How to Reach that Unreachable Left Hand Chord - PHH 077

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.

Okay, imagine this. Everything's going smoothly, you're learning the piece, it looks like a terrific piece, you're excited about it, and then all of a sudden, there it is, that left hand chord. How are you supposed to reach that left hand chord? You know the chord. I mean, it sounds like.

And it goes by a lot of different names. It's a root position triad in open spacing. Or maybe you know it as a i5 3 chord. Or maybe it's just the chord you can't ever place accurately. Certainly when we first encounter this chord, it is a stretch for our hand, but eventually most of us can manage it without too much difficulty. When we place and play that chord well, it sounds warm and rich. Because it's a big reach, though, it's often a challenge to get to the right notes at the right time and play them without hitting strings in the middle. And that's a problem because this combination of notes is everywhere in harp music. We encounter it sometimes as a chord, sometimes as an arpeggio. In fact, I often call this the left hand master chord because it's the one chord that when we master it, it solves playing difficulties in so many pieces. We don't want to have to spend our practice time negotiating this chord in each new piece we learn. But once you've discovered the placing techniques that work for your hand, you can apply them easily every time. So today I'm going to try to help you reach that unreachable chord. You won't need to stretch your hand or your fingers. That's not really healthy for you anyway. But I'll give you my best strategies for placing and playing this chord or arpeggio, accurately, comfortably and beautifully by the way, there's an extra bonus here too. You'll find these techniques work for those larger right hand chords as well. But before we get started, I have to say we just finished our Play It With Confidence intensive. We had 88 courageous harpists who now have techniques and strategies and tools to help them play the harp more confidently. We had a fabulous masterclass with 10 participants who played so beautifully despite their nerves, their shakes, and their fears. Over the course of the Intensive, we talked a lot about what makes music meaningful to meaningful to a listener, meaningful to us as harpists and to each of us individually. I know I learned so much, as always, from working with these dedicated harpists and generous people. And I wanted to publicly congratulate every one of the intensive participants. You were great. And now we're starting to see that holiday season on the horizon. And for most of us, this year promises to be a bit busier than last as the situation has normalized here sort of post Covid, we're, you know, out and about a little bit more. And if you're at all like me, you're probably doing just a little bit more playing this year than you have done in recent years. So I wanted to bring back a resource that I did many years ago and amplify it and help you maybe hit this holiday season with a little bit more calm and a little bit less stress than you. Well, than before. Let's make it easy, right? So quite a while back I did a little PDF resource that was called Crush the Rush. Well, I went back and took a look at it and thought, you know, there's some really valuable stuff in here and there's some other things that I want to share. So I'm going to be offering a free webinar about how to crush your own holiday rush. Now, it's not about, you know, lighting a candle or going to a spa, although I have to say those sound pretty good. But this is about how to prevent the holiday frenzy from infecting your harp playing. I mean, maybe you have holiday music you need to practice, but you can't seem to focus your mind or to get enough practice time. Maybe the music that you plan to play for someone this season is. Doesn't look like it's going to get ready in time. How do you do that? How can you prepare your holiday music and still play music that you love.

Without having to sacrifice sleep or your nerves or without getting all stressed out about it? I do have some incredible strategies and tips that I want to share with you. It's A free webinar. There's nothing to sell here, nothing to buy. It's just to help you get through your holiday season. So we're going to talk about how to practice holiday music that maybe you know too well and maybe are bored with practicing. I know that happens, right? How to finish that piece that still isn't ready. How to keep your music that you've spent months preparing fresh and ready to play in just maybe 15 minutes a day. And how to have one piece that you play just for you to make your holidays even, even more meaningful. All together. I'll be giving you 15 wonderful ways to banish your holiday harp stress. And that's our crush. The Rush webinar. It's coming up on November 22nd. That's a Tuesday. And I'd love to have you join us. You will find the link on our Heart Mastery homepage or here in the Show Notes. So, you know, you can head over to heartmastery.com, look under the Events tab. You'll find it there. As I said, it's totally free. I. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I don't want you to buy anything. I just want your holiday season to be harp filled and happy. So that's coming up and I'd love for you to join me there. And now let's get back to talking about that left hand cord.

Let's begin with a little review of what this cord actually is. This is the chord a lot of people call a 1, 5, 3. And, and that's because it's the root of the chord.

