Masterclass Episode: Warmups With A Focus - PHH 098

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, the although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there, I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. Do you have a daily warmup that you use to start your practice? If you do, I'm sure you rely on it to help you get your fingers and your focus ready for your practice session. That's exactly what a good warm up should do. Or at least that's one of the primary functions of a warmup. If you've worked with me as a student, or in my online community, or even if you've listened to this podcast for a while, it will come as no surprise that I have fairly specific ideas about warm ups. What they should and shouldn't do, how long they should be, what their purpose is in relation to the rest of your practice. And naturally, I want to share those ideas with you today. Today's episode is a masterclass episode, meaning that it's a play along episode. So you will not only learn my best warm up strategies, but you'll get to try them out by playing along with me as you listen. If you're not at your harp now, that's okay. I've got a lot to teach before we get to the play along part, so you can listen now to learn my guiding principles for warming up as well as how to do the playing drills. And then you can come back and play with me with when it's more convenient for you. I'll also answer some of the questions I am asked most frequently about warm ups, plus one or two questions that nobody has asked but someone should have. So maybe there's a question you've thought about asking but haven't yet. If so, I hope I answer it for you today. If I don't, be sure to email me@podcastarpmastery.com and I'll try to answer it on a future episode. Now, one clarification before we get started. Certain types of warmups have special physical uses for warming up muscles and tendons to prevent injury. Today, we aren't dealing with those types of physical warmups. We're talking purely about playing warmups that ease your fingers and focus into your practice. If you like to do more thorough stretching, that would happen before the warmups that we're talking about today.

This episode of the podcast is episode number 98, and that's a big number. But we're coming up on a bigger one. We're coming up on the 100th episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. And that's a milestone for sure. And because it's a milestone, it deserves some celebration. And in case you haven't heard, I am inviting you all to to celebrate with me for the 100th episode of our podcast, which will go live two weeks from today on Monday, April 17th. We are going to be doing a live taping of that podcast in advance of it. Of course, we're going to be doing the live taping on Tuesday, April 11, and I would love for you all to be at the podcast taping. The subject for this podcast is going to be reviewing my 30 days to done system for learning a piece quickly. This is the sort of shortcut system that I teach to my students. It's a separate course that is available through Heart Mastery. If you're a My Heart Mastery member, you already have access to that course. So 30 days to done is a shortcut way. I put it in a 30 day framework, but you can use a shorter period of time or a longer one if you need.

But.

But it's the steps that are so important. And while I go over the steps quite clearly in that course, there are some finer points that I don't often get to teach on. And I'm going to use this particular podcast taping as an opportunity. So if you are interested not only in joining me to celebrate the 100th episode of the podcast, but in having the opportunity to be with me live as I talk about the 30 days to done system and of course, having the opportunity to ask questions about it, I invite you to join me for that. You can use the link that's in the show Notes for this episode to find out how to join the live call. Or you can go to heartmastery.com, look on the Events page and there's a page there that will give you all the information you need on how to Join the call. So I would love for you to come and celebrate with me. It's going to be just a lot of fun and should be a really good episode as well. So that's the. The podcast itself is two weeks from today, April 17th, but we'll be doing the taping in a week from tomorrow, I guess. So that would be Tuesday, April 11th will be when we're doing the taping. So hop down, join those links, sign up, and I will look forward to seeing you on that podcast. Taping. So one of the things we won't be doing on that podcast taping is playing the harp. It's gonna be all just talking and communicating and sharing ideas. But we do have some playing to do today to get our warmups working. So we're going to get right into the meat of today's episode and start talking about warm ups. I think it's important to start our discussion with an idea of what warm ups are for and what they're not for. I told you I had pretty clear ideas about this, and I hope this will answer some of the questions that you have. So primarily, a warm up is for three things. It's clearly for limbering up our fingers, right? It gives us a chance to check our posture, gives us a chance to just sort of do a reset and a refresh. And as we come to the harp fresh that day, or fresh to that particular practice session, it gives us a chance to think about how we sit.

How we approach the harp, what our.

