Everyday Etudes: The Right Way to Use What You’re Already Practicing - PHH 074

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. So, sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. Quick question, hands in the air. If you've ever decided to skip your technique, drills and etudes because you're doing that work already on a challenging passage in one of your pieces. Yes, I thought so. Everybody's hand is up, including mine, so we all do it. Skip our technique work because we're short on time and we can get the same benefits from by doing double duty practice. Working on technique with one of those sticky spots that we need to drill anyway, right? It sounds like a good idea and a great use of our time, but is it really? Well, yes and no. Exercises and etudes have very specialized functions in harp technique practice. The most significant of these is that they take musical context out of the equation by eliminating the pressures of the right notes at the right time. With all the dynamics we can laser focus on our mechanics, the way our fingers work, the position of our hands and arms, staying relaxed and maintaining a healthy posture, then moving from exercises to etudes adds back those musical concerns in a minimal sort of way, keeping the focus on the particular skill, but testing the waters to see how our execution of that skill holds up under the added stress of rhythm and expression and everything else. So there are important functions that exercises and etudes serve, and together they create a progression of development for whatever skill you're working on. But I'm not here today to tell you that you must include exercises and etudes in your practice regimen without fail. I know I don't. I'm a big fan of double duty practice. So while I do practice both exercises and etudes regularly, there are times when I just don't have the time when I'm practicing a recital program, for instance, and those pieces require all of my technical and musical focus. So I do what we all just admitted to doing. I use my pieces as etudes. But I don't want to give up the special benefits of those exercises and etudes either. So I let my pieces do double duty. However, there are really powerful ways to do this. Ways that allow you to work on those challenging spots and still get the technical and musical benefits of your exercises and etudes. They don't take more time, only a little know how. And that insider know how is exactly what I'm going to share with you today. So you can be certain that you will conquer the challenges in your music and level up your technique, just like exercises and etudes do.

After all, technical security is really important to us, right? And knowing your fingers will work is one of the things that gives us confidence when we play. And that's why I want to talk to you right now about my brand new Play it with Confidence Intensive. It's going to be starting in less than two weeks and it's really going to be fun. So let me tell you what it's about.

I hear from harpists all the time about how scary it is to play in front of people. Whether you're playing in front of just a couple family members or friends, or playing in church, or playing at a nursing home, or any sort of situation, it's scary. And there are lots of things that we do that don't serve us well when it comes to preparing to play. So I thought with the holidays coming up, I thought about how important it was to feel like you were ready to play, to feel confident in what you were doing. Not just because you feel confident, but knowing that everything, that you've prepared everything the right way. So I created a five day intensive. This is a short blast of information and it's several live workshops and live mindset coaches, a two hour masterclass. A bunch of stuff is included in this little five day program and it's designed to help you know that you are ready, know that you've prepared your pieces properly. After all, there are a lot of things you have to prepare in a piece of music to know that it's really right. You know, does. It's not just the notes and the fingers, right? It's does the music flow? Does it have a musical expression? Are you able to get from beginning to end without stopping and create that seamless experience for a listener, the one that we enjoy too, right?

So it's preparing your music and then it's creating that bridge between the practice mindset and the playing mindset. It's About? Well, if you're going to share your music with anybody, you have to practice it in a different way. The same kind of practice that is great for just learning notes and drilling them. It's isn't the kind of practice that's going to prepare your music. And so if you have lots of pieces you've been practicing but they don't feel ready to play, this is exactly the workshop that you need. And then our third workshop in the intensive is really about your focus. Where does your focus need to be when you're playing? What do you do to keep yourself from being totally sabotaged by worries, by fears, by nerves? And so that's the third part of this intensive. There's a lot of components here. But the thing is, I want you to have some pieces that you feel great about playing. I mean, that's why you started the harp anyway, right? To play music and to play it beautifully and to enjoy your playing. And that's what we want now. So while some of this might start with having a really, you know, confident, trustworthy technique, there's more to it than that. And so I'm going to be showing you, walking through with you on this intensive. I'm going to be showing you the system that's going to allow you to have all those pieces put together so that you can play your music with confidence. So there's a link in the show notes here to join the intensive. It's going to be starting soon, so get in there and, and get registered. Now, we have an online community that.

