Making Music Sing: A Phrasing Primer for Harpists - PHH 199

Interestingly enough, when you are hearing the phrase and trying to project the phrase, this piece and pieces like this get a lot easier to play because you're no longer focused on all those little tiny notes. You're focused on the bigger picture, the picture that those little notes are helping to create. So getting that whole phrase to stick together and to be one melody is. Is very powerful.

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.

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 Miharp 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 and 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.comjoinnow. that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. I've been playing concerts with my flutist friend Joan Sparks for more decades than I care to admit. Our work together has included concerts, being artists in residence at schools and retirement communities, producing our own concert series, recording multiple CDs, actually even a couple of cassette tape recordings back in the day, and commissioning some significant works for the flute and harp concert repertoire. In fact, one of those works turned into an actual question on the TV show Jeopardy. Maybe. I mean, it turned into an answer. Anyway, I'll tell you that story at the end of the podcast. Of course, our collaboration hasn't all been about work. We don't travel as much now for concerts as we used to, but we did a lot of traveling earlier in our career and naturally we became very close friends. And in that time I also learned a lot about the flute. One of the biggest revelations I had was listening to Joan practice her long tones. Now, this won't surprise any of you who have played melody line instruments, but as a harpist with some years of piano lessons in my youth, long tones were practically a new concept on the harp. We don't hold a note, we simply play it and it goes effortlessly into the ether. No need to practice long tones. But this also means that we have no control over a note. Or once we've played it, we can't make it crescendo or decrescendo. We can't add vibrato to intensify it. We can't create a true legato where one note connects seamlessly to the next. I think this is partly why we harpists tend not to pay enough attention to phrasing. Yet phrasing is the breath of the piece. It's the living component of the melody. The it's what makes the song sing and the peace flow. So today's podcast is essentially a guide to phrasing for harpists. We'll talk about everything from what a phrase is and how to identify it to how to practice it so your melodies can sing. If you've been wondering how to get that flow factor into your playing, this will be important information for you, so stay tuned. Of course, there are other things that contribute to that flow factor. One of them, of course, is being able to finish a piece right and knowing how to do that. So a while back you might remember I gave a finish it intensive. Just a one day workshop and intensive that a lot of people who attended found very helpful. So having presented that in the live one day seminar sort of format, having heard how helpful this was for a lot of people. I really didn't want this information to sort of languish in Internet limbo when there were harpists who clearly could use it and who weren't able to attend that intensive. So I created a brand new course. It's the Finish it course. And you can learn just like the harpist on that call did, but on your own schedule. So this is actually the replay of that call. Plus I created a brand new introductory video where I explain more about what we cover on that course. And of course the there's also a study guide which is a little bit filled in and refreshed from the one we used on the call. And this course also includes an entire separate booklet called the Quick Start Guide to Learning Like a Pro. Now, when I gave this course initially we charged $49 for it, but we're offering it now in the replay version for just $12.99. So if you've been struggling to get even one piece finished, this may turn out to be the best $12.99 you've ever spent. I don't know. But you will find the link to that course in the Show Notes. It will be posted in the app for you and you'll be able to find it as well on the homepage of heartmastery. Com. And if you're not interested in the course, but you want to just purchase that Quick Start Guide to Learning Like a pro. That's 10 strategies to start learning your music faster. You can purchase that separately as well. And all that information is so I wanted to be sure that you knew all about that. And of course it's not too late to join our March seminar. It's the Variations on Bendemeer's stream, and we're teaching these variations week by week coming up. Week two starts today, but you won't have missed anything. You'll be able to catch up on the replay. So if you're not a My Heart Mastery member, go ahead and sign up for that March seminar. It's another bargain course, that's for sure. And it comes with all the PDFs and you know, the sheet music music everything that you need for that course. So you'll find all those links in the show notes, on the homepage, in the app, all those places for you. And I certainly hope you take advantage of those things because this is what we're here for, to help your heart playing be exactly what you want it to be. And I know part of what you want it to be is musical and that's where phrasing comes in. Phrasing is essentially the horizontal dimension of music. It's the flow of the melody, it's the pacing of the melody. It's everything about the melody. And so it happens horizontally. And if you think about it for a moment, you'll know why that's such a problem for us harpists. We work so hard at trying to line up the vertical, trying to get our right hand to play with our left hand, to try to get those notes played together, to get those chords rolling together, to make the hands balanced, to just get them coordinated enough to play together. Right? So we spend a lot of time worrying about the vertical, and that's where we lose. I think the idea of phrasing. It can be very hard to step back from concentrating on getting those hands together to making sure that, yes, they're playing together, but the melody is driving the progression of the music.