Fingers should be doing. It gives us a chance to refresh all those real simple basics that we don't have time to focus on when we're trying to learn notes and play music. So it gives us a chance to remind ourselves of the ideal technique, of the relaxation that we want to bring to our playing and gets our fingers just a little bit limber. I know that as I have gotten older, it takes me longer to get my fingers moving in the day. So a warmup becomes more important. For me.

As I age, it gets more important. And perhaps you're at that same point too, maybe not. And that's terrific as well. So limbering fingers, a number one focus. For any warmup, a number two focus would be to be preparing your mental focus. A warmup should be that transition, right? So that, you know, you're out in the world, you're doing whatever it is you do in your regular life. Maybe you're just, you know, doing the dishes, I don't know. But whatever it is, you're done with that you come to the harp and we need to create that transition. You might even think of it as a shutting the mental door on the rest of your life so that you can come in and just play the harp. This is especially important if you need your harp to be a place of calm.

And creativity and a restorative sort of place for you. If that's the frame of mind you're in, then your warm up is going to help you shut everything else out. Just turn that off and get ready to focus on your harp playing. That transition is so key, and I think if we ignore how valuable and how important that transition is, what we risk is, is diving right into our practice before we're really ready. And our practice feels scattered and it feels disorganized, and it just doesn't have the same kind of concentration, the same efficiency or effectiveness that we really want from our practice. So this transition time is critical. So we want to prepare not just your fingers, but your mental focus as well. And then third, this is the one I think we often ignore. But our warmup gives us a chance to really listen.

As I'm recording this podcast, you might be hearing some extraneous noise in the background. That's because one of my neighbors has just gotten out a chainsaw. So I hope that that's not too intrusive for you. But it's really a great point because what I wanted to bring up right now is that we spend so much time trying to turn off that extra noise that it's really crucial to remember to bring our ears to our playing and to develop our critical listening skills. And I'm not talking about listening to things that are right or wrong, but listening to qualities of sounds, listening to sound with a non judgmental sort of attitude. This is a great time to just refresh those listening skills, to think about tone, think about dynamics, just listen to your fingers, enjoy the sound of your harp. So those would be the three things that are essential for. For a warmup. We're going to limber your fingers, we're going to prepare your mental focus and just give your ears a chance to readjust. Okay, so what should you be doing in your warmup? Well, think about basics. Your warmup doesn't have to be involved. In fact, the simpler it is, probably the easier it is to make that transition to limber up your finger and to listen. So think basic things here, things like scales or arpeggios or chords or something just very, very simple so that you're actually just warming up and not trying to do too much. Now, here are some examples. This is the question, the kind of question that people don't ask. Sure, they want to include things in their warm up and it makes sense to think about including a lot of things. On the surface, it seems like a great idea to think, well, let's see, I could work on my technique and my dynamics and I could work on this and I could work on this and, and. But that's not what a warmup is for. If a warmup is essentially that transition time, then we can't really put too much work in it because we're not giving ourselves the chance to readjust, to clear the palette, as it were, and start fresh. So there are some things that are definitely not warmups. And here's what I think. I think that anything that is hard or difficult is not a warm up. We're not here to start your practice session with a super duper hard challenge. That's not what we're looking for. We are easing into practice.

Exercises that challenge your technique that are really tricky. Not a warm up. Great exercises, but not a warmup. Now, we could use them as a warmup, but we're going to do that a little differently. Drilling a difficult passage in and of itself. That's probably not a warmup. There are ways to use it as a warmup and we're going to talk about that. But a warm up shouldn't be difficult. So while all those things, pushing your technique, drilling a difficult passage, anything like that, it's all valuable. And we can give them warm up status by reducing the challenge or the difficulty or the stress involved. But remember, warm up isn't running the race, it's preparation for the race. Right. You can't sort of do your stretching and jog at the same time. We need to do your stretching first and then you can run. And that's exactly what we're doing here. So we might be doing some of the same things, but. But we're going to be doing them in very different ways. We'll get there, I promise. I'll give you some more concrete examples. How long should your warm up be? Gosh, I've heard people tell me about their 15 minute warm ups and I think that's too long now. 60 seconds might be enough, depending on how much limbering and transition time you think you need. Five minutes is probably a good average. Anything in that three to five minute range is probably enough because the warmup doesn't have to be your technique work. Warm up is warm up. Technique work is separate now, on any given day, your fingers may need more or less limbering and you can begin your practice slowly to help you do that so that you're not spending too much time just warming up. But you can go into your what you need to practice and just start a little bit more slowly. But the thing about a very long warmup is that if you're doing oh more than say 10% of your practice time block as your warm up, then if you still want to do more challenging technical work and you want to work on pieces and you want to work on something else, you've really compromised your time. So think about that. 10% of an hour.

