Hands in the Air: Raising and the Art of Letting Go - PHH 066

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I, although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show.

Let's start with this form follows function. Now, I expect you're familiar with that idea, but you may not know the entire context. The phrase form follows function is a vast simplification of an idea put forth by architect Louis Sullivan, mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright. And this was in his 1896 article titled the Tall Office Building Artistically Considered. So, working from an idea of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius that a building should be solid, useful and beautiful, Sullivan developed his overriding philosophy, what he called the single rule that shall permit of no exception. Now, this was his complete statement.

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight or the open apple blossom, the toiling workhorse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds over all the coursing sun. Form ever follows function. And this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills remain for ages. The lightning lives, comes into shape and dies in a twinkling. It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all things, all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

Wow, that's something, isn't it? Those are profound thoughts. And today we are going to apply those thoughts not to the oak, the clouds, or the cosmos, but but to the harp. Specifically, to one of the more confusing aspects of harp technique, the technique of raising. Now, what you do with your hands after you play a string or a scale or a chord is just as important as how you place your fingers before you play and how you move your fingers when you play. It's the follow through that makes a huge difference in your sound. It also affects your ability to move around the harp quickly and helps you stay relaxed while you play. Now there are many schools of thought on how to raise. And on today's show I'll try to get to the heart of the matter why we raise. Because once you understand the why, the true function of raising, the gesture itself follows naturally. Get it? Like form follows function. Now I'll also give you a really simple formula to help you practice the perfect raise, even if you've never felt comfortable raising before.

I also want to let you know that coaching enrollment opens today. That would be today, Monday, August 22nd. It's going to close on Monday, September 12th, unless we fill our coaching spots sooner. And that has happened before, so. So you might want to jump on your enrollment and your registration sooner rather than later. The coaching session itself starts September 19th. That will be the week of the first lessons. Now think about this in terms of the idea we're talking about today, that Louis Sullivan idea that a building should be solid, useful and beaut.

Well, think about that in terms of your harp playing, right? So many things go into making your harp playing beautiful. And the wealth of knowledge and experience that our coaches bring to their work with their students can help you build that solid foundation that's going to make your playing beautiful. Now we're introducing something new to our program this session as well. We're going to be introducing two great group calls so that the students can get to know each other just a little bit better. So that there's just a little bit more opportunity for, for sharing among the coaching students. So that's going to be fun. They're, you know, just little social get together calls. But it's going to be, it's going to be a nice addition to the program, I'm sure. So you will find all the information that you need to to register for this coaching session right on heartmastery.com probably the easiest way is to use the link in the show notes for this episode. But you'll find the direct link@heartmastery.com coaching or you can look for the coaching page under the heading our programs on the website. So jump on in if you've ever thought about coaching, this is the best time to do it. While you're fresh with the energy of you know that that autumn brings. You're rested, relaxed. After summer, you're ready to start on something new. And our coaching is designed to help you achieve your goals, not just work on the same thing over and over again, but make a difference in your playing. And I encourage you to hop on over to that webpage and read all about it. So, without further ado, let's get back to our form follows function topic for today and start talking about raising. What is a raise? I mean, what do we mean when we're talking about raising? It sounds like we're talking about something that we do. And this is true. But in order to work with this whole form follows function thing, I want you to think about what we usually think of when we think of raising. We think of the gesture that we see, right? You see someone raise, and we've seen lots of different kinds of raises. At least I have, and I expect you have too. We've seen raising that looks very minimal, just a gentle release from the strings. We've seen raising that goes up, raising that goes down, raising that goes out, raising that is very small, or raising that's very flamboyant, buoyant, and a huge gesture. But the gesture that we see is not necessarily the whole point of raising. While raising can look beautiful, that's not the only idea. The raise needs to have a function. It needs to have a purpose. And it does. In fact, it has a few. And the beauty of the gesture itself is really just the smallest part. Now, the harpist Carlos Salzaido, when he started his method, which was a departure from the French method that he was learning.

