Playalong Episode: Rediscovering Your Sound - PHH 145

Foreign.

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 me 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.

Welcome to the show. I'm always interested to hear what first attracted harpists to the harp. It's fascinating to learn the many ways that the harp can draw a potential student. My own story is that I heard the harp on the radio and told my parents that was what I wanted to do. The important part of that story for me is that it wasn't a gold harp or a pretty dress that drew me to the harp, but the sound that pulled me in naturally. There's nothing wrong with the gold harp or the glamour look, but the sound was and is important to me. Whether or not it was the harp sound that first attracted you, sound is important to us as harpists. So why don't we spend more of our time listening to our playing? We devote a lot of energy to reading the notes and teaching our fingers to play the right strings. But somehow there isn't always time to just spend listening. But it's an important habit and one that we are going to spend a little time with today. So this is a play along episode, meaning that I will play and you will be able to play along with me. I'm going to lead you through a warm up that will help you focus on your fingers and your listening skills. There's no printed music for this. Just follow my directions. That's part of the listening. If you've ever participated in one of my live Monday warm ups, then you know how this works. I realize that podcast listening time is probably not usually harp time for you, but even if you're not at your harp right now, you you can still Benefit from listening. And of course you can come back to this episode and play along with me later. However, if you're driving or doing something that requires your attention, perhaps anything more focused than stuffing envelopes, be sure to keep your wits about you. Don't get so involved that you lose track of what you're doing. In the Show Notes for Today, I've also listed a link to a blog post I wrote a while back called the Practice of why It's Essential for Every Musician. And this will help you take the that listening away from the harp even and just practice your listening skills and that might be fun for you to take a look at. The link is there. Also in the Show Notes for today is the link to join my brand new live intensive called Finish It. We are working at finishing your pieces. If you've ever been stuck with pieces that just don't finish, you practice and you practice and you practice and then all of a sudden they're not getting any better and you're tired of working on them so you just put them away. And in fact you might put them on a pile somewhere. And if you're like a lot of us, you've got a pile of pieces that you just never quite finished and that pile gets bigger. But I want to be sure that it doesn't get any bigger. Right now I want to show you the steps that you need to finish pieces. And this isn't just practicing more, it's not just practicing with new strategies or different techniques. Some of this material is gleaned from things I've already taught, particularly from the Kaleidoscope practice system. You'll find some of that in there, but there's a core here that I've been working with some of my students lately and it's been coming out in bits and pieces. But I'm so excited because this is the first time I've put this in information together in a more comprehensive way. And it's going to be one of the workshops in the intensive and it's focused on the difference between learning mode and playing mode and how they're very different kinds of practice and they require total mindset shift and observational shift. So they're very different styles. And if you're not finishing your pieces, that is likely part of the problem. And if it is, this intensive is going to be a game changer for you. It's a five day intensive. It actually starts before those five days. It starts on Friday, March 8, with a little starting line party. We're going to take a Look at.

Where the starting line is.

And then the intensive itself Begins on Monday, March 11 and runs through that week. And we'll do a wrap up call the following week just in case there are questions and you have things that, that, that you want a little bit more help on before we, before we say goodbye as far as the intensive goes. So you'll find the link to register for finish it in the show Notes. You'll be able to find it@harpmastery.com as well. And I'm excited to be teaching this. I love teaching intensives and haven't done it in a while. I'm excited to get back in there and do it and I certainly hope you'll join me. It's a paid intensive. It's $47. And what you get for your $47 is pretty impressive, I think. So head over to the link in the show notes or heartmastery.com take a look at what's involved in the intensive and I hope that you will join me. But right now we're not going to get so intense. We're going to get a little bit laid back. So take a couple deep breaths and slow down with me. And if you're ready, you can go ahead and head to your harp and I'm going to head to mine and I'll see you there in just a second.

Okay.

I am at my harp and my harp is set for C major, so.

You probably want to do that too.

Just so you can play along with me. So C major is our key for today. And the first thing you want to do is as you're sitting at your.

Harp, just give yourself a quick posture check.

Take a nice deep breath, let that out.

Ah, sit there, check.

Make sure that you're seated properly, that your feet are supporting you, that they're not, you know, crossed under you kind of weird, but that they're supporting you, that the harp is comfortable, that you're.

Seated nice and straight. Your head is up, your shoulders are down, your back is straight. Wiggle those fingers around a little bit. Just wiggle them, wiggle them, wiggle them so that they get a little bit loose. Take another couple good breaths and then we'll start. So let's start. We'll start today, I think with just hands together, just to get fingers warmed up. I'm putting my fourth finger on C.