Right, would be six minutes.

So a five minute warmup is probably great if you have an hour to practice. If you have half an hour to practice, try warming up for just three minutes. But keep your warm up time within that 10% frame. And I think you'll be happier, you'll be able to get more work done and your fingers don't need that much limbering that they can't get from your practice and you shouldn't need that much transition time either. So, you know, I think that that 10% rule is probably a good one. Now, could you just use your exercises or your scales to warm up? If you have scales you want to play and exercises you want to play, yes, you can use them to warm up. But we're going to talk about ways to warm up with those exercises or scales that are not so stressful or challenging, but really create that easing into practice for your fingers and your mind. Another question. Is it okay to do the same warmup every day? Absolutely. In fact, there's a lot of value in a habit like that. If you do the same warmup every day, every day, then that becomes a really quick way for your brain to reset.

You know, it's sort of like that, you know, sort of conditioning. Right. Is really what it is, I guess a conditioned response where you know that when you do this warm up, well, when you do that warm up, it's time to practice. And so it can create a very clear and easy transition for you. So if you do the same warmup every day, that is terrific.

Remember, it's just a warmup. It's not your technique work.

Right?

Okay.

But if you want to change up.

Your warmup every day, that's okay too. You can do a different warmup every day and that might bring energy and interest to your practice. So you can do it that way if you want.

Now, the next thing I want to do is I want to talk to you and to demonstrate a little bit of three different ways to use a warm up. Now, all three of these bring in those elements. Limbering your fingers, transitioning your focus, and bringing in listening skills as well. But they're all just a little bit different. And on any given day, one or a different one might appeal to you more. So let me get over to the harp and we'll talk a little bit about these three ways to use your warmup.

So the first way to use your warm up is as a transition time. That time in between the rest of life and when you've shut the door.

To your practice room and you actually.

Get to the meat of practice. So it's not just limbering up your fingers, but it's actually creating a transition.

Time that is going to work for.

Your fingers and for your focus. So in order to create that transition time, you really only need a single element to focus on for your warm up. And it can be a very simple skill. We're going to actually use a scale for it today. A very simple skill, but it could be something related to technique or something related to your tone or to any one particular aspect your practice.

But we're going to use just a.

Scale and I'll show you a couple.

Different ways to use that scale as.

A transition time warm up. Now, you can do this hands separately or hands together. I'm going to use a C major.

Scale here and just my right hand.

And I'm going to use this as a very slow scale just to close my fingers.

To make sure that they place well.

To give myself a chance to look at how every finger is working.

We're going to turn around here and go back down.

Let every finger work well. Be relaxed, but have that picture perfect position. Right.

And now I'll do the same with my left hand.

Just a one octave scale.

Very simply. Working at.

How, looking at how each finger moves.

Place, go back down.

You can use this as a, as a moment to think about your relaxation, to keep everything.

Working well, but relaxed. And you can do it hands together too, right?

And back down.

Now to keep going with the transition, you're going to take that same single skill, that same single drill. And we're working on a scale. And let's do it here in one or two additional ways to just help deepen our focus just a little bit.

And get us more ready for the work ahead.

So I'm going to do a two octave scale this time and I'm going to do it in a Long, short rhythm.

So I'm not going to go too.

Fast, but I'm going to be thinking about that rhythmic accuracy.

So 1e and a 2e and a 3e and a 4e and a 1e and, and a 3e and a 1e and a 1e and a 2a 3e and a 4e and A 1e and a 2, 3.

So once again, it gave me a way to just check my technique, to warm up my fingers gently and to, you know, keep focusing on my practice. You might try a wonderful scale at a very full sound, making sure that even though you're playing quite loudly, you're fully relaxing in between notes.

Listening to what your sound is like at that full volume.