That is part of this as well. So you'll be able to communicate, you know, 247 with me and the other members of the intensive program. So there's that component too. Plus, all the teaching in this intensive is live. This isn't watching videos. This is me teaching you and you being able to ask questions and to work with me, all those things. It's very interactive. That's the point. So, you know, live learning is really where we learn best, Right? So I want you to be able to ask those questions. I want you to be able to come out of this knowing that you're going to be able to prepare your music and you in a way that you can play well. So that's the Play it With Confidence Intensive. Use the link in the show notes or just go to harpmastery.com confidence and we'll get you signed up and on your way. So enough about that. Let's get back to talking about these etudes. I think we have to start our discussion with the definition of an etude. After all, if you're going to use your piece as an etude, you need to know exactly what an etude does, right? And what the value of it is, because that's the value we're looking for when we work on these passages. So remember that I consider an etude a missing link. It's that bridge in between the drills and exercises we do and the music that we play. And if you're not doing exercises, then it truly is the missing link. Right? But we want it to bridge that so that when you're doing your scales, your arpeggios, your chords, whatever exercises you do, those are great because they're working on those skills in isolation. They're working on those skills very, very specifically and with no other musical distraction, right? Very few notes to worry about. The patterns are easy. It's all about making your fingers, your mechanics, making everything work properly. And then on the other hand, there's real music, right? This is on the other side of that etude bridge where real music is. The music part is complex, and we're just hoping that we have our technique developed enough to serve the music. Sure, there are tricky spots and, you know, convolutions that happen in every piece of music that are a little bit different. But the more developed our technique is, the more we are able to, you know, ride through those moments without too much fuss. So the etude is the thing that it's like the testing ground, right? We're going to move away from the rigid repetition of an exercise that, you know, hones and works on one particular technical skill, and we're going to add some variety to that. We're going to add some different notes, we're going to add some rhythms, we're going to add connections from those patterns that we're working on, perhaps to other notes. We're going to add two handedness, right, where the two hands are doing different things. So the etude brings in those other elements, but in a limited way. It's not full blown music. I mean, there are concert etudes, of course, that are. But a regular. Well, let's test out this skill. Kind of etude is, okay, it sounds pretty musical and it can sound charming and lovely, but really it's about putting that particular technical skill to the test and adding a little bit of complication to see how it's going to work in a musical context. Have you developed the skill enough? What else do you need to know? What other complications may happen when you try to put it into the midst of a real piece. That word was in air quotes, in case you couldn't hear it. So that's the etude, right? It's testing that skill in all those different ways. In an etude, musicality is important because that's what separates an etude from an exercise. So if you're taking a passage out of your piece and you're just playing it ten times through as part of your warm up, that doesn't really make it an etude and it doesn't give it the true value that an etude has. It's more like an exercise or a drill at that point. So just plain repetition is not an etud. An exercise, perhaps. Useful, definitely. If you've got a challenging passage, that's going to be great for you. Using it as a warm up is terrific, but let's not call that an etude. Using a piece or passage as an etude doesn't mean just playing it every day or playing it slowly 10 times while you're thinking about your technique. Remember, the purpose of an etude is to take that skill and put it into a musical, well, a more or less musical context. So it's a combination of three things. It's a combination of drill, like you would do in an exercise. Right? We're working on that single skill, but variation on that drill and musical expression. So those three things, drill, variation and expression, are the three ingredients in any etude. We're taking that single exercise, that single skill. Maybe it's three note arpeggios, and we're going to take those three note arpeggios and we're going to put them in, we're going to make them into a piece of music and we'll have them going up and going down and going in different finger patterns. So we're going to add some variation to that and then we're going to make it a little bit musical and we'll add some expression to it and some musical meaning as well. So drill, variation and expression are the three things that an etude combines to help it bridge that little gap between, oh, yes, I'm working on scales and arpeggios and patterns and, oh, now I'm playing an entire piece of music. So. All right, from here I think you can see where we're going. Right. If drill, variation and expression are the three things that are important in an etude, then for any passage that you want to work on, or any piece that you're working on, to really, truly work like an etude, it needs to incorporate those three Technical precision, which is the drill part for your fingers, variation, which will help your fingers be flexible and give you practice at practice recognizing and reading that pattern as you play, and a musical context which will help you make that skill flow and incorporate it seamlessly into the piece. All right, so with that much stated up front, the next question becomes, well, how do we do this? So the how is easier than you might be thinking. And you've probably already either done it or experienced it by having a teacher or a coach do it with you. So let's talk about those. Those methods for how to turn that piece or passage into an etude the right way. So we're starting with the technical aspect, the fingers, the drill. And so that passage, whether it's two bars, one bar, four bars, whatever it, you're going to find a finger combination in there that is going to require some specific technical skill. And it may just be that the fingering is a little bit tricky. It may be that it's a particular pattern that isn't easy for you, but that's enough. Right, so there's the isolating of the technique. Then we're going to start varying what that passage has that we're going to add some variation to the way that skill is presented, presented in the music. We're going to work on it with different metric patterns, different rhythm patterns, different emphasis. Maybe play it higher or lower on the harp, maybe in a different key. We might try some different finger spacing or a different sequence of fingers. And looking at different connections in and out of the pattern, we might even try it in both hands. Suppose it's a right hand pattern that's giving your right hand trouble. Well, have your left hand learn it too. Right? That's part of this. So there are different ways to create variations. We'll get more specific here in a second. And then we're looking to add more musical context. We're looking to work at the flow of that passage, which is, of course, what you're trying to do, right? You want that passage to go smoothly. And so we're going to play with some of the elements of that. We're not just trying to get it to go right exactly the way it's going to be in the piece. We want the challenge of that passage to be deeper ingrained in that than that. We want it to be more part of us so that when something similar, even if it's not exactly the same, shows up in another piece, our fingers kind of go, oh, yeah, okay, I've done this before. So we're going to create different musical ideas around that pattern, around those two measures or four measures or whatever it is. We might change up the dynamics, we might change the pacing so that maybe we do it with an accelerando or a retardando. We're going to change up the tone, maybe a full sound or a lighter sound, the articulation, maybe we'll make it very legato and smooth, and then try it more accented and a little bit crisper. Well, try it at different speeds. Change the tempo fast, you know, allegro, andante, largo. Right. Play it at different tempo so that you know that you can control that technique in different ways. So it's not just about playing this the same way 10 times. We're going to play it maybe 10 different ways, and that should be interesting, it should be creative. And it's going to really benefit your. Your fingers and everything else that goes with it. So it's going to really secure that passage. So let's go just a little bit deeper here. You're going to start by deciding on that passage in your piece. Which measure? Which two measures. Maybe it's an entire pattern that. That goes through the whole piece. Something like Little Fountain, where there are all those descending arpeggios. And you think, wow, my arpeggios really aren't even well. So take a couple of measures, two measures, four measures, whatever, and drill those notes slowly for technique. Now, this is probably the part you're already doing, right? You got this. But that's only the drill part, and we have to make it more like an etude. So the drill, drilling those notes slowly for technique, that's where we start. Sure. But then we're going to create some variations. One of the ways that we do this very often is by creating rhythms. So if you have those descending arpeggios, like for Little Fountain, maybe you're going to do those arpeggios in rhythms like a long, short rhythm. So instead of da da, da, da da, da, da da, you're going to do da buddy, bada, bada. It's a variation that's going to help you learn those notes a little bit better and help your fingers respond to them in a different way. There are plenty of different metric patterns you can do different rhythms that you can do. And in fact, there are seven that I use all the time, and you can check those out. I think I've got YouTube videos and stuff that refer to them. Not all of them work for every piece. But the long, short rhythm is a go to One. One that works for just about everything. You can try it in a different key. All right, so those little fountain arpeggios work really well in F major, but what if you played them in G major? What if you played them in E flat major? What if you played them in C major? Think how much you could get out of something like that just by trying those. That same pattern in a different key. Talk about triple duty, right? You're not just working on that passage. You're not just creating an etude here, but you're also working on some of your musicianship as well. Ooh, I like that.