He was studying at the Paris Conservatory with Hasselmann, and.

He was learning one method, but he wanted to revolutionize harp playing in his own particular way. And so he devised his own method, and he had a very specific system of raising. And you might have seen this. And it's done in the Salzido technique. It's always an upward raise. And there are several different expressions and versions of it. But when he first wrote about it in the method book that he did with Lucille Lawrence, he called it the aesthetic gesture. And while I think the aesthetics of it were truly important to Salzido, and I think that they have important meaning for all of us, whether we're Salzido method players or not, I don't think, and this may be heresy, but I don't think that the aesthetic of it was the primary function, even for Salzato, of raising. And certainly having studied with a student of his and done some, you know, quite a bit of reading and research on this, I don't think the aesthetics of it were the primary purpose For Salzedo, he was too much of a musician for that. So think about it this way. Now, Salzido was a person who worked with dancers. He, you know, in his circle of friends and acquaintances were people like Nijinsky and Martha Graham. I mean, the aesthetics, the ergonomics, even of the physical movement that's required to play the harp, these were very important to him and became part of his method. So when it came to raising, to the release from the string, the aesthetic was important. But in Salzedo's world, the. The aesthetic was not separate from the musicality of it. It was part of the expression of the musicality. And that's why you'll see Salzido trained players doing very different kinds of raises at very different times. So the aesthetic is part of it. But I believe that even the aesthetic, when you're considering the aesthetic, rather the gesture itself is following the purpose for it. The gesture. The. That the gesture looks one way or another is because the music requires it to. It's a visual expression of what the music conveys. Now, that's in Salzetto method, and he had his own specific way of doing it. But I'd like to really talk today about raising in more generic, general terms that would transcend disputes and differences between methods. As I'm referring to different methods, don't think that I'm advocating one over another. It's just that they all have so much to add to this discussion. The fact is that whatever method you play, or even if you're not sure that you play any method at all, raising is important. And here is why. This is the essential function of raising. The essential function of raising is that it affects our sound. It can prolong the sound. It can make the sound that make the tone richer, make it travel further, make it last longer. It's all about the sound. That's the primary function of a raise. Now, think about it from sort of a physics aspect for a moment, right? Sound travels on airwaves. So that if you were to just sit at your harp and play a chord and not move your hand at all.

The sound that would be created is just the sound created by the vibration of the strings.

But if you play that same chord and then move your hand slightly, doesn't even have to be your whole arm, just move your hand slightly, you are adding to that sound by creating more air motion. Now, that's a rather unscientific way to express a pretty scientific principle, but I think you get the idea, right? The movement of air creates the sound so that when we participate in moving the air, we change the sound as well. So we can prolong the sound. We can make the sound sound richer or fuller just by moving our hand. And I would urge you to just do that simple experiment. I'm not going to do it here on the podcast because I'm not sure it would translate well, depending on what device you're going to hear the podcast on. But think about it and try it. Sit at your heart, play a chord, don't move your hand at all. And then play the chord again and raise a little bit. You will hear a difference in sound. I know that when I was a student.

My teacher could be, you know, in another part of the room, and she'd say, oh, you didn't raise that cord. And I always wondered why. How could she know that I hadn't raised the cord when she wasn't even looking? She had her back to me. But as soon as I became a better harpist, a more mature harpist, and certainly when I was teaching, I found out that you can hear when someone raises or not. It makes a big difference in the sound. As soon as you start noticing that, you will understand the essential function of raising. It's a follow through, right? Your golf swing, your tennis swing, all works better when the follow through is there.

