More Than Dynamics: Uncovering the Real Secret to Musical Expression - PHH 182

But when we express what's on the page, that's taking that idea that lives behind the dots, right behind those dots on the page. It's taking that musical idea and infusing it with life. Now, I know that sounds very grand, but this is not an idea that's just for virtuoso players or just for the masters. It's for every musician. It doesn't matter whether you're playing Rachmaninoff or Row, Row, Row youw Boat. The idea is that there's a way you can express the music and not just play what's there.

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 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.com join now that's harpmastery.com join now welcome to the show.

What can I do to make my music more expressive? Well, if I've been asked that once, I've been asked it a thousand times. This isn't a beginner question either. It's usually a question from an intermediate level player. Once harpists achieve a fair level of technical competency, then they have enough bandwidth to consider how to make their playing more musical. But until that point, it's all about getting the right fingers on the right strings. Naturally enough, most of us look to the dynamics to make our music more expressive, and it's a good plan. Following the dynamic markings that the composer has included allows us a glimpse of what the composer intended the music to be. Dynamics created differentiation in the music that helps a listener hear the intent of the music as well. And dynamics add variety so our music is more interesting. Dynamics are a great place to start if you're ready to make your playing more expressive. Usually, however, the harpists who ask me about making their music more expressive are already working at the dynamics. That's why they're asking the question. They aren't sure why their music still does sound the way they want. Today I'm going to share my ideas on the techniques of musical expression that lie beyond the dynamics. I'm talking big picture concepts here, ideas that will, I hope, change the entire way you approach your music from practicing to performing it. These ideas are for every harpist at every level. Beginners can use them, and advanced harpists can always use a reminder about them. Every piece, whether it's super simple or virtuoso. Concert repertoire can and should be played expressively and beautifully. It's not about the number of notes you can play or the speed and facility of your fingers. It's about finding the musical heart of what you play and not being afraid to put your own heart into into it. Don't let that scare you though. I have some ultra practical strategies for you that will help you make your music as expressive as you want it to be.

Speaking of being expressive, I want to remind all our my Harp Mastery members that our On a Roll course is continuing this week and running all through the month of November. This is the series about rolled cords, about how to roll them more beautifully, how to make them more and use them as part of the expression of your music now for My Heart Mastery members, these are our regular Monday night calls. But if you're not a My Heart Mastery member, then you can join us for those calls only by purchasing our November Seminar series. Our seminar series is a way for you to access the the courses that our My Heart Mastery members get each month. You don't get everything else that comes with My Heart Mastery. You don't have access to the library. You don't have lots of the other perks that My Heart Mastery members enjoy. But you can join us for these calls and you'll get the replays of the calls as well, and all the PDFs that go along with them. So if you're interested in following along with this course, I highly recommend it. And you will find the link to sign up for this seminar series either in the Show Notes for this episode or at Heart Mastery under Upcoming Events. You'll find it there. Also, on those Upcoming Events tab you will see the link to register for Our February Getaway Retreat as you might know, we had an interesting retreat in October in Florida. We were. Well, essentially our retreat was shut down by Hurricane Milton. Fortunately the warning was early enough that nobody came and was stuck in Kissimmee with us, so everyone was safe and that was terrific. But we're going to be doing our getaway retreat in February as usual. Fortunately, February is not hurricane season in Florida, so we expect better weather for sure. And so I hope that you might consider joining us there. It's a terrific opportunity to be part of a group of harpists. Like minded harpists. They're in person, learning together, sharing together and it's a great experience for sure and I would love to have you join us. So you'll find the link again in the show notes or@heartmastery.com under upcoming events and you can learn more and sign up there. We all know that dynamics are important. Although actually I was in a chamber music rehearsal once where we stopped to correct some things and one of the other players said to the cellist, I believe, well, you know, we need to make that dynamic difference at measure 120 or whatever it was. And the cellist looked at the person and said, well, are we doing dynamics now? Now he was being facetious and of course he, you know, made the note to be sure he did that dynamic the next time through. But still, dynamics are one of those things that we sometimes overlook. So dynamics are important. They bring that variety to our music, they help it speak. And so they are important, but they're not Everything. And here's a really good example that I think illustrates how dynamics don't create expression all by themselves. I use a program called Sibelius to do my music writing, you know, when I'm typing up music and that sort of thing. So Sibelius is a terrific program, and it's got some really great playback features so that I can have Sibelius play my music. And if I had sprung for the really expensive package of Sibelius, then I'd have some really beautiful instrument sounds and it would be, you know, be pretty. Pretty nice sounding. When I just played back my music through the computer.

