Powerful Practice with the Five Focus Areas - PHH 176

The obstacle that we face is that practice can be absorbing. It feels really rewarding to dig deep into the music, to fix things, to analyze it, to repeat things, to refine them. When you've done that kind of practice, you get off the harp bench with that same feeling that you finish a physical workout, right? You're tired, but you're satisfied and just a little virtuous, right? It's like, look what I did.

But the problem is you may not really have moved the needle, or at least not moved it far enough.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Anne 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 place. 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.com join now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. Ten years ago, I wrote a small book. It was my response to the frustration I observed some harpists experiencing. These harpists were diligent in their practice and dedicated to doing everything right, but they still weren't able to play their music the way they wanted. Some told me that they just couldn't get the notes, the fingering, and the placing correct. Others said they couldn't get their music anywhere near an appropriate tempo. Some couldn't look at their hands in the music at the same time. Others couldn't make their music flow. And none of them seemed to be able to discover a solution to their problem. So I started asking harpest questions in order to find out a little more about what the real source of each of these issues might be. What I discovered was that although the symptoms manifested differently in each individual, there was really only one problem. One that all of them shared. And it was this. No one had ever told them how to practice. What I discovered in my own harp journey was that practice really wasn't about what I thought it was. It isn't enough just to play something over and over again until it's right. The goal of practice isn't perfection. It's music. When your practice isn't helping you make music, you can be pretty sure you're doing it wrong. But the right kind of practice starts with the right kind of focus. I'm not talking about mindset or concentration. I'm talking about practicing for the results you want. The results that are more than the right notes. Results like flow, expression, and musicality. That was the starting point for my book Kaleidoscope. Practice, focus, finish, and play the way you've always wanted. I used the word focus in that book to describe five focus areas which can serve to direct your practice so that you can actually play the music you start. I'd like to explain those focus areas to you today and give you some of my favorite practice tweaks that just may revolutionize the way you think about your practice. The way they revolutionized mine. Speaking of revolutionizing, we at Harp Mastery have done something that we think is pretty revolutionary, at least for us. We now have our own Harp Mastery app. I mean, a real app, like all the other apps that you put on your phone. Now, right now, our app is only available for iPhone and iPad. The Android app is coming soon. So Android users, never fear. I am an Android user myself, so I wouldn't leave you stranded. We are getting that Android app ready, but Google has a couple other hoops that we need to jump through still. But if you are an iPhone or iPad user, you can go right to your Apple App Store and download the Harp Mastery app. There's actually a link in the Show Notes, but you can go directly to the App Store if that's the easiest thing for you. So what's the deal with the Heart Mastery app? Well, first of all, like every other app you have, it's designed hopefully to make your life easier. This is what we love about this app. You can access any course that you have purchased from us right on your app. Your entire library is going to be available right there. If you are a member of the Hub, you can access the Hub right from the app. Remember, the Hub is our free community, right? Our social media, free social community. All about the Harp, and that's there. In addition, we have courses that we are offering in the app. We have a couple there. We'll have more coming soon. The app is brand new for us and I'm really excited. The people who have downloaded it so far are finding it really easy to use because you can do everything you want to do with Heart Mastery right from the app. How great is that, right? So if you are an iPhone or iPad user, head over to the App Store, download our app, know that this is a work in progress. It's still coming. It's brand new for us. Who knew that I would turn into an app developer? But I'm really excited about the app and I think it's going to really help you take advantage of everything that we do at Harp Mastery, whether it's the live Monday warmups in the Hub or the courses you have in your library, accessing your. My Harp Mastery calls any of those things really, really exciting and easy. So download that app and remember, Android users, we're working on it, I promise.

Let's start our discussion by acknowledging this. The ultimate goal of our practice is playing, Right? The ultimate goal of our practice is playing music. If all you want to do is practice, then none of this matters. But if you want to play music, then you need to direct your practice that way. Now, the obstacle that we face, which can be very powerful, very daunting, and very sneaky, the obstacle that we face is that practice can be absorbing. It feels really rewarding to dig deep into the music, to fix things, to analyze it, to repeat things, to refine them. When You've done that kind of practice. You get off the heart bench with that same feeling that you finish a physical workout, right? You're tired, but you're satisfied and just a little virtuous. Right. It's like, look what I did.

But the problem is, you may not really have moved the needle or at least not moved it far enough.

To paraphrase the famous line of St. Paul, when I was a child, I practiced like a child.

