Practice It or Personalize It PHH-023

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. Well, I live in Pennsylvania, and autumn is finally in full swing here. And one of the wonderful features of autumn in the country around where I live is the corn maze. You know, the farmers, before they cut down their corn, they cut beautiful maize patterns in, and you can go and you can walk in the corn maze, and it's a wonderful diversion on a beautiful autumn afternoon. But the corn maze is one of those things that I kind of have nightmares about sometimes. You know, you're in the corn and you're by yourself, and the corn, it's tall and you can't see your way out, and it starts to feel claustrophobic. And then there's finally that moment of intense relief when you get to the end and you're out in the open and. And you feel like you can breathe again.

So why am I mentioning the corn maze? Because that same kind of being stuck and not being able to find your way out feeling is what happens to us often when we get stuck in the middle of a piece. And there's that decision that. That nagging fear that comes when you think that the piece might be just too hard for you, it might be beyond you, and you might never get to the end. You might never see your way clear to finish it. And the problem is, there's really no way to know. You know, in the corn maze, there are maps and there are signs and you can find your way out if you get stuck. But that doesn't happen for us in music. We don't really know. So on today's show, I'm going to talk about what happens when you get to that stuck point and you're faced with that decision. Do I keep on working on this piece or do I put it in the drawer with the other pieces that I haven't finished that are waiting for that someday moment when I come back to them? Do I go on or do I give up? Well, I do believe that there's a third option and we'll talk about that. But I really wanted to give you six questions that you can ask yourself to help you make the decision.

Part of the problem around this whole issue of not knowing whether to go on or to give up is that there isn't a clear set of guidelines where you can say, okay, well, I've got to that point and I can tell if I keep on going it will take me this long and I will get to the end, or, well, I got to this point and now I can see that it's just too hard for me and I have to put it away for a while. There's no real clear set of guidelines. And while every piece is different, every situation is different. The six questions that I'm going to give you will be a really big help as you consider whether or not you're going to keep on and persist and practice in spite of the fact that it doesn't seem to be getting you anywhere. And hopefully we'll be able to fix that along the way too. So we're going to talk about those six questions. We're going to talk about that wonderful third option so that you don't get stuck in the maze. But before we do that, I wanted to remind you that there is still time to jump aboard our Waltz of the Flowers challenge. We kick off that Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza Challenge a week from today when this show goes live. It will start November 1st and you still have time to get in. And I wanted to be sure to take this opportunity to address a few questions that people have been asking about it. They're good questions, and I wanted to be sure to get the answers in front of you. For first of all, you can play this cadenza in the versions that I have created on just about any type of harp.

