Make Your Warm Up a Triple - PHH 120

Foreign.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience 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. Welcome to the show. Let's talk warm ups. You likely have a favorite way to warm up at the beginning of a practice session. It might be short and sweet, like an arpeggio in a scale. It might be a fairly thorough routine that allows you to check everything from your posture to your focus. Or possibly it's just a passage from a piece that you're learning. Whatever you do, however you like to warm up, that's great. I don't want to change that today. What I want to do is show you three different and important ways your warm up can help you. That's the triple referred to in this episode's title. These aren't earth shattering or revolutionary new techniques. They're simple, you clear approaches to your warmup that will allow you to develop critical skills beyond what's usual in a warmup. Now, I have a warmup that I will use to demonstrate as I teach you these approaches and it's available for you as a free download. You'll find the link in the show Notes for this episode, which you can find either on your podcast app or by going to harpmastery.com clicking on podcast in the menu bar, and then clicking on today's episode, which is episode episode 120. So if you want to go ahead and download that warmup now, you can just hit pause, download the warmup, and then come right back. But you don't have to use that warmup. You can use the approaches I'm going to talk about today with your regular warmup and derive just as much benefit. In fact, the triple threat Benefit three critical skills you can improve with whatever warmup you like. Now, if you're wondering what the critical skills we will focus on might be, here you go. They are finger dexterity and independence. Independence of the hands and musicianship. Specifically dynamic control and rhythmic control. Now don't let the terminology scare you off. This is easy and it just might even be fun. I've also included in the show notes a link to a blog post I wrote a while back called what to do to do when your technique is holding you back. In that post I talk about warm ups, but I also share some other ways to improve your technique and your confidence. I love sharing information with you, I love talking harp and I love teaching others about the harp. It's one of my favorite things I do. And of course the podcast is such a perfect way for me to be able to do this. I love being able to teach this way. But it's not the only way I teach. And I wanted to let you know about one of the other teaching things that we have at Harp Mastery. It's called My Harp Mastery and it is our membership program. I like to think of it as an all in one harp happiness platform. At My Harp Mastery, you can do everything you want to do with your harp playing all in this one place. And even better, you can do it beside other harpists who are just as interested as you are in becoming the best harp players they can be. I like to talk about my heart mastery as a Learn, grow and share space. When you learn in My Harp Mastery, you're learning through courses. We have recorded video courses, over 65 of them, on every harp topic imaginable, from technique to note reading to improvisation. We have courses and workshops that teach how to practice more effectively or perform more confidently. We also have courses on specific pieces, we call them featured pieces, where I teach an actual piece live on a call, which of course is recorded for you. So you get to sort of learn a piece in an hour. How fun is that, right? Then, of course, growing we have the Scale of Success. This is our fill in the holes, step by step curriculum to help you know that you're developing all the skills you need to play the music you want to play. It's a simple way to be sure you're just checking all the boxes. So the Scale of Success is something we have for our My Heart Mastery members and then sharing. Well, of course we share every week on our live calls, so that's a part of our experience too. But we also have fifth Monday musicals on the on Every month that has a fifth Monday, we use that fifth Monday for some of the members just to share their music to play for the other members on a call. Very informal, but a neat way to share, learn about some new music, try out music that you're learning, or just test the waters. As far as playing live for somebody goes, we have sounding boards, which are member groups who meet on their own time, but they get together and meet over, zoom and play for each other to help develop their playing skills as well and, you know, form kind of deeper harp friendships. So we also have a member forum where our members can chat, discuss, ask questions, all of those things. But most importantly, we do our live learning on our Monday calls. These are workshops taught not only by me, but also by my certified coaches, expert harpists and teachers who love teaching and sharing their knowledge just as much as I do. Now, they normally work one on one