Moving Up: How to Find the Next Rung of the Ladder - PHH 040

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan, and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I, although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. Today you are going to get a promotion. Or rather, today I'm going to give you a promotion. Or even better, today you are going to give yourself a promotion. Just think, a promotion is exciting, right? It may come with a new title or a certificate or a diploma. It likely has new responsibilities and new challenges, as well as new and as yet unimagined opportunities. It signifies a higher level of competence in whatever it is you're doing and the confidence that others, at least if not yourself, have in your achievements and in your potential. And that promotion, that gold star, that new job title, that pay raise, right? Is proof of your accomplishment. Bingo. There's your promotion, all right. But where is the promotion? Where's that proof, that gold star? When it comes to your harp accomplishment, how do you know that you're making progress or keeping pace with whatever goals or timelines you've set for yourself? Where's that little guidebook that says you are here, that little dot on the map and shows you how to get to there? Yes, we do have some ways that we can gauge our progress, right? There are the yearly student recitals or those, you know, congratulatory moments when you get to the end of a book of exercises or pieces. And of course, there are those music exam systems like the ABRSM or the RCM exams. And those are really great because they're an organized way to, you know, to get your promotion, right? You work through the curriculum and you move from one grade level to the next. And at the end, you get your paper that says you've passed that certifies your promotion. But if you're not following an exam system, and that's most of us, how do you know, where is that assurance of growth and progress? Where does it come from? Now, you may not need that piece of paper to prove that you're making progress and accomplishing things. You know that scarecrow in the wizard of Oz, Remember him? He needed his diploma, right? But our harp happiness really depends on our faith in our momentum. If we don't think we're getting anywhere, we tend to stop trying. So what we're going to do today is to create some clarity, clarity about those mysterious levels of harp playing, especially those ones you see on pieces, right? An advanced beginner, an early intermediate. I mean, what's exactly the difference there? It's kind of hard to tell, isn't it? We're going to get some clarity on those specific signature skills that you need at the different levels and how to create your personal plan for promotion. Now, if you're thinking that because you're really only playing for yourself, or maybe you're thinking that this discussion is only for serious harpists or for young people who want to, you know, who want a harp career, but if that's what you're thinking, you couldn't be more wrong. Frankly, it's way easier for young students or harpists with a really clear career path to find those next rungs on the ladder, right? To get their next steps. They know where they're going. The course for them is very clear. This discussion is for everybody else, those of us who want to take things at our own pace and want to enjoy our harp playing. Why? Well, because the path isn't as clear, so the progress levels aren't as clear either. And if you don't have those markers for where you are and where you're going and what your next step is going to be, you just end up going around in circles. And that's where the frustration can creep in. So let's give you a promotion. Today we will talk about those markers so that you can find your next step forward, your next rung on the ladder. And then you can give yourself that gold star or certificate or a special treat that's going to mark your promotion. After all, you deserve it.

Now, as you might guess, there is a lot to talk about with this topic. And as I was preparing this podcast, I kept coming up with more information I wanted to share with you. So. So rather than make a super duper long podcast, I decided to put all that information into, except for what we're talking about today, of course, into a free webinar. And registration for that webinar is now open. It's called Check Check. What's your level? How to know where your heart playing is now and how to move up. So we're going to be able to get into today's topic in even more depth with more specifics than I can do right here on the podcast. Now, the webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, March 8th at 7:30-9:00pm Eastern Time. It's free, of course. Plus, I'm going to share some resources with you that you'll be able to download to keep you earning your promotions. And there's no sales angle to this webinar. I'm not going to have any special deals or offers or anything other than the insights that I want to share with you. So if you are able, I urge you to attend the webinar live so you can ask me questions as we go along. But if you can't attend live, please register anyway so that you can have access to that replay because I know this information is really going to help you. I would not want you to miss it. So once again, that date is Tuesday, March 8, at 7:30pm Eastern Time. You will find the link to register in the Show Notes on this page or@heartmastery.com under Events. So there's more to this topic than we'll be able to get into today, but let's get started right now and dive in. All right? So these mysterious levels. Now, if you're like most of us, you've been pretty confused at times about those levels. This piece says it is advanced Beginner, and this piece says it's intermediate or early intermediate. And yet the intermediate one seems easier to you than the advanced beginner. And you try to go online and you look up what pieces fit in what levels, and maybe you even look at curriculum sort of things like for the exam, for the music exams, or for different, you know, different lists online. And you look and you think, well, gosh, I'm playing some of these pieces at this level, but I can't play some of those pieces at this earlier level. What's the deal? What's going on?

