Peaceful Hands: How to Look More Graceful and Feel More Relaxed - PHH 081

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. It is a true joy to watch a fine musician play their instrument, whether it's a harp or another instrument. There's a physical flow, a sense that no motion is wasted. You can practically see the mastery they bring to their music. I would go even further to say that all their physical resources are being used to serve the music. There's a an efficiency in their gestures, a grace and a strength that is as visually compelling as their music is. After all, we see a performance as much as we hear it right now. If you doubt the truth of that statement, just think about a performance you watched where the performer had distracting facial expressions or gestures. Maybe you were able to ignore them and continue listening, but it's likely that the music spell was broken for you. What you saw became more important than what you heard. This is one reason that orchestras have a uniform dress code, usually formal wear for the men and long black clothing for the women. Most professional orchestras are very strict with their dress policies, down to the color of socks and hose, closed toe shoes for women, and the length of their sleeves and hemlines. The point of all of this is to reduce visual distraction so that the audience can concentrate on the music. Now, I've been in orchestras where players were spoken to about facial gestures that were deemed to be distracting, so they take this stuff pretty seriously.

Now, on the other hand, watching a virtuoso harpist play is almost like watching a ballet dancer. The hands seem calm and unflustered. They move around the harp without excess gesture, but with motion that seems to reinforce the mood of the music. Their movements are unhurried, even when they're playing fast, and their hands seem to defy gravity as they float through A more contemplative sort of piece. It's as beautiful to watch as to hear.

Now, if you've ever been concerned that your hands don't look graceful when you play, then this show is for you. We're going to talk about ways you can develop and practice those beautiful hand gestures, not in a way that feels artificial, but in a way that feels very, to use an overused word these days, feels very organic and is a part of your playing. I mean, you may have tried to make your hands look more graceful before and not been happy with the result, but these tips that I'm going to share with you today are super practical, very easy to do. Plus they're techniques that you can use any every day to make your music not just look more graceful when you play it, but to sound more relaxed too. And what better time of year to work on this than right now, right in the season that is focused on peace and love. So on today's show, I will give you all those practice ideas as well as I'll share some of my favorite practice tips for preventing the December dithers. You know, that frazzled feeling that can creep into your playing at this time of year. And I'll share a cute little acronym to help you remember these tips every day. And I'll even play a little peaceful piece for you too. Before we get to that though, if you recall, on one of our last episodes, I encouraged any of you who wanted to to share with me to email me with a story about your gratitude and and about a harp experience that inspired your gratitude or just thinking about that. And I received a response that I do want to share with you. I promised that I will share these anonymously and so I will. But this is just a lovely story and this is the way the email goes. Thanksgiving Day with family after the dinner, the little girls wanted to see and hear the harp. I did something that I would not have done even a year ago. We went to the harp room and I started to play basically just anything that I thought I could play at the moment. The little girls who take ballet started to dance with swirls and emotion to the music. They loved it. And the parents began to video the performance. I just played and they danced. It wasn't harp perfect or even ballet perfect and it was beautiful. All were so thankful for this performance. Some said that it was the highlight of the day. I will admit I felt proud and so glad that I didn't let fear get in the way.

This person also goes on to to thank me and a My Heart Mastery because this person is a My Heart Mastery member and also in our coaching program and this is what they have to say about that. I definitely would not be where I am today without all of this, including how to learn how to use zoom and I'm thankful for you and all you give to us. Well, I am so thankful for you. As I mentioned, this person is a My Heart Mastery member and a coaching student and has been in our coaching program.

I think since its inception. And I can say that we are very, very proud of this student. It's been a remarkable journey from I'm never playing for anyone because I get too nervous to the story that you heard today. So you know we are overcome with gratitude for this is me and my certified coaches who teach in the coaching program just absolutely overcome with gratitude when we get a message like this because this is why we do it. This is why we do what we do. And we are just I can't tell you how filled my heart is when I read this email. So I would be remiss if having given you the this wonderful story and told you just a little bit about the harpist that it comes from. If I didn't mention that we are opening enrollment for our next coaching trimester very soon. Our we have three trimesters a year in our coaching program. We have five certified coaches who teach. They're amazing harpists and amazing teachers and our trimesters essentially start in January, May and September of each year. Our last trimester, our coaches rosters were completely full and we always give priority registration to the people who are in the coaching program that trimester. So we are already well on our way to filling up our trimester this next time as well. But registration will open later this week and and I encourage you to head on over to the coaching page on heartmastery.com and read about the coaching program, read about our amazing coaches and just, you know, this might be the best thing that you do for your heart playing in 2023. Coaching provides so much direction, so much motivation and encouragement and you'll get the kind of progress that you only get from working in a program that uses the kind of system we use to get results to help you achieve your goals, not just go on from lesson to lesson. So I would encourage you to check out our coaching page on our website and.

