage only works if I put my third finger here. Okay, that's great. And if you want to stick to one fingering, that's okay, too. But if you try out different fingerings, you're going to get an entirely different technical experience, and you're going to learn those notes rather than just the fingers. It's not a Bad idea. It's very powerful. And of course, as we spoke about a moment ago, you can always play it in different octaves just for a different idea. So those are some of the ways that you can etudify a particular passage in your piece. Now, we're going to take those good habits we talked about and the etudify ideas, and I'm going to show you the technique stacker. So sort of picture a sandwich. And we can either start with the piece of bread on the bottom, the foundation, which would be those exercises, those technical skill development things, or we could start from the top piece of bread, which the piece of music that we're working on. And certainly you can always work from the bottom up, from the exercises to the etudes to the piece, right? But you can also work from the top down, so that if you have a piece of music that you're playing and you get to that part that you know there's a skill that you're going to need for this particular piece, you can work from the top down. So that's why I call it a stacker. And the idea is that this we're going to, if we have the piece, we're going to identify the skill that is required for that piece. So for instance, if you're looking at something with a lot of chords in it, well, there you go. You're going to need some chord skills, right? So after you've identified the skill, the next thing is to find some exercises that will work on that particular skill. And you can find them from exercise books or you can create them on your own, if that's what works for you. But you're going to work find some exercises that relate to that particular skill. Then you're going to etudify those exercises and the passage in the piece by working the exercises in different ways and by taking those variations, if you will, to the same passage in the piece or the skill in the piece to make it work. So you're going to find the piece, identify the skill, find some exercises, and then etudify. Okay, so let's look at some examples. Let's start with a piece like the Little Fountain, which has a lot of downward arpeggios, particularly downward four note arpeggios. This is a very harpy kind of a skill. It's one that we need a lot. There are a lot of pieces that use it, whether you're playing the Little Fountain or La Source, the Walls of the Flowers Cadenza Nataliana by Deborah Henson Conant has some of this in it. So so this shows up a lot. And it's not a skill that we always practice, but it is a skill that if you don't have it in line, when you get to the piece that uses it, you're going to need to spend some time working on it. So, okay, we've identified we need some work on downward four note arpeggios. Well, the good news is that there are plenty of exercises that can help you with this. Almost every exercise book has exercises for downward arpeggios. I particularly like the exercises in the book called On Playing the Harp by Yolanda Kondanasis. Starting on page like 75, she's got some wonderful exercises for downward arpeggios that really help you see how to place them. But frankly, if you don't want to use a specific exercise, then just take those arpeggios and play them carefully. Do them in rhythms for evenness. Get the etudify thing that's coming in here. You're going to do them in rhythms so that you work on the evenness. You can do them as block chords for placing. You can try reversing the hands, doing them on different notes, doing them in different octaves, all those etudify ways. So you can use those same techniques with the arpeggios in an exercise and then also in some of the arpeggios that you find in the piece. And that's how you're going to stack your technique so that all these techniques begin to improve. Now, maybe you're running up against a chord passage in a piece that you're learning. There are certainly many pieces that have moments of big chords if they're not all made up of chords. And when it comes to working on chords, there are a number of issues, right? You want to be able to see them as a group, place them as a group and play them evenly. So the exercises that you're going to turn to might be based around intervals where you're first worrying about placing two notes and then maybe going on to three note chords, then four note chords. They can actually be arpeggio exercises where you work on the evenness of your fingers, and they can be in patterns of fingers as well. Um, the conditioning exercises, actually everything from the first exercise to the sixth exercise, these are all great for working at chord shapes and working at placing your fingers. So they're very good for that. If you want to work on exercises on your own, it's the placing and the grouping. So that's what you're going to work at. But then let's etudify those exercises, whether you're working from a book or not. We're looking for changing up between arpeggiating chords and playing block chords. Change them up as far as key, as far as octave, work at the different spacings. Play them with both hands for sure. Work at counting your placing so that you have a real rhythm and practice placing on time. So those are all ways you can intuitify that and you can bring that back to the piece as well. So that in that chord passage, you're going to take that passage out and you're going to look at the intervals at two notes at a time. You're going to play different pairs of notes