And that's what I mean by phrasing. If you want to think about a literal definition of phrasing, a phrase is a group of notes that communicate a particular thought or a part of a thought. If you're thinking of them in terms of grammar, which is where we think of phrases. It's that group of words that sticks together. It doesn't have to be a complete thought. It's going to be something that maybe has a comma at the end of it, or maybe is separated from the rest of the sentence by commas. It's not a complete thought in itself, but it's a partial thought. So I think that the parallel between language and music here is pretty similar. But once again, you see that we're looking at something that moves forward in that horizontal way, not as a progression of vertical sonorities like chord, chord, chord, chord, chord. It's a melody that flows. One way to understand what a phrase sounds like is to listen to a singer sing a song. Pick a song with a nice melody, not probably a rap song, right? But pick something with a nice melody and listen to where the singer breathes. That's probably where the phrase is, because those words are grouped together. And the composer of that song has made the music suit the words so that the words of the phrase go with the notes of the phrase. So that can be one very easy way to start thinking about what a phrase is and to listen to it. But of course, we want to find it in our music as well. Because if we're going to understand phrasing and if we're going to play the phrases, if we're going to make that part of our musicality and our expression, then we need to figure out what, where the phrases are in our pieces. So sometimes the composer is very helpful and they'll put in a slur marking that's actually marking the phrase. Now, you've seen these markings and a few of them look pretty much alike. So it's that nice curved arched line. And it can be mistaken for a couple other things. For instance, that beautiful curved line, if it attaches one note to the very same note, and that's all like a G with a beautiful curved line attached to another G, that's a tie, and that is indicating that you hold the note for that particular extended length of time. If it's just over two or three or four notes, it might be a slur. We harpists don't do slurs very well. But it's the idea that this group of notes, this little tiny group of notes, is meant to stick together.

And so we can sort of get the idea that la da da da, maybe those four 16th notes go together instead of da da da da. The slur marking is helping us understand that those are notes that go together might be more legato. But if that arched mark extends over a number of measures, that might be a phrase marking. And so sometimes looking there can be very helpful. Composers often put those in music to help show you where the phrases are if they don't think you can find it. If there are words to that melody, it can be pretty easy to find where the phrase marking is. But if there are no words, the end of the phrase can be tricky to find. Often it ends at a long note. Sometimes it ends with a note followed by a rest. So you can look for where that might be. If it's not indicated in your music, then you may have to play the melody and you may have to just guess. But use your musical intuition. You have it and this is a great time to use it. Now, here's an idea, right? So that very simple minuet in G, the one that's attributed to Bach, pretty simple melody.

That might be a phrase. Even though the melody continues.

That might be the next part of the phrase, or it might be the next phrase. The nice thing about phrasing is that it's part of our expression. So there are various interpretations that those eight measures that I just played, do you hear them as two separate phrases, two separate thoughts, or as one thought?

So this could be two four bar phrases or an eight bar phrase. If you're not sure where phrases are in your music, look for four bar and eight bar phrases, because those are very typical. They are by no means exclusive, but they're very typical. So you might want to just take a look there. You can also, of course, listen to a recording of the piece and see if you can hear or where the performer decides the phrases are. That can be very helpful. So if you need to find phrases, this is what you're going to do. You can listen to it, you can check out the words. You can look for long notes or what looks like starting and stopping and restarting places in your music. You can look for those phrase markings if the composer has put them in. And you can experiment with counting four bars and eight bars and seeing if you can find them there. Looking is always helpful. Listening is even more helpful. That's how you're really going to find where the phrases are. Finding phrases is important, but of course, once you've found them, what do you do with them? Well, phrasing is about flow. It's about the melodic flow, the progression of the song, if you will, of the piece. And if you think about that curved line that is sometimes used to indicate phrasing, well, you can think of that as a visual representation of the concept of the melodic arch. Melodies generally start from a point of minimal energy or no energy, and then they grow and they blossom and then they come back. That's how a phrase is going to work. It starts from a low point. It goes, grows and intensifies and comes back to another low point, which is where it starts again. So that arch that is so visual in that phrase marking is something that we want to do as we play. That's what you do with a phrase, because that's where the flow is. Now, if you were playing the flute or the violin or something, you'd have a whole range of things that you could do in to help move that arch along, because you can crescendo during a note, for instance, in decrescendo, because dynamics are one of the things that we use to help create that arch. The famous oboist Marcel Tabuto was with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He taught at the Curtis Institute for many years. It was before my time, but he was legendary in not just the oboe world, but the woodwind world, particularly for teaching his students how to create a beautiful phrase. And he used a numbering system that started with zero and then built up through that arch and came back to zero, like 01-2-3210. And learning to spin out that phrase, particularly through a very long melodic phrase. Was something that his students really learned to do well because of his method. So thinking about that starting point and then this blossoming of the phrase and then the relaxation as it gets ready for the next phrase, that's what you're looking for. And that's what I mean when I'm talking about the melodic arch. Dynamics are a key here. And so you can also work with the intensity of tone. You can work with the pacing. Sometimes you move through the phrase a little faster and then slow down at the end. That's not always appropriate, but sometimes it is. But generally you want to think of it, I think, in terms of dynamics, so that there's that little swell of sound. Maybe not as much as a crescendo, maybe just a small crescendo, but that swell of sound and then the relaxation, that's what we're looking for. So here's an example. This is the opening of the melody in Petite Berceuse by Alfons Hasselman. So this is a very simple little four bar phrase. He actually doesn't indicate it as all four bars phrased together. He's got two smaller arches that are showing you the note groupings rather than the actual phrases. But here's the melody.