You can. There's a version of the cadenza suitable for a 26 string lever harp. Now, that's as small as I could make it. But if you have a 26 string lever harp, you can play one of my versions of the cadenza. It's written for you. There's a version for a larger lever harp or pedal harp, and all the way up to an advanced version that is just for pedal harp. But there are four different versions of the cadenza and whether you have a lever harp or a pedal harp, 26 string or larger, you will be able to do this cadenza. And let me say that the levels are pretty carefully graded, so I want you to succeed. I want you to be able to play this. So I've created these levels of the cadenza so that you will be able to play them. And then I'm going to give you the tools that you need, the techniques, the strategies, a way to learn this that will pretty much ensure your success. Plus, these strategies are things that are going to be ones that you will use in lots of different pieces. You'll be able to apply these to, to a lot of different things you play, and it will help you learn a little bit more about how to learn a piece. So there's that as well. Plus, of course, with this challenge, it's not like a lot of other challenges where you, you know, you have to log in every day, and then when the challenge is over, you're left with wondering what it is you've really done. This challenge is set up like a course, and yes, I think it's fun, and it will be effective. If you go through all five days of each week in a row, and if you stick with our time frame and stick with us, that'll be great. But this challenge isn't going away. It's going to be a course that you have access to forever, or at least as long as heart mastery is around. And I don't think we're going anywhere anytime soon. So you'll have access to that course forever. And you can go back and watch the videos and have the materials and the videos of the live calls. All of that will be available to you for as long as you need it. It will just be there. So that is, you know, I think that in itself is a great reason to take the challenge. Now, I'll let you in on a little secret. We will be making the challenge available after the challenge is over. I mean, you don't have to purchase it now. It's $25 now, but I can tell you that the price will be going up after the challenge is over. So if this is something that you think, oh, I. I know I want this, but I can't quite fit it into my schedule right now. This still might be a great time to hop in on the challenge and secure it for yourself at this bargain price. So I hope that that answers a question maybe that you had about the challenge, because if you've been on the fence, now is the time to Jump in because we start a week from today. It's going to be lots of fun and I certainly hope you join us. The link to join the challenge is in the show notes or you can find it on the harpmastery.com site. Just go to events in the top navigation bar and you will find the Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza challenge. I hope to see you on the challenge, but right now let's talk about what to do so that you're not stuck in the maze before I can get you started with the six questions that you need to be asking and answering for yourself. Let me talk about some questions that you just shouldn't be asking because nobody is going to be able to answer them. They're the ones we want the answers to, unfortunately, but let's get them out of the way first. That first all important question, the one we all want the answer to and the one that we just can't ever answer is when will it be done? When will the piece be done? I don't know. We can make a good estimate and we can estimate that based on similar pieces you've played and how long they've taken. But each piece is different. You're at a different growth stage with every piece, so there's really no answer to that. So if that was the question you wanted the answer to, I can't help you and neither can anybody else. But we'll come really close, I promise. We also can't answer questions like how long will it take me? Or how long should it take me? There's no answer to that either. Every person is different, every learning stage is different, every piece is different. And every, every harpist comes to a piece with different strengths and so they learn differently. There's no one size fits all for this. But you already knew that, right?

And there's no real good way to answer the question, is this piece too hard for me? That's what we're going to try to get close to with our six questions. But even then it's really a toss up. So the people that come close to knowing the answers to those questions are your teachers, right? The teachers who have a little bit more perspective and a lot more experience can look at what you're doing and look at the piece that you're working on. And they probably are using an unconscious version of these same questions to help assess where you are and what help you need to get to get the piece finished.

But even then, this is not.

A step by step, absolute kind of process. It's an art and that means that it's a little bit of a guessing game, but we're going to try to take as much uncertainty out of that game as we can. So let's talk about the options that you have, the decisions that our questions are going to help you make. First of all, let's talk about the case for continuing to practice a piece. Well, there are some definite benefits, right? I mean, if you continue to practice it, you're going to get it done, right? It's, you know, that's the only way you can finish a piece is to keep working on it. And you, you will indeed learn things from it. And you will develop your skills, you'll grow your musicianship. All that stuff will happen as you continue to practice a piece. But on the downside, it may take more time and more patience than you have to spend on it right now. If the frustration level is mounting, it might not be good to just put your head down and proceed and keep plugging away at it. That is a cost in terms of harp happiness, actually. Right. And it may cost you in terms of your future harp happiness. So I really think that when the frustration level gets to be too much, it's time not to continue practicing it. That would be the downside. Now, let's look at the case for putting the piece away. Well, okay, on the upside, when you put the piece away, you get to forget about it and you get to bring fresh energy to something new. Wow. Sometimes that is just the biggest relief. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's fine. It's good to be able to enjoy the next piece of music that you're going to learn. That's a good thing. And of course.