If the enrollment isn't open yet when you get there, add your name to the first to know list and you will be the first to know. When we open registration, there's pre Registration that's available for the first to know list as well. So you can get over there. Do check it out.

I can tell you that there are plenty of happy harpists who have been working in our coaching program, and I'd love for you to be one of them. So having said all that, mull that over in your mind. But right now we can talk about how to get those graceful hands. When we think about the graceful hands of a harpist, we think about them floating, don't we? We think about those gestures that remind us of ballet. And yet that kind of a gesture feels so distant from what we actually have to do. We're scrambling get our placing to jump to the right notes to get everything in place. And that's when we feel that our hands can look flustered instead of free and floating. And so we try to practice lifting or raising, as we often call it. But just practicing that gesture can feel very artificial and it can feel really awkward to practice. So let's start by sort of breaking down. What happens when you lift, when you raise away from the strings? Why would you do that? Well, the importance of raising or lifting, there are really two things. One, well, maybe three. One is that it looks really pretty, right? But that's not the. That's kind of the byproduct and not really the purpose. There's a purpose that applies to the sound because when you move your hand, you're helping move the. The air, which is how sound travels, right? So, so that motion can actually prolong the sound. Um, may seem like a very small thing, but it's totally audible. And you can even experiment that with that on your own. I know that an experienced teacher can always tell when a student is holding their hand just next to the strings, or lifting when they can and raising when they can. It makes a difference in the sound, so you can experiment with that too. So that's item number one of the big two. It makes a difference in the sound. And the second thing is that it gives you the opportunity to relax because it's lifting you away. It's moving those muscles.

It's the absolute opposite of trying to grab for the next notes. It gives you time, so it is an opportunity to relax your hand. It relaxes your mind, and it's going to help you get to the next strings more easily, right? If you have to jump, lifting or raising is the obvious way to do that, right? Gets you from place to place. So here are the four, well, we can say five stages of raising. When you play something, the first thing you do is close, right? You're going to close your fingers. And that doesn't involve moving your hand or your arm at all. Remember, raising or lifting comes from your forearm and your wrist. It doesn't come from your upper arm. Your upper arm is going to stay stable and you're going to, you know, you don't want your elbows flapping around, so it's really your forearms that are doing the raising.

So first thing you do is you close your fingers and then you lift your forearm away from the strings. Boom. Okay, Pretty easy. If you want, you can think about your upper arm kind of like a stationary, stationary thing, and your forearm just pivots up from that. If you want, you can try holding onto your upper arm with your other hand. You know, put the harp down, do this away from the harp, and then just maybe think about your hand as being at 9 o' clock in front of you. And without moving your upper arm or your elbow, just, just bring your hand up to noon. So we're doing a 9 o' clock to a noon pivot on your upper arm. And that's really all the lifting you need to do. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that. And when you think of it that way as the nine to noon lift, just pivoting on your upper arm, it makes it so much easier to practice because it feels so much more natural. You're not trying to create a motion. You're just doing something very simple, efficient, which is the kind of motion we want, right? So you're going to do the nine to noon lift. Then when you're at the top at noon, you're going to start opening your hand and float it down to the strings. And as you float down, your, your fingers are going to assume the shape of the notes that they're going to land on. And then you land on the strings. I know that sounds a little bit easier than you know that it is, but that really is the concept. That's really how it works. You're going to close your fingers, do the nine to noon lift, open your hand, float down and land on the next strings. Now that's not so hard to practice. What you can do, in fact, is just take an interval or a chord and play the same interval or chord a dozen times in a row. And just practice that nine to noon lift it up, open your hand, and float back down onto those same strings. I would do that. And make it nice and slow.

And you can actually practice counting this so that you can play and then count 1, 2, 3. And at 3, you're at noon. Your hand is at noon. And then count three down to the next strings. 1, 2, 3, play. 1, 2, 3, open. 1, 2, 3, Play. And it works really, really well. So, and I think that this helps you make that raising a little bit less artificial. And you'll be able to see how graceful it looks because it's a controlled motion, but a relaxed one. And it releases your hand when you get to the top of the gesture. So it really will look like beautiful slow motion raising.