I've got my right hand, fourth finger.

On middle C, my left hand, fourth finger, the octave below that. And then I'm just putting my fingers on the next strings. So 4 on C, 3 on D, 2 on E, thumb on F. And you're going to hold all of those gently on the strings. And just play your fourth fingers.

Just play them together. Feel them closing into your hand. Feel them nice and relaxed, and listen to how they sound. Do they sound exactly together? Do they sound exactly the same? Probably not. These probably sound close. Do you make a buzz the way I just did? Replacing that fourth finger.

Okay, listen to that sound.

Now leave your fourth finger in your hand, and let's play third finger.

Same thing.

Can you make your third finger have.

Just as beautiful a tone as your fourth finger?

Keep breathing.

One more. All right, let's leave that in your hand. Now we have two and one on the strings.

And let's play our second finger, the.

E.

Be sure to close your finger into your hand, right? We don't want it sticking up. Close it straight into your hand.

Sometimes you can think about pressing the string instead of plucking it, and that helps. Helps get a different sound. One more of those, and then replace.

2, 3, and 4.

And let's play thumbs. Oh, my goodness. That was a quiet thumb. There we go.

Remember to let your thumb close all the way over to your second finger knuckle. It should have a nice long way to go.

There we go.

I like that a little bit better. Let's play four, three, two, one. All four fingers just going up the scale and then back down this way.

Now replace them, and then we'll go play thumb and we'll go down.

Now, as you play them, we're going.

To keep doing it again up and down.

Think about being relaxed. Relax everything from your scalp all the way to your jaw.

Relax your shoulders, Relax your back.

And listen to how being relaxed helps your sound.

Make sure your hands, of course, fingers are relaxed. As soon as they play, they pull in toward your hand and they relax.

Boom.

One more up and then one more down.

And we'll finish up right here.

Three and then four.

Now, right now you should be feeling so relaxed and comfortable. And so just take a moment and enjoy that. It's so different from the busy work.

Of practice, isn't it?

All right, so what we're going to.

Do right now is really listen to.

Two fingers in combination. So we're going to start with right.

Hand, and we're going to start with thirds.

I want you to put your second finger on middle C and your thumb on the E above that. So this is just right hand.

Start by just playing those two notes.

Now, we can try engaging all your senses if you Want? Probably not taste or smell, I suppose, but you can look at your fingers, make sure that they're closing. So see how they look. Do they look like harpist fingers? They are, right?

Think about how they feel. Do they feel equal on the strings? How do they feel when they close into your hand?

These are important cues to develop, right? You want to know how they feel when they're playing correctly, because it will help you, believe it or not, when you're working on a piece and playing it quickly and you don't have time to work. Look, the feel of your fingers and how they're supposed to feel when they're doing the right thing is important.

And lastly, just close your eyes and.

Just listen to them.

It's okay if in closing your eyes, you hit the wrong strings, come back to the wrong strings, not a big deal. But just listen. Listen to the resonance of the sound.

Listen to how it just prolongs. Yeah. Nice, huh? Let's do the same thing with left hand. Give your right hand a rest and let's do left hand. This is C and E. I'm using this C and E below middle C.

And you just want to play.

Be sure that you're still sitting straight at the harp. You haven't twisted around in your chair.

There.

Look at your fingers, look at your arm. Make sure your shoulders relaxed and down. Everything can be relaxed. Easy, easy.

Then if everything looks good, think about how it feels. What does it feel like to have your fingers closed?

Every time I think about what it feels like to have my fingers close, I close better. I wonder if it works that way for you, too. Here you go.

And then close your eyes and just listen.

It's okay if you go back to the wrong strings.

It's not a problem. We're just listening to how this sounds.

How does it sound when you replace slower, the way I did right then.

Or a little bit faster.

Listen to the resonance, the reverberation.

Make it louder or softer.

There you go. All right, now what we're going to do is we're going to take those thirds and we're going to go all the way up and down a scale of thirds. So just your right hand for right now. And we're going to play the C.

And the E. Then the D and the F and the E and the G. F and the A. G and B.

A and C. Oh, B and D.

C and E. And then go right back down.

B and D. A and C.

G and B. F and A. E and G.

D and F and C and.

E.

Do it again. And as you do it this time.

Really think about relaxing your hand.

And you can actually raise your hand in between those notes too. So you can just think about what that lift does to the sound.

So C and E, D and F. E and G. F and A. G and B. A and C, B and D. C and E.

Now, be sure you're listening.

Close your eyes if you want.

It's okay if you miss the notes, but listen to how it sounds.

There we go.