And then the fifth above that, and then the sixth above that, which would be the third of the chord. Picture a C, E, G triad, C, E, G. Right. And then I'm going to move the C down here. And so there's our C and our E and our G. And we're going to play the C. And then the fifth above that C, which would be the G. And then we're going to take that E, which would be the third of the chord. And instead of playing it in the middle, we're going to move it up an octave. So now we have the C and we have the G. And instead of having the E down here, we now have the E up there. And there's our beautiful chord. It is a beautiful chord. And the thing about it is that it really is wonderful on the harp. Now, if you came to the harp from a piano background, you might not have been playing so many of these chords. Piano is so clear. The Sound on the piano is so clear and precise that a chord that. Where all the notes are close together like this sounds great. And it sounds. It sounds nice on the harp, too. Anything sounds nice on the harp, right? But on the harp, those chords can tend to sound a little bit muddy. So what we like is we love this open spacing on the harp because it uses the richness, the resonance, the complex of these sounds.

Just like that. It's a beautiful sound and it's easier to reach on the harp than it would be on the piano. So that's why we find more of it in harp music. It doesn't sound muddy. It sounds beautiful in sequence. Listen.

Now the regular triads with the notes close together.

Okay? They're pretty, but they just lack that spaciousness of these chords.

But even though these cords aren't as hard to place and play on the. On the harp as they are on the piano, they still can be a stretch. Now, if you have a smaller harp, it's maybe not as big a stretch. And with a lighter tension on a smaller harp than on the, the big pedal harp that I'm playing here, they can be easier to play as well. Also, on smaller harps, those chords that are closer together sometimes have a little bit more clarity. And so you'll find that spacing often on smaller harps. Right. But still, there are going to be times that you're going to need to play the spacing, and you want to be able to do it well. But I want to urge you here that the stuff we're talking about today needs to be adapted to your hand. And I'll talk about ways to do that. But if playing this chord is a stretch for your hand and it hurts, then you have to not do it. We might work up to that, and I'll talk about ways for you to work up to it. But it's important not to hurt your hand by stretching it. It's important not to try to stretch your hand on purpose. Those are very delicate tendons and muscles. We don't want anything to go wrong with your hand. We want you to be playing the harp for a long. So if you can't reach it yet, I'll give you some workarounds and I'll show you how to work up to it. But please don't push yourself to the point of pain because that no pain, no gain philosophy does not apply to the harp. We don't want you to be in any kind of pain or discomfort playing this. So having said that, let's talk about how you can play this chord. Most of the time you encounter this chord, it's going to be arpeggiated, either in that really fast arpeggiation that we call a rolled chord like this.

Or as part of an arpeggiated pattern, maybe something repeated even like this.

Or maybe part of an accompaniment like this.

So most of the time you won't have to play those notes exactly together when you. Which is a big help, but even so, it can be a big stretch. So the exercise that I like to recommend for sort of easing your way into this is to start with a very simple octave with the fifth in the middle. So I have a low C, middle C and the G in between. And I'm playing those with my fourth, second and thumb. And just put all three fingers on at once for this particular.

Interval. And then play them one at a time. So 4, 2, 1, 2. They're nice and connected.

Just a little rocking bass line.

And once you get that working well.

Then let's have your thumb move up to the D so that we're going to add a little bit of a stretch here.

So I'm playing C, G, D, G.

And then back up, we're going to move the thumb up one more time here. We're going to move it up to the E. And this is our.

Pattern, this is the chord we want. Right now you'll find as you play this that what's happening is that 4 and 2 are on the string at the same time, and 2 and 1 are on the strings at the same time, but all three fingers are not.

This is how you're going to be able to manage that chord. As I said, there may come a time when your hand is comfortable just placing all three notes at once. But mostly we're going to think of it as the lower two notes played by 4 and 2, and the upper notes played by. Played by 2 and 1.

And what's important to note about this is that your second finger is the anchor finger. That's the finger that's going to give both your fourth finger and your thumb stability. So that when you encounter this chord in a piece and you want to practice the placing of it, whether it's arpeggiated or just a rolled chord.