Now, if you have the right kind of passage that you're working on, you could try switching the hands. Have the right hand play the left hand part and the left hand play the right hand part. That may not be the technique I would choose for something like those downward arpeggios in the. In the little fountain, but it would work really well for a lot of other kinds of passages where your left hand has one sort of accompaniment pattern and your right hand's trying to play a melody with that. Well, certainly work on it that way. But then switch hands, play it higher on the harp, play it lower on the harp. All of those are really great variations. You could. If the. If the piece were in major, you could try playing it in minor, just to vary things for your ears. It's amazing when you switch keys, especially switching modes from major to minor, all of a sudden it's way harder to play those notes, and you have to focus on them in a different way, which is great for learning and securing those notes. Don't worry that it's going to mix you up eventually. It's going to make things a lot more secure for you. And the information that you have is going to be deeper about that passage, and your knowledge of it is going to be deeper and stronger. So don't let that momentary confusion worry you. Then you're going to. In addition to that, after, you know, you've drilled it for technique, you've created those variations, then you get to go for the flow. So create musical changes that are related to expression. So you can alter the dynamics, the tempo, your tone, all those things I mentioned a moment ago. But be sure also to work the transitions in and out of that passage. We want to get those connectors right, so that if you're working on, you know, four bars in the middle of something, be sure that you also work on that, on getting into it from the measure before and getting out of it into the next measure, so that you are putting that passage in its context. And of course, you can practice the regular musical context, the one that you want. But once again, don't be afraid to create variations, to create changes, because those changes are what builds in the unshakable sort of security. So you'll know it so much better, trust me. So, yes, this is about repetition, but it's not about doing the same thing over and over. We could call it rotating repetitions. Right? So you're going to practice those same skills, but they're not going to all respond to the same drills. So you're going to be working on, you know, the, the kinds of drills that do the right sort of stuff. But you know, the, the drills, you know, well, is a better way to put that. So you're going to be working on, okay, I'm going to play loud and slowly. I'm going to be very specific with my technique. I'm going to do all those things that I know how to do, and then I'm going to try these other things because that's where some of this in depth learning happens. So let me walk you through an example here at the harp. I've been talking to you about the little fountain. So why don't we use the first few measures of that? This is a piece by Samuel Pratt and it's a favorite of harpists. Whether you're a lever harpist or a pedal harpist. It's just a wonderful piece and it's got those lovely rippling arpeggios.