Now Hasselman has marked it piano. And then in the second part of that melody, there's a small crescendo and a decrescendo. And that's helping us identify and create the melodic phrase. So we can see it there. But we can also use that crescendo and decrescendo to help us make that phrase audible to a listener. What's interesting about this is that now we're thinking horizontally again about this connected melody. But this entire melody is in sixths. So nothing is connected. The right hand's jumping all the time.

Right. None of those intervals are connected. So to make the phrase sound flowing, we really need to use our dynamics so that the phrase would come out like this.

And that gives it that flow that we're looking for. So let's say you have a piece of music that you're working on or that you're going to learn, and you want to find the phrases and you want to work at making sure that you are expressing those phrases nicely in your playing as you learn the piece. So the first thing you want to do is you want to find. Find those phrases. You want to label them so that you know where they are. You can mark them just, even just sort of mark a beginning and an end of one. Or you could use little curvy marks if you want, or maybe you don't even really need to mark them as long as you know where they are, but do find them. And in order to find them, you probably need to listen to the melody. You need to hear it. And then if you're listening to a recording of it, that may give you a good idea. You may be able to hear where the performer is putting the phrasing. If you can't, then try singing the melody yourself. Where are the places that it feels natural to breathe? Even just breathing the melody, as you say, the rhythm may help. You can do that along with the recording. You can do it while you are playing the melody through in your head. But remember that what you're listening for is where you would take a breath. Where does this stop? We want our music not to be a run on sentence and we want it to be expressive. So we need to find those points of articulation, if you will, right where the phrase ends and the next one begins. Remember too that as you're thinking about these phrases, they're going to help you focus on them while you're practicing and of course while you're playing. And what we focus on, what we hear in our head, that's what communicates to a listener. So hearing the phrases and making sure you're very clear about them is how your expression starts. So you're going to find those phrases, label them if you need to, and then practice that breath as you go along. Remember, with each phrase, here's the next thing. As you're playing through those phrases, you want to create that arch. What you'll do is you'll take the melody and we'll assume for the moment, although we'll talk about some exceptions to this and what to do, but assuming that the melody is in the right hand, you want to take that right hand line and play it through. Play it through at tempo if you can, or pretty close to tempo, because that's going to really allow you to hear where the phrasing is. If you're playing it too slowly, you won't be able to hear it. That's where a recording can be helpful, of course, but. But what I would suggest is that you play it through. Try singing with it if you can. Even if you're out of tune. Doesn't matter. Just sing along with it and see if the breathing sounds right to you. If it feels correct, that's where you want to start. And then you can, having identified those phrases, you can start adding that arch, thinking about how that Crescendo, decrescendo. That sort of swell feel goes to it, how the phrase moves forward. Sometimes a phrase doesn't come back at the end of it. Sometimes it doesn't crescendo through it. There are varieties of these things, and you'll know when you get there what that phrase is supposed to do. Sometimes the composer has told you, and that's a great thing, right? But remember, you're going to sing it through, play it through, breathe it, and find where the phrase is. This is essential to shaping all the learning that you're going to do of this piece because it's going to help give every single note a context. So that when you put the hands together, when you're working through all the hard stuff that happens in the piece, it's that phrasing that's going to allow you to be sure that you haven't lost the idea of the music someplace along the way. So it's a great idea to start with some phrasing study.

As I mentioned a moment ago, lots of times in our harp music, the melody has a lot of other notes around it that can help confuse, camouflage, whatever the actual phrase. And one of those pieces that is often played and that I'm thinking about right now is. Is the Little Fountain by Sam Pratt. So this is a piece that has a lot of notes. They're downward arpeggios, eight notes in every quarter note beat. And so the first eight bars of that piece sound like this.

There certainly aren't any phrase markings. There's not even any dynamic here in the music. There's nothing like a rest or a long note to help you find the phrasing at all. So this is one of those places where you might just decide to count four bars or eight bars and see if that sounds like a phrase. You can also look for a repeat. So, for instance, the first four measures actually repeat.

