How to Add Color and Variety to Your Sound - PHH 053

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.

My harp teacher could make any harp sound amazing. I was astounded every time I heard her do it. On the occasions when she came to my house and played my harp, her magical touch on my very ordinary harp brought it to life in a way my practice never did. And it was my harp. Now, my teacher was Marilyn Costello. She studied with Carlos Salzado at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and had a lifetime career as principal harpist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. And she had the warmest, richest, most liquid tone I have ever heard.

Having a beautiful tone wasn't something I thought a lot about as a young harp student. I was more interested in playing fast and flashy pieces, so I didn't give much thought to having a rich sound. After all, when you're playing pieces at warp speed, who can hear the quality of your sound? Well, that's not true, of course, but it made sense to me at the time. And obviously tone matters. Like so many other harpists, it was the unique voice of the harp that first attracted me. The sound of the harp spoke to me when I heard it ring through the dense, tiny texture of an orchestra. It drew my ear when I heard it in the background scoring of a movie or a television show. And it still does every time.

On today's show. I'm going to give you my thoughts about what makes a beautiful harp tone, what tone really means, and how you develop your tone. And even better, how you expand your tonal repertoire. Yes, you can and should have a repertoire, a range of sounds and tone colors at your fingertips. Now, I hope this topic excites you as much as it does me. There is nothing more characteristic of the harp than its sound and Nothing more interesting than the unique sound of an individual harpist. We all have our special sound and today I want to help you find yours. Before we get started talking about tone, however, I wanted to let you know about something that's coming up in June that is very exciting. June is a big anniversary month for us here at Harp Mastery. It will be 10 years ago in June, that would be June of 2012 that I started Harp Mastery. Harp Mastery just began with a single little blog and has turned into something much more over these 10 years. And not only am I excited by the growth, but I'm really excited about this chance to celebrate this anniversary, to take a look back and to take a look forward and to have a great lot of fun along the way and I'm going to be inviting all of you to join me. We have some really special events coming up in June that I will be inviting you to, including a live taping of a podcast episode and I will be giving you more details coming up very shortly on how to join us for that. We'll be getting that information out as soon as we have it all organized. We're going to be having new merchandise in our store, new sheet music, special deals on things, all kinds of things coming up in a way to celebrate June. It's also going to be a special month in that we will be opening membership to My Harp Mastery My Harp Mastery as our membership community where we have an amazing group of harpists that learn together and enjoy each other's company along the way. We'll be opening that membership at in June and we'll give you all those details as well. And we enjoy invite you to join our first to know list so that you get in on the ground floor of that as well. We'll put all those links in the show notes for you and believe me, I'll keep you posted so you don't miss a moment of the celebration. But 10 years in the online world is really something to celebrate and we're pretty determined to do it up right here at Heart Mastery. So I wanted to give you a heads up on that because believe me, you will be the first to know when we announce all the fun things coming up for June. So I hope I have whetted your appetite for that. And now let's get back to talking about tone. As I mentioned in the opening, my teacher could make any harp sound. Amazing sound, beautiful sound, warm sound, rich. She could make any harp sound just like her.

Now while I didn't give a lot of thought to tone as A young student. Of course, as I grew and became a little bit more musically mature, tone became something that was really important to me. And this phenomenon of my teacher making any harp sound like her made me stop and think, because there are so many aspects to creating tone. And one of the first places we start to put blame or look for a solution perhaps, is perhaps not where we should be looking for it. And I'm thinking about, you know, the, the harp itself and the strings. You know, lots of times we'll say, oh, this doesn't sound good. This harp doesn't sound good. I don't think these strings sound right on this harp. And some of that is true. I mean, harps do have individual sounds and they do sound different from each other, and different strings can make a difference. But if there are people like my teacher, for instance, who could make any harp sound good, obviously looking to a particular harp or a particular brand of strings is not where we want to look for the best solution to finding the best tone. Right? That's not where it's going to come from. Our tone is going to come from someplace else. So after I dismissed the idea that, okay, well, it's all about the harp, which obviously it wasn't then, maybe it was all about the fingers. Now, my teacher had beautiful, rich, fleshy fingers. And, and I think, and you know, I don't think there's a real dispute here that that played a part in creating her sound. That's part of what made her sound, her sound.