But being very conscious of relaxing in between the notes.

Once again, you could do this hand separately or hands together.

Now, maybe you have other rhythms you want to try. Maybe you want to try scales that.

Are.

In sixth.

Where your hands start at different times. Or perhaps you want to try scales in tenths. They're playing in the same, same time.

But playing different notes.

Or you could do different tempos, different dynamics.

You could also do a contrary motion scale where your scales are, your hands are going in opposite directions.

So that's one skill. That single, single skill with focus several different ways makes a great transition time.

Warm up.

This is the warm up technique that.

I call a musicianship moment.

Lots of times we think about warm.

Ups as a technical thing, but they.

Can help you work on your musicianship skills too.

So musicianship skills would be things like.

Music theory skills or oral training, right?

Where you're working on your listening skills. They could help you work on your.

Dynamics and your expression. They could help you work on your memorization or improvisation. That could be a focus for your warm up, too. So for this kind of a warm up, you're going to take one particular passage or one particular exercise or drill and we're going to work it several different ways. So I've chosen a very simple chord sequence. Four chords.

It's a I chord and a IV chord and a V chord and a one chord, right? So very simple chords. C, F, G, C. And for my warm up, I'm going to start by just playing that several times and letting my fingers get used to it.

Now for this kind of a warm up, it's nice to have something that you like.

Now, if I wanted to practice my.

Music theory skills as part of my warm up, what I might do is.

Do that same chord sequence and do it in several different keys. So right now it's in C major. But what would it be like if I did it in G major? Well, I have to set my pedals with an F sharp, so I know I'm in G major. And then I would. Transpose is the word we use, all the chords. So I'd be starting with a G chord, then going to a circle C.

Chord and a D chord and a G chord. So.

So once again, the same chords but.

In a different key.

And then I'll reset my pedals and.

I'll try it again in F major. So I need A, an F natural and a B flat.

And we'll do it down A.

There it is.

If you wanted, you could keep going down by step.

Right.

I could go down to an E.

Flat, set my pedals for E flat.

And do the same kind of chords.

And I could go down to D if I wanted.

Oh, goodness.

Get rid of those flats, get some sharps going. And then a four chord, which is five chord is the A.

So you can get quite a lot.

Of theory, practice and A warm up at the same time.

So that's a great musicianship. Warm up another one. Perhaps you want to work on your oral skills just listening to chords. So going back to my original sequence here in C, maybe I would try singing the bottom note.

It's easy to sing the top one.

But I'm going to try singing the bottom one. So it's a separate C and then it's an A, and then it's a.

G and then it's a C. And.

Just listening to that note, that would be one way to do it. If you have a passage that you're reading, you can try saying other notes. I mean, you could try singing or saying middle notes in a chord sequence like this and just see what you can listen and hear. Or you can work this like a little improvisation. We've got a lovely little chord pattern. What if we try some different notes patterns? So like, what if we tried to arpeggiate the right hand downward?

Sounds different, doesn't it?

Or maybe move it up an octave and maybe add a bottom note.

Or perhaps.

Use the chords.

And make a little piece out of it. So there are lots of musicianship skills that you can do while you're warming up too.

Big chords.

Big arpeggios with the same chords.

Right.

All of that can be a musicianship moment.

Warm up.

A third way to use your warm up is to create clarity. So if you have a passage in a piece that's been challenging, that maybe creates what I call A flinch moment when you just tense up because you.

Know that you might be getting some of it wrong. And so you do.

We want to unflinch that. We want to relax that moment, create clarity so that you can play the.

Right notes at the right time.

So I have chosen a little excerpt from a minuet. And the. The minuet itself.

Is going fine here. But then all of a sudden after this fourth measure, the pattern changes.

And for the purpose of my demonstration here, going to pretend that this passage is making my fingers a little bit uneasy. And because I know the pattern's changing, I never play it quite smoothly. So here's how to use a warm.

Up to create clarity around that.

So you're going to start with just the measure or two, in this case three, that are a little challenging. And you're going to go super slowly, slowly enough.

That you can do it without errors.

The same measure three times, but I might need to do that. And then we're going to connect it.

So we're going to put the measure.