After the first eight bars. So you've got eight bars. And then the next eight bars start out the same as the first eight bars. That's a really good indication of a phrase grouping, where the first eight bars are going to go together. And then the next eight bars start the same, go someplace different. So that's a next phrase. So what do you do? Well, in the Little Fountain, a lot of times people concentrate on just those melody notes. I want to accent those melody notes. I want to get out those right thumb notes. And I don't think that's the best way to do it. If you understand that those thumbnails are the melody, then you can make the melody happen. And so you can look at the melody by itself and think about where that melodic arch is. Listen to it and see.

It swells here. And maybe it goes on. I think I played a four bar phrase before, but that's okay. And comes back.

And make that melody hang together. I know it's not the most interesting melody in the world because the interest in this piece is in all the other notes. But that's the melody that you want to hear. And that's what's going to keep those eight measures of little fountain from sounding just like a bunch of notes. It's going to keep them from just being blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's going to make them sound like the fountain. It's going to give them a larger scope. Interestingly enough, when you are hearing the phrase and trying to project the phrase, this piece and pieces like this get a lot easier to play because you're no longer focused on all those little tiny notes. You're focused on the bigger picture, the picture that those little notes are helping to create. So getting that whole phrase to stick together and to be one melody is very powerful. So when you have a piece like that, maybe it's even a piece where the melody shifts from hand to hand. Pull the melody out first and look at that and sing that melody. Hear it if you want. You could put words to this, right? If that helps you understand the phrasing and keep it in mind, Put words to it. Don't be afraid to do that. Why not? Nobody's going to hear them, right? You're just going to practice with them. Although if your words are profound, maybe you can, you know, publish them and that'll be okay. So that's the idea. Find that phrase and then make it happen. You can do it and it's easier than you think. Just practice that melody alone if you need to. And it's probably a good idea anyway. Practice it alone and make it have that shape, have that beautiful arch shape. That's where the phrases are. And finding the phrases, that's what's going to help your music flow. So let's do a quick recap. Phrasing is about the horizontal dimension. It's about the melody and making the melody flow. Phrases are parts of the melody that hang together just in the same way that a phrase does as part of a sentence. We make the phrase flow by giving it its arch, which is done primarily with our dynamics. Maybe that little bit of swell and then the Release as the melody takes off from ground zero, as it were, and then comes back to earth at the end of it. When you're looking for the phrasing in a piece, start with the melody, listen to it, breathe it, sing it, mark it. Look for four bar or eight bar sections. If you can't find anything else to help you, then practice the melody on its own. Practice creating that arch. Then you can start putting it hands together. And hopefully you won't get lost, won't get swallowed up in the difficulties of putting those hands together, but you'll be able to maintain your focus on the melody, on the phrasing, on the flow of the piece. That's all there is to phrasing. Now, I did promise you the end of my little Jeopardy. Story. I told you that my friend Joan and I, the piece we commissioned ended up as a, as a question or answer on, on the TV show Jeopardy. Well, we commissioned the sonata for flute and harp from the American composer Lowell Lieberman. And it's a terrific piece. Quite difficult, but it's a great piece. And we were so surprised that all of a sudden there it was on Jeopardy. Here was the answer that Alex Trebek said he was the host of Jeopardy. At the time. And here was the answer. Composer Lowell Lieberman wrote a sonata for flute and this instrument often heard at weddings. And of course, the contestant had to say, what is the harp? I mean, isn't that wonderful? An answer on Jeopardy. That was all about the harp and it was about the piece that we commissioned, even though we weren't mentioned anywhere in it. That's not a problem. So it was just a lot of fun to hear that on Jeopardy. So I hope you enjoyed that little tiny anecdote and I also hope you enjoyed our discussion on phrasing today. It's definitely something worth thinking about. Next week, something else worth thinking about. We're talking about the last 10%. You know, I often talk about music. You know, you get it to that 80% or that 90% or whatever it is. How do you close that gap between where you are and where you want it to be? I'll give you a sneak peek because you probably can already guess this. I'm not talking about perfection. I don't believe in the pursuit of perfection. I don't think it's healthy for us and it's pretty unrealistic. But we will be talking about closing that gap. This is where you are. This is where you are want to go. And that's what we'll be talking about next week do check out our March seminar. I'd love to have you join us on that. I'm so pleased with the reaction I've had so far to the little Bendemer Stream set of variations that I wrote. It's just a lot of fun and, you know, a little bit of Irish stuff here in March. Also, of course, we have that Finish it course which is now available for you and you can find it on the homepage of Heart Mastery or in the show notes or or in the app. You'll find it there too. So, so much going on. Wow. And of course, it's all about harp happiness, right? So 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.