with the harpist in our coaching program, but they hop over to the My Heart Mastery community every Monday to share their expertise with our members there. So. So somebody's always teaching you live on a call. All these calls are recorded. So if you can't be there live, you still get the benefit of all of that knowledge. But it's a fabulous community. So why am I telling you about this now? Well, normally we only open membership for My Heart Mastery twice a year, usually April and November. But I wanted to just give harpist the opportunity to join us right here at the beginning of the fall season when everything is starting to gear up so that you can get the best running start on your fall on this new season of harp playing. So if you are listening to this podcast right when it comes out, it's coming out on Labor Day, September 4th, and we are opening membership today, that's Monday, September 4th, and all the way through Friday, September 8th. So right now, for five days, you have the opportunity to get into our My Harp Mastery community. Now, this is a paid membership. It costs $47 a month. Now, that's much less than the cost of one harp lesson. And you get all of those things, you get the courses, you get the live Monday night calls, the opportunity to share with the other members in the community. And we have 150 plus members from all over the world. So it's a very rich and vibrant group of harpists, all different kinds of levels, from beginners to professionals who are happy to share their knowledge and their love of the harp with you as well. So there's a lot going on and I urge you to hop in there and Join us now so you can use the link in the show notes to find out more about my harp mastery and to register. But we're only holding registration open through this Friday, September 8th. It's like a little flash opening, so if you're quick, you can take advantage of it and get on in there. And as a matter of fact, when you get in there this week, the first Monday night call that you'll be on is, well, you could get on that call tonight and you'd be learning about sight reading, which is terrific. Or you might be learning on next week's call, which I will be doing. And that's a call about a featured piece. We'll be learning a piece of music right on the call there. So lots going on. There's always stuff going on at my heart mastery. I invite you to give this a try and I look forward to seeing you on the inside. So what is a warmup usually for? Well, it's usually to warm up your fingers, to limber them up the same way that an athlete would limber up before they start their daily exercises. But it's also for warming up your focus. It's a way to begin your practice slowly and get accustomed to the work that you're going to be doing. So warm ups are generally done slowly. It's, you know, a slow tempo. It's good for your fingers, it's good for your body. It's helpful. You don't want to just dash in with something fast and furious. They're generally focused on mechanics, on how your fingers work, how your posture is, everything that goes into physically playing the harp. We're reviewing our best technique in all those forms so that we can get off to the best start possible. It's a good way to put a check on that. Yes. It can be a way to review fundamentals like scales and arpeggios and intervals and chords. It can be a way to look at a difficult passage in a pie and get some extra focus time on it. It could be a time when you review repertoire. It could be all of those things or just any of them. But today we're looking at using your warm up in a few very different and extra focused ways to just help you with some of the more common difficulties, the things that we face all the time that we just might want a little extra practice on. Now, the warm up that I'm using is something that I have called noodle doodle for Ms. Double. Okay, it's a funny name, but that's because it was inspired by the Double strung harp of my friend Denise. Denise was letting me noodle around on her double strung harp and her double strung harp is named Ms. Dublay. So I wrote this little ditty just to sort of have fun on the double strung. Now I am not a double strung harp player so I really was just sort of noodling around and I was experimenting with the fun of playing strings that were very close together on opposite sides of the harp and you know, not having to bump. So while that original noodle doodle wouldn't work quite the same on a single strung harp. So because of that I changed it. So this is edited for a regular old single strung harp. So the hands aren't playing the very same strings on different sides of the harp. We're playing just a little further apart. But it's still a very cute little doodle. And I chose that for this because it's got some, got some fun things to work on. So that's the download that you're going to get. And I thought we'd start, I'd play the whole thing through for you rather slowly so that I can warm up and so that you can hear what it's all about you. So this is noodle doodle for Ms. Dublay.