But it didn't matter which harp she was playing on, and it didn't mean that her sound was one dimensional, that, that she only played with a warm, liquid sound when a different kind of sound was called for. That was in her repertoire too. And of course, I heard beautiful tone coming from other master players who didn't have the same physical construction to their hands that my teacher did. So clearly it wasn't about the harp or about the strings. It wasn't really about what your fingers looked like, whether they were long or short or fleshy or skinny or anything else. It was about something else. And what I came to learn was that your tone starts in your head. First you have to have an idea of the sound. You have to have a clear mental picture, mental sound perhaps, of what tone you want to get the difference between tones. It's elusive, I grant you that, but we're going to talk in just a moment about maybe how to get some clarity around that and how to be able to articulate to yourself what the distinctions in Tone are because you have to have an idea about sound before you can think about creating it. Then you have to know the tools that you have to create that sound. And yes, it's not those tools primarily are your fingers, but it's also your technique. It's how you use your fingers to create that sound. And then step three, you're going to have to practice using those tools, aren't you? Knowing what the tools are is not enough. And beyond that, you always have to listen. Our tone is something that we can only check by listening. And you need to listen to yourself and to others. Now, this may sound like a really big task, but it's not. It should. And it can be something that you focus on daily for at least a minute. That that's just sort of one of those considerations that you're listening for in your practice. You know, you're listening for even fingers or for not buzzing or for hesitations. Well, consider your sound, too. Just as you would be thinking about dynamics or other elements of expression, considering your tone is something that's just part of your normal practice. And when you're thinking about it, even for just that moment in your practice, you can start making the incremental sort of progress that you really need to start developing your tone and creating your tone repertoire. So primarily, this is about listening. It's about knowing the tools you have. It's about thinking about sound rather than just right or wrong notes. It's about musical intention. It's about variety and expression, and it's about the wonderful sound of the harp. So that's where we're going to start learning how to talk and think about sound. When we talk about sound or talk about tone, we're really talking about the timbre. We're talking about the quality of the sound. Now, please don't mistake this. I'm not talking about quality as being good and bad. There may be sounds that you prefer or sounds that you don't like, or sounds perhaps that you believe nobody would like. But we're not talking about judgment in terms of good or bad. A lot of tone that we might not like, for one thing, works very well as a way to express a different kind of music. So it's not good or bad, right or wrong, but rather it's the description. It's the inherent nature of that tone. Often we talk about this as tone color. We might use words like, tone is rich or it's warm, or it's.

