Perspective Over Perfection: The Secret to Playing with Freedom - PHH 226

I'd like to start our discussion about perspective today with a statement that I know is absolutely true and that I also know is probably going to get some pushback. This may not feel right to you, but here's the what you do when you're playing matters, but it matters less than you think.

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 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.comjoin-now that's harpmastery.com join now.

Welcome to the show. I'm sure You've seen that famous optical illusion picture that can be perceived either as two faces in profile looking at each other, or as a vase. That image is named the Rubin Vase after Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin, who authored a book in 1915 called Visual Perception. Now, this image and others like it have stimulated a lot of scientific debate about how our brains understand and process images. What fascinates me about those images is that moment when my understanding of the image shifts right that instant where I can see the second interpretation of the picture. Naturally, there's a technical term for that. It's called a gestalt switch. A gestalt switch occurs when you change your perspective from. From one view of an image, a sound, or an experience to another perspective. As with the Rubin vase, you first saw it one way as a vase, and now you see it another way as two vases. Now, there's a lot of debate about the cognitive processes that allow this switch to happen, but there seems to be general agreement that the switch is hard for an individual to control. Sometimes you just can't see the faces. You only see the vase. Nevertheless, we are talking about the necessity for you to be able to make that switch in your harp playing. That's the premise for this show today. Making your piece sound like music isn't about what you do. It's about your perspective. In case I've made this sound too difficult, let me reassure you that I am positive you already do this in your playing. You just haven't thought of it this way before. If you weren't making this perception change, you would stay stuck on one measure and never get to playing the entire piece. What we're going to explore today is how to make that perception shift intentional. Why would we want to do this? Because when we shift our perspective from playing the notes to playing the music, we play the music better. If this sounds a little mysterious, be sure to listen to the rest of the episode, because this discussion will help you find more freedom in your playing. It will help you learn and finish a piece faster and allow you to play with more musicality and confidence. I know that sounds like a big promise, but I'm confident I can deliver on it. Confidence is one of those things that we all want, and there's no better way to get confidence than with the right kind of instruction. So we have a few ways right here at Heart Mastery to help you with that, and one of them is coming up this Wednesday. That's just two days from the day when this podcast goes live and it is Back to School Night. This is Wednesday, September 17th and we are holding a free back to school night where I will be hosting a one hour webinar and all of the certified coaches will be coming on and teaching just a little, you know, five to 10 minute class on one of those topics that we all need to learn about. So they're just little snippets of learning. It's a little bit like one of those, you know, PTA back to school nights except you don't actually have to walk from classroom to classroom. We take care of all of that for you. So we've got Back to School night happening and that's going to be a lot of fun. I I've put the link in the show notes for you to register. As I said, it's free. You'll also find the link at heartmastery. Com. I hope you join us. It's just going to be a fun evening. And of course this is the perfect opportunity to think about working with one of our certified coaches in our coaching program or to work with one of our accredited teachers who are listed on our website as well. All of these people are people who have been trained by me in different ways at different levels. Our certified coaches work very closely with me. We have monthly trainings and they teach one on one in our certified coaching program. The accredited teachers have also had training with me in how we do things here at Heart Mastery and they are master teachers in their own right and are available for you as well. So you can be in touch with one of them and find out more about studying with our accredited teachers or our certified coaches. And as I said, confidence comes from having the right instruction. There's nothing like working one on one with the right teacher to help you move forward and feel good about it. So you'll find links to all of those things in our show notes and I would urge you to check them out.

I'd like to start our discussion about perspective today with a statement that I know is absolutely true and that I also know is probably going to get some pushback. This may not feel right to you, but here's the statement. What you do when you're playing matters, but it matters less than you think. What you actually do matters less than you think. As I said, I'm prepared that you might not agree with this, but I'm also prepared to explain to you why I feel so strongly that this is true and why if you don't subscribe to that kind of idea, perspective may be a problem for you. Let's talk about some Symptoms that I ascribe to needing a shift of perspective. So if one of these things is happening to you on a regular basis or is part of your experience or has ever been part of your playing experience, this is a perspective problem. So here's one of those symptoms. You can't play through the piece without stopping.