The story that I have often told, but not necessarily in this context, is one about when I was taking karate lessons. It was very early in my karate studies that the studio where I was studying had a board breaking evening. And you were going to come and break boards with your hand. And I thought, oh, am I going to hurt myself? And my, my teacher said, no, you will not. And one of them was a guitarist, so I trusted him and he said, no, it's going to be fine. And it was. And it was just so much fun. The, the board was. There was a board and it was set up on top of. In between two big cinder blocks, right? So that the cinder blocks were on each end of the board supporting it. And then we broke it in the middle. And it was fun. And no, it didn't hurt. And it was great. But there was one woman in my class, a much more experienced karate student, but she couldn't break the board. And it was the. It was evident to me as a, as a harpist and a harp teacher at this point, I could see what was happening. And the karate instructors were working with her on this very same thing. Her vision was stopping at the board, so that when she hit the board, that's all she Hit. She didn't follow through.

In the sense of going through the board and beyond it. There was no follow through. And so she was unable to break the board. It was extremely frustrating for her, but it was totally about follow through. And that's what the raise is for us. It is the follow through.

So if that's the essential function of a raise, to prolong the sound.

Then. And this, by the way, I should add here, I'm not just thinking in terms of long notes. You know, like you might want to prolong the sound of a whole note, right? Because, of course, we can't do that the way, you know, a flutist or a violinist could, right, where they can actually make a note last for four beats. Our sound starts decaying as soon as we've played it, but the rays will help to sustain it. But I'm thinking about prolonging the sound in terms of just letting it travel, giving it life. Might even be another way to say that. So if that's the primary function, there is a really important secondary function, and that is that it gives us the opportunity to relax.

It allows us to leave that position right there at the strings to get our hands and arms moving, even if it's just a little bit, and to eliminate stiffness, to keep things supple and relaxed. It also gives us the flexibility to move up and down the harp quickly. Right? It's like a little springboard for moving around the instrument. So it has an important physical function for us as well. It's important to note here, before we go any further, that when we talk about raising, no matter how careful we are, to talk about the function of the raise and why it's there, and to listen to the difference that it makes in our playing. And it's hard to have this discussion without talking about exactly how the various methods talk about raising, how to create the gesture, what the gesture looks like. And the gesture is going to look different based on whatever method you use, or if you're not particularly bound to one method or another, whatever seems to work best for you. Now, I can give you the. The ideas put forth by some of the legendary teachers of the harp. But I want you to remember that for all of them, as specific as some of them got about what that gesture should look like, the point of the. Of the raise was less about the gesture than about the music. So whenever you're practicing raising, whatever that looks like for you, remember that it's not as much about how it looks as it is about how it helps the music. Whether we're talking about prolonging the sound. We're talking about keeping your hand and arm relaxed so that you can keep on playing and keep the music sounding the way you want it to. It's not primarily about how it looks. That being said, we are going to have to talk about.

How it looks just so that we can have a framework for what really will serve the music well and what might not. Now, Henriette Rainier was definitely in the sort of minimalist camp as far as raising goes. Her idea was very, very much after the. The Louis Sullivan idea that you really didn't need to think about what you were going to do gesture wise, because it was all going to flow from the music and that the. The musical demands and how you played the string really dictated, not even dictated, but generated the movement itself.

So that the movement happened as a result of your playing. So the Rainier Method book talks about supple movements of the wrist that are related directly and come directly from the way you're playing a particular passage and whether you're using short, medium or long articulation, which is a matter of interest in the Rainier Method book and worth looking at if you haven't before. But we'll save articulation for another day. Today's all about raising. So when, in Rainier's world, when you're creating, when you're playing a note, any motion comes directly as a result of the way you are playing that string. So there's nothing extra to think about. She has ways to practice this slight, supple movement of the wrist.

Without separating it from your playing. In fact, she goes one step further when she's thinking about this kind of motion. Follow through after the. After you play. And she talks about the motion of the wrist with cooperation of the arm, so that there are times when you're going to want to use more of your forearm to help prolong that sound and to, you know, to create the tone. Tone that you want. But.