When you first started music lessons as a child, if you did, you probably had very good instruction, and your teacher told you exactly what to do. Do this ten times, do this five times, do this, hands separately, do this, hands together. Even if you started music lessons later, your early music lessons on the harp were probably very similar to that. It's like, okay, you know, you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. And especially if you started the harp later, you were probably very focused on your placing, your fingering, and how your fingers moved. It taught you this laser focus. That was what your practice was, this laser focus on this one aspect of playing, an important one. Absolutely. Because if our fingers can't do it, then we can't do it. It's just that simple. And this is where you start. You have to start by learning how all of that stuff works. But if you stay there, then you stay stuck, at least stuck in a pretty slow learning mode. This is where I have seen harpists get mired, get stuck in the weeds, because they're continuing to practice with that level of focus in mind, that focus on. I've got my right fingers on the right strings. They're placing properly, they're playing, and they're playing with really beautiful technique. All of that stuff is great, but by itself, it won't help you play music. There's so much more to it. I. I know you know that, but what I want you to think about is that there's a different way to practice, to get there. Yes. We want to focus on all these things, all those important mechanics of playing the harp. We need to. This is how they work. But there's a lot more that goes into it, and that's why I came up with the focus areas, so that a person would know what else they needed to be practicing. These focus areas give you not just a different way, but more ways to consider what you're doing when you're practicing, so that when you're looking at all those things like notes and fingering, you're still focused on the music. That was key, because if you just stay with the fingers, the notes and the technique, that's all you're going to learn, that's all you're going to know. But because those fingerings and notes and all that kind of stuff, because that's the easiest place to start when we start learning a piece. I made that, the first focus area, I called it detail. So when you practice for detail, certainly you're practicing the notes and the rhythms and the fingering and the dynamics, because all of these are important elements, important details in the piece. They're part of what the composer wrote. Maybe not the fingering so much, but the notes and the rhythms and the dynamics, certainly. And so when you're thinking about the details of a piece, you are really thinking about how you are not only reproducing what the composer has written, but you're also thinking about how you can interpret it. You're thinking about how those musical elements and how those notes and rhythms are going to contribute to the big picture of the finished piece. So you're looking for the technical detail and, and you're looking for musical details in the service of the big musical picture. So that's detail. If you're just starting to learn a piece, stick with working on the details, the notes and the fingering the way you like. But be sure you're including elements of expression. Be sure you're paying attention to what those notes mean, not just what they are. That's going to be key. Think about your practice not in terms of measures, but, but in terms of phrases. Make the melody and your attention to the melody part of your practice. If you're further along in your learning stage with a piece, maybe you're at the messy middle. The messy middle is a great time to work on those details, but at tempo or much closer to it. This is an important thing to start working on early. Don't save the at tempo work until the end of your time. With a piece, start working at tempo earlier on because the details that you've worked on, like the fingering, that sometimes changes as you start to go faster. A fingering that works slowly doesn't always work faster. And that's just one of the things that might change when you start picking up the tempo. The whole way you think about a phrase can change. So at that messy middle stage, start pushing for tempo right away. You're going to enjoy your work. It'll be a little bit, maybe a little bit hair raising at first it'll be like, oh, a little uncomfortable, but it's going to really get you where you want to go faster. And that's what we want from all our practice, not just from detail practice. Now, if you're in the finish stage, to work on detail really means to do a little bit more experimentation. You can think about different expressive plans for the piece. What if you made this part faster or slower or louder or softer? What kind of story can you put in the piece, and could you change the story? This not only makes your music more expressive and more personal, but it also builds in some performance flexibility so that when you play the piece for someone, whether it's, you know, your teddy bear or your teacher or an audience, you have the flexibility to sort of adapt and go with the flow. So that's also very helpful. So detail stage, all about those notes, the technical details, the expressive details, but remember not to stay there. Push it along in the messy middle, get it up to tempo, and then experiment. As you get more familiar with the piece, experiment with those different expressive plans. The second focus area is expression. Okay, feels like a good choice, right? When we've worked on the notes and stuff, we need to make sure that they're expressive. We granted we were working on expressive details in the details focus area, too, but because music is all about expression and communication, this really deserves its own focus area. So in the focus area of expression, it's so much more than dynamics. It's also about the phrasing. It's also about the entire musical idea about your tone, about articulation, whether it's legato, staccato, all that stuff. So when we're practicing for expression, we're actually practicing all the tools that we have at our disposal, all the dynamics and all the different aspects of our tone that we can use to help bring the music to life. I'll give you a few ideas. If you're still at that beginning stage with a piece, well, then use your slow practice while you're learning the notes to just give your dynamic range a little extra practice so that you can do some repetitions of those notes at a soft dynamic, some medium and some loud. See if you can keep your hand relaxed all the way