How to Choose Your Next Piece - PHH 207

That piece that you are pretty sure is way too hard for you, but you really want to play it well. You know, what's wrong with putting it on your music stand and just seeing what it's like, seeing what all those notes are. And if you can't even figure out what's on the page and you can't get beyond the first couple measures, that's okay.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

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.comjoin-now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. The author Shel Silverstein, maybe you know his book the Giving Tree, wrote a beautiful and supremely short poem that perfectly fits today's topic. The poem is called Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda and in just seven short lines, Silverstein sums up the ultimate way to prevent regret. He tells us that all those woulda, coulda, shoulda's vanish with one little did doing beats wishing every day. So if we were sitting in the same room together sharing a cup of tea and you asked me what I thought your next piece should be, I'd have to ask you a question right back. What do you think you want to do?

Life is filled with shoulds and have to's. But our music doesn't need to be. Our music is personal to us. The music we play, our repertoire is something that reflects what we like and who we are. It's a personal expression at every playing level. Your personal musical expression starts from the very first day. You are capable of playing a melody on the harp. Your music is in you and your music is you. So if you need to choose your next piece to learn, it should be something you want to learn. I know I just said should, but there you go. This is a good kind of a should. I think it should be something you want to learn. So back to our conversation at the T table. When I ask you what piece you'd like to do, you you're probably going to tell me you don't know. So we'll dig a little deeper. If you're thinking that there is a skill you need to develop and you're looking for a piece that will help you do that, that's great. I can suggest half a dozen pieces that will help you with that specific skill. But have you considered trying a sort of piece you've never done before? Or what about that bucket list piece that you weren't sure if you're ready for? This is the problem, right? There are too many choices. There is simply too much music in the world and it's impossible to play everything we want to. So we need to choose. And what if you chose to make your next piece, one that created a did it filled a want or prevented a future regret? That's what I want to help you with today. I want to give you a little system to help you choose. I also decided to take a sort of light hearted, fun approach to this topic. So since today is the 5th of May, I've created five possible categories to choose from in honor of Cinco de Mayo. After all, we can't take ourselves too seriously. By the way, I have linked to the woulda, coulda, shoulda poem in today's show notes so you don't have to go searching too hard for it. And it's worth a read. It'll take you 20 seconds to read, but it'll give you exactly the framework that you need, that mindset to appreciate what we're going to talk about today. So that's woulda, coulda, shoulda. And as I said, the link is in the show notes. You can do your own Google search for it and it'll come up just fine. But it was just something that I thought we needed to talk about today. Now, speaking of mindset, today is the day, May 5, that we are holding our sharpen your focus clinic. And if you are looking to sort of reset the way you think and the way you feel when you play or look at your focus when you practice a little bit differently, we're going to be talking about focus tonight. So that is on our call and you can still register. I've put the link for it here in the show notes. It's a really important topic, focus, because when you are focused, you can get so much more work done if you're practicing. Focus allows you to create progress rather than just sort of doing the same old thing over and over again. It allows you to hone in on what you really need to do to get that piece you're working on or that technique you're trying to strengthen to the next level so that you can play the music that you want to. Which of course is part of our topic today, isn't it? So that kind of focus in your practice is important. Learning how to resist distraction, learning how to keep your mind in the moment that you're working. That's a wonderful thing. Now, don't confuse this with autopilot, because that's very different, right? When you let your focus kind of drift and you're still doing things, but your mind isn't exactly on what you're doing. Autopilot is the thing that sometimes gets us into trouble when we play for others too, right? Because when you're on autopilot and then you realize you're on autopilot, you've got that lurch moment when you have to come back and figure out where you are. And in our practice, that's not such a big deal. We just stop. But we don't want to do that when we're playing for other people. So learning to keep your mind in the moment is certainly part of focus. And of course, our special presenter for this clinic is Dr. Lucy Smith, who has a unique combination of credentials and expertise in the areas of sports and music performance psychology. Now, this isn't just for performers. This is the kind of focus that is going to help you play better in whatever situation you play in, even if it's just for yourself. These are valuable techniques and you're going to want to learn them. And her insights are really remarkable. So this is something I encourage you to attend and it's not too late to register, but you need to do it today because that's when the clinic is. So you can hop on the link in the show notes. You'll find the link under upcoming events@heartmastery.com and just look for sharpen your focus Clinic and we'll be looking for you on the call tonight. Now, in our discussion today, I really don't want to focus on regrets. I really want to focus on possibilities. I mean, I don't know, I think this might be a uniquely American thing, and perhaps not to our credit, but this is sort of the. The all you can eat buffet syndrome. Not too far from us, there's a huge restaurant that is a buffet and it is a huge. It's got different rooms, it seats hundreds of people at a time. I've been there a couple of times. It's not my favorite place to go. I'm not really a. A buffet sort of eater. You know, it's the kind of thing where you go in and you just get plate after plate after plate of food. And the fact is that you really couldn't sample everything