Need a Fix? Try My Favorite Exercises! - PHH 052

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. There will never be a shortage of exercise books. As long as there are harpists. They will want to develop a more facile technique to make their playing easier, faster, more fluid and more musical. And although scales and arpeggios will always be the staples of our technical work, obviously there's so much more that goes into harp technique and and with the plethora of choices of exercise, etude and method books, where does a harpist start? Well, the short answer to that question is to just start. It doesn't really matter where any technique growth is better than none, a steady progression of skills is even better. Of course. And again, the simple solution is a good one. Just work your way through any exercise book beginning to end, and you will cover most of what your fingers need. And when you're finished with that book, choose another one. There are some technical issues, though, that are very common to all of us harpists and yet are often resistant to the usual approaches. So on today's episode of the podcast, I want to discuss a few of those issues, seven to be precise, and some exercises that are favorites of mine for resolving them. I'm going to give you two different exercises for each of those issues. One that's more basic or fun, fundamental, and one that covers a more advanced aspect of that particular technique. And while you may want to take notes as we go, never fear. I have put a link in the show notes to a list of the books and the exercises that I mention so you'll be able to download that and look at these exercises at your convenience. Now, two more things before we dive in. First, these are not the only only exercises that solve these problems, and they may not be the best Ones for you. They are ones that I like and ones that my students have found helpful, and I hope you find them helpful, too. Secondly, what I think is important about today's discussion is that I will share not just the exercises I like, but why I like them, how they will help your technique, what they're really designed to do, and why this is necessary for your playing, not just as an exercise. And I'll tell you a little bit about exactly how to practice them. I wish I were able to demonstrate every exercise fully, but, you know, this is one podcast episode and we've got a lot to cover, so we'll have to save that kind of work for another day. We have a lot to cover right now, so let's get started.

I think if you asked 10 different harpists what their biggest challenge was, nine of them at least would be telling you that it's playing fast. We all want to be able to develop more agile fingers. We want to be able to play faster and at the same time play securely. And I believe one of the best exercises for developing that kind of confidence at speed is scales. And the two exercises I'm going to recommend for you now are both about scales. But one of the things that's important about these exercises is that they use a lot of the harp. They're not just plain, simple, slow scales. They use as much of the harp as we can. They will require a nice, light, agile touch to play them well. And they encourage faster playing by the very simple use of note values. So I'll explain. These exercises are written so that there are slower scales and then there are scales that have similar patterns and are in note values that are twice as fast. So one of the exercises I recommend are in the Deborah Frio book Exercises for Agility and Speed. And her scale exercises on pages 75 through 78 are terrific. They start out with simple hands together, scales in eighth notes, just two octave scales, not huge, but big enough and working, starting on different notes so you're covering the whole harp. Then she does those same scales, but puts the turnarounds at the top of the scales and keeps them counted so that the accents fall on different fingers each time. This is so important. And that's one of the things I love about these exercises. They get the accents on the different fingers, which is helping you develop even fingers. So you must pay attention to those accents when you practice. Then after two exercises of eighth notes, she switches to 16th notes. Now, the temptation for all of us is that when we turn the page, we want to play those 16th notes at a nice comfy speed. The point of these exercises is for you to play them twice as fast as the previous ones. So keep that metronome speed the same, but move toward the 16th note exercises. This will allow you to speed up with the clarity. You know that you're faster, and it'll keep you from being too careful. Set the metronome as slowly as you like for those first exercises, knowing that you're going to have to speed up and play twice as fast for the second ones. So those are brilliant exercises. Simple, easy to do. A more advanced look at those same kinds of scales would be in the Salzato conditioning exercises, exercises 9 and 10. These are big scales. They cover, you know, another octave fully. They're really going all over the harp. They add some oscillating. If you've never done oscillating before, you can certainly skip the oscillating measure. That's simply a wrist motion that allows you to stay relaxed and keep your wrist loose. I talked about that a little bit on the Wrist podcast just a couple of episodes back. But you can certainly skip that measure if you want. But this does the same kind of thing that the free you does. It allows you to get the accents on different fingers. It allows you to look at those patterns a little bit differently. Exercise 10 is twice as fast as Exercise 9. Now, don't let the fast note values trick you here. Salzato uses 16th notes and 32nd notes, where Deborah Frou uses 8th notes and 16th notes, but the proportion is the same. So just start slowly enough that those 16th notes are very comfortable for you, so that the 32nd notes actually go twice as fast. The extra benefit here from using these faster note values is that you might get over your fear of 30 second notes. They are not, in themselves super duper fast, right? It's all in the the actual beat that you're using. So don't let that scare you. One of the things that the Salzato conditioning exercises will do for you is twist your brain a little bit on this, too. The exercises are hands separately, and they're only written out for the right hand. You're going to play the left hand ones an octave lower. The right hand exercise for both of these, the right hand starts in bass clef, so remember that you're looking at bass clef, but that's not left hand you're starting with. That's right hand. Your left hand will actually start an octave lower than that. So this does give you a really good workout all over the harp. It's a really great exercise. I love both of these. Remember to use a firm but relaxed.