through them. See if you can keep your tone nice and round and rich. No matter what dynamic level you're playing at, this is a great time to practice your dynamics right there in your slow practice. Now, if you're more in the messy middle stage with a piece, I want you to start listening, listening to what you're doing. Start taking your mind off of the actual doing and start thinking about how it really sounds. Think about your tone. Listen to your tone, listen to your phrasing, listen to the legato that you're making. And are you really doing what the music asks you to do? Notice how this is helping you move toward performance. Yeah, you still are practicing, but the idea is that you're moving toward playing. Whether you're playing for yourself or somebody else doesn't matter. You're moving toward the music. So this would be all about listening. Now, if you're in that finish stage and you're just sort of polishing things, this is a great time to do what I call compare and experiment. So find a few recordings of the piece, if you can find a few, and listen to each one. And make notes in your practice journal perhaps of what was different about those performances. What did you like? What did you not like? Was this slower or faster? Did they take time here? Did they slow down there? Could you hear the left hand better here? Anything that you notice, be a very observant listener, then go back and taking some of those elements that you liked from those other performances, experiment with them in your own. Can you do that? How does that feel? And then maybe record yourself, see if you like the way it sounds. But that compare and experiment is a great way to not only enlarge your expressive palette and to consider choices that maybe you hadn't considered before, but it builds in familiarity with the music as you're learning it. And this again is a great source of confidence and security when you go to play the piece for someone else. The third focus area is continuity. We want the music to sound continuous from beginning to end. We want it to flow. Flow is such an important thing in music, isn't it? We want that continuous sound. And very basically, when we talk about continuity, we talk about playing past your mistakes. But there are other elements to continuity too. Keeping the rhythm steady, keeping the tempo steady, pacing the piece from beginning to end. So there are a lot of elements to continuity, but basically it's all about flow. So when you're starting to work on a piece, you've got those small sections and you're working on all those detail things. Well, one of the things that can be very helpful, whether you're working on one section or working on the entire piece, is to work backwards. This is a terrific way to start making the continuity happen. You know what happens? You've got a four bar section, you're working on it, and you know the first measure really well. And then the further you get into the section, the more confusing it gets. And you're working harder to keep up with it. Well, in that four measure section, start with the last measure, work on that measure, then work across the bar line and go back to the beat before the fourth measure and play from the end of the third measure through the fourth measure. Do that a few times, then go back to the beginning of the third measure, play the third measure and the fourth measure, do that a few times, then back across the bar line to the last beat of the second measure, and play from that last beat of the second measure all the way through the third and the fourth bars. You can see how this is going to help you build your confidence and your familiarity with the end of the section so you won't feel like you're hanging on by your fingernail when you get to the end of it. And that's part of developing continuity, developing the flow. If you're in that messy middle stage further along with the piece, work on the transitions not just from measure to measure, the way we were doing, a way I was talking about a moment ago, but in between those sections, you need to take those small sections and start combining them. So where your small section one, your first four bars, maybe connect to your second four bars, let's work on the transition between those two sections and play the last bar of section one and the first bar of section two, and make sure that that connection is strong. Then working out, go from the measure before that. So like the third measure of the piece to the sixth measure of the piece. So you're playing the last two measures of the first section, the first two of the second section, get that transition. Smooth transitions can be so awkward. And if you're not practicing them and making sure that you know how they go, it's going to be very hard to make your performance smooth. And of course, the ultimate goal of this is to have those sections combine into bigger sections and then eventually the whole piece at the finish stage. One of the things I like to do to help with continuity is to fix the flinch. You know what the flinch is? There are those couple of measures in the middle of the piece somewhere where you know these are scary and your fingers might fall off or you might play wrong notes. And so your whole body tenses for it. You flinch. It's like, oh, it would be like getting in a cold shower, right? You know it's gonna be cold. And so every, every muscle in your body is tense before you get in. Well, this is the same thing. You're playing along and you know that hard measure is coming up. And so your whole body tenses. We don't want that. That tension does not help. And it's also very mentally distracting because that's what you're thinking about. You're thinking about the hard measure that's coming up next. So you. Here's one way to fix the flinch. Play from well before the flinch to well after that flinch point. And as you get close to the flinch, slow everything way down. Don't stop playing. Don't put a break in it. Just start slowing way down, as if somebody had turned the speed knob down on your playing. And play through that flinch section at half tempo if you have to, but at some tempo where you know you can play it and you have time to get everything right. And as you come out of that flinch section, turn that speed dial back up and go back to regular tempo. Obviously, you can't do this with the metronome. It's not going to work. And that's okay, because you're going to be working on developing the control that we talk about in the next focus area. But this is going to help the flow. So you're going to be playing along. La dee da dee da and here comes the flinch part. So la dee da dee da dee da di da.