It, it, you can always decide that, well, you'll bring that piece back later and you'll finish it and it will be more. It will be easier for you. It will be more approachable because you will have grown in the meantime. This is also true, and there's nothing wrong in making that decision. The downside here, and this is something that, once again, you have to assess for yourself and the way you feel. Sometimes putting a piece away rather than finishing it can feel like a lack of success, can feel like a failure, and that can eat away at you. If you're the sort of person who doesn't like to lose, or if you're worried that this might become a pattern for you and you'll never finish anything, then maybe putting it away isn't the right option for you. But I told you there was a third option, right? Rather than just practicing it, putting your head down and persevering and, you know, plowing through it anyway, or putting it away and hopefully getting it out again and finishing it later. There is that third option. You could personalize the piece. By personalizing, I'm talking about making adaptations that make the piece playable for you. And these kinds of adaptations can be small. Like, well, what if I just left out that one note in the left hand chord that has taken me so long to place because it's hard to reach for me? What if I took out that one note? Then it wouldn't be a problem anymore. Wow, that's an easy fix. If that's all that's standing between you and playing the piece smoothly, go for it. Why wouldn't you make a change like that? Or perhaps it's changing a fingering, or perhaps it's leaving out a section of the piece. Wow, there's a big personalization factor for you. But if almost all of the piece works for you except for this one part, maybe you don't need to put the whole piece away. Maybe you need to put that part of the piece away, realizing you can bring it back and put it in later.

So this is editing the piece? Yes, it's personalizing the piece, making it playable for you. So what are the pros and cons here? Well, clearly it's going to reduce the amount of practice time you have to put in and the amount of effort you put in. You want to make some smart decisions, ones that suit you, about how you personalize the piece, but frankly, it's going to create a win. And that's a big benefit for you to be able to finish the piece, even if it's not the way anybody else plays the piece. For you to be able to finish the piece is a win, and that feels good. That's a stepping stone to a bigger win.

I think that's really, really powerful.

On the other hand, the downside of this is that it may feel like cheating to you. It may feel like if you don't play every single note on the page, you're not really playing the piece.

Well, let me tell you that not only is it not cheating, but it is a time honored tradition. Now, you know, I'm. I'm in Walt of the Flowers mode here. We've been thinking about that a lot as we prepare for our challenge. And that's a prime example. Nobody, well, you know, almost nobody plays the cadenza the way it's written. I had to do it for a couple of years. When I was playing with the Pennsylvania Ballet. Well, actually, for one year, when the conductor insisted that. That I do it. And then after that first year, I said, really? Can we play it my way instead of the way it's written? And he agreed to that. And so for the rest of my ballet tenure, I played the edited version. You see, the thing is that the way Tchaikovsky wrote.

Not only is more difficult, but it doesn't sound as nice. So the harpist at the Bolshoi Ballet at the time went to Tchaikovsky and said, you know, Peter. He probably didn't say that. He probably said, you know, maestro, whatever. This just really doesn't work. How about if I played the cadenza this way? And he played it in a way that much closer to the way that we play it today. And the story is that Tchaikovsky thought that this was a great idea and that they agreed on this edited version of the cadenza. It's just that that edited version was never print. So every printed version of the cadenza that comes out today in orchestral music is Tchaikovsky's original version, but the personalized version is the one that he preferred himself. So it's not cheating. It's making an adjustment for a very good reason. Even if that very good reason is just your personal success, I think that's worth it. So those are the three options that we've got. You can persist in practicing it, you can put it away for later, or you could personalize it. Let me say again, if I haven't said it already and you're going to be hearing it from me again, all three choices are valid.

You get to decide which one is right for you at any particular moment. What we're going to do now is dive into those six questions that hopefully will provide you with a framework to allow you to make the decision that feels right to you.

One thing to note before we get to those six questions. These are the questions that teachers often use as a tool for evaluating this very same question for their students. So lots of times your teacher will be making suggestions based on what he or she sees as the path that you could go. So your teacher likely has a decision framework, something like this, even if it's not so formal. But if you're working on your own, or if you want a chance to just make that decision on your own and make the call, these are the questions that I think you should be using. These are the ones I use with my students, even when I forget to tell them that's what I'm doing. So let's start Here we're making a choice between practicing it, personalizing it, or putting it away.