So I'd like to start by helping you understand that these levels are really arbitrary. There's no, you know, official harp committee that, that assigns levels. There's no place where, you know, composers and arrangers have to go to submit their pieces so that they can be, you know, marked and cert. This is an advanced beginner piece. Nobody does that. There's no place for that. So every composer and arranger and harpist does it sort of on their own which is why it's so uneven, or at least that's part of what's uneven about it. The other part that I think makes these levels so artificial and so misleading.

That they have more to do with an individual player than they do the piece or the arrangement itself. So think for just a moment. Now, you might not be a parent, but if you are, and if you parented, you know, an infant or a toddler, you might remember being, you know, glued to those baby books. Right? And now I suppose you're glued to websites as well, Right? But you know, those, those books. Well, let's see. At however many months my child is supposed to be doing this, and at however many months my child is supposed to be doing this, and then you get to the playgroup and you think, Gosh.

My 12 month old isn't walking, but this person's 8 month old is walking. What's wrong with my baby? And it takes a while to sort of calm down and remember that, okay, if your baby isn't walking at 12 months old and everything seems normal, and the doctor's trying to reassure you, you don't have to worry they're going to walk before they go to school. It is going to happen. It's just that different children develop at their own pace, at different paces, a different pace than another child. Those differences aren't necessarily qualitative. They don't mean that one person's better than another or more advanced than another. It's just that these skills are coming at different.

And that's the deal with trying to assign a level to a piece of music.

It's about a skill set. And when somebody looks at a piece of music and they say, well, let's see, if I were going to put a level on this, I think I would call it early intermediate. Okay, well, what early intermediate means to one arranger or one teacher for might be a little different than what early intermediate means to another. And it certainly is kind of an average of a skill set, right? Well, let's see. At early intermediate, you know, you've got these hands together skills and you can play three finger chords, but four finger chords are pretty difficult. And you can handle this level of finger independence, but not this one. And it's all average. And it's sort of averaged out the same way that, you know, if your head's in the oven and your feet are in the refrigerator, you should be comfortable because your average temperature is comfortable. Right? So it's a shoe that doesn't fit anybody. So please remember that when you're looking at.

Any piece and it's got a label like that on it. This is an advanced intermediate piece. Well, what's the difference between an advanced intermediate piece and an early advanced piece? I mean, that just sounds wrong, right? An early. I mean, where's the division?

And the deal is that there isn't one. There's no real division. The skill set of any harpist is a continuum. And yet every harpist brings their own set of strengths to it and they develop differently. So where four finger chords might be absolutely no problem for this one harpist who's been playing a year and really considers herself a beginner on the harp and she can't do a lot of things, but she can do four finger chords. And this other person who's been playing for a few years is having trouble with three finger chords.

That's just a difference in development and a difference in the strengths that people bring to their harp playing to start with. It's not a judgment call. So I would like to really, before we get into the skills that I want to talk about today, I want to remind you that don't take the label on a piece of music as a label for yourself.

I hear lots of harpists who will say that they are an advanced beginner. Well, if they're playing advanced beginner pieces, perhaps they are an advanced beginner. But. But I bet we could find an intermediate piece that they could actually play even if they don't feel comfortable thinking of themselves as having intermediate level skills. So please don't take the label for yourself. Realize that there's no clear cut way to identify a piece of music. We can come up with lists and lists of skills.

But they don't fit every person and they probably don't fit any person. Exactly. So don't take the labels on yourself. Read the label on the piece and realize that there's going to be a lot of variation.

But let's talk right now about some of the things that need to happen for you to move from one level, wherever it is you are. And we won't put a name to it, even move from that level and to the next 1. Picture two pieces of music, or get two different pieces of music and put them in front of you. One of them, that's. That's easy, right? One that would be maybe from your very first days at the harp or just a little bit later. And one that's maybe more advanced than you think you, than you feel you are right now. Right. So you're going to look at that I'm going to call them an easy piece and a hard piece. Look at those two. And you can just take a look, and you can see that one is going to be more challenging than another. So without calling one necessarily beginner and advanced, let's just take a look at the things that separate that easier piece from that harder piece. And right away, one of those things that you see is the difference in complexity between the two pieces. And I'm not talking about complexity in terms of the number of notes in each measure, although that's certainly where we often start. And I'll bet you've been deceived by that at some point, right? There are sometimes when you look at pieces and they seem like they have a lot of notes on the page, and you think, oh, this is going to be really difficult. And then you start it and you find out, oh, wait, those notes aren't as hard as they look. And maybe you've been fooled the other way, too, where it doesn't look like there's a lot going on in the piece of music, and the page looks pretty clear and, you know, not a lot of black dots all over the page, and you're thinking, oh, this doesn't look so bad. And then you start learning it and find out that, gosh, there's some really tricky stuff in here, and it's harder than it looks. Which is why we can't always judge the piece on the number of notes per measure or how empty and clean and clear that page looks, because it doesn't always tell us everything.