And it's just a modulation of the tempo that allows you to relax as you get to those harder measures. You'll be able to pull that tempo up as you go. But it's amazing what happens when you can practice without that flinch. When you learn to calmly get through that section, it's going to be so much better. The fourth focus area is control. Don't get the wrong idea about control. I don't want you to get all tense and tight. It's not about holding the reins of the piece. It's just knowing that you're in charge, knowing that you are the boss of you when you play. It's about having physical stamina, having the physical capability to play the entire piece. It's about having the mental stamina to the focus to be able to do this. And there are ways you can practice this. I've seen lots of harpists get really flustered when all of a sudden they realize that the demands of playing the piece are way different from what they've been doing in their practice. And believe it or not, the place I see this most often is in a lesson. They've practiced their piece and they've done all the little section work. They've done all that small detail work, but they haven't put it all Together, they haven't actually developed the control to play the whole piece. So they come into a lesson and they start to play it and they don't understand why it doesn't work. Control practice is the reason. This is not, as I said, about tension. It's about stamina and focus. At the beginning stages of your practice with a piece, it can be really useful to practice dynamic control, to say, okay, if I need to make a crescendo here, I want that crescendo to happen note by note. So you figure you're doing slow practice anyway, Particularly if you're doing hands together practice, it might be quite slow. So think about that crescendo and think about making every note louder than the note before. Can you really do that and keep it in a manageable playing dynamic for yourself? Pay attention at that detail early learning stage where you can just think about exactly what that crescendo is like, exactly where it's going to go. That can be really helpful. Or you could practice dynamic control by practicing that section at three different dynamics. I'm going to play it at pianissimo, I'm going to play it at mezzo forte. I'm going to play it at forte and keep that dynamic consistent all the way through. This is not just dynamic work, it's technical work because you're teaching your fingers what they need to do to play that particular dynamic. It is terrific for focus and for stamina. Now, in the messy middle, you can practice tempo control. Take a large section of the piece and then play it through without the metronome. One of those rare times I tell you not to use the metronome without the metronome at a comfy tempo for yourself, then play it again all the way through without stopping, at a faster tempo. You decide on the tempo before you start and then keep that tempo consistent. This is you monitoring the tempo, being in charge of the tempo, and then pick another tempo. Could be even faster, could be slower than you're used to playing it. But keep that tempo steady without the metronome. That's a very important skill to learn. Also, if you have ever felt a piece running away from you when you're playing it in a performance, if you had this kind of tempo control, you could bring it back. Wouldn't that be great? So that's a messy middle technique. A finish stage technique might be just to play the entire piece through three times right in a row without stopping in between. Playing it once is great for sure, but if you can play it three times in a row without stopping. You know that you have the stamina, the physical stamina and the focus stamina, to actually play it when you might be compromised by nerves. And you might. Might be a little bit stressed if you're playing for someone, even just playing for your teacher. So playing it through three times in a row will help you develop the stamina that you need both physically and mentally to play that piece. So that's control. Which brings us to our final focus area, connection. Connection doesn't necessarily have anything to do with actual practice at all. It's about finding connections in the music, making connections between you and the music, and helping convey those connections to a listener. But if I had to explain connection in the simplest possible terms and in ones that sound a little bit more practical, I would define it this way. Whatever it is that you listen for and practice for, a listener will hear also.