I realize that this could be just something that we put down to, okay, I'm not reading ahead. I'm not focusing on what comes next. I'm not getting my hands in the right place soon enough. And that's why I can't play through the piece without stopping. But I'd like to suggest that it's not just the notes or the speed or your focus that's stopping you. It's being focused on those things instead of on the music you're trying to create.

That's a perspective shift from what you're doing to actually what you're creating. What the music is saying. That's a perspective shift. And that's a symptom. If you can't play through the piece without stopping.

Here's a second symptom. You don't know how the sections of a piece relate or you can't describe them. I mean, if you can't start anywhere in a piece and have it sound like it's in the right context, like it fits the music, like it belongs. This is what I'm talking about. Every part of every piece has a meaning. It has a place in the flow of the piece, in the story of the piece. So that when you start at any particular spot in a piece, you need to have that story already in process. It's a little bit like pausing a movie. You're watching a movie and you pause it so that you can get up and, you know, get a snack or whatever it is when you come back. The movie starts in exactly the same place, at exactly the same level and in the same way. The storyline just continues. You need to have that level of continuity in your idea of the piece. Let's put it another way. Could you describe the structure of your piece? Not maybe in an academic way. Oh, this is the exposition, and this is the recapitulation. You don't need those. But in a really practical way, okay, here's the introduction. Then we've got the first section. Then we have the first section again, but it's a little bit different. And then there's this other stuff, and this changes the piece in this way. And then eventually we come back to that first section, but it's changed a Little bit. And then there's an ending. Beyond that. Do you have that plan, that plot line in mind for your music as you practice it? This is the true flow of the piece. Usually we think about flow as playing the notes smoothly and just playing past our mistakes and making the dynamics happen, all that sort of thing. But flow really goes beyond that. Flow is about the progression of the storyline of the piece, the progression of the plot.

For instance, are you making the beginning sound like the ending if it's supposed to? Right. If the plot of the piece has started us in one place, taken us through some changes, and then brought us back to the beginning material again. The same kind of music we heard at the beginning, is it supposed to sound exactly the same? Maybe. Should it sound different? Does it have a transformation built into it? That's the kind of thing that is the true flow of the piece. It's the journey that the music takes us on. Here's another version of that same symptom, and this might give you a little bit more insight into the kind of thing I'm talking about. If you can't describe the story of a piece, you don't have quite the right perspective yet. For instance, if I asked you to look at that piece of music and describe it to me, what would you say? Would you tell me about the notes that are on the page? Oh, and then we've got some chords, and then there are some arpeggios, and then it does this. And then here's the tricky finger passage. Or would you tell me what the notes mean? Well, here's the part that always sounds to me like somebody sneaking up on someone. And then.