As you can see, it is a real little doodly kind of a thing, isn't it? And it's cute and it's fun and it's can be, it can be played on any kind of harp. So there you go, that's what we're going to work on. So let's take this as a regular old warm up. If I were to use this as a warm up, I'd be playing it quite slowly, something like this.

Where I could check each finger, think about how each finger is playing and closing that the hands are working together, et cetera. Now you could do this hand separately as well, but that's what I would be doing for a normal kind of a warmup. Now I might want to play it faster, but that's a different story. That's not exactly for a warmup, but what we're going to do right now is talk about those three areas that I want to focus on today. The first one is finger dexterity and independence. So aside from just checking the mechanics, checking how each finger is working and that you're sitting straight and all that good stuff, we're going to check and see if we can't get your fingers to be just a little bit more agile and to work a little bit more independently of each other. This particular Little doodle is good for finger independence. It's got a lot of sort of twisty patterns, but we're going to push this to the next level. That's kind of the, the idea in our little triple threat. Warm up here. So to really work at finger dexterity, we're going to work hands separately. So I'm going to start with my right hand. And here's the first technique I would do. I would work this pattern in a rhythm. Long short is one of my favorite practice rhythms. And it's like this.

It gives me a chance to really think about the replacing of every finger.

Think about how every finger is working. And it changes up the timing of my placing. So it's just a little extra workout. Now, long, short is one rhythm. One of the other rhythms I like a lot is sort of a 1, 2 and 3. 1, 2 and 3. Kind of a little, a little waltz rhythm. So 1, 2 and 3 will go this way. 1, 2 and 3. One long, short, short, long, long, short, short, long, long, short, short, long. One, two, three, one.

Once again, it just gets you moving a little bit more and it keeps those fingers just on the, on the edge. They're guessing a little bit because the placing, the timing of the placing is different than with the regular rhythm. This is something you can do with any warm up that you have. If it's not already in a rhythm, change it to one of these. If it is in a rhythm, make it straight without that rhythm. Now I'll share one more rhythm that I like a lot, and that's this rhythm. We're going to make the first note fast. So we're going to play one and a two, one and a two. So short, short, short, long. So.

And I would play all the way through and I would do the left hand. But because in this particular little doodle, the left hand doesn't play quite as many notes as the right hand. I would have the left hand play the right hand part, but an octave lower. So instead of playing its own little part, which has all kinds of rests and eighth notes and quarter notes, I would probably have it play the right hand part, but lower. So I'd have it do maybe the long, short rhythm.

Oops, I missed.

That's what comes of sitting sidesaddle while I'm talking to you.

And then you can have the left hand continue through and play the whole rhythm or whatever rhythm you like that way. And that will be really great for training your left hand. So extra dexterity from the rhythm. Now another way to add some Dexterity practice to a drill like this is to absolutely change up the speed. If our warm ups are usually slow and careful, that's great. But if you don't play fast, you'll never play fast. Right? So after you've done that slow warm up and your fingers are limber and you're ready, then try that same warmup again in a very fast tempo with a very light touch. So lower the dynamic so that it's not forte or mezzo forte, but something that's mezzo piano or piano or even pianissimo. But turn up the tempo so that it's much faster. Once again, do this drill hands separately, not hands together. Well, you could do it hands together if you wanted, but start hands separately. So instead of playing a warm up tempo for this drill, I'm going to play something quite a bit faster, like this.

Etcetera. Okay. So when you're playing at that fast tempo and playing lightly, what you're listening for is the cleanliness of your fingers. You are focusing on the relaxation of your fingers at that faster tempo and concentrating on making everything sound even and smooth. And once again, I would do this hand separately and I would have the left hand play the right hand part when it comes to its turn. Because we want the left hand to be able to do exactly the things that your right hand can do. We know it can do special left hand things, but you to train it to be as agile as your right hand is a fabulous idea. So those are two good ways to look at your warmup. Focusing on finger dexterity. Now you can use any warm up to do this. So perhaps your warmup has the hands treated equally. To start with, right hand and left hand are playing exactly the same part. So it doesn't matter which hand you play, you're just going to do what's there. So. But that's a different way to look at your warmup. But what if we're not looking at hands separately necessarily, we're looking at hands together. Then one of the things we want to practice is not just the hands being together, but the hands being independent. When we're working on a hands together warm up, generally we're working on making sure that the hands sound equal, that they play at exactly the same time and with an equal dynamic. So doing my little noodle doodle. And I'm going to start. Oh, I'm going to start closer to the end here. Measure six.

At that nice slow tempo.

We'Re thinking about every finger playing together.

Listening to everything.

I'm no Good at talking and playing at the same time.

And that would be a real warm up, right? That would be great for getting everything focused and getting you, you know, limbered up. But what we can do to create a little bit more practice, a little bit more independence of the hands is after you do something like that, you can, can consider a geography drill. So, for instance, if your hands are far apart.

They'Re more or less far apart here.

You can do the same tempo if you want, but move the hands closer together. I'm sure at some point you've played a piece where you're thinking, gosh, my hands are so close together and they're tripping over each other. It's kind of funny when you think that the harp is a two sided instrument, why we should be so, so, so challenged trying to get our hands to play close together. But the fact is, of course, that if your finger is trying to play the same string that another finger is trying to get to, that doesn't work too well. The advantage of a double string, however, let's try this. Now, because this exercise was written for double strung, the hands are already pretty close together, but we can make it closer. So starting down at something like measure six, instead of having the hands be a tenth apart, I could move them so they're only a third apart. They're quite close.

This is going to create some placing challenges.

And it's going to mean changing my fingering just a little bit.

But it's good exercise. Hello. Tripped a little bit there.

Just to have your hands so close together and get used to it.

They're playing the same string there. They're overlapping here.

Same string.

It's an interesting challenge and one that could be fun to do now. So if your hands are far apart in your drill, you can see what happens if you can bring them closer together, if they're already closer, close together, you could take them farther apart. So in the beginning of this drill, whether only a sixth apart, I could move them further apart and have a whole different experience with this exercise.