The big question for putting it away is always, am I going to be happiest if I put it away? So I haven't even included that on my list of six questions because I believe that for most of us harpists, putting a piece away is sort of a last resort. So if that's the only way that you think you'll feel better about this piece is to put it away, then that's the only question you need to ask. But assuming that you want to decide if you should keep practicing it or if you should sort of take the plunge and personalize it, here are the questions to ask. So the first question would be, is there a technical skill that you should develop or something technical that you need to just alter in the music? And this would be, you know, maybe your arpeggios need to be faster, maybe you need to work more at your placing. Maybe it's a four note chord skill that you need to develop, or maybe it's just a fingering that you need to change. All of these kinds of things come in the category of a technical skill or change that you need to make.

And if that's the answer, then you know, this is a good reason to just make that change, develop that skill and keep practicing. Of course, if it's going to be a skill that's going to be a long time coming, then this is going to give you a guide to, well, maybe, maybe this is the time to put it away until I'm better at that. If your four note arpeggios are at a snail's pace, maybe the little fountain isn't the piece for you right now. On the other hand, maybe you'd love to have that piece.

As a vehicle for developing that technical skill. So that's a real way to evaluate whether or not you should persist or put it away. Remember, it's your choice. Neither answer is wrong here. Okay. And the second question that goes along with that is, is there a practice technique or strategy to try? Maybe the way you're practicing it isn't giving you results. And if we looked at it a slightly different way, used a different practice technique, it might come together. It might just be that that one thing that's resistant to the way you've been looking at it, and a slightly different practice strategy might fix it for you. Like practicing in rhythms might even out a scale, or.

Doing something with a tempo pyramid, or doing something slowly or doing something fast, or changing the dynamic all different kinds of practice strategies may be the May flip that switch for you. Right? So those are the two questions that I would start with that would help you decide whether or not it's really worth continuing to practice it. That would be if it's a technical skill or a fingering, something like that, that needs developing or changing. And if it's a practice strategy, that would make the difference here.

If you're not quite sure about that, here are the next four questions that will help you personalize the piece if that's what you're looking to do. So look at it this way. Are there notes you could eliminate? Just like the example I gave you a moment ago? If that fourth note in that left hand chord, if that's just too big for you, and that's what's keeping you from playing that chord in the right rhythm at the right time, whatever, then eliminate one of the notes of the chord. Could you do that? There are other circumstances as well where sometimes there are just more notes in a chord or more notes in an arpeggio. You know, extra octaves are there, you know, just those little notes that you could eliminate that wouldn't ruin the piece in your own estimation, but would make it so much easier to play. It's worth looking at. Next question. Is there a section you could drop? This is the one I talked about before as well. You know, maybe the beginning of the piece and the end of the piece are fine, but there's that one part in the middle that's really a problem. Well, here's your question to ask yourself. If you left out that middle section, granted it's. You wouldn't be playing the whole piece, but would you be playing enough of the piece to satisfy you? Would that feel like a win for now? Would that enable you to play the essence of the piece in a way that satisfied you, knowing that when your skills were up to that middle section, or when you weren't quite so frustrated with it, you could come back and work on it and add it back in, right? You're not making a forever choice. You're making a right now choice. Something that's going to enable you to play the piece right now and you can come back and fill it in later. So is there a section you could drop? Be open to this?

Could you change the tempo? We get so tied to some of those metronome markings, don't we? But most of the time, those metronome markings are a suggestion. And if you listen to various recordings by various harpists of a single piece, you'll find most likely widely varying tempos. Some people playing it faster, some people playing it slower. Listen to a bunch of pianists playing the same Debussy piece. Some of them will take it at a. At a pretty brisk clip. Others will have it as a much more reflective kind of tempo.

