Freedom to Choose - How to Make Any Piece Sound Right - PHH 213

There's a big gap between what I call playing the dots and actually making music, and that's likely the gap that you are experiencing if you feel like you play everything correctly, but it still doesn't sound right.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happ. 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 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 join now. Welcome to the show. Have you ever made something and it turned out okay, but somehow it just didn't look right? Maybe you Thought those two paint colors would go together, but now you're not sure. Or maybe the furniture arrangement in the living room looked great on paper, but it sort of doesn't work now that you see everything in place. Well, I think we've all had those moments. I had one not long ago with a photo I was doing. It wasn't quite right, but since I had to just get it done, all I could do was to shrug and sign off on it, whether it was right or not. But if a piece of music we're working on doesn't sound right, we want to fix it, not forget it. I'm sure you know what I mean. You've been working hard on a piece. You muster up your courage to do a recording of it, and after a lot of takes, you come up with one that you think is pretty good good without noticeable mistakes or hesitations. Then you listen to it and something's not right. Is it too slow? Are you not making. Making the dynamics clear? How come it doesn't sound the way it sounds in your head? This is truly a challenging point because it can be difficult to know the precise things you need to do to make the music sound the way you want. Assuming that the notes and the rhythms are correct and that you're playing reasonably expressively, what else is there? That's the question we're going to answer today. I'm going to identify three things that are essential to make any piece of music sound right. These three are the same whether you're playing a classical piece or a folk piece or a hymn or a pop tune. When each of these things is in place, your piece will sound like you want it to. And the bonus is that you have choices. Every one of us harpists makes these choices, but you may not realize the power behind them. These choices are what makes one harpist's interpretation of a piece sound different from another harpist's. Even though they may both be beautiful performances, my friend, you have the power to make your music sound right to you. All you need to do is is exercise your freedom to choose. Before we get to those choices, though, I want to remind you that our 2025 Super Summertime challenge is going in the Hub. So this is a weekly challenge, just something simple, a little prompt to. To add some summertime interest to your practice. Something fun to do that's just a little bit different. Because in summertime, we have the. The opportunity to do things just a little differently. Things are a little slower, a little more relaxed, and it's fun to be able to explore just a little bit. So this summertime challenge is in the Harp Mastery Hub. So when you go to the Hub, you have to go to the challenges section, and you'll see this week's mini challenge. There are mini challenges all the way through the middle of August, one each week. Now, I realize you might not be at your harp every week. That's okay. You can always, you know, know, keep on going and do a couple in one week if you need to, if you want to catch up. And here's why you might want to do that. At the end of the challenge when all those mini challenges are done, I'm going to be looking at the names of everyone who participated each week of the challenge. So this is why, when you do the challenge for that particular week, that little mini challenge, you need to post in the Hub so that we can see that you have. Have done what you were supposed to do. And everyone who does all of the challenge weeks will be entered in a drawing for a Harp Mastery surprise box. A little box of Harp Mastery and harp goodies. So that's. That's the deal. Just a little incentive to keep you going. Now, because this challenge is in the Hub, you will need to be a Hub member. It's totally free to join the Hub, and the people in the Hub are generally the first to know about all. All the new things that might be coming up at Heart Mastery. So it's great. It's easy to do. You can sign up, you can find the link in the show notes, or you can just go to harpmastery.com or even easier, you can sign up with the app. So downloading the app is a super easy way to participate in the challenge and to be a member of the Hub. So you want to be sure you have the app, be sure you belong to the Hub, and then get over there and start participating in the challenge. It's fun. Absolutely. We had a lot of fun with this last year, and I know you'll have fun with it this year as well. Just a little bit different. I've mixed things up just a little bit, so not quite the same thing. And. And I'm sure you'll enjoy it, at least I certainly hope so. Before we start talking about the three ways to make any piece sound right and we get into those little nitty gritty details, I want you to keep this in mind.