But think about the progression of.

Musical skills. Not just harp skills, but musical skills that go from the easy piece to the hard piece and the way those things change, I mean, as your musical skills develop. And this would apply to any musician, whether you're a harpist or not, right? So as your musical skills develop, you become more familiar with different time signatures. You know how to accommodate accidentals as part of playing, right? Not just performing them, you know, pushing levers or pedals, but that you understand what an accidental means. I know it might have been a long time since you had to learn that, but at one point, you did have to learn it, right? You have to learn what dynamics mean and how to incorporate them. You have to work on tempo changes, things like retardando and accelerando and all that kind of stuff. All that is part of musical learning. So pieces that are very simple will have very simple time signatures. 2, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4. And then as you get more musically adept, those time Signatures change, and you're starting to work with cut time, like 2, 2 or 6, 8. Or maybe you're even doing meters in 5, like 5, 4 or 5, 8. Or pieces where meters change from measure to measure. Maybe you are doing pieces where there are a lot of accidentals and sudden dynamic changes and maybe even big tempo changes within a piece. Like this is the allegro section, and then it's got a largo section right in the middle. And you have to change those styles, and you have to do that quickly. And, you know, as you're playing through the piece. And of course, all of the.

Musical complexities of articulation, right, like staccato and legato and all the things that go with that. So no matter what instrument you play, that's sort of the scale of musical growth that happens between a beginner's piece and a piece later in a student's development. And along with that, of course, is a degree of musical sophistication. Not just in terms of the, you know, the flats and the sharps and the. The dynamics and all that stuff, but in terms of understanding of music. Understanding the form of a piece.

A piece for a student who's more experienced is going to have a more complex form. And this doesn't just mean that it's longer, although that's, you know, one of those instant ways we try to judge a piece, too. Oh, that's a three pager. I don't play three Pa or whatever it is. It's not just about length, but it's about, oh, I see. This is a section that repeats here and here, and it almost repeats here, but it's a little bit different. And being able to understand that form, being able to interpret it in your playing, and to have a wider and ever increasing knowledge of different musical styles, all that is part of the growth of a musician. And it's something that shows up not just in terms of learning, but in terms of the music that you're playing. It would be very hard for a beginning musician to play a very complex kind of a piece, even if the notes were simple, because it wouldn't sound the same. Right. The notes might be easy, but the piece still kind of sounds like a beginner's playing it. And that's because they don't necessarily have the depth of knowledge to play it exactly the way it's supposed to go. You can think about.

A young child reciting lines in a school play, and the words are all there, but, you know, they're missing some of the meaning behind it. Or even a young child musician playing something that's quite difficult, but it still sounds like a child is playing it, rather than a really experienced, mature musician who would have a different interpretation of it. So that's part of what happens in musical growth. And you can see that as you look at pieces at different levels. Oh, okay, this one, this one is, you know, less complex. This one uses easier time signatures, doesn't have very many accidentals. It. It doesn't necessarily go very fast. It's a really easy to understand form. All of those things are part of giving a piece a label as far as what level it it's concerned. Right. And those, you know, and you don't have to own up to it to anybody but yourself. But you know, which one of which ones of those things throw you off. Are you comfortable picking up a piece in 6, 8, or looking at a piece that's in 9, 8 and saying, you know, oh, okay, yeah, sure, I get it, I understand. Or five, four maybe? Or a piece where the meters change? Is that something that you have had experience with and that you know how to do? That's part of what goes into deciding, you know, whether a piece is appropriate for you or not. Right. And notice this is totally aside from all the stuff that we think of when we think of making a decision about a piece. Right. This doesn't take into account.

Actual technical stuff and the technical stuff that we're looking at.