I don't have that. So I have some really pathetic sounding instruments. But that's okay for the purposes that I needed. I just want to make sure I have the computer play it through so that I can hear if there are obvious, glaring errors that I need to fix.

But what happens is that when I put dynamics in the music, those fortes and piano markings and even crescendos, even retards, Sibelius knows it. So when it plays it back, it makes it softer, it makes it louder. It'll do a crescendo, but it still sounds pathetic. And it's not just the sound of the instrument. It doesn't really breathe. It doesn't bring the music to life. It just is softer or louder. Oh, yeah, it's a crescendo. Oh, yeah, it's a decrescendo. But it really doesn't make the music expressive all by itself. And to me, this is absolute proof that dynamics alone don't create expression. Imagine in your mind's eye a painting that you have seen, a representational painting, maybe a still life, something where, you know, the people look like people and the oranges look like oranges, et cetera. So think about that, and maybe you can even think about one that has the beautiful depth of color and difference of light and shadow and a beautiful perspective to it. But even if everything in that painting looks beautifully real.

Is it actually depicted exactly the way it would be in reality? Or some of the things may be enhanced with some extra something or maybe obscured. Maybe things in the background perhaps are a little obscured and blurry. Maybe other things are exaggerated just a little bit. The question is really this. So when we're looking at that painting, what do we perceive as true to life and what is actually revealed to us differently through the artist's eye? I mean, yeah, it's a pair, and it's a really beautiful pair. In fact, it's a pair as Beautiful. More beautiful than one I've ever seen in real life. Not because it's more perfect, but just because it's more like a pear than a pear. There's something about it that is different because it comes to us through the imagination of the painter. That artistic viewpoint is enabling the painter to create something that is more than reality. Not just hyperreal, but more in depth, more brilliantly colored or more pale. But it carries with it not just the picture of a pair, it carries with it something about the idea of that pair. It's just a little bit different, so that the painting is more than just the object itself.

That's what I want you to think about with music, too. The music is more than what's on the page. Now, I know that's a scary concept because when we're looking at a piece of music, we know our job is to play what's on the page.

But that's only the beginning of our job. Our job is not just to be the accurate reflection of what the composer wrote. My computer writing program can do that. And it's not very pretty, but it can do it.

What we're looking for is something that actually exists beyond what's on the page so that we can do the dynamics. Oh, yeah, we can observe every single one of those. But there's something else that we need to put into it. And that's what I want to talk about today. When it comes to written music. Human beings have had ways to write down music for a very long time. In fact, there are examples of written music as far back as 1200 BCE those neumes, those, you know, really old fashioned, sort of square, funny notes, all those neumes, they came along at about 650 A.D. and our system that we use today dates from probably about the 1000s. So our system of music notation has grown and changed a lot, but we've had it for a really long time. It's no wonder we rely on it so much. And of course, this is different from some other art forms. Ballet is legendary for not having had one particular way to write notation so that choreography could be given and passed from generation to generation in a way that was actually written down and not just word of mouth. In fact, one of those choreographic notation systems was not developed until the 1940s. And that's the one that's used at the Royal Academy in England to teach classical ballet. Think how new that is. It's not even 100 years old yet. So, you know, we've had our notation system for A long time. But that leads us to a trap, because it traps us into thinking that playing the music is replicating what's on the page. And I want you to compare these two ideas, the difference between replication and expression. When we replicate what's on the page, that's what my computer program does. It. It sees it and it spits it out. But when we express what's on the page, that's taking that idea that lives behind the dots, right behind those dots on the page. It's taking that musical idea and infusing it with life.

Now, I know that sounds very grand, but this is not an idea that's just for virtuoso players or just for the masters. It's for every musician. It doesn't matter whether you're playing Rachmaninoff or Row, Row, Row youw Boat. The idea is that there's a way you can express the music and not just play what's there. And I know that that's what you're seeking when you're saying, well, you know, do I need to do more dynamics? I need to make my music more expressive? What can I do? That's what it is you're seeking. You're seeking the life behind the music, behind the dots, the thing that's not just playing what's on the page. Of course, the problem is playing what's on the page is the easiest thing to do, even when it's hard. I mean, I know that there are difficult pieces to play, and, you know, you have to work hard, you have to practice. You've got to make your fingers play the right strings at the right time and all that stuff. But it's the easy thing to do because the directions are there, and all we have to do is follow the directions and boom, we've got a piece of music. And there's the problem. Following the directions on the page and playing them correctly doesn't mean we have a piece of music.