even if you wanted to, or at least I certainly couldn't. And while the plates are reasonably small, most people at a buffet tend to just sort of heap them, right? Because the possibilities are endless. You could have so many much food. I don't need that much food. Doesn't mean I don't want it. But I certainly don't want all this stuff that comes with eating too much food either. And the same sort of thing is happening in our music. It's not that we don't have enough choices, especially with the prevalence of music that you can just download. I mean, you know, you don't even have to store pieces of paper of music anymore, right? You can store it all digitally. It doesn't take up any room. So it's not like you can't get plenty of music. It's not that we lack choices, it's that we really can't Figure out what we need to do next. So this is the Buffet syndrome, I think, and it's how to fill your musical repertoire, reasonably your little musical plate. You don't need to play everything, even though it would kind of be nice, it's not going to be possible. So we really need to decide what we want to do. And so from those endless possibilities, how do we know what to choose? Well, let's figure this out, and let's start with our shouldas, right? In our woulda, coulda, shouldas. We're going to start with the shoulds to start with. And I think in this category belong the pieces that we think we only ought to know. We ought to learn them, we ought to be able to play them. And it could be everything from repertoire that we ourselves consider standard, that I think, oh, gosh, I ought to do that. Everybody knows that, and I don't know that. Or pieces that you think everybody expects you to play. So let's start by saying, all right, There are very few circumstances in which you actually have to have a particular piece in your repertoire. Just because everybody, and I'm using that word advisedly, everybody knows how to play moonlight doesn't mean you have to. Actually, moonlight is not a piece I ever learned. I mean, I have taught it. It's. It's a little beginner piece. It wasn't written when I was a beginner, so that wasn't around then. So I don't know that I had an interesting experience. Oh, a little while ago, I had a student who was gradu graduating and playing her graduation recital from college. She was studying at a university with a really well respected teacher. I mean, just, you know, she's a great, great teacher, great harpist, great colleague. And we were talking afterward about some of the pieces that were on the program, and I said, you know, that's just one of those pieces I've never played. And truthfully, it could be in the category of standard recital repertoire for a concert harpist. And she looked at me, you've never. And I said, well, no. And it led to a little discussion about the traditions that each of us grew up in, because the tradition, the music tradition that I grew up in was very heavily focused on Salzato's music. I mean, I grew up in the Philadelphia area. This was where he taught at the Curtis Institute, and I was studying with students of his. So this meant that his music was a large, you know, portion of the music that I learned. And there were other things, part things in standard French repertoire that I Had to learn later for myself. So this, you know, my. My growing up diet was very different than this other teacher's. Hers was much more in the French tradition. So there are salzato pieces that I know well, that she's never played. But there are other pieces by Renier, for instance, that I have had to pick up later or haven't gotten around to yet. So we have these different traditions that we came from. And it's not that either of us lacks repertoire. And you couldn't say that, you know, we're incomplete harpists because we don't know these other pieces. It's just that there's too much music in the world, right? So it's just a personal repertoire. Things you know, things you don't, and it's okay that you don't know them. So when it comes to standard, and I'm putting that word in air quotes, standard repertoire, there are no real shoulds here. There are only pieces that you like and pieces that you know and pieces that you think you might want to know someday. But unless you're in music school and your teacher is telling you you have to play this particular piece, there's nothing that's telling you you have to or that you should, or that you're missing something if you don't. So I'll say that one more time. When it comes to repertoire that you think you should know, there really are no shoulds, only music that you like. All right? So I've released you from the idea that you are not a harpist if you don't know any particular piece. Fill in the blank there. But there are other things that sometimes we think we probably ought to know and sometimes are actually right. For instance, if you are interested in playing for weddings, you should know the Pachelbel canon, because people often request that. And that would be something that you know if they think of you as a harpist who plays weddings. And they come and they talk to you and you say, what? You don't know that piece, you don't play that piece. And you say, oh, no. They start to wonder how many weddings you've really played. Because this is standard wedding repertoire. Even if it's something that you don't particularly like to play, this might be something that you decide that you should know. So that's one kind of should that you really probably do want to fill that box. And that's an important thing, right? It might be learning wedding marches or maybe you play at church. So you really should know some hymns or, you know, some arrangements. Of church music. So there are those repertoire gaps that are important for what you play, the kind of places that you play. Those are gaps that might be shoulds that you want to fill in. But once again, those are your choices. So let's take our first category then, of pieces in my five categories. And one of them is right there in the shouldas. And that's something to play somewhere, right? Something that you really need to know in order to fill a requirement for a place or an occasion that you want to play. Okay, Legitimate should. There are very specific choices there. That's an easy box to fill in. Oh, gosh, I'm going to play this. I probably should have one of those. There's another kind of should piece though, as well. This is the should piece that we think we should study because it's going to help us level up a particular skill. Now, this is a piece to consider, right? This is a should that you might like. The other kind of should. You really might want to think about this. Do I want to level up my.