If you're not used to this chord or if it's any kind of a stretch, I want you to think about placing your second finger first. Put your second finger on the string where it needs to be, then reach down with your fourth finger. And then after you play your fourth finger, pivot up to your thumb. So you're going to place your second finger. In this case, I'm placing it on the G, place that first, then reach out with your fourth finger to get it on that low C. And then after you play the C, pivot on your second finger and kind of roll your hand up so that your thumb can reach the E. That's how you're going to learn to place this and place it accurately by using your second finger as your anchor. I know it's more traditional and seems even more logical to place your fourth finger first because that's the note you're going to play first. But getting your second finger on will give you the center of the chord and will give you that pivot point. Now if you can get two and four on at the same time, that's even better. And that will be a faster placing so that you can get 2 and 4 on the strings. Then play your fourth finger and pivot up to your thumb. But that will be just a little bit faster than just placing your second finger. But it's a really great way to work it. What you don't want to do here, I don't think, is to start by placing your thumb first because it's the last note that you're going to play in the pattern. Unless you have an arpeggiated pattern that starts like this, in which case you might place your thumb first. But most often we play these chords from the bottom up. So it's going to be the, the note that you need last. So don't place that first. And it's the least likely to give you that sense of security when you're placing. So my rule of thumb with this, although it's not a thumb thing, is to place my second finger first to give that chord the anchor. Or the next level skill from that would be to place four and two at the same time. And then you can use that second finger as the pivot to get up to the chord.

Now you will sometimes see this chord as a four note chord instead of a three note chord. And that has certainly a little bit more challenge to it. And in the four note version, you're going to find the fourth finger on the C. Since we're using this chord as a demonstration, the third finger on the G, and this is where you may experience some stretch. Then your second finger is going to be on the C above that middle C in this case, and the thumb on the E. So we've added middle C to our chord. C, G, C, E and now we have 4, 3, 2, 1.

This is a bigger stretch. And as I said, you may be uncomfortable with the stretch between your third and your fourth finger. There are a couple of ways to do this, and it depends on the context for your particular piece, what you want to do. But you can play your fourth finger and then just jump that. It's a little hop. It's not even a jump. Just do that little hop up to your third finger and place three, two, one at once. That can work for you. That's one option. The other thing is, if you can reach the 4 and 3 stretch, just place 4 and 3 and then use your third finger as your pivot rather than your second finger. So that your third finger in this case will need to go on the string, most likely with your fourth finger. Then play your fourth finger and pivot on your third finger up to those top notes. The four finger version is certainly more challenging. And if it's a real stretch for you, what I would suggest is that until your hand is used to this, or maybe your hand will never get used to it, and that's fine. When you encounter a four note version, you can almost always edit it to be a three note chord. So instead of the C, G, C, E, you're going to go back to C, G, E and play it 4, 2, 1, which is a much easier chord to play, much less stress on your hand. And there's almost never a reason that you need that fourth finger, which would actually be your other finger. There's almost no reason you need to make that a four note chord. So edit that down. Particularly if you're playing music.

That would have been written and arranged in the, in the, you know, 18th or 19th century harps were smaller than, the strings were closer together. So those big chords posed less of a problem for the player than they do on our bigger harps today. So feel free to take out that extra note that doesn't work and make that four note chord a three note chord. Let's look at some musical examples. The first one is from Samuel Pratt's piece the Little Fountain, a favorite of people everywhere. Right. Harpists love this piece and so do audiences. The middle section of this piece is all about this chord we're talking about. Here's how it goes.

Now that left hand arpeggio, that one we're talking about, the beautiful 4, 2, 1 fingering is all through this little section. In fact, there are several of them in a row right here.

Now, my hand is big enough I can actually place them, but I'VE been playing the harp for a very long time, and this is a perfect place for you to try placing 4 and 2 at the same time and rocking up to your thumb. If you need to get the second finger on first and then place four, that will work for you as well. But placing four and two will give you that security that you need to get to the arpeggio on time and still roll up to your thumb nicely.

This is a great thing to just practice left hand alone and make sure you can place four and two. Oh, there's a smaller one right there. And roll on up to it. So the little fountain is definitely an example to look at. So is one of my favorite pieces, upon the Willows by Brooke Body. Once again, it's the middle section of this piece where he uses these big arpeggios, this big stretch to such wonderful effect. It's that spaciousness of the arpeggio that really gives this particular section.

Just a textural difference from what's come before. It's.