So you may have a tempo in mind for the piece, but what if you changed it? What if you changed the picture of the piece so that perhaps it wasn't a rapidly flowing brook, but was a somewhat lazier stream, for instance? Right. The tempo is something that can be in your artistic and technical control. If you make it an artistic choice that suits your technique for right now, then you get to play the piece right now. You can always change the tempo. Later, when the piece has been in your repertoire for a while, you might find that getting to the tempo you had initially chosen is not a big deal, and maybe being able to play it now is a big deal. So that's the choice you want to make.

Now, the sixth question is sort of the biggie. I mean, let's look. We've talked about technique and fingering. We've talked about practice techniques. We've talked about eliminating notes or sections of the piece, changing the tempo. But here's the big one, and it's going to be a key factor in your decision. Could you change your expectations?

A lot of the questions that we just asked sort of play into this. But what if you changed your expectations, your expectations of yourself for right now, your expectations of the piece? Right. What if we.

Change the mood of the piece as we changed the tempo? What if we make some other alterations?

If we expect that we will play every note in the piece and play it at exactly the tempo the composer asked and do all that stuff, well, those are the expectations we set for ourselves. And if that's what we want, then the personalization option is off the table. Right. And it's either practice it or put it away.

But if you can change your expectations.

I don't have to play every note in the piece to really feel like I've played the piece, then personalization becomes a real option for you.

So does practicing the piece. If your expectation has been, well, I'm going to have it done next week, and you realize that it's going to take way more practice time than that. If you can change your expectations to, well, I might have it done in six months. Now, that's a radical change, I realize. But if you can change your expectations, then you're more willing to accept the work that comes with A longer time frame like that.

Your expectations are going to be the key to how you feel about the work you're doing. And I'm not trying to get all, you know, all touchy feely with this kind of stuff. Your feelings are important. We put a lot of ourselves on the line in our practice and in our playing. And if we don't feel like we can be successful, it's going to be very hard to sit down and practice every day. It's going to be very hard to face the same piece of music feeling like it will never get better. So our feelings are extremely important to our success, to our happiness and building the success, building the platform for our success. Creating wins is a big part of that. So that's where the personalization option becomes so interesting. If you can make some tweaks that allow you to create a win, there is no reason why you shouldn't do that. So this brings us to the decision itself. How do you actually go about making that decision? I mean, you know what your options are, right? You've got those three options, keep practicing it, personalize it, or just postpone it, put it away. And you've got the six questions to help you decide which one of those is going to be best for you. But let me give you sort of a decision tree for making that right, that sort of yes or no answer thing that you can go through. The thing is that once you know your options, remember that none of these options is a forever choice. And every decision that you make, every answer that you make to these questions isn't going to be a once and done something that's irretrievable, something you can never go back on. In fact, every single one has to be about what you want right now, not in the future, not anything else but what you want right now. So here's the first question I would start with.

How important is it to you to continue on this piece, whatever that piece is right now? How important is it to you to continue with that particular piece right now?

That's right. It has to be important to you. Doesn't matter to anybody else. You're the one doing the practice, right? Okay, so if it's very important to you, then here's your next question. If it's very important, then you need to ask yourself what needs to change? This is where you look at those questions about the technique or the fingering or the practice strategies. What needs needs to change to make this work?

And once you've identified what needs to change to make it work, you get to ask yourself one more question. Are you willing to make those changes right now?

For instance, maybe what needs to change is that you need to work on your four note chords to make this piece playable. Well, here's your question. Are you willing to work on those four note chords in the way that you're going to need to to play the piece? Are you willing to work on those right now? If your answer is yes, then go for it. You know what you need to do? If your answer is no, then we're either going to have to personalize it and get rid of those four note chords, or we're going to put the piece away. But there's your decision right there. Now, on the other hand, if it's not very important to you to continue on this piece right now, maybe you're saying, you know, I've had enough of this, I just don't want to look at it anymore, then here's your next question. If it's not very important, you need to consider this. Would you like right now to have sort of a quick finish to that piece, Some sort of massive personalization that would allow you to play it and just get on with something else?