It'S a little motion of the wrist with the cooperation of the arm rather than a big gesture. Do you see how she was working with the wording there? It's not about waving your arms around in the air. It's about a subtle motion that is directly the result of your playing. Now, with Salzato, it was a totally different, different thing. Not in terms of the connection between the gesture and the sound, but in terms of the way he described the gesture. First of all, the gestures in Salzado Method are bigger than they would be in Rainier's method and their everything in Salcedo's world was big. And the gesture, the raising, the aesthetic gesture is no different.

But that doesn't mean that it was free for all or that it was as over the top as you will sometimes see people. People doing. It's not flailing about with your arms. It's a rather controlled gesture, considering. And it's about a gesture with your forearm. Your forearm only using your upper arm as a hinge to lift your forearm away from the strings. But once again, that lifting only occurs after you've played the note and would occur in direct proportion to the to the musicality that you want from that note. Is it a long note? Well, then you'll use a slower and slightly bigger gesture, still only coming from the elbow forward. Nothing involving the upper arm, right? And then just that that gesture would be slower and larger for a longer note, shorter, faster, more wrist for a shorter note. So the.

Thinking is not so very different between these two very opposite looking styles. The idea is that the music itself comes first and then the release, which is the word I'm going to use right now. Instead of raise, the release, the follow through after you play the note may look different, but it's only to serve the music that's there. That's the function of raising. Now what I'd like to do right now is just walk you through.

What I was taught were five steps to a perfect raise. Now this, once again, I learned Salzato method. So my raise might look different than yours. But you know what, that's the beauty of a podcast, right? The steps are going to be the same.

And they happen almost instantaneously. Once again, I'm going to use the word release instead of raise. So however your release looks, there are some methods that release by dropping their hands, some that go more outward. The Salzator one goes more up, and the Rainier is very minimal. So, you know, there are different ways to do this, but the method is going to be more or less the same. So the idea is this. You need to start by closing your fingers and then releasing your fingers as they close into your hand. You can almost think about them as just sort of touching your palm and bouncing away. Right? It's very important to close your fingers because that's how we get our sound with. And once again, it's basic physics, right? We're going to get the most sound for the least amount of effort if we use our whole finger and close it. So, you know, this is exceedingly important. Once again, a topic for Another day. But you're going to close your fingers into your palm and then let them release out of your palm just a little bit, just so that they're not clenched against it, right? We don't want to create tension. We want to release it. So close and release. And then for us Salzillo players, we lift and you might just lift your wrist and you'll find Renee style that as soon as you close your fingers and release them, your wrist will move a little bit. It's almost invisible, but it will happen. When you close your fingers and then release them, your wrist will move just a hair. And then if you're going to do a fuller Salzero kind of raise, then what you're going to do is lift a little bit more, but only from your elbow, right? Don't lift that upper part of your arm. We don't want it flapping like a chicken wing. The upper part of your arm should never be involved in your raising. There's really no school of heart playing that I'm aware of that teaches that full arm raise. First of all, it takes too long and it doesn't really serve a purpose. It's not helpful. Once again, we're talking about form following function. It's not really helpful to have that much of your arm waving around. Now that doesn't mean that from time to time we don't use more flamboyant gestures just because. But it's not really a part of the raise per se. It's sort of an add on, if you understand what I mean. So once again, let's talk about where we are. So far we've closed our fingers, released them from the palm and then we're going to lift. You can lift from your wrist just a little bit or you can release downward, if that's what you do. We Sal Zeta players, we lift up from our elbow in. And then as you lower your hand after the lift, your hand opens and replaces on the next string. So this is an exercise that you can do very simply with chords. And let me walk you through that. Now I'm going to play some simple three note chords. And first of all, let's see if you can hear this. I'm going to play the first chord and not raise at all. And then I'll play it and, and raise just a little bit and see if you can hear the difference. All right. It'll be kind of like you're the eye doctor, right? Can you tell the difference between this one and this one? Okay, so here's the first chord, no raising at all.

And here's the second chord.