And you can see that. Or maybe you can hear. There's our 10th, but he's thrown a couple other little notes at the end, right? A slightly different shape there, a regular octave, and then our favorite chord right there. And there are a number of these just peppered through this particular piece, but they have to be smooth. Once again, the arpeggiated bass makes it easy to just get those low fingers on and then rock up to your thumb.

And it'll make that possible for you. But don't just try placing your fourth finger at once and then getting your second finger on later. It won't work so well. So this pattern is easy enough when it shows up as an arpeggio, but it's more challenging when it shows up as chords. So I wanted to give you a few examples of that as well. This first one is from Bernard Andress Automat from the Sicilienne movement. And it's filled with these beautiful rolled cords, some of which just about every other one, in fact, is that exact shape that we're talking about. And that 1, 5, 3 kind of shape that open spacing alternates with a regular octave with a fifth in the middle. These are all rolled chords. But once again, here for your placing, your second finger is going to be key. Get that second finger on and roll up. You can do that for the smaller spacing chords, too, for the. Just the octave with the fifth in the middle, if you need to. The key with these chords in this piece and any other piece is that even though you're rolling them, they have to stay in tempo. So this, this whole little section of the undress piece goes this way.

So you don't have a lot of time to place those chords. Use your second finger, use it as a pivot. Another favorite piece is the arrangement of green sleeves. That's in the Medieval to Modern book by Sam Milligan. It's in volume two of Medieval to Modern. And these are big chords. The left hand here is, is so rich. The whole thing is just filled with these big, big chords.

They're big four note for the most part, left hand chords. And when they're just within the octave, it's not too bad. But there are lots of them that are bigger. That spacing that I was talking about earlier, that's very hard to reach all over the place here. That fourth, then third finger, then second finger, then thumb.

If you're going to reach all four of those at once to roll them, remember that aiming for to get that third finger on three and four if you can. I actually usually get two and three on and then stretch out my fourth finger as I do that. So once again I'm aiming for the middle of the cord, which is where the security is. But then the stretch isn't quite a problem for me that it may be for you. My fingers are really long. So if you can get that third and fourth finger on, it will allow you to roll up. And just remember that the speed of your placing is going to determine the entire speed of the piece. If you take a long time to place that, then your whole melody speed is going to have to reflect that. We can't be waiting for those chords. Right? So the placing here is critical. But remember, if you can't reach all four of those notes, you don't have to just leave out that what would be the second finger note here and turn it into a three note chord that you can reach with 4, 2, 1. If that's easier for you, feel free to do that.

And then just to round this out, I wanted to finish up with one of my very favorite pieces. This is by Henriette Regnier. It's Au Bord du Rousseau at the edge of the stream. And she uses this kind of spacing all over. So that that 4, 3, 2, 1 spacing that I just talked about from Greensleeves.

It's an arpeggio. Sometimes it's up and down the way I just did. Sometimes it's just the three notes going up, a nice sound. Sometimes it's a rolled chord.

And it's a Lovely, lovely piece. Here's just the closing of it, but you'll be able to hear those nice big stretches.

Such a beautiful piece. And yes, some of those big chords. If you were listening closely, you might have heard an extra little noise there in the, in the Renier excerpt. That was my computer thinking it wanted to go to sleep. Fortunately, it didn't go totally to sleep and of course neither did we. So everything recorded properly. But just love technology, huh? Sometimes it's wonderful, sometimes not so much. I hope you enjoyed talking about the left hand master chord today. I certainly did. And I hope that I've given you tips to help you play it just a little bit more easily and at least to understand what the special secrets are to placing it and playing it well. Next week on the show we are going to be talking about the three most important dimensions of music. The horizontal dimension, the vertical dimension, and the time dimension. So we're going to be talking about those and how you can be sure that you're working with all three of them in your practice. There are some interesting concepts to be talking about next week and I'm looking forward to that. Uh, don't forget, do join me on the free webinar on November 22, the Crush the Rush webinar. We are going to set ourselves up for some fun and stress free holidays and all the harp music making we can fit into them. And I'm going to show you how to make sure that your holidays are relaxed and not stressed out when it comes to your music. Your harp should be part of the joy of the holidays for you. And so that's what we'll be talking about on the webinar. You'll find the link to register for that webinar in the show notes and also on our website heartmastery.com just go to the Events tab. So thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to talking to you again next week. 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.