Downward arpeggios so that I'm going to practice little fountain, or I'm going to practice La Source, or I'm going to practice ribbons or any one of these pie that focuses on that particular skill? If there is a skill that you want to work on, choosing a repertoire piece to help you develop it along with appropriate exercises, is a really good way to do it. Now, I don't suggest that you just do the piece because I think it's important to not only take the technique as it's presented in that piece of music to work on it, but also to take the technique as a whole, as a general technique, and work on it. And any of these things you'll find in exercise and etude books, and they give you more ways to explore them that'll make your overall technique a little stronger. But to take a piece and say, okay, I want to level up a particular skill, not a bad thing to do. But once again, choose, because you will have more than one choice for this. So if there's a thing that you think, yeah, I probably should do that, I should work on something with arpeggios or I should work on something four note chords. That's okay. Don't take it as a. As something that you absolutely have to do, though. Make sure that it's a choice like, oh, yeah, I like that piece and it will help me with four note chords, or yeah, I really think that's a pretty piece and it will help me with polyrhythms. Or whatever it is that you want to level up and work on. Be sure this is a piece that you really like. Now, compare this just for a second to the other should that I talked about. If you have to play weddings and. Or if you are choosing rather to play weddings and so you think you should know the Pachelbel canon, which you probably should. It doesn't matter if you like the Pachelbel canon or not. You probably need to know it. In this category of shoulds, be sure that you're picking a piece that you like to help you level up. This is where the wealth of heart music that is available to us is really helpful. Because whatever skill you want to develop, there's not just one piece to help you do it. So be sure that you're choosing a piece that you actually like. Gosh, what a concept. Right? So those are our two shouldas. When you think that you should have something special to play in some special place or occasion, you think there's something you absolutely need to know. Because it's important to have that piece for a particular reason. That's a legitimate should. And so is having a piece to level up a skill. Just remember that in that second should category, be sure you're picking something that you like, because there are plenty of choices. All right, let's go on. And let's look at the couldas. We started with the shouldas. Let's look at the couldas. The couldas are interesting because they give you the chance to. To either indulge yourself or to try something new. I mean, could is about possibility, right? Well, I could do this. I could do that. And I think that the second we start thinking about things that we could do, many times we load that could with, oh, well, but maybe I should do this. And we start thinking about things that other people might think are important for us. Or instead of treating this category as the possibilities. If the shoulds were about meeting obligations one way or another, and I don't mean to make that sound onerous. The shoulds were about, okay, this is something I need to know or something that I think is going to be important for me. The coulds are about experimentation. The coulds are about, wow, there's a lot of music in the world, and, I don't know, I could try this. But experimentation and just, you know, opening that door to the wider world of harp music can be a little bit scary or intimidating or at least confusing, because there is so much to choose from. And I think this is where the buffet issue really Comes into play, right? You're looking at. I mean, okay, so I like desserts. So I'm standing there at this big dessert table in the buffet, and I'm looking at it thinking, wow, I don't know. I always love creme brulee. I am a creme brulee person, truthfully. So it's like, oh, I don't know. That's there. But look, here are some things I haven't tried yet. And I could try those or. But I know I love the creme brulee. Or, oh, gosh, look at that Black Forest cake. I'm a sucker for anything chocolate, too. So. Although I probably. I've never met a dessert I don't like. It's just amazing that I'm not, you know, a thousand pounds. But I'm looking at the buffet table, and I'm trying to be good. I'm thinking, well, I'm going to choose one. Well, maybe two. Well, it's really hard to limit yourself. And so that's where it gets confusing. And that's where you end up taking too much on your plate. And you think, well, you know, I'll just try a little bit of it and I'll put it on my plate, but I don't have to eat the whole thing. And then you find that you do eat the whole thing. And first of all, when it comes to music, you're not going to gain any weight. Hey, okay. But I think you can put your coulds into two categories that will help you make choices and feel good about your choices. One is the category I call Playing Favorites. I mean, if there is a style of music that you love or a composer or arranger whose music you love, go there first. It doesn't matter if the last 10 pieces you've learned have been by Hasselman. If you love Hasselman's music, go ahead and specialize. Whoever going to tell you you can't, right? I mean, you know, if there is, you know, if you are. Let's see.