Right? Very fountain like, unless they don't work for you. So we can make this into a terrific etude and let's talk about some ways to do that. So of course it's great to start with.

Very slow, even practice. This is the kind of drill that we do that's just important, but perhaps a little bit mind numbing.

But it gives you a chance to check all your mechanics, making sure your fingers are curved, that they're closing, that you're sitting properly, all that good stuff. And you can work through all the first four bars like that. But what if you wanted to try a different pattern? Maybe you've discovered that one of your fingers is a little weak and it might be your third finger. Well, you could play that same pattern, but accenting your third finger like this.

Etcetera.

See how that could help develop your third finger just a little bit. It's a variation. And what about working in a different rhythm? I told you before about the long, short rhythm, but a pattern like this. I sometimes like practicing in something a little fancier of a triplet rhythm, like 1, 2 and 3. 1, 2 and 3. 1st, 2 and 3, 1, 2.

You'll discover very quickly which ones of your fingers don't like to play in that kind of rhythm. So good for your technique, for sure. And of course, in a pattern like this, placing is always important. So working these patterns in chords.

Right hand, then left hand, right hand, then left hand, right hand, then left hand.

Always useful. Or you can even practice playing them hands together.

It's a great way to be sure that you're placing all those notes exactly at the same time when you're supposed to be that your placing is secure and not frantic, but nice and calm. It's a great way to do that. But having practiced this quite slowly with that lovely full sound. Right. Maybe a great variation for you, because you want to speed it up, is to also try it slow and fast with absolutely no accents. Very, very even. And make it soft, you know, very soft. Soft and fast.

And see how your fingers respond to that. Right. Then we can try some different dynamics. We could try taking those first four bars and maybe doing one of those lovely hairpin dynamics. Make a crescendo through the first two bars and a decrescendo through the second two bars. Now, of course, if that's what you're doing already, maybe you want to turn those dynamics around and do them the other way. But I would pick a medium tempo for this. We're starting softly, we're crescendoing as we go.

There's our loud point. And now we'll start our decrescendo.

Not too much too soon. We still have another measure to go.