Sharp or it's crisp. Right? And that variety of tone color is something that we want in our music, but we also sort of want a basic, normal, natural kind of a harp sound. Right. We want that core tone that is going to be part of our sound that we can manipulate to get those other effects. Think of it maybe as being sort of the center part of a sliding scale, where that center part is your sound without any particular musical interpretation on it. And then it works out from there. Maybe even like spokes of a wheel, if you want to think about how the sounds could go out from there. Right. We have all kinds of words that we use to describe things. Some of them sound like opposites. Some of them may sound like different colors. Perhaps you're a very visual person and picturing this as colors on a color wheel. I mean, maybe not making specific assignments like, you know, rich is purple or something. Although maybe you're a person that. That really appeals to. But thinking about those tone, you know, all those elements of tone, all those. These descriptive words of tone as part of an entire picture and a place that you can go in your sound for different things. Let's think about some of these words, and I'll sort of put them into two different categories with things that seem to go together. Although you can blend these too, right? They're not always separate from each other. So here's. Here's one set of words to sort of get your imagination started. A full or a rich sound. Something that's deep or lush or round or warm, resonant, dark, melodious, smooth, mellow. You get the idea, right? And you can think about those words and think about the pieces that you know that you might want a tone just like that. So working for one of those kinds of sounds is going to be sort of your normal, natural, resonant tone, plus whatever you need to make it sound like whichever one of those words you want. Resonant, smooth, lush, rich, whatever. Now, let's look sort of at the other end of the spectrum. There's your natural tone, but maybe we want something that's sounding a little bit more crisp. Some other words for that might be sharp, distinct, brittle, clear, brassy, bright, light, whispery, thin, breathy. Now, they might not be words that you associate primarily with. With a harp sound, but there could be times that that's what we want. Think about some upper octave figures that are meant to be just whispery and thin and breathy while your left hand does a melody. Or maybe you want some very light, beautiful chords toward the end of a piece, or maybe in the middle of a melody that's being played. So these are different sounds, and there's nothing inherently bad or good about any of them. There's going to be a time to app all of them. Not all at once, granted, but each one of them will have its moment, its moment to shine. So working on your natural sound with the way you want it to sound, and then creating that repertoire outward from there, that's where you want to go. So in order to really get an idea of what those different tones and sounds mean in terms of playing, as in terms of just vocabulary, you may want to listen to different players, different harpists, even. You can do this with recordings, too. Granted, we know that there's going to be manipulation in the recording, but that's okay because you're still listening to the sound, even if it's the altered sound of a player. You're listening for the quality of sound. And that's the. The skill that you need to exercise right here, your perceptive and descriptive power of listening. You can listen to different players, even play the same piece of music. And as you do that, try to separate out the musical differences. Like, this one is faster, this one plays softer, you know, this one does better dynamics, this one does a bigger. Try to separate those differences from the actual sound. Consider the sound itself and don't take into consideration the type of the harp, the age of the player, any of that kind of stuff. We're just thinking about sound. You don't need to make allowances for anything else. We're just learning to describe. So listen to these recordings or these performances. Try to find a word or words that can describe that sound for you. How would you describe that sound? Remember, it doesn't have to be a description that means anything to anybody else. This is for you. If you're listening to that and that player's sound sounds thin to you, okay, now you have. You have a musical idea of what thin sounds like. Or maybe this person's player sounds. This person's performance sounds really resonant. Now you have a musical reference for a resonant sound, and that's what we need to practice. So many times we don't, you know, think about trying to. Trying to pin these things down, and we let them sort of stay very ethereal and just, you know, more as ideas. We need to make it a little bit more concrete here, because if you're going to create a tone, you need to be able to describe it. So start by describing other people's and remembering. Remember that this isn't casting judgment on it. This is merely descriptive so think about those different words that we talked about. You know, the words like deep or round or warm or whispery or breathy or crisp. And think about words like that as you listen and put those words to what you hear.

Once we've done the describing and we've started a habit of listening with that kind of intention, then we need to start considering what we actually do to create our own sound. And of course, there are a variety of considerations to revisit what I said earlier. Yes, your harp and your strings do make a difference to your sound, right? The tension of the strings might make a difference. The material of the strings might make a difference. Some harps just sound different. Well, every harp sounds different from every other one. Right. They're unique beings in the same way that we are. So, yes, they do make a difference. But I would urge you not to look for your tone there, or not to put the blame for your tone or put the responsibility, that's a better word, for your tone on those things. First, let's see what we can do working with the materials that we have, the harp that you have, the strings that are on it right now. Let's see what we can do to create the sound you want using the harp and the strings, et cetera, that you have. If you have multiple harps, it can be a lot of fun to try the sorts of experiments we're going to be talking about on all of your different harps and see how you can bring out the unique voice of each of your instruments while still maintaining a tone that feels like and sounds like the tone that you want that's appropriate for you.