Kind of touch to your fingers, especially when you're working on the slower ones, and allow the faster ones to be a bit of a stretch for you. If you fall off the strings a little bit, just get right back on and do the next scale. They don't have to be good at first. On your way to success with those faster scales, you're going to flail around a little bit. Just stay relaxed, stay loose and laugh a little bit, and you'll get where you want to go, I promise. So these kinds of scales for speed and agility. Next up on our list is finger independence. Think about the times that your fingers trip over each other or the number of times that you may have struggled trying to find the right fingering, the one that works for you for a particular passage. Well, now think about what it would feel like if you had options, if you could count on your fingers to be able to sort of, you know, any finger into the breach kind of idea where any finger could step in for any other one. Where you could have multiple choices for fingerings and have your fingers respond well in any of those choices, or have your fingers recover for you in case of emergency. Right. All this could happen, but your fingers have to be able to act independently of each other. So we. What we want to do is work on some of those patterns that are a little bit less usual or that help us develop that independence, that break our fingers out of the usual rut. This will help develop that agility and flexibility that you want, in addition to giving you those fingering options. Now, I've chosen for sort of the more fundamental exercises, some from Maria Grossi's method for the harp. And. And these come from pages 17 through 19 in that book. It's the very most important and, you know, most common first step at developing that kind of finger independence. And it's just playing our fingers out of order. It's that simple. Right? So the patterns in these pages are all working at playing your fingers in that alternating sort of pattern, like 4, 2, 3, 1, or 1, 3, 2, 4. Like this.

Right? 4, 2, 3, 1. The four notes are right in a row, but we play them out of order. Now, these exercises have you do these in sort of different patterns. But what's important about this and what you want to be careful when you practice is that you need to be very deliberate about your placing. These exercises are very carefully written with placing indications so that those brackets will show show you what you need to place ahead of time. And in the grossi exercises, the lack of brackets will let you know that you don't have to place those notes all at once. You can place them one at a time. So, for instance, in exercise 36, you get to place all the fingers just one at a time. Except here, you need to place a head from three to one. In some of the subsequent exercises, you'll see placing brackets, and you need to put all the fingers under the bracket on the strings at the same time. So it will give you a chance to have all fingers on the strings and then play them out of order. It'll feel a little bit like, you know, patting your head and rubbing your tummy at first, but it's fabulous for you. Now, the exercises that are more advanced along these same lines I chose from the. From salzados conditioning Exercises, particularly numbers 2 through 6, 2 and 3 are arpeggiated patterns where you're playing the fingers out of order and placing just one finger at a time, similar to what the grossi does. The patterns are a little bit wider, spread out, so it's a slightly bigger reach. I mean, they're all easily within an octave. They're basic chord patterns, but they're a little bit more spread out. And then exercises 4 through 6 work in chord patterns. And of course, there's my favorite conditioning exercise, five, where you play two and four at the same time, and then three and one at the same time and go back and forth like this.

My favorite one. One that when you've learned it, all kinds of fingering options open up for you. Good news here is that if this is a difficult technique for you still at this point, the grossi is excellent preparation for this salzido exercise. So it kind of works really well this time. Just be very careful with your plac. Use absolutely the fullest finger action that you can. Close fully, keep a nice, slow tempo, stay relaxed as always, and pay attention to the placing. And that's what's going to help your fingers become more independent. Oh, that sounds good, doesn't it? All right, here's the next one. Now, as much as we want our fingers to be independent of each other, we want our hands to be independent of each other as well. What's interesting about this is that to get your hands working together and yet separately, there are some things you have to let go of, like reading every note. So.