This is not about playing the right notes. This is about something that is much more intrinsic to the music than that. I mean, it is possible to play everything right to Play all the right notes and the right dynamics and still have the piece not sound the way you want it to, to not sound musical in the way that you want, to not sound expressive in the way that you want. Magic happens someplace between the notes on the page and the performance that we're hearing. There's some sort of alchemy, some sort of thing that is a little bit mysterious, although we're going to demystify some of that today. But the dots on the page don't make music. They tell you what you need to do in order to make the music, but they don't make the music by themselves. There's a big gap between what I call playing the dots and actually making music. And that's likely the gap that you are experiencing if you feel like you play everything correctly, but it still doesn't sound right. So that's what we're talking about. We're going to let go of the dots for right now and realize that the answer to making something sound right may not actually be on the page. To make the kind of choices we're talking about. You can't just use your eyes. You can't just practice your way out of it. You actually need to look for the choices you. In the music itself. What the music is about, what it says to you, and what you want it to say to someone else. Now, I'd like you to think about this statement and think about writing it down someplace and reminding yourself about it. Because in your practice, every time you start to go back to just practicing the notes or just looking at the numbers, whether they're fingering numbers or tempo numbers or just getting all worked up in the dots, I want you to remind yourself that this is about the music, not the dots. Okay? That's the premise that we're starting from. And if you can release yourself just a little bit and remember that we're letting go of the tyranny of the dots, then we are ready to start with the first essential thing that might just do the trick and make your piece sound right. And that's tempo. This is probably not a surprise to you. You've probably played with this and you've probably tried to reconcile yourself to, oh, I'll never get to the number on the page, or maybe the tempo isn't a problem. It just doesn't sound like maybe the right tempo. All right, I want to give you a different way to think about tempo. Tempo doesn't have to be a number. It can be an idea. And if you want some proof, if you want a little bit of reinforcement for that sort of thought? I mean, it may sound good to you up front, right? Oh, yeah. Okay. Tempo doesn't have to be a number. Tempo is an idea. Well, think about this. Scroll through YouTube, scroll through any number of videos of the same piece and. And listen to it played by different professional harpists. I mean, you don't have to compare a student video because we don't want your music to sound like a student. Right. We want it to sound right, whatever that means. So we're going to look at videos that are by different professional harpists. I guarantee they're not all going to be at the same tempo. They don't have to be, because this is what makes this particular piece sound different. When harpist A plays it, and when harpist B plays it, and when harpist C plays it, they do different things with it. And part of what they do differently is tempo. So the first thing I want you to do is to remember that you don't have to meet the number that's on the page, or at least very rarely. I'll tell you a story about that. Now, composers have been putting metronome markings in their music for a couple hundred years. Beethoven is credited as being the first composer to include metronome markings in his music, and that was in something around 1815. So it's been a long time. But even so, sometimes there's a lot of play. In other words, sometimes the composer is a little bit more flexible on tempo and than other times. And I wanted to tell you about a time when the composer was not flexible. So I was part of a chamber music group, and we were playing a piece by a composer, and the composer was conducting. So this was, you know, a contemporary work, and it was quite difficult and very, very fast. So I spent quite a bit of time preparing my part because I knew that tempo was going to be an issue. I had to be able to play it at the indicated tempo. This is part of what you do as an ensemble player, right? You make sure that you can keep up with everybody else. So this is what I was doing, and I was assuming, of course, that everybody else was doing it too. But we got into rehearsal and some of the parts were even more difficult than mine, and the players were having trouble keeping up with the tempo the composer wanted to do. So we only had a couple of rehearsals on this piece before we were going to play it, but. And someplace in the second rehearsal, the composer said, I'm sorry, but we can't play this piece fast. Enough to suit me, and I don't want to conduct it. We're going to put something else on the program. Well, of course, that felt terrible to the people who had not prepared the piece at tempo, who couldn't play it that fast for whatever reason. And that was really an embarrassing moment. But this was the composer knowing how he wanted that piece to go. And frankly, it could have been any conductor knowing how fast they wanted a particular piece to go. So this is why it's important to prepare properly for something like that. But if you're playing a solo, everything is a little bit different. Your job as a performer is not necessarily to meet that metronome marking, particularly if it's just going to be too fast for you. Your job as a performer is going to be to convey the idea or your version of the idea of the music. Think about something like a minuet. There can be very slow minuets. Dum da da da, 1, 2 and 3. There can be pretty peppy minuets. 