I mean, if you love Celtic music, don't get caught up in the idea that if you play another Celtic piece, somebody's going to say, no, you know, you really need to learn this other kind of music. You need to learn some classical music, or you need to learn some Latin American music. Whatever it is, if that's what you like, play it. Now, I know that there are a lot of people for whom this is an easy choice. They've declared their specialty, and it's like, yep, no, that's what I Do well, that's excellent. Nothing wrong with that. And remember to, you know, to be proud of that at every moment. But for others of you who haven't made those kinds of choices, you don't have to. I mean, I have a very wide range of music that I love. And so this is not an easy category for me. Playing favorites. Oh, I've got a million favorites. But if there's one where you think, oh, gosh, I love Debussy's music and I've never played it, well, go for it. Choose a style or a composer that you love, or one that is your favorite and take one more from there. That's a great opportunity. That's a great coulda moment. Your other coulda category might be the total opposite. Going off the board. This could be an opportunity to do something you've never tried before. Never played any Latin American music is a great moment to experiment. Go ahead and try it. Why not, right? Or you've never tried music by.

Any. You know, insert your favorite harpist composer here. You've never tried any of their music. Well, this is a great idea. Experimentation is terrific. And remember that if you go off the board and you choose a particular piece and you think, I really want to try this, there's nothing that says that once you get into it, you have to stick with it. This is not you have to eat everything on your plate moment. This is a, oh, I tried it. And you know what? For whatever reason, this is not for me. My technique doesn't like this. I'm not having as much fun working on it as I thought. I'm not going to be able to use this anywhere is, you know, if you don't like it, you don't have to play it. Once again, this is different from standard food thinking, right where we were taught growing up, eat everything on your plate. You don't have to do that with harp music. You don't have to do it with food either. But you don't have to do it with harp music. For sure. If you start it and you don't like it, there's a lot of music in the world. Go on to something else and don't feel bad about your experiment. That's part of what music is all about. Looking at everything that there is and trying it. And then if you like it, terrific, you've found something new, and maybe you'll go there as a new favorite next time. But maybe it's something like, oh, okay, did this. I don't have to go back. I don't have to play that again. And that's okay. You're allowed. Remember, your repertoire is personal. That's the whole point. So when it comes to thinking about, I, I could do this, indulge yourself a little bit. And if it's something that you want to play more of because you love it, do it. Or if it's something that you've never tried and you think you want to do it, don't ignore possibilities just because there's something that you think that you ought to do. Those kind of shoulds are not the kind of shoulds that we're looking for, and they certainly don't help you find more joy in music, which is where those coulds, which is what those coulds are all about.

But let's get to the woulda category. The woulda category is the scary one, because this is the one that can be loaded with regret. If only I would have done this. If only I would have. This is that if only category. If only I would have tried this piece.

It's about your bucket list piece. It's about things that you don't feel you're ready for, but you really want to do. It's about those things that you think, well, but this is why I started the harp, and I'm not doing it yet. And the thing that you think, if I leave it undone, I'm going to have missed something.

And you don't have to do that in most cases. The wood is something that you can at least try and something that is probably able to be worked into your.