One of the components of getting your hands to work independently isn't just technical. It's. It's A control thing. We have to learn to let our fingers go, and we have to learn to read the patterns, see what the music is telling us, rather than just read note by note. This is part of hands together playing. It's part of learning to sight read well. And it's a hard skill to learn or to practice or to teach in its, you know, as a whole. So working at an exercise that helps develop this independence of your hands in a very controlled way is exceedingly useful. And one of the things that I particularly like is I like having my students work on scales that don't line up.

The fundamental exercise I've chosen for this is actually not an easy one. It's from Salzado's harpist, Harpist's daily dozen. It's number seven. That's his exercise on scales. Now, the daily dozen book here is not a book I recommend. Um, in general, the. The reaches are very big, the patterns are difficult, and it's. It can be more injurious than it can be helpful. But this one, this particular exercise, number seven, is a great one. It's a scale exercise. And at first it seems like it's pretty simple. It works on, you know, sort of scales in incremental sections. We're going to work up half a scale and then a whole scale and then an octave and a half and then two octaves. Except that instead of the usual turnaround at the top of the scale, it has you do doing a turnaround on your fourth and third finger. It's a little bit unusual to say the least, but it's terrific for training your fingers and for just messing with your head a little bit, which is something we all need to do. Right? We need to build in some mental agility as well here. So I do like this exercise. And he starts by having you learn the scale pattern hands separately at the beginning of that. And then there are three more parts to this exercise. One where you do the scale sort of as a. Or two, I guess. Well, you do the scale as kind of a canon. You know, your right hand starts and then your left hand joins in. And then the other way around, your left hand starts and your right hand joins in. So the turnarounds come at different times. So the, you know, your hands are doing the same thing, but at different times, and it's confusing. And then the. The last part of this exercise is a scale and contrary motion where your right hand is coming down, where your left hand is coming up. Also terrific for independence of the hands. I'm going to Just show you real quickly what this Sal zo exercise is like. Sounds like. So hang on and let me get to my harp. So here's the basic scale in this Salzedo exercise. He starts it in A major. You can play this in any key you want, of course, but we have a 4, 3, 2, 1, and then a turnaround on 4 and 3. So the, the accents change. It's just a little bit different than most usual scales. But it's really good for you. So that's the basic scale idea. And you'll learn that pattern hand separately right there. It could be a big jump up for your technique if you've never done a pattern like that. Then he does the pattern in canon as I said. So the right hand and left hand will play the same scale, but the right. In this first one, the right hand will start first and then the left hand will join in.

So you can hear the, the right hand turn around and then the left hand turn around. When you do this, don't do it too slowly because it will confuse you more. Think about the pattern, concentrate on the turnarounds as they come up and it will work a little bit better. Then the next scale is the same, but the left hand starts first. And then finally there's a scale that just starts at the outer edges of the harp. If your harp doesn't have these big outer edges, then just start from an octave in. But the hands are going in different directions. Right? Pretty cool. And then they sort of come together in the middle and then meet as they. And you know, then go back outward. It's a very cool scale pattern. You will find ones like this in a lot of exercise books. I happen to love these because they're, they have that added twist to them. But even doing a little bit of these exercises will go a long way. Now for the advanced exercise in hand dependence, hand independence, I have chosen something completely different. This is Exercise 18 from Marilyn Costello's book 21 Exercises for the Harp. And this is not about scales at all. This is about counter rhythms. And it's based on a scale of 4 note chords.

And then arpeggiated patterns from those chords. And the hands are playing different rhythms. So for instance, in this first variation, the right hand.

Plays this pattern. The left hand plays the same pattern but in a different rhythm. So the right hand is actually playing triplets. One, two, triplet, one triplet, two triplet. The left hand is playing one and two and, and they have to go together.