1, 2 and 3. 1, 2 and 3 different ideas. So if you are playing a minuet and there's no metronome marking, then, you know, you get to decide maybe there is a tempo indication. One of those beautiful Italian words, allegretto, or what I love for a minuet, is when you get to a piece that says, as its tempo indication, tempo di minueto, the tempo of a minuet. Well, that's not very helpful, is it? So there isn't always a good guide. Now, of course, you can use other people's recordings as a reference guide, but it's likely that if you research a number of recordings, as I was mentioning earlier, you'll find different ideas about the tempo. So how do you make a piece sound right if you can't play the metronome mark that's printed at the top? That's the question we want to answer. Because if you can't play it that fast, then trying to play it that fast isn't going to sound right either. It's going to be messy. It's going to have hesitations and stumbles, and that's not the best representation for that music. So I think that if you don't want to, or you can't play the piece at an indicated metronome marking, then you need to have an idea. I'm using that word a lot today. An idea of what the music is supposed to. To sound like. Think about a piece that is called something like, oh, the babbling brook. Well, all right. We realize that if we Play the piece too slowly. Our brook isn't going to babble. It's going to be more like a stagnant pond. So it has to sort of have a minimal amount of rhythmic flow to it so that we get the idea of a babbling brook, but it also doesn't have to be a raging torrent. And so if that metronome marking for the composer's version of the babbling brook is too fast for you, find one that works for you but still lets the piece sound like a babbling brook. If you're trying to find the ideal tempo, it might be helpful to start from your comfy tempo and, and see what that sounds like. Do a quick recording of a part of the piece with you playing at a tempo that's really comfortable for you to play and see how slow that sounds. See if it sounds really too slow, then see what your fastest tempo sounds like and see where that range is. Does it. Could it be someplace in the middle? That's one way to start. There's another sort of high tech way that might be interesting. If you have a recording of the piece, even a recording of you playing the piece, you can use an app like the Amazing Slow Downer app, and you can actually speed it up rather than slow it down. And you can say, all right, this is where I'm playing it and how fast could I. Could I move the needle? Literally, how fast could I turn this up to where it's still manageable for me, but it sounds right and you can find your tempo that way. It's kind of fun to put with, you know, just speeding up the recording and saying, oh, okay, look, I only have to go a few metronome notches faster and it will flow. It's really interesting to listen to the difference. Even if you don't use the app and you just do your own recordings. To hear how a piece sounds at one tempo and then at another, it can still be that piece even though the tempo is different. And if you want one example, maybe you are a classic rock fan, maybe you know the Eric Clapton song Layla. Well, when he first recorded it, it was a pretty energetic sort of, you know, high pumping kind of song. And then he re recorded it decades later as a very slow ballad. And there were people who were up in arms at the. The slower version. Well, that's not how the piece goes. Well, frankly, it's his piece, so he can decide how it goes. But I think it's really interesting and speaks to the musical aesthetics of composers everywhere. Because he composed this song that he was open to experimenting with a different version of that song. So please use that as a touch point to remember that. Okay, I have permission to make this my own. I have permission to choose. So tempo is not a number. It's an idea. It just has to reflect the musical idea of the piece. Now let's move on to the second quality that helps music sound, right? And it's closely related to tempo, and that's flow. Naturally, tempo is a part of the flow of any piece. It's the pace of the piece and that relates to its flow. But every piece has its own particular flow that is beyond the tempo. Is it a piece that requires a steady and rhythmic playing? Like perhaps a baroque piece? You know, think about the Handel concerto, right? It's very rhythmic. There's not a lot of tempo variation. It just winds itself up and goes just like a little mechanical clock almost.