So what does? Well, I think there are three things. As we look at these three things, I want you to keep this in mind.

The answer isn't on the page. The answer to making your music more expressive is in you. You already have it. You have everything you need, but you need to look inside you and not on the page, because it's not written there. The composer can only tell you so many things. There are, you know, there's notes to write, there's fingering, dynamics, all that sort of stuff, but they can't write every single thing for you. So they've given you all the clues that they possibly can, but the answers are in you. So we just need to tap into them. So the first thing you need to tap into, I think, is your experience. Yeah, you have a lot of musical experience. Even if you're new to playing music, you've never played any music before. And here you are studying the harp, and you have a lot of experience listening to music. You've heard a lot of music in your life. And now that you are starting to learn more about actually playing it, there are new things that you've been learning that are now part of your experience. Or maybe you've played an instrument or maybe even the harp for years. There's a lot that you know, and that's the first place to look for the answer to how can I put more expression in my music? Because your experience is going to tell you what you know about pieces like this one. There's your question, what do I know about pieces like this piece? Because maybe you've even heard this piece before, but maybe you know other pieces like it. Maybe it's a song that is similar to other songs you've heard. Maybe it's a minuet and you've heard other minuets and you know how they go. Maybe it's a nocturne, maybe it's an etude, maybe it's a fast piece. Maybe you know something that is familiar there. Maybe it's a piece that is a French piece of music and you've never seen it before. Well, but if you can relate it to something else that you've already heard or played, that's going to be helpful. So think about what you know about pieces that might be like the one you're working on. What are their main characteristics? What should they sound like? What kind of mood should it have? Thinking about what a piece should be like is very practical. More practical than perhaps you might know. But here's what I'm going to tell you. It affects your choices of stuff like tempo or your tone, the energy that you translate through your playing, the dynamics, of course, the rubato, all those choices are ones that you're going to make based on what you want the piece to sound like. For instance, if you're playing a piece that you want to sound calm, I don't know, maybe something like the Sati Gymnopodi or Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. You want it to sound just very calm and serene. Then you're probably going to pick a slowish, steady tempo. You're going to think about the legato of the melody, and let the melody sing something that's a different kind of piece, that's maybe more haunting and mysterious, like a dark Celtic kind of song. You're going to think about that as having more rubato, more difference in the tone that you use. Perhaps a happier piece is going to perhaps have a peppier tempo. So this is the start of what is making your piece expressive. You're going to bring everything you know about that kind of piece, or just your thoughts about the way you want that piece to sound. I want it to sound stately. I want it to sound this way. So you need that mood, that atmosphere in mind because it's going to affect those details. And that brings us to the second thing I want you to tap into. I want you to tap into your. Your intuition so that once you know what your piece is like, think about how you would do that.