Now, this plays on the bad as well as the good. If you're paying attention to your mistakes, guess what those mistakes are going to be? What a listener notices as well. This is part of the reason we talk about playing past your mistakes all the time as if they didn't happen. Because if you pay attention to them, then they catch a listener's ear and attention as well. But it goes deeper. If you feel a strong connection to the music personally, you're going to play it differently. And a listener, therefore, is going to hear it differently. They're going to hear the emotion, the passion, the love that you put into the music, and they're going to feel that too. Now, you might be putting in all kinds of drama and think you're putting in all sorts of suspense and excitement, and then they hear something totally different. That's okay. It's the energy of the emotion that has conveyed itself, and that's what we're looking for. And connection starts with knowledge and understanding as well as your own love of the music. So, for instance, when you're first starting a piece, one of the ways to make connection is to look at every single marking on the page and be sure you understand it. If you don't understand it, look it up. For instance, if you see a lovely Italian word like tenaramente and you don't know what it means, then you might not know how to play that particular passage and that the composer has intended it to be played tenderly. It's worth paying attention from the very first to all those terms on the page. Be sure you understand everything. Now, after you've been playing a piece for a while and you're in that messy middle, look for connections in the music, repeating patterns or sections or melodies that are the same in different places or the same, but a little bit different. Make those connections as well, so that you're paying attention to, oh, here's that melody, and here it comes back again. The more of those connections that you make, the more you will play that music with understanding. And that comes through to a listener as well. It gives shape and purpose to your entire presentation of the piece. So those kinds of connections are important to look for. And if you're in that finished stage of a piece, consider writing program notes. Okay, you might not be playing this piece in a program. You might not be playing it in a place that requires program notes. But maybe you are playing it in a place where people would enjoy knowing just a little bit more about the piece. Even when I play something in my own home, for someone who's there, it's nice to give them a way to connect to the piece. And I always do this with audiences whenever I can to tell them what they might listen for in the piece, to tell them a little bit about the title or about the composer or about the kind of piece it is. But I like these kinds of program notes and the kind I'm talking about in terms of our practice today, not to be totally fact based. They don't have to read like an encyclopedia. They need to be personal. For instance, you might say, one of the things I love about this piece is the way the arpeggios sound just like rippling water. And I think that's one of the things the harp does so well. This brings a listener immediately into the piece, gives them something to listen for, and they're immediately connected to the piece. And by the very act of your compiling, those program notes doesn't have to be more than a sentence or two really, for your own reference, but just in doing that, you're creating a stronger bond between you and the piece as well. It's a funny sort of thing that. That extra effort in saying something or writing something about a facet of the piece, something about it that connects with you, helps you play the piece better. But it's true. Try it. Just be sure that whenever you're writing those program notes, remember to include something that you love or something that really interests you about the particular piece. That's the power of connection. Now, I've walked you through all five of these focus areas, and I want to be sure to remind you to let you know you don't need to practice all of These every day, rotate through them. The most important thing is that you are working in all of the focus areas in some sort of rotation because this is how you keep that goal of playing in mind. Remember, if all you want to do is practice, then none of this makes any difference to you. But if you want to play, then you have to get out of the just working on the notes mindset and really work on creating that finished product. And you can do that from the very beginning of a piece. Now, as I mentioned before, all of these focus areas are things I talk about in my little ebook, Kaleidoscope Practice. I also have a PDF workbook for harpists called the Harpists Playbook. Both of these things, the Kaleidoscope ebook and the PDF workbook are available in our Harp Mastery Shop. And if you want to learn more techniques that you could use for these, if you want to know how to use them in the different learning stages, if you want some ideas for practice rotations to include them in your practice, then the Playbook is really a great resource. Resource. We don't have a print version. It's only available at this point in PDF. But I encourage you to head over to the Harp Mastery Shop and take a look at it. But just start, start thinking about playing the music, working at the expression, working at the flow, and not trying to work on these skills in a row. Well, once I get all the notes, then I'll put in the expression and then I'll try to play past my mistakes and then I'll get it up to tempo. No, no, you want to work at them all, all the time. It will get you to the end of the piece faster. Trust me. Been there, done that. I want to remind you about our iPhone and iPad app. The Harp Mastery app can be found right on the App Store and I encourage you to download it so that you can get to all your Harp Mastery resources more quickly and easily and from any device. The Android app is coming soon, I promise. Next week here on the podcast, we're talking about something just a little bit different. We're going to be talking about you. Do you have a sense of rhythm? Do you think? Oh, horrors. Do you think you have no sense of rhythm? Could that really be true? How would you know? What would you do about it? So we're going to be talking about how to find your sense of rhythm and keep it. So that's next week on the podcast. Remember, until then, and 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.