This is a great exercise. What I particularly like about it is that this is a pattern that we almost never practice, except when it comes up in a particular piece. And this gives you a great way to actually get some practice in on it. And then actually there are plenty of variations on this that she's written in the book. And you can really go to town on these particular exercises. But they're great for the independence of your hands. Once again, don't play them too slowly. You have to free your fingers to do their jobs. That's the whole point here. You can't control them and tell each one when to play. You're trying to let go and let them just play the pattern. We're playing up, we're playing down, we're playing this way. So that's what you're going to work on. You're going to work on reading the patterns, thinking about where the turnarounds are, where the articulation points are, you know, like where's the beat? And then let your fingers do their job. Remember, this is an exercise and this is why we're practicing it, to get better at this particular skill. Not easy, but incredibly worth it. Now, let's talk about chords. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how important it is to practice chords and four finger chords in particular. Four finger chords are a dividing stage in intermediate playing. When you can play four note chords, when you can place them quickly, read them quickly, understand them quickly, a whole different level of heart music opens up to you. So four finger finger chords, we don't want them to be your stumbling block. We want them to be the, the, the doorway to more playing for you. Um, the fundamental exercises I want to recommend here come from the Deborah Frio book. Again, pages 57 and 58. These are great exercises for learning to develop and place four finger chords. You start out with just, you know, simple groups of notes. While you're holding on to some strings and playing the other ones. And then you're going very basic patterns of four note chords up and down in each hand. And then learn to play them together as eight finger chords. Right? Hands together. And these are great drills. You can play them in different keys too. These are all written in C major. They're all C major and G major chords. But you can easily translate this to any other key. So you get a lot of practice at chords that way. Now, for a more advanced look at chords, I've chosen one of the Pozzoli EZ Etudes. So it's not actually an exercise, it's an etude. This is from the back of the Grossi method book, there's a separate book of Pozzolii Etudes of Medium difficulty. That's not what I'm talking about. These are the Pozzoli exercises at the back of the Grossi book. And this is number 32 on page 100 of that book. It's a lovely little etude of bigger chords. Some of them are four note chords, some are four notes in one hand, three in another. But it's a lovely warm up kind of an exercise. And it's lovely enough you could even play it as, as a, as a little piece at church or as a wedding interlude. So it's really beautiful. And if you have some experience with rolling cords and placing cords, this is a great look at going through all of those. It's a lovely little etude and I highly recommend it. So this is number 32 from, from the back of the Grossi book on page 138, a Pozzoli Etude. Lovely for. For learning to place and practicing placing chords. Be sure that as you do that, you are placing all the fingers at once and you're closing your fingers fully and you're rolling, of course, without moving your hand. Right now, if you want more practice at rolling chords, I have different exercises for that. Once again from the Grossi book, the exercises in the front of the book by Maria Grossi, pages 47 to 51, are a terrific look at how to prepare for a role she has. You start with the chord as sort of a slow arpeggio, then as a faster arpeggio and a F, and then finally a rolled chord. What's important about these drills is that you count them because that's going to really give you the timing difference and help you learn to make your rolls slower or faster. So it's a really important drill to count. Not that all of these aren't, but these in particular, so that you're looking at the chord as a slower arpeggio, then place carefully back on the rest. That's what some of that Italian text is telling you. She's also tells you, and she's very specific about this. Place all those fingers at once. This is part of good chord habit and you want to develop it here. And then you'll play it faster and faster and then finally as a roll. So this will give you a lot of good practice at developing a beautiful even roll.

The more advanced exercise comes from the Marilyn Costello book, and these are great. If you are already pretty good at rolling chords, you just want a way to practice it. It's a beautiful, slow way to check your technique and to check the evenness of your rolls. It's all about the beautiful sound and relaxation, plus a little bit about harp geography, too. Playing higher chords and then lower chords and going back and forth from octave to octave. Be very careful when you practice either of these exercises to stay relaxed, to close your fingers fully, to use a light dynamic at first so that you can be sure that your fingers are even. And then you can vary the dynamic, and you can also vary the speed of the rolls as you get more. More advanced and comfortable with that. So these particular exercises are good for practicing rolling your chords. Now, one of the things that all of us harpists want is to make our music more expressive, to make it flow, to create a beautiful melody. And that all starts with creating legato. And in order to do that, our fingers need to be even in those melodies. So what I am going to recommend here is an exercise and an etude that will help you practice thinking and hearing melodically, hearing that horizontal dimension of music. You know, as harpists, we get so caught up in those chords. Right. I just gave you two different sets of exercises on chords. We get really caught up in that. But creating the melody, creating that sense, even if it's.