Here'S a river. And this is what those arpeggios sound like. I mean, are you going to tell me what the music sounds like or what you're trying to do? This is a significant perspective shift, because when you are in the middle of what you're trying to do, you're down in the weeds. You're just worrying about those little pieces, the notes, the fingers. And I know they're important, but if they don't add up to music, then they're not as important as we think. And this is why I have that little statement that I started with today. What you do in your practice and playing matters. Of course it matters, but it matters less than you think. What you are saying with your music, what you're saying with what you play matters more. It's that communication aspect of music that is the perspective we want to attain. We want to be able to play our music and have it mean something, even if it's just, oh, isn't that pretty? And we want it to mean something, whether we're sharing it with somebody else or just playing it for ourselves. That's why we do this. I know I remind you about that all the time. We do this for the music. We don't do it for the working through the notes and the hard grunt work of it. We do it because we end up with beautiful music. At least that's what we're looking for. This is why creating a storyline for your piece can be helpful. It lifts you out of that doing phase and into the fact fabric of the music itself. When you can take your focus away from, okay, I've got to get my fourth finger here, and I have to move this lever or pedal here. When you can take your mind out of that doing phase and put it into the story that you're trying to create, that's where the music is. Now, here's another way to look at it. You know, we often see somebody playing a concert, you know, some virtuoso, and we think about their total concentration and the focus they have and how involved they look. They look like they are, you know, lost in the music. And frankly, we can all get lost in the music. It certainly happens to me, and I hope that it's happened to you at least a couple of times. And those are those times that what we're doing fades into the background. We're less conscious of what we're actually doing, doing the mechanical aspects of things, and the music itself takes over, and we're just so lost in the music that it feels almost like it's playing itself. That often happens for people in their practice because they're a little bit more relaxed and it's easier to achieve that perspective shift. And that's more like what I'm talking about here. I'm not going to talk today about how to get lost in the music exactly. But that's the place we need to go where the music itself is more important and everything that we're doing is there to serve it, and we can keep the proper perspective. That's where we're going today. So let's talk about how we get there. I've organized this thinking about perspective into four different levels of perspective, because I think that we need to talk about where we get stuck and. And how to get out of it, how to start changing our perspective from where it is. And often the reasons that we get stuck aren't the reasons we Think we're stuck. And I truly believe that for so many of the things that plague us in our playing, if we just lifted our eyes a little bit and looked at the result we really want, it would be easier to get there. And that's the perspective shift that I'm talking about. But just like with the vase, the picture of the vase and the faces, it can be tricky to actually force yourself to make that shift. So that's why I've sort of put this in four levels, and here's the first one. I call this one Getting it Right. This is the curse of the person who just wants to do it the right way. They want to make sure they're not getting into bad habits. They want to make sure they're doing everything right, and they're just taking their time with it and they're doing it carefully. This is a good thing. It's not a bad thing. Don't get me wrong. But it can get you stuck. Because you end up trying to make something perfect. You end up sort of bound to this level of trying to get things right. You end up being limited by the mistakes you make. Because if you're making mistakes with this particular perspective, if you are making mistakes, then you're not doing it right and you can't move on yet. This is one of the reasons that it can take people so long to move from learning notes to making music. They get to the messy middle stage and they never get out of it. And this is so vital for every level of harp happiness. This is vital. So here's what I want to suggest. If your perspective right now or at some point in the future gets stuck in this getting it Right phase, I can't move on because it's not right yet. I want to give you this word of advice. I want you to trust to time. Not that the time spent fixing this measure is going to make it better, but the fact that if you move on just a little bit and you move on to that next stage, you'll still have the time that you need to get those things right, but you'll be putting them in a different context, and you'll be taking some of the challenge that you're experiencing now out of the equation because you're looking at a bigger picture. I realize that this can seem counterintuitive, but it's absolutely fact. So if you are stuck in getting it right phase, I want you to move on and trust that time will help you fix that.