Skill level, your world of possibilities. Anyway. Now, there are some things that might be beyond you. You know, just like if you're 70 years old, that's probably too old to be a professional baseball player for the first time. Okay, so there are some things that might be off the harp plate for you. Like, okay, well, you know, I'm just a newbie, and I'm probably not going to, you know, get into a music conservatory in the next two years. I don't know. There are some things that are unlikely. I am reluctant to call anything impossible because I've seen all kinds of things happen in this world. And I know that whatever your skill level now, whatever your age is now, whatever your harp status is right now, whatever that means, I have no clue. But wherever you are right now, there are possibilities for you that we don't even know about until you try. And that's what the WUDA is about. You won't know until you try that piece that you are pretty sure is Way too hard for you, but you really want to play it. Well, you know, what's wrong with putting it on your music stand and just seeing what it's like, seeing what all those notes are. And if you can't even figure out what's on the page and you can't get beyond the first couple measures, that's okay. You've given something a try, and it's not that you're going to try it and maybe put it away forever, but you now know something. You know what you don't know and what you need to know in order to play this piece, and that's more powerful than you might think. Let me explain. Let's say you've got that big hard piece in front of you and you know you've never played anything more than two pages, and this piece is 15 pages and it's got stuff you don't understand in it at all. Well, this is the time to start understanding. Now, if you're working with a teacher, your teacher can really help you hone this down and say, okay, well, you know this piece. Let's learn about this piece. It may not be the time to learn this piece yet because you're still pretty far away from the level you need to be in order to play this piece well. But this piece has this particular skill. Maybe it's got a whole lot of big arpeggios all around the harp with lots of enharmonics and pedals. So, so let's take two or three of those arpeggios and let's work on them so that you understand what they look like in the music, how they work on the harp. And you get some extra pedal practice. We're going to get some technical practice at getting all the way around the harp and we're going to learn that first. Then we're going to go to this other part and we're going to work on some of those big chords and we're going to work through some of the chord passages and. And you can do this for yourself. You don't have to do it with a teacher, but look at it in tiny, tiny morsel, like kernel of corn size chunks so that you can see a little bit of what's there. Now imagine you may be on your way to playing that piece someday, which would be really cool, but you're also learning skills that are going to play into your learning of pieces that are a lot closer to your level. You're stepping up your skills without saying, okay, well, I have to tackle this entire Huge piece right now, which is too daunting and possibly just outside the realm of possibility, at least frustration, less possibility for you at this particular point in your studies. So let's take some of those things and learn what you need to learn in order to play them. This gives you a chance to try a little bit of that piece that you really love and want to play. And as I mentioned a second ago, it may be the start of your journey with that piece. Okay, I'm going to learn this skill and then I'll learn that skill. And it may take me two years to get through the piece, but I'm not going to leave it off my list. I'm not going to let it be one of those regrets, one of those pieces that I never ever learn. It's going to become not a, oh gosh, I wish I had tried this. I wish I woulda tried it. But hey, I gave it a shot. I wasn't able to play it, or I was, or I was able to play part of it. And that