But on the other hand, there are pieces by composers like Debussy and Ravel that are much more fluid and have much more give and take. They have rubato, they have all kinds of little slowdowns and speed ups in the piece. So there's a lot that goes along with it. And it's much less metronomic than a baroque piece. But it's not just about the historic periods here. It's really about any particular piece. What is necessary to make that piece sound right? Should it be steady and rhythmic? Well, great. Then that's what you have to do. And if you try to make it too expressive, it's not going to sound right. What happens more often, of course, is it's one of those romantic sort of pieces. Maybe something from the 19th century, or maybe something from the turn of the 20th century, like Debussy or maybe something later. Could be a pop song. It's more fluid, it's more romantic, it's got more give and take. And if you try to play that with that steady and rhythmic pulse, it's not going to sound right. This is where you need to do just a little bit of imagining. Now you can do some listening research to see what other people do. Oh, listen, that person slows down there. I didn't think about that. Realize too that not all of that rubato will be written in the music. Sometimes composers tell us, oh, we want a little retard here. We want to go back to tempo. But oftentimes that's not there. And it's up to us to make those decisions, those choices. So you need to know a little bit about what you're playing and about how it goes. And that will help you decide exactly how much play you can put in the piece. Is it going to be steady? Is it going to be fluid? Is it going to have that give and take to it? Or is it going to be much more metronomic and steady? This is part of what gives a piece its personality. And you need to be prepared to switch those pieces personalities for yourself from piece to piece so that you know that you're doing just the right sort of thing for that particular piece. It's like putting on a different hat. I'm going to put on my steady, rhythmic, metronomic hat, or I'm going to put on my very fancy, fluid, flowing hat. It's about your intention, because your intention for that flow is going to come through in what you play as long as you remember to practice it. So you need to do a little bit of research perhaps, or just think about how the piece should go. You know more than you think. You don't need to do a lot of research. You don't need to ask somebody. It might help you just to feel more confident in your choices. But I'm pretty confident that your own musical taste is going to be your guide here. So make the choice and then stick with it. And make sure that that's what you're practicing and that's the way you're playing will help your piece sound right. The third ingredient in making your piece sound right is color. Color is really about articulation and about sound. It's about your idea of the piece again, what you want the piece to say, what you want it to sound like, and making all the details of playing support that. It's not just notes, it's not just dynamics. It can be, and very often is, about the chords in a piece. If your piece has chords, should they be rolled or should they be not rolled? And if some of them should be rolled, should all of them be rolled? If you have a very quick piece that is very rhythmic, maybe you don't want to roll the chords. But if you have a piece that is much more romantic, again, much more, oh, melancholy, perhaps even then you want to roll the chords. Now, that's not to say that rolling cords is melancholy, but remember, rolling cords is what harps do. We roll chords. And in fact, for most pieces, particularly for pieces written before 1950, just to choose an arbitrary date.

A harp chord, whether it's marked to be rolled or not, is probably rolled. That's our default. You don't need to play flat chords, just because there's not a roll marking there. I was working with a student the other day on the theme for the Minstrel's Adieu to His Native Land by John Thomas. And in the printed version of the theme, John Thomas shows some chords marked with a roll marking. You know, that little squiggly line. And others not the big squiggly line. Chords are going to be bigger rolls. These are going to be very sentimental kinds of things. They're part of the expression of the piece. And maybe that's why I used the word melancholy a moment ago. I was thinking about this piece and thinking about the way those chords almost sound like a sigh, right? Like.