Okay? There's a lot to be talked about in that particular piece of advice. But we need to move on, too. So we're going to look at the second level of perspective, which I call being trapped in a measure. This isn't just about getting it right. This is more about that one measure that just won't work. We can play up to that measure, we can play after that measure, but every time we get to that measure or two measures or line, whatever it happens to be, that doesn't work, and it throws everything off. We tell ourselves, if that measure were right, I could play the entire piece. So if we're stuck on one measure, that's a perspective issue, because clearly we're not looking at the context of the whole piece. Now, when it comes to fixing one measure or two measures or whatever it is, there are certainly very practical solutions. There are practice strategies. We can do it hands separately. We can try to work it out in rhythm. We can slow it down. We can do all kinds of things that will help us play through the measure and learn the measure better. And there are musical strategies, too. We can decide that, you know, what, if I just edit that measure this way, then I can actually play it. And I believe in that kind of editing. If that's a measure that's stopping you from playing, well, let's fix it. You don't have to slave through every note. You know, I. There are different levels of playing. If you are going to enter a competition, you better be prepared to play every note. But short of that, if you are just playing for people to enjoy your music or for you to enjoy your music, you don't have to play every single note on the page. That may sound like heresy, but I think it's true. And I'd rather see you enjoy your playing than get hung up on a chord that you can't play. So consider editing. Consider some strategic rubato. Does this measure have to flow exactly in tempo, exactly in rhythm, or is there a musical reason that you could add a little bit of give and take a little bit of push and pull in that measure to help you play it? So certainly there are practical strategies, there are musical strategies, but there's also a perspective strategy. What would happen if you gave it a context, if you looked at what that measure really means in the music, what's happening at that moment, and then considered what that measure needed to sound like, not how many notes needed to be played or how fast they needed to be played. Some of those might be important, but if you look at the musical context, you might find the changes that you need to make. You might find the right practice strategies. This is, again, about perspective. When we're looking at it from the top down, from the end result, that musical perspective that's very different from just trying to play all the notes. And that's how you can get out of being trapped in a measure. The third perspective shift to think about is one that may surprise you, and this is that we get stuck in trying to make it musical. Now, I know this sounds like exactly what I'm trying to get you to do, and that is certainly true. But lots of times we get stuck and we think, oh, gosh, I didn't do my dynamics. All right, we all do that. But what can often happen is that we get the piece learned to a certain point, and then we say, okay, well, let me look at the dynamics. Oh, that's supposed to be forte. That's supposed to be piano. I need a crescendo here. And the dynamics get pasted on the top, sort of like the icing on the cake. When really those dynamics and the phrasing and all those things that go along with it, they're part of the cake. They're not something that should be slathered on top. They're part of what's baked into it. They're the goodness in the cake. They need to be, I hesitate to use this word, but organic to the music, because those dynamics are part of what the music is telling us. Now, here's an example. Think about any piece of music and think about it as a blank, dynamic canvas. It has no dynamic markings in it at all. And actually, you might find one of those pieces on your music stand right now, there are composers who are well known for not adding any dynamics into their music, at least into some kinds of their music. Bernard Undress is one where you've got wonderful learning pieces, pieces that are sort of short and perhaps not too difficult, but there's no dynamic indication at all. The thing is a blank canvas. So you could learn the notes, and potentially you could learn the notes and not even consider that there were any dynamics to. To think about, because he didn't write any in for you. But part of your job, part of our job, for all of us as musicians as going beyond just playing the harp to actually playing the music. Our job is to make the music say something. Now we've got a blank canvas there. Well, what dynamic do you want to start at? What shifts do you want to make? Do you want to make sudden dynamic changes, gradual changes? What's the overall mood that you want to convey? There are so many choices. And you can try them on, like, different hats. You know, you can say, well, let's see, if I do this and then I do this, it sounds one way. If I do a whole different dynamic plan, it sounds differently. So you can make the piece of. Into almost any number of different pieces just by changing the dynamic plan. That's why I'm saying that if the composer has written in a dynamic plan, they're already telling you a little bit about what they want that piece to say, what the story of that piece is. They've given some meaning in there. And if you ignore that, at most of your beginning learning stages, you're not learning the music, you're just learning the notes. And you're going to have to go back and rethink what you've learned, because you've probably had this experience too. It's very different playing a passage at one dynamic level than at another. It requires a different thought process. So if you're thinking about the musicality of the piece from your very first learning stages, then you learn it with that intent. You're focusing on that larger perspective right from the very beginning of learning. So when you're looking at a piece and there are dynamics there, think about what they're telling you about the piece. Why are they there? How does this affect the story that this piece is trying to tell? There may not be an answer that you can come up with right away, but it could be that as you keep practicing the piece and you're practicing those dynamics into it, that shapes your own understanding of the piece and of the storyline of the piece, of the plot of the piece, of the flow of the piece. So if you're stuck at adding those dynamics on, I want you to consider. Well, you have to add them on if you're at that point in the piece. But think about why they're there. And the next time you start a piece, get that happening from the very first. It's going to give you a way to keep your perspective a above the notes and on that bigger picture, on that musical picture right from the beginning. And that brings me to the fourth level of perspective. Kind of like the fourth dimension, only it's not. We're not talking about the actual fourth dimension being time or whatever. I'm talking about our fourth dimension, which is actually about flow. So the perspective at issue here is the. The things that are beyond what we do. The inherent soul of the music, that plot, that storyline, whatever you want to call it, but that thing that is music beyond the notes and the fingers and the rhythms and the pedals and the levers and all that good stuff. And we know we get stuck here, right? The music doesn't flow. It's not smooth, or it just. It just doesn't sound right.