Now, a moment ago, I mentioned something that's pretty important. I mentioned raising. Salzido method. People call it raising. You might call it a lift, you might call it a gesture, but.

But it's that thing that happens after.

You play, after you close, when you move your hand away from the strings, some harp methods go up, some harp methods go down. And that's okay. It's all sort of the same thing. But what I want you to do, since we're listening today, is to just play that C and E again and.

Play it without moving your hand.

So you're going to take your fingers.

And just play and then not lift your hand at all.

Just keep your hand in the same place. Just close your fingers. Do a few of those.

And now do a few.

Lifting your hand or whatever kind of.

Raise you usually do. Be sure to close your fingers first. Can you tell a difference in the sound? I can.

And I bet you can, too.

It always used to amaze me when I was in my lessons that my teacher could tell. I swore she wasn't looking, but she could tell if I was raising or not, just from the way it sounded. As I got a little older, I was able to tell the difference myself, and that was helpful. Okay, so we did right hand. Let's do left hand. The same thing.

C and E. The scale all the.

Way up and down.

So C and E. D and F. You're closing. You can use your eyes to place is good, but listen to how it sounds. Do the notes sound exactly together? Do all the thirds sound the same? If they don't, that's okay. You're listening and you're observing C and E. And now we're going to go back down.

B and D. A and C.

G and B.

F and A.

E and G.

D and F. C and E.

Let's do it one more time. Listen. And if you like, close your eyes. We're going to go. Here we go. Up again. Play the wrong notes.

That's fine.

It's all about listening. Closing your eyes is interesting because it Gives you a real idea to, you know, how much your hand and your fingers know about where those strings are.

Listen again.

There.

I like that sound better. There we go.

If you're raising, be sure to close and then raise.

Right.

Okay, good.

All right.

There we go.

Now let's do the same thing with sixth. So we're going back to right hand now, but this time we're putting the third finger on middle C and the thumb on the A. So this is an interval of a sixth. And just play a few of those. Get used to how it feels, how it looks. Oops, that was an ugly thumb callus. There we go.

Think about centering your hand. Being sure that the big knuckle at.

The back of your hand.

Right. Is sort of in the center between the C and the A. And that your hand isn't all the way back towards your thumb.

Close your fingers again. And when you're ready, let's start a scale of six.

Here we go.

You ready? So this is the C and the A. Then the D and the B. Listen.

E and C. Plenty of time. F and D. Close and raise. G and E. A and F.

Oh.

B and G. C and A.

And then back down.

B and G. A and F. G.

And E.

F and D. E and C. D and B.

C and A. And we won't do this whole scale with your eyes closed. Although it would be a fun thought, wouldn't it?

Oh, maybe.

We'll try it.

Here we go.

You ready?

We'll scale with our eyes closed.

So C and A, D and B.

E and C. It's okay if you cheat. That's all right. D and F. But closing your eyes helps you listen, doesn't it?

And the A and F, B and G.

C and A.

And then back down. Oh, those two notes weren't exactly together. A and F. Keep your shoulders relaxed. Keep your back straight. D and whatever. F and D. I'm not looking, so I have to remember E and C.

D and B and C and A.

All right, do some thirds with our left hand. You ready? So C and A. This is just way down there. Just listen to those two notes together.

Yeah.

Trying to make them sound exactly together. My replacing is not as clean as I'd like today. All right, let's try that scale. So C and A.

Next is D and B. E and.

C. Keep your hand relaxed. Make sure it's centered between the strings.

That's a vision thing and a feeling thing.

B and G. Oh, I don't like.

That sound very much.

C and A. My third finger is not sounding especially lovely today.

A and F.

G and E.

F and D. Oops. E and C.

D and D and B.

C and A. And we'll try it again. We'll do the eyes closed version. See how we do here?

You ready?

Here we go. C and A.

D and B.

And C.

Next.

Oops. I hit a buzz on that one.

And back down. This is the B, I believe.

A and F, G and E.

F.

And D.

E and C.

D and.

B.

C and A.

You could tell my placing wasn't quite as clean on the way. On the eyes closed version. Especially on the way down, just a little bit trickier, right? Okay, so guess what? It's time to do some octaves, huh? So let's do some octave Cs. In the right hand.

I can probably get a better sound. They're not quite together.

If you're not happy with the sound you're getting, play a little bit softer because that will help you relax. There we go.

Those aren't the best strings on this harp either.

Listen to the attack of your sound. Attack is such a. You know, we don't want to attack the sound, but to the very beginning of the sound. Does it. Is it loud? Is it soft?

Is it gentle?

Is it sharp?

