Quick Fix: Buzz No More - PHH 108

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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. Welcome to the show. Legendary harpist and composer Carlos Salzetto had this to say about buzzing it is important that there be no buzzing when replacing. Buzzing comes from lack of precision in replacing and will be eliminated if the player replaces very accurately.

Now that quote comes from the Method for the Harp book that he wrote with Lucille Lawrence, his former student and at the time that method book was written, his wife. What is interesting about that quote is that even though Salzedo had so much to say about so many aspects of harp playing, that's all he says about buzzing. Nothing more.

On the one hand, it's enough. Every harpist should be replacing accurately in order to avoid buzzing, but we knew that much. What Salzido leaves us wondering is exactly how we should practice accurate replacing so we don't buzz. Unfortunately, Salzato either thought it was too obvious to elaborate on, or he wanted to keep keep his secrets for his students.

Now, I imagine he thought it was obvious, but since it isn't obvious to most of us lesser harpists, we need a little more instruction. Hence today's podcast episode. This is a quick fix episode, meaning we're going to get super practical and talk about the practice techniques to use to help you be more aware of your buzzing as well as learn to prevent it. You're going to want to take notes, so if you're driving or on the exercise bike, go ahead and listen now, but be sure to come back to this episode later when you can write down some of those key strategies.

Now, I'm sure you all know that I love learning about the harp, about the harp players and composers and techniques and music and all kinds of things. And maybe you knew that. Last week I was in Los Angeles for the American Harp Society Summer Instant Institute. And I just had to tell you how much fun that event was. Now I'm on the board. I'm a volunteer member of the board of the American Harp Society. So my first couple days at the institute were.

Actually in board meetings. So. So those were a different kind of fun. Although I have wonderful friends on the board and it's wonderful to get to work with them to help promote this, the work that the society does. But I just wanted to let you know that as much as I encourage all of you to go out and seek harp events and seek harp friends and be around other harpists, I'm doing the same thing because it is energizing. I mean, it's fun. You know, it's always fun to go someplace and to hear harp concerts and workshops and all sorts of things. I had an extra good time because I got to meet up with some of our. My Heart Mastery members there. And so the institute was really, you know, like a coming together of a big family, almost like a family reunion for me. And I just loved that. I loved hearing the concerts. I loved meeting all the other people there, catching up with harpists I hadn't seen in a long time. And of course, with the interruption of COVID I missed seeing a lot of these people. So this was really, really fun for me. But I just wanted to give you that little reminder that reaching out, being part of the harp community in whatever way you can, whatever way, feels right to you, is so important. It's such a wonderful way to nourish yourself, to reinvigorate your own playing and to just, you know, just the. Just the vibrations in the air, if you will, from being with all those harpists just makes you feel good. So just a quick little plug there for staying involved with the harp community. Whether you choose to join the American Harp Society or just join your local harp circle, all of that's terrific. But do get involved. It makes such a difference to be around other harpists. Speaking of being around other harpists, we have two spots left at our retreat, which is happening in mid August, August 13th. And if you would like to join us, I would love the chance to work with you. This is a small group. This is nothing like, you know, a big institute or conference or something. We're a very small group. Just maybe 10 harpists, and that's it. And so you'll get all. All that opportunity to learn, to spend time with, to be around those other harpists. Of course I get to work with you and that's just fun for me and I hope it'll be fun for you too. But there's so much to learn and so much to share and the retreat is, is a wonderful way to do that. So we have two retreat spots left. You'll find the link to the registration page in the Show Notes or you can go to harpmastery.com and look under the Events tab. And it's we would love to have you with us. So do check that out. It's a great way to spend a few days in August in the mountains of Tennessee. We have a beautiful house. It's a big log cabin overlooking a beautiful valley in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. And it's just going to be a great time. So if you can take a few days to focus on your harp, we would love to have you there. I would love to have you there. So now, enough about all this harp camaraderie. It's time to get back to the buzzing thing. Perhaps I should be really clear here because there are lots of kinds of buzzes that we could be talking about. We could be talking about those phantom buzzes that your harp makes when something is vibrating and you can't find what's making that buzz. That's not what we're talking about today. What we're talk buzzes your fingers make on the strings when you want them to be making beautiful sounds. I mean, that's why we don't want to buzz in the first place, right? We, we hear that beautiful sound of the harp. We have this, you know, lovely instrument and this warm, liquid kind of sound. And buzzes just interrupt that experience. I was trying to look for a way not to say ruin the sound, but there you go. So that really gets in the way and we want to eliminate those buzzes so that our music sounds seamless and beautiful. Now, what happens when we buzz is that is one of two things. We're either just making a buzz because our finger is replacing on a string that's already vibrating, or it's hitting an adjacent string that was vibrating. So there are two different kinds of sounds and they're going to require slightly different kinds of remedies. Now, please understand that when you replace your finger on a vibrating string, it's going to make a noise. You can't get away from that we're stopping a vibrating string. It's going to sound like something. But what we want is to is to minimize that sound. Now, you could prolong it and have a really long bzz. But that's not what we want. Unless the composer of your piece is calling for a very special effect. We want as small a noise as possible. But whenever you're replacing your finger on a vibrating string, it's going to make some kind of noise. So please don't think you can absolutely eliminate everything. You know, we have to be reasonable about this. So. However, the thing that we do want to avoid at almost all costs, the thing that we really want to try not to do is to have our finger, or even worse, our fingernail, hit that neighboring string, that string just below it when we're trying to replace that string was already vibrating it, and we end up with a really ugly noise. So let me show you the difference between the kinds of buzzes, and you'll see what I mean. So here's a plain old middle C.