Also, we talked about the difference in fingers, right? Thin fingers, fat fingers, all those things. Oily fingers, dry fingers, the length of your nails, how hard your calluses are, all of those things can make a difference, too. And of course, if your nails are too long, we cut them. If your calluses are too big and hard, you can file them and moisturize them. If your hands are too moist, you can be sure that you dry them before you play. You know, there are. Are those things which can go into tone as well. Those are more easily dealt with. But even before you address those things, well, maybe except for cutting your fingernails, which you should be staying on top of, right? Aside from that, before we get there, let's talk about the technique of tone, how you produce your sound, because the way you produce it is going to make all the difference. And it's wonderful to be secure in the knowledge that you produce your tone that no matter the harp or the strings or the condition of your fingers, your sound is something you have control over because you have worked on the technique of tone. Now, I know that sounds really good to you, and I know your question is, okay, how do I do that? Basically, your regular old harp technique is the core of your tone. So all you really need to do is start paying attention to tone as you do your technical work. Now, we're going to get more detailed, but think about this for a moment. If you have your hand on the strings and you've got your best position, your best hand position, your best technique, and you, you play the string, closing your finger all the way the way you're supposed to, that's the place we want to look for your best tone. So that as you play that string, any string, any finger, when you play it properly, the way that is proper for your technique, right, you play, you close. That's when you want to think about your sound. That's going to be your default sound, your normal tone. So that's the place to start. Just put your fingers on the string. Put one finger on the string, any string, and play it with your best technique. Listen for it, and then start experimenting just a little bit. Think. Okay, well, what happens if I think about plucking the string? If that's the word that I use in my head, what does plucking the string sound like versus what does it sound like if I think about pressing the string? Now, the physical difference in your actual motion from the string may be nearly nothing. It may be very, very slight. But you will find that thinking about your sound differently gets you a different effect. Let me demonstrate just a little bit here, and we'll see if you can the difference. So here's my second finger on one string.

Now, that's kind of normal for me. My hand's in a good playing position.

And my finger closes. Nothing good, bad, or indifferent. I would call that, you know, neutral. But if I think about plucking the string, what happens?

Sort of normal and plucky?

Well, it feels to me like I'm using a different part of my finger. It's not really a different part of my finger, but to get a pluckier kind of a sound, it's. It's going to be a sound that has more of an attack to it, a stronger beginning. It's going to be something that sounds sharper, that sounds crisper. My teacher used to call it, you know, to get this kind of a. Of a really focused sound. She said, you know, try Playing on the bone, you know, thinking about playing all the way to the center of your finger and using the bone part.

Versus using the regular middle, old part of my finger. It's a slight difference, but it's there, isn't it?

Or maybe pressing the sound out and using the fleshiest flesh part of my finger, I can. Not necessarily adjusting where my finger is on the string, but thinking about the. The depth and the, you know, thinking about just pressing the sound out of the string.

It'S a slower attack that it takes. You can feel kind of goes thwom instead of tong, right? So it's a slower sort of start to the sound and it's extra resonant. I'm not making a conscious difference in dynamic here, just in the way I touch. So sort of here's default.

And here's a plucky kind of a sound.

And here's a press kind of a sound.

The differences are slight, aren't they? But they're audible. And that's where you want to start just thinking about that kind of a sound. And as you do that, try not to make radical distortions of your technique. You want to be able to do this with your normal technique. That's the point. So if the differences seem small, that's okay. Thinking about them is the biggest part of this. So your tone is going to come from your technique, and it's going to be something that you create with the way you think about the sound. The way you use your finger on the string. It can also have a little bit to do with finding that sweet spot on a particular string. Right. It's just about adjusting your touch and your idea of the sound, both of those things.

So how do you practice this? Well, we're looking for that repertoire of tone colors, right? We don't want to always sound the same. We want this to be part of our expression of a piece of music too. So while we've got our lovely neutral sound, which you can certainly practice just the way I did a moment ago, you also want that range of tone colors. So experiment. Try using slightly different parts of your finger. What happens if you play a little bit more toward the tip? What happens if you play a little bit further in on your finger? Try not to alter your hand position. Think about. But, you know, try a little bit different. Very slightly, you know, think about feeling the fleshy part of your finger on the string or maybe closer to the. The callus at the end of your finger. Think about where that energy is coming from. And start with a simple Scale or just simple notes the way I did, but maybe just a few notes of a scale. Right. All right. Can I get. That was my fourth finger. Can I get a rounder sound? Sure, I can. Ooh, listen to that difference. Right? That's playing a little further in, beyond my callus on my finger. My finger's still closing. My technique is still the same. I can play a little more toward the end and get that sort of thinner sound. I can get a crisper attack. Oh, there we go. I can get sort of halfway in the middle, and I can get a nice, relaxed, warm sound. All the same. Finger on the same string, and you can try to get that relaxed, warm sound. Oops. That had a little more tension in it, didn't it? There we go. More pressed, less pluck.