Before and the measure after it, with it, and still very, very slowly. We're thinking about being relaxed.

Thinking about.

Letting everything breathe.

Getting rid of all the frenzy.

Getting rid of all the questions.

And you can do this as many times as you like until you feel warmed up. You can do this in different rhythms.

You can do it with different dynamics.

But the idea is to keep it.

Slow.

And keep it relaxed.

We don't want to create any tension around it.

So being relaxed is an important part of a warm up.

And creating relaxation on purpose in a piece is a great use for your warm up. It's also kind of double duty because.

It'S going to save you some practice time on that piece later, isn't it?

So the critical things here, to be slow enough that it can be correct, and then it can be totally relaxed.

So that's the key to creating clarity in your warmup.

So let me review those three ways to use a warmup. Remember, we're talking about limbering your fingers, creating that mental transition time, and remembering to listen. So we started with a warm up that was essentially focused on that transition time, easing into your practice session with a single idea or a single skill. Perhaps it was a technical thing or just relaxation or tone. And we talked about using a simple pattern in three or four different ways so that you could just start to ease your focus into what your fingers were doing as you stayed relaxed. So that was just working out your warmup from a transition time perspective. But then we talked about the Musicianship moment where you're using that warm up time to create a little bit of focus on musicianship skills. And this could be music theory, right? We worked on transposing a chord sequence to other keys, so you're working on your chords and limbering up your fingers and really getting your brain involved at the same time. Or you could work on your oral skills, like your note reading. You could actually sight read something quite slowly. Part of your warm up. That could be it.

Or you could.

Sing or say some of the notes while you play them. You could use a simple pattern as the basis for an improvisation. And you could take that pattern and just start playing with it, repeating it, letting your musical creativity come into play. I warn you, with something like this, don't go down that rabbit hole and let your warm up stretch into 15 or 20 minutes, unless you have that much time to spend, because it can be easy and fun and very absorbing. So be sure you've got a time limit in mind for something like that. Or you could work on your dynamics and your expression, trying to make nice crescendos or decrescendos that are well graded as you move through the crescendo. Right. Or you could work at your dynamic range, seeing if you can play a true pianissimo and a piano and a mezzo piano and a mezzo forte and a forte and a fortissimo and feel like you're doing all those different dynamics. That can be a wonderful way to use a very simple warm up drill and get some extra benefit from it. So that's also great for creating focus. Right. And then we talked about creating clarity with your warm up and this is that. That sort of double duty warmup that we all want to do, where you take a difficult passage or perhaps it's just a skill that you really want to practice and you use your warmup time to work on this so slowly that you can actually play it without tension, without concern, and. And just creating clarity around all of it. So you might even consider creating a short list of three to five different ways that you could approach that passage or that skill. Maybe you could be doing it hands separately or hands together. You could alternate hands. You could do it in rhythms. You could think about your tone or your dynamics. Do not use this as a way to increase tempo because that's going against our basic warmup principle of keeping your warmup stress free and easy. So you don't want to work on a tempo, a fast tempo. With this. We're trying to create clarity, not creating A challenge. So those are the three ways that I just demonstrated for you. But now it's time to play along. So we're going to do a very simple warm up pattern built on those basic building blocks of our harp technique. We're going to be using scales, arpeggios, intervals and chords. And I'll work very simple pattern with you that you can use. And you could use this for your own warm up. You can make your own variations on it, you can do whatever you like with it, but we will play it and I'll show you how. I would use something like this as a warmup. So I will get over to the harp and we will work on this together.

So I'm at my harp and I.

Hope you are at yours. And I have set my harp for six C major. So no sharps or flats, but you could do this in any key.

And in fact, I recommend that you switch up the keys because that's really good for you.

But we're going to do C major for today. The idea is we're going to do scales, arpeggios, intervals and chords. And we're going to do them all in about three and a half minutes.

We're going to do them at a.

Tempo that should give you enough time to just relax and think. So what we're going to do is I'll teach it to you step by step and then we'll go through and we'll do the whole thing all together. So we're going to start with a scale. So the scale portion of our warm up works like this. We're going to do a one octave scale. The right hand starting on middle C. Do a one octave scale in the right hand, up and down. Then a one octave scale in the left hand, up and down.