Pungent?

Yeah. Okay, well, let's do. While we're doing these octave Cs, why don't we do. Not a scale, but let's do an arpeggio of octaves.

So we'll do a C and an E and a G and a C. And then back down, G.

E, C.

And we'll just go up and down a couple of times here. Be sure that you're closing your fingers, that you're not pulling away from the strings.

Now, as you do it again, relax into it.

See if you can get the prettiest sound you ever got on these octaves.

Be sure that your hand is centered one more time so that your fourth finger is curved. That's how you have control over your fourth finger. If your hand's too far back towards.

Your thumb, you won't make it.

Ooh, that was nice.

Okay, now let's try some left hand.

Octaves on those octave C's.

Notice I didn't make you do those with your eyes closed.

You could, though.

Left hand's used to octaves. It shouldn't be a real problem for your left hand, right? But think about how they sound. Think about making them beautiful. It's amazing to me how every time I think about how they sound, they sound better.

Just want to get that in my ear and in my fingers. All right, now that octave arpeggio, you ready? There's the C, here's the E, here's.

The G.

Here's the C.

It wasn't.

Together the G, the E. I'll do.

This a few times, right?

The C, E.

G.

C.

G.

E. One more time. The C.

The E.

The G.

And.

The C and back down.

Now, just because we can, we've got or got the C major thing in our ears.

Let's do this. Put your third finger, left hand on.

The C below middle C and the thumb on the G above that. So we have three and one in the left hand on C and G.

And then two of your right hand.

On middle C and the thumb on the E above that. So we have left hand C and G, right hand C and E. And we have a beautiful four note chord. Just play that, hands together. It's beautiful, right? It's a lovely sonority. Think about making your hands as relaxed. Think about just a pillow of sound. Listen to how it sounds. Enjoy playing it. And now we're going to do just a few of those same chords going up. So move everything up one string to.

The D chord, everything up to the E chord, everything up to the F.

And then we're going to go back.

Down to the E.

To the D.

And we'll do it again.

Going back up. Now, as you do this.

Remember to close your fingers. Lift the sound, however you do that.

For your playing, back down again.

See if you can make this sound very, very gentle.

Oh, this is a nice gentle time, isn't it? There we go.

Close, lift. Listen to how beautiful that is.

Now we're going to do it again, but this time we're going to make the sound a little bit more sharply accented.

Okay?

So the D chord. Sharper accent, sharper accent, sharp accent here. Good sharp accent on the E. We do that just with the pressure of our fingers, don't we? There we go. Let's go back to the gentle.

I liked that.

Listen to the sound.

I like that idea of a pillow of sound.

One last time.

One last time up.

Nice and rich round.

Ah.

Now your fingers are warmed up. But just think about what you've done in terms of listening. You've probably done more listening in these few minutes than you are used to doing in your practice. And it's so valuable to just pay attention to what we can hear. So I encourage you to do just a little bit of this kind of practice every day.

It's really good for you.

Now, let me come back to the microphone here for a second.

What did you think of that? Listening to the directions, just following directions, doing something nice and slow, just feeling how your fingers feel, listening to the sound that they're making, and just paying attention to you and your harp and not any of those challenging notes and tricky things and all that hard work that we do. But this is important work that we do. We're musicians. We listen, we hear. So spend some time pretty regularly, like maybe every day, just listening a little bit, listening to the sound, listening to your harp listen.

It's different.

It'll be different on different days. It'll be different at different times of day. If your fingers are cold, if the air is cold, if it's warm, if it's humid, all of these things will affect the sound. And you'll start to get a real sense of what your harp is doing in a particular environment. Is it absorbing humidity? Does it sound dry? Does it sound rich? Is it a happy day for your harp? Or maybe not such a happy day for your harp. But that's all about listening, and it's a wonderful practice. It's something we should all be doing just a little bit more of. So with that, I will leave you. I want to remind you about the Finish it intensive, which is coming up very quickly now. Coming up, the beginning of March. We start on March 8th. I'd love to have you join us for that. It's just a ton of fun.

You.

Next week on the podcast, we'll be talking about six, eight. Well, we'll be talking a little bit about some Irish jigs and a little bit about other pieces that use that mysterious meter 6, 8. I know sounds pretty common, but there's a lot of stuff to talk about here, and we're going to be working with different ways to really make your rhythm precise, different ways to have the coordination that you need to play it, all that good stuff. So it's all about six, eight. We're gonna be thinking about St. Patrick's Day just a little bit early and working on our Irish jigs. So that's next week on the podcast. 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 for playing along, and I'll 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. And every day. See you next time.