Even more pressed. Let's try this. Oh, there we go. Okay. That string's not quite as resonant as the one before, so I have to work a little differently to get the same kind of sound. Or second finger. Ooh, I don't like that very much. Once again, that's not as pretty a string. It's a natural rather than a flat, too. So the string is closed. So I have to be a little bit, you know, work it a little differently because it's tighter. And then a thumb sound. Nice, relaxed thumb sound. Once again, that's on a flat string, so it's going to sound warmer a little bit. There we go. And you can think about. Just think about the sound, right? Think about making a different attack, right? Maybe make it a fast and sharp beginning to the sound.

Like an accent, or maybe very slow. Very, very lazy.

So that the sound just. Oh, I don't like that one very much. There we go. We use that same finger on a different string.

Okay, There we go. There's something about that string, right? We're comparing apples to apples. Now try all my fingers on that same string. See if I can get all of them to sound the same. Close. I could do some work on that. It's interesting work. You don't want to take too long with it. Just, you know, give yourself a certain amount of time, because it can be extremely absorbing, and you don't want to spend every single practice moment on that when you have other things you want to do. But you can try playing a scale sort of three different ways. Give yourself three different pictures of it. Like maybe the first scale you play, it's going to be all like big bells tolling, you know, big resonant kind of sound, right? And then maybe the second time there'll be like little bells tinkling. What will you make different? How will you do that? How will you think about it differently? And are you able to translate your idea of it into your fingers and have it come out that way? Maybe a third way would be something very smooth, like sort of a mirror surface on a lake with no ripples.

Think about how the, how they sound different. Think about how they feel different when you play it. You can even record yourself and see. Just remember that sometimes those differences don't come across on a recording the same way they do in real life. So, you know, take that recording with a grain of salt. Get information from it, but don't let it stress you out. You can incorporate something like this into your warm up just playing. You could even play your exercises with different tone colors on different days. Like today is my, you know, is my warm, lazy day, you know, the warm sunshine kind of sound. And tomorrow is going to be my pitter patter, rain sound. And you know, you can do all different kinds of things. Play whatever game appeals to you with this, but you're going to start by listening, by getting those tone, color, words and ideas in your head. Then just practice. Play around with one finger or all your fingers alternately playing one string the way I did a moment ago. See what that sound is like. Experiment with it. Don't mess with your perfectly good technique. We don't want to do that. We just want to think about how you pull that string, the intention that you bring to it. Plucking and pressing are two good sort of opposite ways to think about that. Pulling the sound out of the string, releasing the sound from the string.

Other good visualizations, you know, Right. They're very good for you too. Playing with tone is a lot of fun, but, you know, you need to bring that creative part of your brain to it. So I hope you enjoy that. I hope this has been enlightening. If you do have questions about this topic that you might want me to go into further on another podcast, remember, you can always send those kinds of questions, thoughts and comments to me@podcastartmastery.com and I will see them and we'll, you know, get them incorporated into a future show. Do remember also to, to be on the lookout for announcements about the anniversary celebrations coming up next month at Heart Mastery. That's going to be just a ton of fun. And I wanted to give you one more thing there. I got a lot of. After last week's podcast on, on exercises and best exercises. And we do have a lot of resources at Heart Mastery, a lot of different courses to help you with those things. But one of the ones that I found myself recommending over and over again that I will recommend to you again now would be Warmups with a Focus. You'll find this@heartmastery.com There are, it's just a few warm ups and each one of them helps you concentrate or focus on a different aspect of your technique and to work on the warm up. So it's working on your fingers but with an additional focus. And I think that can be very helpful and it will help you sort of think about your technique work in a slightly larger context. And it can be really very helpful that way. So I'd love you to check out Warmups with a Focus. I have put, put that link in the show notes so you can click right over and, and check out that course. It's got some great videos. It's got all the PDFs, it's got everything you need to really help you get the most out of just some pretty, pretty attractive, reasonably attractive warmups. Even if I did write them myself, I think they're okay. So next week here on the podcast, we're going to be talking about the music of Stephen Foster. I'm going to debut some new arrangements that I've done of some Stephen Foster tunes. Not necessarily ones that are, well, not all of them are on the, you know, the, the top hit parade of Stephen Foster music. But they're all lovely and they make wonderful harp pieces. So we're going to be talking about that next week in time for a special Memorial Day episode until I see you next time. 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. I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.