gave me a lot of pleasure. But it's not gonna be the regret. It's not gonna be the, oh, I've never been good enough to do this. You are good enough to try it. You are good enough to look at some of it, to figure it out, to play at least part of it. At least part of it somehow. I've done this with my students over and over again. Taken a piece that's too big and will cut it down into a little bite sized version. Or we'll work on just a page or a part of it and work into it. That way. It can become a lifetime project if that's what you want it to be. But it can just be a sampler that takes that longing off of your plate, your metaphorical plate, and it keeps that regret from gnawing away at you. It may not feel like it's a powerful thing, regret, at least not that one. But who needs it? That's not part of Harp happiness. And there's nothing that says that you can't try it now. Nothing in the world. There is nothing that's stopping you from any of those things. So let's review our five shoulda coulda wouldas. The two shouldas that we talked about. Okay, maybe you should have a particular piece to play in a particular place or for a particular occasion. That's a should. Or something that will help you level up a skill, something that you should invest in. And then there are our cudas playing favorites. Well, I could play more music by my favorite composer. That's a playing favorite. Or maybe you could just go off the board and do a kind of piece that you've never tried before. And then of course, our last one, this woulda the one that we don't want to be. Oh, if only I woulda tried. You can try it. Remember, if you start it, it's too hard, you don't like it, shelve it, go on to something else. You don't need to keep working on it, you don't have to finish it. And unlike the food thing, you know nobody's going to tell you that there are starving children and name the area of the world of your choice, Right? And you have to finish it. No, you don't. There's a lot of music in the world and some of it is waiting just for you to play. So be sure that you choose. Don't worry about choosing wisely. You don't have to choose something that you want and that's how you choose your next piece. I'm going to borrow a quote from Nelson Mandela here just to wrap up our discussion on choosing pieces. And the quote is this. May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. And that's what I want, your choices to reflect your hopes, not your fears. And certainly your harp happiness.

Now, next week on the podcast, we're talking about something much more prosaic, much more practical. We're going to talk about what to do with all that music theory that you've learned. Now, if you don't feel like you've learned any music theory, this will be helpful because you'll know exactly what you need to know and you'll know what to do with it. But if you're the sort, you know your keys, you know your chords, you know chord progressions, all kinds of stuff, well, how do you actually use that in a practical sense to help you play better or practice more efficiently? When does it help? When doesn't it help? That's what we'll be talking about next week on the podcast. Once again, I hope that I will see you tonight on our Sharpen youn Focus. Elevate youe performance call with Dr. Lucy Smith. If you haven't registered, I really want you to take advantage of this. And this is their last opportunity to do that because it's happening tonight, the day the podcast comes live, May 5th. So please do hop in and register for that. You'll find the link in the show notes. You'll find the link@heartmastery.com or in the app and you can get to that and register today. You're really going to enjoy this call. I've seen what she's going to present, and it's going to be really, really powerful material, whether you're a performer or just a practicer. So all that's really good for you, and I invite you to that call. I look forward to seeing you here on the podcast next week. And in the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do 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. It.