Now, you can do this also as sort of bouncing ball practice. You can take notes in different places on the harp. Just take your second finger, play random strings around the harp, and. And you could even put your metronome on and just practice closing your second finger and then moving using your raise to get you to the next string, wherever that is. Kind of like that bouncing ball. It's going to go from place to place to place. And once again you can count this. So you're going to close, right? And then you're going to go raise to lower place so that you raise. And then when you get to the top, you open your finger and move down.

Towards your next goal. Now you can actually make your raise sort of more of an arc, where if you have to move your hand a great distance on the harp, you don't have to raise right there at that string and then make a B line for the new one. As you raise, you can start moving your hand toward where you're going to go. And that will help make that motion look more graceful and be more efficient.

Now, another way you can practice this is with counted breathing. Now, this is a wonderful thing to do because it's so calming and so relaxing. Now you're. You're going to have to count silently because you can't count and breathe at the same time. And so I can't demonstrate it for you that way either, but I can tell you how it works. So you're going to put your metronome on again, because your metronome will help you count it. And we can do any of these raising or bouncing ball techniques we were just talking about. But in addition to counting your raise up and counting your raise down between all the various notes that you want to play this way, you know, little intervals or chords or whatever it is. So instead of just counting the rays, you're also going to make your breathing match that counting so that if this is your tempo.

Maybe you're going to go up for three and down for three. Your raise. So you're going to breathe in three times. Breathe in, in, in, and then from the top, out, out, out. So as you raise up.

You breathe in. And as you raise down, you breathe out. And counting your breathing and making your breathing be as smooth and as graceful as your raise will absolutely calm you down. This is great to use before you start practice or when you're warming up, before you have to play. It will help calm you down. You can also, by the way, do this with breathing the other way so that as you raise up, you breathe out. As you raise down, you breathe in. It's a very different experience. And I urge you to try both. Both of those. Be sure to do them with both hands. You know, you can do hands separately, you can do hands together, but the idea here is that you can make those beautiful, controlled gestures look smooth.

Do their job, which is to relax your hands and project the sound and help calm you down. Relax your hands, make them less stiff, right? Less tense. The whole point of that raise is to relax your hands. So, or at least it may not be the whole point, but it's a big one. And we have to practice that because practicing intentional relaxation is not something we do most of the time.

This is also a technique, by the way, the counted breathing technique or just the raise practice. Whether you're going to do just the counted raises or the bouncing ball idea, this is great to do. If you find yourself tensing up in your practice, do just a little bit of this, just a little bit of that gentle raise practice where you're practicing in your relaxing. It will be wonderful for you. It really will. You will love it. And you'll also like how this, how practical and easy this is to do. It's going to look good and it's not going to feel as awkward perhaps, as some of the other raising techniques you might have practiced. So give this one a shot. Now, since we are coming up to the end of the year here, that means we're coming up to all those holiday performances as well. And even if you're not playing anywhere in the holiday season, there's so much going on in that, it's really easy to let that frenzy creep into your playing where you're starting to play and feel more tense. You're playing a little bit faster. You're not controlling things. You're not feeling in the flow the way you usually do. And that's what I call the December dithers, and they happen to all of us. So here are some things that you might want to consider. Depending on the kind of playing that you have to do in the next few weeks.

One or more of these may be just what you needed. The first thing I want you to remember is that this is not the time. December is not the time for musical virtuosity. Right? You don't need to play loud, fast, and the hardest pieces you've ever learned. Step back your energy, step back the effort, step back that push to get everything right. Let the music you need to play find its own gentle flow. This is a wonderful time of year for, you know, showing everything that you and the harp can do for sure. But it's also just a. A time of peace, a time of calm. Um, you know, we have pieces like Silent Night right there. It's, you know. Okay, we've got Jingle Bells too. I get it. But. But you don't have to be doing the very hardest pieces you need. In fact, you may have heard me say this before. When it comes to a Christmas Eve performance, I always play the repertoire. For me, that is easy, that I know I can do when I'm too tired, when I haven't had time to practice, when the light is bad. I mean, there are lots of things you can do to mitigate those things, of course, but. But I don't want to come into a Christmas Eve performance, especially if it's a midnight mass kind of performance. I don't want to come into one of those and think that I've got a hard piece in front of me. So don't over tax yourself. The point of your playing, especially at this season, but always is for it to be beautiful and for you to be able to enjoy it too. So, you know, step back your. If this means you have to readjust your plans a little bit, it's probably a good thing. Remember that you don't need to let the rush of the season make you rush. Try practicing your music a notch or two under tempo. Believe me, adrenaline will kick in, it will be as fast as it needs to be. But you don't have to practice it that fast all the time. So let yourself practice it under tempo, realizing that it'll get there when you need it. But you need to practice being calm. Your calm practice is going to serve you so much better in the long run. Also, please remember to always take some time to warm up and relax before you play. The counted raising techniques could help you there for sure. But. But just a few minutes of calm, slow warmup. Not the hardest technique things you've ever done, but a calm, slow Warmup. Those are the kinds of things that can really help you focus your mind on your practice, help you shut out the other pressures, the other things you might be thinking of. It can help you make the transition to practice time so that you can be focused on what you're doing. But take the time to do that. It will make all your practice more efficient. It will make all your playing so much better. So don't skip your warmup. Then I'd like you to consider.