This works on your control. It's a great way to make sure that you can make your dynamics very even and smooth as you play them. And I talked to you about sort of messing with the key. Now, granted, we could transpose this whole thing and take those patterns and put them in another key. But sometimes it's fun just to mess with the accidentals. And so I'm going to add an A flat in here. And it's just going to sound very, very different. So I'm testing my fingers. I'm going to play a little on the fast side, so I'm testing my fingers. But I'm also sort of testing my concentration because it now doesn't sound the way it used to.

Kind of an interesting little piece that way, isn't it? And you could keep going and adding more accidentals just to mix up your ear even more, you could add an F sharp to it. This is going to sound very odd.

Ooh, Very mysterious. Yes.

That'S a scary little fountain. But it gives you a chance to really work at separating out what you need to know and what you already know and know well. So that's certainly thought.

There are lots of things that you can do with this. So there are lots of alternatives, lots of great ways to. Great ways to practice. And of course, you could practice different accents, you could practice different rhythm patterns, you could practice more chords, you could practice it in a different key. But doing 10 repetitions that aren't repeating each other is going to be a really strong way to practice this. And it's going to give you more of that etude effect, right where you're working not just at the notes, but that. But at a different musical context as well. Endless ways to create variations here. If you know the Waltz of the Flowers cadenza, maybe you worked through the cadenza challenge with me last year. This is exactly how I built that challenge. Those arpeggios are very similar in some ways to the. To the arpeggios in the little fountain here. And that's exactly what we did. We took out those skills, we put them all back together and created an etude from that little cadenza. So. Well, it's not so little, really. Exactly. So if you're looking for those steps, choose your passage. Four bars, two bars. Don't make it too long. And mark that passage. And be sure to mark also one bar, one measure on either side of that passage, because we want to be sure to connect it. Then analyze that passage and decide what you're going to do. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want your arpeggios to be smoother or faster? Are you looking for more secure notes, more secure fingering? Yes, to all of those. Well, you can do all of those things, but they're likely going to require different sorts of drill, which is why you're making your repetitions different. That's. Your variations are going to be helpful. So that's what you're looking for. Choose your passage, analyze, decide, and then create your etude. Boom. That's how to use a piece or a passage as an etude. I realize that thinking about your music and your practice this way may be new to you. You may not have had the kind of detailed instruction that told you how to do these things before, and that's great, but because now. Now you do. You have that information. But the thing is that There are lots of those sort of insider bits of information that are so important and that make it possible for those, you know, really amazing harpists to play the way they do. You don't have to aspire to be a really amazing harpist the way they are, whoever they happen to be in your world. But I know you want to be the most amazing harpist you can be in your own way. And that's what I'm trying to help everybody do. Help you do in the Play It With Confidence Intensive. It's about your music and preparing it the right way so that you have all those potholes filled, you have all those boxes checked and your music is really prepared, that you know it's ready, that you've practiced playing it. It's a different kind of practice, right? And that you're able to play past your mistakes and you're able to create that seamless flow that makes your music feel so good to you and of course, sound great to everybody else. And this is about giving you the confidence, figuring out the, the foundation for your confidence, understanding where it comes from, and feeling good about sharing your music. So know you can share it in a way that is meaningful, not just to other people, but meaningful to you too. That's why we're in this, to play our music. So I urge you to sign up for the Play It With Confidence intensive. If you go to that intensive signup page, which is heartmastery.com confidence, you will see that I have jam packed a lot of stuff into this course. Lots of bonuses, stuff that, that is gonna be so helpful to you, not just here in the short term, but that you're going to be able to take away and apply to any piece that you want to play anywhere, anytime, for anyone. So that's, it's, it's going to be a great course. I'm looking forward to getting to work with you live. No videos. We'll get to talk to each other, unlike we get to do here on the podcast. So please go and sign up. It's happening very soon. Harpmastery.com Confidence I look forward to seeing you there on the podcast. Next week we're going to be talking about three better ways to practice ditch those drills. So we're back on the repetition kick again and how to make the repetitions that you need to do in your practice really meaningful. Talking about making them actual rocket fuel for your music, not, you know, mind numbing or frustrating or just plain repetitive. So this has less to do with securing your technique. The way we talked about today and much more about making your music creative, expressive and beautiful too. Right? And correct all of those things. So we're gonna be ditching the drills here on the podcast next week, so be sure to join me then. In the meantime, please 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. All right, 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.