Physically speaking, an illusion of legato, of connectedness from one note to the next, is so important. And the exercise and etude that I'm going to recommend here, they're different, and they're different from what we usually do. They're different from each other as well. But they test our fingering combinations and our control. You need to practice these. You need to be very careful with your placing. You want it to be clean so that there's not too much buzzing. You don't want to play these too slowly because then you won't get the sense of flow. And that's what we're really looking for. So the. The more fundamental exercise comes from the Marilyn Costello book, and it's right there on the first page of her book. It's exercise number three, a very simple drill that just goes back and forth, using thumb and second finger, then thumb and third finger, then thumb and fourth finger. So it looks like it's an interval drill, but it's actually, there was a nice buzz there I would want to get rid of. But playing and talking is really not my forte here. But it's going to give you a chance to create a beautiful phrase as well. Something I can't do without actually focusing on it. Certainly can't do it while I'm playing and talking. So I would be doing this with a good deal more concentration than I just demonstrated for you. You want to watch those buzzing and replacing noises because they're going to detract from the legato. Right? Now if you want a slightly more advanced way to practice this. An interesting etude is from Grandenie's book of four etudes. And they're very intermediate etudes, they're not difficult. But the first one he dedicates to working on legato. And interestingly enough, it starts with some of. With a similar finger pattern here to what Ms. Costello did in her book. Right.

But it's hands together, it's a little etude, right.

So that's how this starts. And it gives you a chance to create a phrase with a melody. So one of the things you want to do is really think about that phrase. This isn't the kind of technical exercise that is going to be note, note, note, note. It's got to be more musical than that. So think about those phrases, arch them musically, breathe into them. You could do the same thing in the Marilyn Costello exercise, Let it phrase, think about legato. So this is one of those skills we often don't think of developing, but it's so important to our playing. So I would definitely take a look at these. Now, I have one more suggestion for you, and that's. You could call it a daily dozen, you could call it a warmup. But sometimes we just want an exercise that's going to cover all the bases, cover them quickly, put you through your paces in sort of that, you know, one. One fell swoop, right? Kind of like stop shop for technical, technical refresh. And we do have a couple really good examples. One of them is from the for you book. We've talked about that today in her, you know, exercises for agility and speed. Toward the end of the book, there's exercise 14. That is a theme and variations. And it's a lovely way to get through a lot of your skills. Scales and arpeggios and intervals and chords. Get through those in this very musical them. Variations kind of way. A very nifty little thing to get you through a lot of technique in a short period of time. And in a way that sounds like music. Useful thing. My other all time go to favorite here is at the back of Yolanda Kondanasis book on playing the harp. Everything in that book is worthwhile and. And particularly the stuff that she talks, just reading the text up front about some of the physical considerations and practice considerations about playing the Harp really, really highly recommended. But in the back she's got a warm up that she puts in three different levels. All of these warm ups are based on the same chord pattern and she just uses this to really get you through all of the techniques. There are scales, there are chords, arpeggios, patterns, as you get to the more advanced ones, even trill warm ups, all kinds of things. Very useful, very just. It'll get you through everything you need to warm up on in a very short period of time. So I love these because they are a great time saver if you don't have a lot of time to spend on your technique practice in a given day. These will get you through your paces and keep everything working. They also are great for a warm up piece that doesn't just sound like an etude or scales. If you're going to, you know, some sort of a gig or a, you know, like a wedding or a, you know, something like that, or maybe even a rehearsal, you can play through one of these and nobody will know that you're warming up your fingers. They'll think you're playing something really, really pretty. So, so they're wonderful for that. And, you know, either one is great. Choose, when it comes to the Conde Nasis book, choose the level warm up here that works for you. And these are absolutely lover friendly. So, you know, be be aware that, you know, don't, don't shun this book just because it's. You think it's only appropriate for petal harpists because it is not everything I've talked about today will work for petal or lever harps. So.

So take that for what it's worth. I know I have covered a lot today and gone very, very quickly over this, but it's just a little overview of things. You can, you know, study any of these things more in depth. We have plenty of technique courses over at Heart Mastery, of course, to help you with that.

But I think that this covers an awful lot. Do take a moment and find the link here in the show. Notes to click and get my, my list of technique, exercise books, method books. And that includes a list of all the exercises and the books that I've talked about here today on the podcast. So you'll get a lovely PDF with more references for harp technique than you perhaps wanted, but certainly all the specifics that I've talked about today. Next week on the show, we're going to be talking not so much about technique, but we're going to be talking about tone, about tone production and what Having a good tone means what variety is in tone and what to do to make you and your harp sound as beautiful as you would like them to sound. So we're going to make you guys the ideal musical pair on next week's podcast. Until then, remember, every day is a you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. All right, see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to 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.