Then a two octave scale, hands together, up and down.

And we'll do it fairly slowly at about a tempo like this. This should give you time to just relax and breathe. So take a moment and feel yourself sitting comfortably at your harp. And I've gotten myself comfortable here.

And we're going to start with just right hand.

Okay, so right hand. And then we'll go into left hand. And then hands together, one octave scale up and down.

Ready? Go.

C, D. A little bit slower.

I counted off a little bit fast. Here we go.

Gives you time to just place every note nicely.

There we go.

Close. Relax, breathe. And now we'll go right on with left hand.

And replace.

Down.

Oops, there's a little bit of a buzz there. Breathe, relax.

There we go.

And now we'll do this hands together. Here we go, two octaves.

This time.

Think about your fingers closing.

Breathe. Relax.

Sam.

Okay, so that was the scales. But the way we're going to do them in the real warm up is we're going to sort of chain them together so that when the right hand gets to its bottom note from its hand separately scale, that's the very same note that the left hand uses to start up. And then as soon as the left hand gets down, the hands start together.

Up without repeating the bottom note of those scales.

So let's do it hands together. Well, we'll start hands separately, but let's.

Do all three scales together.

Right hand, then left hand, then hands together.

And we'll give that a try.

Okay, we'll start with right hand.

Now get left hand ready.

And left hand starts. Now.

Keep breathing, not going fast.

Get your right hand ready and we'll do our two octave scale. Hands together.

And turn around.

Good.

Now we're going to do a hand separately arpeggio. And we're going to do just right hand up and down like this.

Same speed. And then we're going to practice our cross unders. So that when we come up this time we're going to cross under just with our fourth finger. So there's thumb, there's fourth finger, one.

Back down. And we're going to go up again.

Four, three, two, one. Cross under, this time with four and three. So four on the E, three on the G.

Cross back over with thumb.

C, G, E. Now back up 4, 3, 2, 1. 4, 3, 2.

This time, E, G and C, C. Third finger on G, fourth finger on E. Cross over with your thumb.

And now all the way up. 4, 3, 2, 1. 4, 3, 2, one. Crossing under with four onto the E.

E, G, C, E, C, G, E.

Crossover thumb on C. 2, 3 and 4. And then left hand is going to do the same thing an octave lower. So C, E, G, C. We'll start there.

C, E, G, C. And we'll go down.

Then we'll go back up, crossing under when we get to the top, crossing under with four. So here's our thumb on C, our fourth finger on E. And then back down.

Lots of practice at the cross unders. This way.

Crossing under with four and going up to three this time.

So there's E, G, E, C.

Going.

Up.

Crossing under with four and then three and two.

E, G, C, G, E, C.

And one more going up and crossing under. And we'll go all four fingers this.

Time, thumb then four Three, two and thumb on the E. C, G, E, C, G, E, C. And that's the.

Arpeggio portion of the warmup. Then we have an interval portion and we're going to do the intervals hands together. So have your left hand start on the C and the E below middle.

C. And have your right hand start.

By playing the C and the E the octave above middle C. So they're two octaves apart. Now you can do them closer together, but they may bump a little bit when we get to the octaves. So what we're going to do is simply play a whole scale's worth of intervals.

So here's your. What your right hand is going to be doing.

C and E with 1 and 2, then C and F with 1 and 2. Then switch to third finger. So C and G with 3 and 1 here. Okay? C and A. Also 3 and 1. Switch to your fourth finger finger C and B with 4 and 1. Then the octave C with 4 and 1 and then the ninth C to D just to give you an extra little stretch. Also four and one. So that's the C and the D.

And then we're going to work back.

Down the octave with four and one, the seventh with four and one, the sixth with three and one, the fifth with three and one, the fourth with two and one. This is C and F and the.

Third with two and one.

And that's all we're going to do. We're going to do those hands together. So the C and the E, the C and the F, the C and The G, the 3 and 1, the C and the A with 4, 3 and 1.

Oops.

C and the B with 4 and 1. The octaves with 4 and 1 and then the ninth, C to D with 4 and 1 and then back down the octave. The seventh switch to third finger.