Now, I don't know if you can really hear that difference over the. Over the Internet or however you're listening to the podcast, but I can hear the difference live, sitting right here. And once you start listening for that difference, it's something that you will be aware of, and it actually makes a great sort of oral check for your own playing, because you can start to hear that in your practice. And you think, whoa, this isn't. This is sounding like I'm not raising. And you. It can remind you to raise. So, something to do. But let's look at a simple passage of triads. I'll play just five triads, right, in a scale.

And by using those simple triads, you can work these five steps, the five steps to a perfect raise, right? Whatever your raises look like. So you play the first chord, being sure that you close your fingers and then immediately release them from your palm. It's almost just like squeezing your hand and then unsqueezing it, right? I mean, you don't actually have to literally squeeze to play the strings the same way. You might, you know, squeeze something hard, like a lemon to get juice out of it or something. You don't have to squeeze that hard. But think about what that is like, right? You squeeze and then release. Squeeze and release. That's what this is like. You're going to close your fingers and then just release them from your palm.

And they're the first two steps right there. Close and release. Close and release. Now, what we will do is we're going to skip the raising step for just a second. We're going to put that in in a moment. So what I want you to do is to close and release and then open your fingers and replace them. So you close and release. Open, replace, close, release. Open, replace, close, release, open, replace, close, release, Open, replace, close, release, open, replace. There you go. Simple. Now we're going to put that raise right in the middle. So we're going to close, release, lift, open, replace, close, release, lift, open, replace, close, release, lift, open, replace, close, release, lift, open, replace close, release, lift, open, replace. Now, I'm keeping that lift very small. I mean, I don't need it to be fast. I don't need it to be dramatic. So I'm certainly not going above the.

Lower part of the curve of my harp, right? So staying within a very. A pretty small, constrained little area. I'm not raising above the neck of the harp. Salzato always thought that was wrong. It was just not musical, which is sort of interesting considering it's a, you're looking at it, right? But he thought that that was, was not what you wanted to do. So even, even in Salzeda method, we're not raising above the harp. Just, you know, you're not raising excessively, just that little bit. But it's close, release, lift, open, replace and you want it to sort of come out in this nice smooth picture and that's how you can practice your own perfect raise. One last tip about raising, and that is remember that this is your opportunity to relax, right? This is a great little drill that we just did for reminding you to relax as you play and to breathe, you know, close release, lift, open replace. There isn't any tension in there anywhere. It's a great way to just practice staying relaxed while you play. And do remember to breathe because that always helps.

And another reminder, if you are interested in learning more about some of those tricky harp techniques like raising or any other aspect of your harp playing, remember, you can always work with one of our certified coaches. Coaching registration is open, as I said before, so hop on over to our coaching page, heartmastery.com coaching or just use the link in the show notes and you can read more about the program and click that link to register before all those slots fill up. Our coaches are more in demand all the time and so I, you know, I don't want you to miss out on your opportunity. We always offer pre registration to the students that have taken the session before and so they, you know, they take quite a number of the slots before we're able to open it to others. So we do have slots available though. But I, you know, I can't guarantee how long they'll be open. So do hop over there, read about the program and go ahead and sign up on next week's show. We're talking about one of my favorite harp things. We're talking about a glissando, about how to play a good glissando. I know that, you know, they sometimes seem sort of confusing and there are certainly some confusing glissandos in the world where you look at them and think, argh, I don't even know what to do. But we're going to be talking about the basics. How do you start them, stop them, how do you turn around, how do you make them sound wonderful instead of just kind of awkward? So we're going to be diving into glissandos, doing a deep dive on one of the most fun harp things to do. And if you haven't had fun with any with a glissando yet. Well, then you don't want to miss next week's show, because we're going to make them fun for you, I promise. So that's what we'll be talking about next week. In the meantime, remember, every day is a day that you can add more harp happiness to the universe and to your world and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. All right, everybody, 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.