Let's tap into that musical intuition. I just think it should go this way. I just think it should be this way. Or maybe you can approach it from the. From your teacher's intuition. You know, what do I think my teacher would tell me? If I'm playing this piece for my teacher, and I say, oh, I'd like to make this more expressive. What would my teacher's answer be? Where would he or she tell me to look? Your intuition is how you use your experience to help you find possibilities. When you're working with your experience, you're sort of making some decisions, just sort of, okay, yeah, it's like this. I'm pulling from things that I know. Your intuition helps you pull. Put all those pieces together to find those happy accidents, possibly, but those expressive possibilities, things like, oh, I could make a phrase this way, or I could make the piece flow more. I could insert some breathing points. I could roll my cords this way or that. So all those choices that you know you have, you're going to use your musical intuition to figure out how to use them. Don't be afraid to experiment with this. And don't think you don't know enough. Yes, you do. Even if you're still at the hot cross buns stage of harp playing, you have heard enough music to have some ideas, and it's your ideas that are important. Which brings me to the third thing. When we've tapped into your experience to find out what you might know and tapped into your intuition to think about what you might sense about the piece and what you might experiment with, it's time to tap into your imagination. It's time to Play what if. What if I could make the piece sound like this? Think about what lies beyond those dots on the page. Imagine if you were in the mind of that composer. What would the composer want to tell you that they couldn't tell you because they're not there? They can't write it on the page because it would have been just an entire dissertation on the piece. For instance, maybe the composer would want to say, well, I'd like to hear this played a little bit slowly with some added rubato. And I think you could put a little breath mark here. And I think this could have a little bit of a retard. And this could be a little bit more dramatic. And this could be this or this could be that. They can only put so much of that on the page. I mean, they might be able to notate Rallen Tondo, but it's still up to you to figure out how to make sense of that marking. So what would they like to tell you, or what might they be hoping you would discover on your own? I will tell you that every composer that I've ever worked closely with, as they were writing a piece that I was going to play, was open to my ideas of interpretation. And if they, you know, gave me the piece and then I practiced it, and on that first playthrough for them, they heard things that were just a little bit different than they had imagined. That was generally okay. It was always an interesting experience for me. You know, you're a little bit nervous, right? The composer's there, and you're playing their piece for them, and you're thinking, oh, gosh, I hope I do a good job. I hope they like it, because here they are for the first time, hearing a real person play it, and you want to do a good job. But doing a good job doesn't mean just playing what's on the page. Doing a good job means bringing it to life. So you're making decisions, and you're just hoping that the composer likes them. I'll tell you, I've had it go both ways where I've done something and the composer said, oh, you know, that's really not what I meant there. I wanted it to be this way, and so I'll do it that way. And then we say, okay, well, is there a way that we could notate whatever it was they wanted in the music so that other harpists would know that that was the intent? And we talk about that. And sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't. And then there are those times I've played for composers and they say, wow, that sounds really amazing. I imagined it just that way, or I didn't imagine it that way, but I really like it. What did you do and why did you make those choices? And so this is something to talk about, but that's where the music is. And you don't have to be working with the composer to tap into your imagination. You've got that. But it's time to play a little bit of, you know, what if. What if the composer were there? What would they want to tell you? But if those three things seem too complicated, let me boil it down and see if I can give you one specific thought that might make it easier. When you're looking to have your music be expressive, you want to play the music that's in your head or in your heart, if you prefer. But if you can hear the music in your head the way you want it to be, that's what you want to try to make your playing match more than matching just the notes on the page and all the markings that are written there. What you're really after is to be able to play the music the way you hear it. And that's where your expression is. And this is what I meant when I said earlier that the expression, the answer to this question is within you. It's not something that you necessarily do, but it is something that you can create.

It's not about saying, here, I'm going to do a retard, but it's more about, I hear the music slowing here, and so that's what I'm going to do. That's where our musical expression originates. We have those words, we have those markings. We have the dynamic markings, the rollentondo, the accelerandos, all the rest of it, to help give us a way to write it down so that we can see it. But it is inside us. First and most importantly, it is inside us, and that's what we want to get out.

There's a famous quote, and I'm sure you've heard it, and the quote has been attributed to various people. Mozart said something like it, but this is the Debussy version of the quote. And he says, music, the space between the notes.

Music is the space between the notes. And I don't think this is just referring to rhythm and keeping the space between the notes. I think it's the space between the notes that allows us to see what's really there. The space between the notes is the room that is given to us as performers to make something out of it.

It's a beautiful thought to think that the notes that we play are only just a part, a vehicle perhaps for the actual music that, just like my computer program, we could play all those notes and still not truly make music. The music that we make is within us and comes through those notes to communicate itself to a listener.

Side note here. And perhaps a word of encouragement for many of us. When you think this way, it can also free you from just counting up your mistakes. Because if the music is in the space between the notes, the notes themselves don't matter quite so much. Yeah, we still want them to be right. We understand that. Because if you play too many wrong notes.

That beautiful Rainier piece doesn't sound like Rainier anymore and we can't make sense of it. So we want the right notes. But that's not where the music is. And if one or two or more of those notes happen to be wrong, but the music is still there in between them, we still have music, we still have expression, and we still have something that is going to touch a listener. So I would encourage you to have the courage to act on your intuition and your imagination. Use what you know, bring that to your music and look beyond those notes to bring the music out. Those music that's in. In those spaces. That's the secret to musical expression. Next week on the podcast, we are getting super practical. If today we went out into the flights of fancy and musical expression. Next week it's all about how to do less. You know, when you're trying to do too much. This is about how to find the balance and the focus you need to actually accomplish. Accomplish stuff without just feeling like you're spinning your wheels. Nobody wants to do that. So super practical. On the podcast next week we'll be talking about how to do less. Remember, there are signups available on the website or in the show notes for our November course. If you're not a My Heart Mastery member, then our seminar series might be exactly what you're looking for for learning all about rolled chords. If you are a My Heart Mastery member, you already have. That's part of your membership. Membership has its privileges, as they say. And of course, our signups and registration are open for our February getaway retreat in Florida. I'm hoping for better weather for sure, so I hope to see you there. It's gonna be a fun time until I talk to you 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 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.

Sam.