Something that I'm calling intentional grounding. Okay, I know that's a. That's a. An American football term, but I'm not using it that way here. What is if you paid attention and intentionally grounded yourself before you played and think about what that might mean to just take the time you need before your practice, during your practice, before you have to play, and it doesn't have to be long just to remember.

What you love about the music that you're playing, what you love about the harp, why you're doing this, how special it makes the season.

And that none of these performances is life or death, right? You know, there's nothing that is, you know, no one's going to die, right? It's not that big a deal. Okay? It's important you want it to be right. But find your perspective. Find that phrase. Find that viewpoint that means something to you, that can ground you, and remind yourself why you're doing this and what's really important to you about it. That's what's going to help you, okay? So take your time. Breathe. Step it back a little bit. And be sure that you're grounded and not flying around in a frenzy this time of year. We really need that grounding, don't we? Because that's how we're going to be able to bring that sense of calm and peace to our music and to ourselves. Which brings me to the little. It's a cute little acronym that I wanted to share with you. So what if you took the word peace? Oh, this is what I did. I took the word peace. P, E, A, C, E. And here's what I want you to think about. The word peace could mean this phrase to you. Practice expression and calm every day. Right? Practice expression and calm every day.

I feel better already.

So this is what I want you to think about. Remember, graceful hands start with being relaxed, which is why we talked about the December dithers. But then we talked about those various ways that you can practice revolution raising to make your hands look graceful, to help you move about the heart more gracefully. Once again, that starts with being relaxed, but it also means just gestures that are natural and controlled, efficient, and that's what makes them graceful. All right, now, I did promise that I would play for you. The piece I'm going to play for you is an excerpt from an arrangement of mine by. But it's one of Bach's most famous chorales and one that I particularly love, the chorale. The English words we use for the chorale title are Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light. And it's a chorale that Bach used in his Christmas oratorio. And so we often hear the chorale at this time of year. I used that corral as the basis for a little fantasy or variations, if you like, on that corral, which it's the title track of my Christmas CD break 4th. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play just a little excerpt, just the chorale portion from my arrangement of that piece for you, but I wanted to be sure you knew just a little bit about it. This corral, as with most of Bach's chorales, we think of them as being his. But in so many cases, he didn't write the chorale melody himself. He just used one that was already there. His genius was in the harmonization. And you can find this with other chorale melodies where the. You might find it in a hymnal and you'll think, gosh, well, that doesn't sound the way I'm used to hearing it sound. And that's because the Bach harmonizations are so.

So well crafted and so beloved. But there are other ones that came before Bach and of course, ones that have come after. But Bach was the master of arranging and harmonizing these melodies. So the melody for this chorale was actually composed by a man named Johann Schopp. S C H O P. He was German. He was.

A composer and very famous as a violinist. He had various appointments, but he wrote a lot, wrote a lot of hymns for the. The Lutheran Church. His he was born in 1590 and died in 1667. So you can compare that to Bach States shop died in 1667. Bach was born in 1685. So this chorale melody had been around for a long time before Bach got around to harmonizing it. But of course, it' box beautiful harmonization that we all know and love. Before I play the chorale, I thought that I would take care of just a little business so that when we get to the chorale, that can be the. The last thing you hear in this show. So I don't want to come back from, from that and have to talk to you. So let me remind you once again that our coaching registration will be opening very soon and that this might be the perfect time for you. Don't wait too long. We have registration. The will be open until just before Christmas or until our coaches rosters fill up, whichever comes first. So don't wait too long to sign up. You'll find the link to our coaching page in the Show Notes here or@harpmastery.com you can look and find our coaching things. Next week here on the show we'll be talking about the power of trying something new coming up toward a new year, and it's time to start maybe thinking a little bit about what might be on the horizon for you. In the meantime, do remember that every day is a day you can add more happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. And that's what I'm going to do for you now. So here is.

My arrangement of the chorale break forth O Beauteous Heavenly Light. I hope it brings you a little calm and peace and today, enjoy.

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.