And the fifth with C and G switch to second finger. We've got the fourth with C and F and the third with C and E. And that's the interval portion of our warm up. And then we're going to finish with three note chords. Now you could also do this with.

Four note chords, but we're going to do three note chords today.

So a C major chord, C, E, G. And we're going to play the chord in each of its inversions.

So C, E, G, then E, G, C, then gce.

Then C, E, G.

And then back down.

Gce, E, G, C, E, G. All.

Right, so and we're going to do this hands together.

C, E, G. Don't roll them.

Just Flat is fine.

C, E, G, then E on the bottom.

E, G, C, G on the bottom. G, C, E, C on the bottom. C, E, G. Then back down to the G on the bottom, back down.

To the E on the bottom and back down to the C. And that's the warm up. So it's the scales, it's the arpeggios, it's the intervals and the chords.

And we're going to get it done.

In less time than you might think.

So we're going to get that done now and let's do it all together. So are you ready? We're going to start with our 1.

Octave scale, hands separately. Then do our 2 octave scale, hands together. So here we go, right hand on.

Middle C. And we'll get started now. So.

A nice slow warm up tempo. I know you're already feeling warmed up, but we'll pretend we haven't warmed up yet.

And right hand back down.

And we'll get ready to start our left hand one octave scale. Now.

We dovetail, dovetailed that beginning and ending. And we'll do the same thing here.

There's your left hand going down.

And.

Get your right hand ready for that two octave scale. And here's the two octave scale, hands together.

This gives you time to think about the cross unders.

To relax.

To breathe.

To enjoy the sound of your harp.

Just think what a great day it is to play the harp, right?

It's always a great day to play the harp.

Now when we finish the scale, we'll go on to our right hand arpeggio.

I'm going to dovetail this again. So I'm going to start my arpeggio right away.

So there's 4, 3, 2, 1.

Right, the C, E, G. Yeah.

Okay, do the arpeggio up again and.

Cross under with four.

And here's your thumb on the C and your fourth finger on the E. Back down.

Now going up, crossing under with four and three this time.

Four, three, four.

Back up, Crossing under with 4, 3, 2.

And now crossing under with all four fingers to play. Here we go, G crossing under with.

Four on E, then E, G, C.

E and back down.

And we're going to get our left hand ready to play its upward arpeggio.

And here goes our left hand. One octave up and down.

Then up.

Again, cross under with four.

Fourth finger.

Back up with four and three this time.

Back up with 4, 3, 2.

And crossing under this time with all four fingers.

And now we'll get ready and we'll do our hands together intervals.

You Ready?

Here we go. So the seconds.

C and E. C and F. Switch.

To third finger C and G. C and A. Switch to fourth finger C and B. Here's your octave. Here's your ninth. And back down to your octave. And the seventh, switch to third finger for the sixth. And the fifth. Switch to second finger for the fourth. And the third. Now, one octave apart, three note chords.

C, E, G E, G, C, G, C, E, C E, G. And back down, and back down.

And there you go. And there's your warm up all in.

About four and a half minutes.

Now, you can do this a little bit faster if that works for you. Although remember, the object is to go.

Slowly and carefully and stay relaxed. But if you don't have four and.

A half minutes to spend on your warm up, you could just do part.

Of the warm up and save some of it for a different time.

Or, you know, maybe you don't need.

To do the intervals and the chords.

Maybe you don't need to do all.

Those arpeggios so you can swap out parts and do it however you want, but that's the way that little warm up goes. I think it's useful.

Why don't you give it a try?

Well, that's a lot of warming up.

I know a lot of talking about warming up for one day, but that is our masterclass. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it gives you some new ways to look at how you're warming up and why. Remember, please check out the live podcast taping, which is happening just a week from tomorrow, happening on Tuesday, April 11th. You'll find the ways to to access that live call on our website@heartmastery.com under the Events tab. Or you can just use the link in the show Notes. But I would love to have you there helping me celebrate with a special podcast episode next week. On the podcast for episode 99, I will be teaching you the shortcut way to build and maintain a repertoire. And we're going to be doing it with one pen, three sticky notes and five minutes. That's right. That's how you can build and maintain your repertoire. One pen, three sticky notes, five minutes. And I'll teach you how to do that next week right here. 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. 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.