That's a perspective issue as well, because we're not paying attention to the things that make the music sound right, that make it sound like music. Granted, there are lots of really practical things. The notes and rhythms, among them, the dynamics, the legato, all that kind of stuff helps make the music sound the way it's supposed to. But there's a little bit more that's necessary, and it's what I referred to earlier, thinking about that storyline of the music, the progression that starts in one place, takes us through a journey and ends us up in another place. You've heard pieces, I'm sure, that start out in minor, and then they seem very sad and tragic and stuff happens and they go along and they have this very heroic ending in major. And you feel very uplifted at the end of the piece when you felt sort of drab and sad at the beginning of the piece as you listen to it. Well, that piece has a very obvious story arc to it, doesn't it? Takes you from one state of being to another state of being as you listen to it. Not every piece of music is that dramatic or has that kind of uplifting storyline. I mean, sometimes, you know, a minuet is just a minuet. However, it has its minuet soul in it. And it's our job to give it that soul, to give it that flow and that perhaps stateliness or elegance or grace or charm or whatever you want to go with that particular minuet. And then how you get from the beginning through each of those sections and back to the end. And in most minuets, you're going to end up kind of with the same material you started with. How you create that storyline, even if it isn't the most exciting one. That's perspective. It's about what we want the music to say. It's beyond what we're actually doing. And that's what all of these perspective shifts are about, right? It's not about the notes and what we're doing as much as it is what those notes are trying to tell us in the bigger picture.

What I'm trying to help you understand today is that when we're stuck, that perspective shift is what's going to allow us to move forward. I've given you some examples of ways in which we get stuck we get stuck in the. In the measure, in the details. We get stuck in that one passage that won't work. We get stuck trying to make the piece sound like music. When we're looking at it from that bottom up, from being down in the weeds, it's very difficult to get those things to work. To make music out of the weeds is really, really tough. That is a metaphor that doesn't work either. But just go with me for a second. So when we're looking from the top down, when we have that aerial view of what the music is about.

Then we can start to find the right ways to solve the issues, whether it's practicing things more or just doing them differently with a different intention, with a different focus, but it's perspective that is going to allow us to go forward. And so one more time, I'm going to remind you of my little quote for you for today. What you do in your practice and playing matters. But it matters less than you think. What you say in your playing matters more. Got it? I hope you do, because that's where the fun is. Speaking of fun, don't miss Back to School night this week, Wednesday, September 17th, we are going to be having a fun evening with all our certified coaches. I'll be there, too. As I said, it's kind of like one of those PTA meetings at school, only you don't have to go from class to class. We bring the classrooms to you and no one has to stay after school. So that's coming up on Wednesday. Please register. I'd love to see you there. It's going to be fun. Next week on the podcast, we're talking about technique, but what do you do if you don't have a technique, if you don't subscribe to a particular method, if you've just learned to play the harp, what do you need to know? So we're going to be talking about technique from a very general standpoint, telling you what you need to pay attention to. So no matter what method you've learned or if you haven't learned any method, let's talk about what you need to be working on and what is really important about your technique, what your fingers need to do, what your arms need to do, everything from your posture on out to your fingertips. So we'll be talking about that on the podcast next week. In the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. 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.