together. You're going to practice rolling the chords, practice not rolling the chords, practice playing them as continuous arpeggios. Practice them in any of the patterns that you've learned perhaps from the conditioning exercises. They're quite wonderful, by the way, if you want a couple really nice little etudes to work on chords as well. These are short and they're very useful. They're in the Grossi book. They're the Pozzoli exercises. Toward the back you'll find the. These are etudes, actually, etudes numbers 31 and 32 toward the back of the book. And they're very nice for working on chords as well. So chords, you're going to work on your intervals, your two note groupings, your out of order placings, placing things together, rolling them, arpeggiating them, playing them flat, all those things to work at your four note chords. One last example, and that's that independence of the hands idea, when your hands are going independent in opposite directions, doing different things. There are lots of pieces that have moments of this. Some pieces are all about your hands doing different things. I'm thinking of things like the transcriptions of some of the Bach two part inventions, things like that, where the hands are definitely doing different things and your left hand is every bit as melodic as your right hand. It the pieces we play don't always have that level of independence in them, but there's often one moment when your right hand's going up, your left hand's going down, doing something different. And it's just a little confusing. So how do you take that skill? Well, we're looking for skills that, or exercises rather that build on the independence of the hands. So practice your scales and arpeggios in contrary motion, for instance, where you have one going up, one hand going down, and just get used to playing in different directions at the same time. Deborah Frio, in her Exercises for Agility and Speed book, has a section in the book that I love for this. It's an entire chapter on finger independence. And it's really good for this kind of practice. And that's, Interestingly enough, chapter 13, lucky 13. So you can work through that chapter and you'll find lots of exercises to practice that skill of getting your hands going in different directions. But then we need to etudify. So whether you're working on scales or arpeggios in contrary motion on your own or using exercises, what you want to do is mix it up, right? That's the entire point of etufy. So you're going to start playing them in different keys. You're going to play them at different speeds, fast or slower, and different rhythms. Different rhythms is. That's one of the most powerful things you can do for this. Not different from each other, although that would be pretty good. But play both hands, perhaps in a long, short rhythm, or maybe long, short, short, whatever kind of rhythm works. But that's going to really, really help. And you can take those same ETUD principles, of course, and take them to the contrary motion portion in your piece.
So there you go, three examples of how to use the technique stacker. You're going to identify the skill. You're going to look for exercises, either ones that you can create or ones that are in a book that you happen to have that seem to have that same skill built into them. Practice those exercises, then etudify the exercises where you add those different components, different speeds, different rhythms, different keys, different octaves, all those things. Things, right? And take those same A2 to 5 principles to the section in the piece as well. And that's how you stack your technique work to really make those passages work for you and for your fingers. And of course, it will keep all your technique skills moving forward. Now, I know this is a lot of information and I've covered it very quickly, probably put more than I should have into one podcast episode. But in any case, this is the technique stacker, and this is how you can take those parts of your pieces and really work on them. So you're not just fixing one passage, but you're building your technique as well. I hope you give these things a try. I'd love to hear from you if you do. And if you find that they're working for you, that's even better. Now, I want to invite you one last time. It's not too late to join our theory Intensive. The intensive kicks off today, October 30th but you won't have missed anything, or at least not much if you get in there and join today. If you're too late for the live workshop, the recording will be posted and you'll be there. You'll be ready to go and and as I said, you will be easily able to to catch up and move forward. So I invite you to join that Theory intensive before we close registration. And so you know, we'll be doing that in just two days, so be sure that you hop in. Um, next week here on the podcast we'll be talking about four parts of preparing to share your music. Four ways that you can get yourself ready to get that music played for somebody else. I know this is the time of year when we're preparing pieces, and in fact this is the theme that the My Heart Mastery members are working with this month as well. So or at least coming up in November. So we'll be just getting a quick little survey of the same thing here on the podcast next week. So the four parts of preparing to share is our topic for next week and I certainly hope that you come back and join me for that. 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 do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll 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. Sam.
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