Well, it's your finger speed, it's your finger independence. How many patterns your fingers are capable and comfortable with is what I meant to say, the independence of your hands. How well do they work together playing the same kind of thing or playing different things? How comfortable are they? Are they just doing their own thing so that they can do different things and do complex things, even while the other hand is also doing a complex thing? So all of that plays into it. And that's part of what makes some pieces that look easy not quite so easy after all. If you've heard me on various webinars, and certainly in the. In the My Heart Mastery membership, I know my members hear this all the time. One of our signature skills is the difference between three finger and four finger chords. And I talked about this actually, not, not that long ago on a podcast. Right. Four finger chords are immensely more difficult to play than three finger chords. So, you know, that's certainly a leveler. And that gives us, you know, an idea of, okay, I'm ready for four finger chords. I'm comfortable with them. So therefore, this piece is going to be within my grasp or I'm only comfortable with three finger chords. So I guess I'm going to have to do some work on four finger chords so that I can step up to those pieces.

So you can see that there's no one skill, there's no magic bullet for getting from one level to another. But there are some really significant ways that.

You can.

Help yourself get to that next level a lot faster and for some really specific reasons. So let's start with the first one. The first thing I would like you to do and the thing that I have seen make the biggest difference for my students and help them get to that next level way sooner than they thought they would. And that's, you need to play more music, play lots of music, and play a wider variety of music than you probably are playing right now. Why do I say that? This is really important. I mean, you know, I'm not telling you to buckle down and practice everything, but you need to experience all those other things. Remember I was just talking about the difference in meters, right? Time signatures, 6, 8, 9, 8, 5, 4. You know, all those things. You need experience.

That will help you build a bed of information to draw on so that you get comfortable with some of these things. And if you just stick to the same kind of music that you always play, you won't be broadening your knowledge. Now, before you say, well, but you know, I never am going to want to play a piece in nine, eight, or a piece in five, four. Well, that's okay.

You don't have to play it. But you musically, and your fingers particularly, are going to learn a lot by spending just a little bit of time investigating one of those pieces. And, you know, you might come across some pieces that you didn't think you were going to like that you absolutely love. But really, the point of this, well, there are three, I think that are really valuable. One of them is, is just that it gives you experience points in playing different kinds of music. And the more musical things you have experienced, I mean, from an active playing way, not just listening, but the more experience you have, the more comfortable you get with everything you have to do, because you've had some experience with it, right? It's not the very first time you've looked at something, it's not quite so shocking. So play more music and play a wider variety of music than perhaps you are right now. Let yourself experiment a little bit and learn a little bit. Now, this also helps you develop some confidence with your reading.

It's not just about your music. Reading skill, but it's also about that knowledge that you've seen this before and you've worked through it before and you've done it before. And so therefore you're less fearful of it and you feel more confident and ready to read it. And this is going to help you not just feel more confident, but it will help you approach a new piece and learn it faster.

Playing more music, a wider variety of music also widens your technique vocabulary, right? As your fingers are getting used to different patterns, different notes, and learning different things, they too gain a lot of knowledge from this, right? They have the ability to expand their vocabulary. You can help them work around these different patterns of notes, different shapes, different different rhythms.

That will help them in everything that they approach. So your musical experience is a big factor in how quickly you level up. I'll tell you, I see this or I saw it first when I was teaching a lot of teenagers, the first time that they had to play with their school orchestra or the youth orchestra and they had a, a real harp part to play instead of just something that had to be cobbled together from a flute part or something. So when they had a real heart part to play, it was usually considerably above their current playing level. But the urgency of needing to do it helped them get into it, get, you know, help them approach it. I mean, of course I did too, right? We sat there and worked through what needed to happen. But after that first or second orchestra concert, wow. They were playing at a completely different level because they'd had to step it up. And you don't need the pressure of something like that to help you step up your skills. Just play more things and experiment a little bit outside your usual kind of pieces and you'll find it pays big dividends.

The next skill that is absolutely essential is your hands together skills. I know and I know you know this and I, and I sort of hate to tell you, but you need to do more hands together practice.

A lot of harpas like to start a piece hands separately. And when you do that, you are keeping your training wheels on. It is not an efficient learning system because nobody plays one hand at a time when they're supposed to be hands playing together. That's not what you want, so that's not where you should start. Hand separately is great for fixing things, not great for learning things. So even if for right now you need to do a lot of hand separately learning, be sure that you're doing some hands together playing every day, even if it's not great right now, that's the skill you need to develop. You want to be able to read both clefs and play both hands simultaneously. That's what we want to do, so we need to start doing it. So do more hands together. Practice. The independence of your hands is an absolutely key skill in moving up to the next level. The more comfortable your hands are working together.