Or you could actually reverse your hands. If you have run into those occasions when you have to play with your left hand higher than your right hand, you know, that's a challenge. So for this drill, I'm going to actually move my right hand down two octaves so that my left hand can be on the top.

And I'm playing reversed. My left hand's playing the normal part and my right hand's playing its part two octaves lower.

An interesting challenge for anybody. So working at Geography like that is kind of a fun way to make sure that your hands can work independently of each other. But I have another fun way. At least I hope you'll think it's fun. And this is to alternate your hands. And there are different ways to do it, but the way I'm talking about right now is to play the, the notes and the drill here. We're going to play them, but we're not going to play them together. We're going to alternate them doing. We'll start with left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right.

It's interest for your reading.

I'll play this then. Left, right, left, right.

Don't worry if you don't come out even here. That's all right.

Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. And then reverse it and do the right hand first. Right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left.

A little faster would be good.

It's an interesting exercise and really, really good for teaching your hands to work independently. Lots of fun.

But what if you would like some musicianship practice from your warm up? And you might. There are some great ways to use a warm up to practice your dynamics. Dynamic control is one of the hardest things for any musician, no matter what instrument you're playing. You know, how do you gauge where a piano is versus a forte? And how do you make that work? So with any warmup or we're going to use it with this one, you can practice what we call terraced dynamics, which means that there's not a gradual dynamic shift. They just work like terraces, like little stair steps. So you could make the first measure piano, the next one mezzo piano, the next one mezzo forte, the next one forte, so that you're working at an actual dynamic level shift each time. And then of course, you could reverse it from there too. And you could do. If we did the first four measures moving up to forte, we could do the last four measures moving from forte back down to piano. So it might sound like this. We've got a piano.

Mezzo piano.

Mezzo forte.

A forte.

And keep it forte, then mezzo forte.

Mezzo pian.

And piano.

An interesting exercise. You wouldn't have to do it so fast, of course, and you wouldn't have to talk while you were playing it. But terracing the dynamics like that can be a really interesting exercise in regulating your dynamics. If you don't want to do the teris idea, you could do sort of the hairpin idea where you start piano and then do a gradual crescendo up to forte and then a gradual crescendo from forte back down to piano. Also good for practicing dynamic control.

But you could also practice your own rhythmic control. Now, what may sound radical to you is that I'm not going to ask you to get out your metronome. I'm going to ask you to be your own metronome. So what we're going to do right now is have you play one hand and then tap the beat with the other. So you're going to keep a steady beat. I'm using my left hand here and tapping gently on the soundboard. And I might tap the quarter notes and I'll play the right hand. So, 1, 2, 3, 4. It's an interesting coordination. We're working at independence of the hands with that.

But it's going to help you.

Hear the beat and create the beat at the same time in a totally different way. Now you don't have to do the quarter notes. You could do the eighth notes.

Or you could switch back and forth. Now I'll go to quarter notes.

In this case, you're almost using your playing to help inform your tapping, which is sort of interesting. And then of course, you want to reverse that and have your right hand do the tapping and your left hand do the playing.

It's an interesting exercise. Once again, it's going to be a coordination kind of a thing and a counting thing all at once. Plus you're just using your warmup. How cool is that? So those are the six ways that you can make your warmup a triple threat. You can work at finger dexterity by working hands separately in either rhythms or working at a faster speed. Nice and light. You could work at the independence of the hands, sort of changing the geography of the of the warmup with your hands in moving closer together or perhaps reversed or maybe farther apart or alternating your fingers between your hands. You can work at your musicianship, working at your dynamics, or working at your rhythm by being your own metronome. Lots of ways that you can make your warm up triply useful and extra beneficial for you. So I hope you've enjoyed this little look at other ways to use your warm up. Do be sure to pop into the show notes and find that link so you you can download your copy of the Noodle Doodle. And while you're there, don't forget that we are having that super secret Flash opening for my heart mastery this week only from today, September 4th to September 8th, Friday. So hop in there and join us. You're going to just love this community and I will certainly look forward to seeing you on one of the Monday Night calls next week. Here on the podcast, we're talking about being prepared. We say so much about being prepared where we wonder if we're going to be prepared for when we play or when we have a lesson. But what does it mean to be prepared? And what do you actually have to do to be prepared? That is the subject of our conversation for next week and I look forward to explaining exploring that topic with you then. 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.