If you know the piece. If you don't, it's a wonderful piece to listen to, and I would urge you to check it out. So some of those chords are marked rolled. But that doesn't mean that the other chords shouldn't be rolled. It would be unlikely for John Thomas, living, when he did, to think about playing every other chord that didn't have a roll marking, to play all those other chords flat. That would be extremely unlikely. Harpists roll chords. So even when they're not marked rolled, you can think about rolling them. Unless the composer has specifically told you not to roll it. Then you have some direction there. Go ahead and roll the chords. And whether you roll them slowly or quickly is another expressive technique that will give the piece its color. So in terms of making a piece sound right, think about. If you're playing all the chords for one of these romantic pieces without rolling them, you're missing out on part of the romantic color of the harp. Rolling those chords is going to be so important in making this piece sound romantic and sound right. And then, of course, there's articulation. If you're playing a romantic piece you want, you're playing on the strings. And to be more relaxed, not to have very clear definition to the beginning. We don't want it to sound like. We want it to sound like ba, ba, ba, ba. And the way you play the string is what makes the difference in that kind of sound. Do you want the piece to sound crisp? Do you want it to sound mellow? Do you want it to sound sprightly? Or do you want it to sound calm? So the articulation, the way you use your fingers, the kind of sound that you get is going to be important if you want to make the piece sound right. So let's review our three factors again. There's tempo and there's flow, and there's color. I Know, tempo is a big one because I'm always getting questions about how fast this piece should go. And just remember that almost always there's more leeway in the tempo than you think. And then think in terms of flow, not just the mechanical flow that we talk about, getting all the notes to flow in steady tempo and not do hesitations or stumbles, but in terms of the flow that is important for that particular piece. And should it be steady, should it be more metronomic, or should it be more relaxed? And likely there are different places in the piece where you're going to want one or the other, but that's part of what makes a piece sound, right? And then remembering to listen to how you're using your fingers, how you're articulating the sound, are you giving a very sharp attack that would be more suited to a jig than a romance? How you use your fingers is important. And we talked about rolling chords. That's one of my big things. I love to hear harp. Harpists roll chords. It's part of what we do. Don't forget to use that as part of your expressive palette.

Now, one last thing. I want you to know that as you're making these choices, you're going to feel more confident about your choices. If you feel like you can explain them, you know, like, oh, okay, so my tempo is slower than it's printed, but I still think I get the feel of the babbling brook. Too slow. I realize it's not going to babble, but I can't play it that way. But if I bring the tempo back to a little bit slower, where I can actually play it, then all the notes will come out, and I'll have time to think about the dynamics and the other expression, the color and the flow that I want to put with it. So you can do so much with these things. Just think about why you're making the choices, because you can. And I'm going to remind you one last time that you are going to remind yourself when you get into one of those places and you're not sure why your piece doesn't sound right. It's not about the dots. It's about the music. You're going to remember that, right? Not about the dots. Okay. All right. I know I've said that one enough for today. Next week on the podcast, we're talking about something completely different. We're talking about using your vacation or even your staycation to recover from burnout. I mean, summer is supposed to be a time to refresh. But do you know when it comes to your heart playing how to do it guilt free and how to do it right. Well, that's what we're going to be talking about on the podcast next week. Remember, our Super Summertime Challenge is happening in the hub all summer long and you can join at any time. But get in there and join today. And remember, if you do all the mini challenges, and that doesn't mean just doing them, you have to let us know by posting in the hub. In the post for that mini challenge, all the directions are there. It's pretty easy. But you have to remember to post what you did and just follow the directions. And if you do, every week, you will be entered for the drawing for our basket of Heart Mastery goodies. Could be a basket, could be a box. I'm not sure. Haven't decided on that one yet. All right, so Summertime Challenge happening now and I hope that you are enjoying a fun summertime. Or if you're not in the Northern hemisphere, that's okay too. I will look forward to talking to you next week. And 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. 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.