The faster you will move forward. And you need that to move on to the next. To the next rung of the ladder, whatever rung you're on right now. Okay, then. The third skill that is probably going to surprise you is that you need to have finished pieces that you play often. Playing is a skill. It's not just the happy result of a lot of practice. Playing is its own skill. It has a completely different set of strategies and focuses and directives than practicing does. For instance, in practicing, you might be fixing mistakes. In playing, you're going beyond mistakes. Practicing is often about that micro view where you're looking at the little tiny details. And playing is all about the big picture view where you're creating the music for a listener. So those finished pieces have a completely different.

Set of skills. And if you're not doing that regularly, having finished pieces that you play often, then you're cheating yourself and you're holding yourself back. So what can you do to help yourself move forward a little bit, to make your own personal plan for promotion? Well, I would look at those three skills that we just. Or development areas might be a better term for them. But I would look at those three things that we just talked about and think about which one feels like you need to do that one. Now, we all need to develop these all the time, but there's going to be one that probably feels more urgent to you. So if the skill that feels like it's going to help you the most is to play more music, play a bigger variety of music, then here's what you should do. I would identify three pieces outside of your usual repertoire. Maybe they're by a different arranger or a different composer, a different type of music, different genre, different speed, even, you know, I don't know. But identify three of them and then choose one and start to play it, Start to learn it and see what happens. If you can incorporate something like that into your practice regularly, you're going to be stretching yourself in wonderful musical ways and making, I'm sure, a lot of fun musical discoveries along the way. Alternatively, you could have a book of short easy for you pieces to sight read and sight read one or two or however many you Feel like however often you can, the more you sight read, the more you will learn, the more you will step up your musical knowledge, your musical sophistication and your harp skills all at the same time. So there are a couple of good ways to start by to go about playing more music. Right.

Now, if you're really stuck, you think in the hands together realm, and that's a skill you need to level up on. Well, here's the easy way. Whatever one hand does, the other one should do too. So when you do some hands separately practice, because we all do, right? When you're doing that hand separately, practice. If you're practicing a right hand line, practice it with your right hand, then also practice it with your left hand. Play the same thing and let each hand experience what the other one is doing. That's a great way to sort of step up each hand skills. So that's a hands separately start to hands together practice. It kind of, kind of gets things moving a little bit. But I would also begin each practice session or each piece that you're practicing that day. Hands together. Don't let yourself look at it hands separately first. Look at it hands together first. Then use hands separately as you need it to fix things, to clarify things, to get all those notes right. But start with hands together. Don't let that be, oh, I'm not ready for hands together yet. You need to be ready for hands together now. So even if it's not good, even if it's uncomfortable and it takes a long time, do some hands together practice. And do that first at the beginning of every piece you're working on, just to get the feel of it. And that will help you get better at hands together quickly.

If you don't have any finished pieces that you play or you're not in the habit of just playing pieces for yourself or for others, I would like you to find two pieces that you can play or very nearly play and play one of those two pieces every day for three weeks.

Take a look at the end of that three weeks. Notice how those pieces are changing, how they have changed. Do you feel more comfortable with them? Your feeling about those pieces after playing them every day for three weeks is going to change. They're going to feel, they're going to start to feel like friends and you're going to be thinking of them differently. Not in terms of measures and notes and fingering, but in terms of the music, which is where we need to be. And everything that you've done to help yourself play those pieces is going to Help yourself, play the pieces that you're currently really working on and learning and and the pieces that you want to learn in the future.

So play more music, do it hands together and have and have finished pieces that you're playing and playing often. And that's going to level you up wherever you are. Now, as I said, this is sort of skimming the surface of this topic. There's a lot more to talk about and there are some more specific things that I'd like to get to but would just have taken too long to share with you on this podcast. So please I'll be sharing those on our webinar on March 8, so remember to register for that. You can use the link in the show notes or you can go to heartmastery.com and it'll be there right there under Upcoming Events and you can register totally free. If you can't be there live, there will be a replay. So don't let that hinder you from signing up because I want to be sure to be able to send you the replay and that's and the the handouts that I'll be sending as well. So you want to be able to do that. And if this topic intrigued you, if this is something you want to learn more about, you will love the webinar, I guarantee it. There's a lot of stuff that I'm going to be sharing now. Next week right here on the podcast I will be answering questions, questions that you have sent in and there are a number of them, some that I think are going to be really intriguing. So if you have a question that you would like for for me to talk about, there's still time to get it in I believe for the next podcast and you can send those questions to podcastarpmastery.com and I will take a look and we will be talking about what's on your mind harp wise when we meet again next week. So don't forget to register for the webinar, don't forget to make your personal plan for promotion and I will look forward to to talking with you right here next Monday. Have a great week until then. Bye. 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.