Or would you rather just put it away and postpone, you know, finishing the piece or never finish it? That's another option too, right? But if you're willing to make the, the personalization that it's going to require to bring the piece to a quick finish, if that's what would make you happier than putting it away, then you can do that. Otherwise, you get to just put it away.

The decisions are pretty simple. I know that they're loaded with all different kinds of feelings, all kinds of shoulds and woods and well, you know, I should be playing all the notes or I should be finishing this or you know, all that sort of thing. But I want to remind you that you, you are the harp player in your world. You play the harp. You are the one who's doing the practicing, you're the one who's doing the playing. You get to make the rules. You get to say what winning looks like. And if winning to you right now means I just can't look at this piece another day, I'm going to put it away. Great. Go for it. If winning looks like I'm just going to keep plowing ahead because I love this piece and I'm willing to do the work that it's going to take to get it done, then do that. But you get to say what winning looks like for you. This is what so many harpists don't understand or forget. They think that their harp playing needs to be measured by somebody else's standard. And unless you're going out and doing competitions.

It doesn't. Yeah, your teacher may have standards, but most teachers have standards that are specific to their individual students. And almost every teacher is going to be receptive to what their student wants their harp playing to look like. That's the point. You're playing the harp because you want to. And your harp playing needs to look like what you want it to look like or sound like what you want it to sound like.

So you think about your decisions, and the next time you're confronted with a piece that is too hard or that you're getting stuck on and you can't see that light at the end of the tunnel, then you've got decisions that you can make. You have questions to ask yourself. You have choices. You have a little decision framework. Once you have those choices in mind.

And you have my permission to make whichever choice you want, that choice is yours. And doesn't it feel great?

Yeah, just sit with that for a second.

It does, doesn't it? You get to make this harp playing adventure yours. You get to make the music yours, and you get to make the choices, and that's a win. And that's harp happiness. Oh, I'm excited just thinking about it now. Actually, I'm going to get back to something. Something a little bit more. Sounds a little bit more mundane. But it's the same thing as what I have done with the Waltz of a Flowers Cadenza for the challenge. Right. There's no way that a beginning harpist is going to be able to play all of Tchaikovsky's notes. So I have done the personalization for you. Does it still sound like the cadenza? I think so. I mean, I've played all these versions and think, wow, okay, yeah, I feel good about this. I would feel good playing it. And so these cadenzas are coming to you personalized to a certain extent. I mean, you know, can you personalize them beyond that? Yes, you can. I give you permission to do that, too. But I've done a lot of the work for you in this challenge, and that's why it's going to work.

It's the miracle of personalization. It's a good thing. So I hope you certainly join me for the challenge, because that would be fun. But what's more important to me is that you learn how to create those successes for yourself in your playing. Practice it, personalize it, put it away. Any one of those can be a success, whichever one you want to be a success at any given time.

Wow. So that was a lot for today. I want to invite you to join me next week when we have a totally different topic. We're going to be talking about glissandos, or more properly, glissandi. We'll do the Italian plural. And they can be glorious, they can be so spectacular, but they're one of those things we often forget to sort of teach people how to do. So I'm going to be giving you a quick.

What I call an essential guide to practicing glissandos. But we'll talk about what makes glissandos wonderful, how to do it, how to fit them in, all that good stuff. We're going to be talking about glissandos. Doesn't matter whether it's a lever harp glissando, pedal harp glissando. The techniques are essential, the same. So that's all next week's show. So we're starting off November with a wonderful, shiny, splashy glissando, sparkly, kind of a. Kind of a podcast. And I hope you join me for that. In the meantime, I hope you join me on the walls of the Flowers challenge. By the way, I've also put a link in the show notes here to a blog post that might help you with some of those technical issues that you might be having in your pieces, just to help you in case you want to keep practicing and not putting it away. So you can check that out too. But I look forward to seeing you on the challenge and right here next week for next week's show. Thanks so much for being here and I'll talk to you then. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.