Perfectly nice sound all by itself. But suppose we want to play that middle C several times in a row. It's going to necessitate our replacing the finger on the string like this.

Now you can hear my finger replace on the string. What you don't hear, at least you didn't in those times. I was lucky, is that you didn't hear a buzz like this.

Right now. There were a couple of things that I did in order to avoid that buzz, and we're going to talk about them in just a moment. But that's the replacing on a vibrating string kind of buzz. We want to minimize that. But you'll probably always have some kind of sound. That's just the way it is. What we want to avoid is this.

Well, let's see if I can make it even more obnoxious for you. Let me play a few notes.

So that I'm hitting. Ah, there we go.

My fingernail buzzing on that string. Ooh, quite a noise, isn't it? Not a pleasant one. But when you're playing a lot of notes, playing notes fast, that can happen. And that's that accurate replacing thing that Salzedo was talking about, right? So when you're replacing more accurately, your finger isn't missing the string, it's not coming back to it and hitting it with your fingernail or with your knuckle, that's where that really accurate replacing can come in and save the day. So those are the two types of buzzes that we have. And when it comes to that first kind of buzz, that just simple replacing kind of thing, there are some best practices you should Be aware of, first of all, when you're placing on the string any note, anytime you want your finger motion to be relaxed and to be very simple, very efficient. Don't you know, just open and close your fingers, Just open them from your hand, close them into your hand, very straight, no looping things, no trying to avoid things, just very simple motion. The more efficient your motion.

The more controlled it will be. I know that sort of sounds like a paradox, but what happens is that when your motion is simple and efficient, you're more likely to do the same thing every time. And it gives you a measure of control that you don't have if you're always sort of swooping your fingers around trying to avoid the strings. So your best plan of placing or replacing is going to be just to open and close your fingers as simply as possible. Now, going along with that, you want to keep your hand and wrist steady, not stiff, but you want to maintain the same angle with your hand all the way up and down the harp, so that your hand isn't wobbling and twisting and your wrist isn't bending in and out. You want that one angle to there. That's the job of your arm. Your arm is helping to support your hand and wrist so they can stay in one position. Once again, if your hand is steady and it feels supported and your wrist is at the same angle, you'll have a better chance of replacing your fingers accurately because the angle of your hand will always be the same. And that's how we get security. Right.

One more thing to think about here. I urge you to think about curving your fingers. I know it might seem like, well, if you go in with straight fingers, they won't hit the other strings. But curved fingers are more supple, they're more relaxed, they're more flexible, they can move more quickly. So keep your fingers curved and just place them on the strings. You won't bump, I promise. You'll figure it out. It just takes a little bit of practice.

And that's what we're talking about right now, how to practice that. And you're going to start very simply with your exercises. Just plain exercises are one of the best ways to practice your accurate replacing. Now, I'm trying very, very carefully not to say to practice your buzzing, because we don't want to buzz, right? So we're going to practice our clean and relaxed replacing. That also sounds beautiful. So when you're doing an exercise and you know, you might as well start with a very simple scale, right? If you do.

A scale pattern, that involves replacing.

Maybe a pattern like this that's just.

Oh, you could hear a little bit of replacing there.

Right? You hear a little bit of noise, but for the most part you don't hear that, the really objectionable fingernail sound. So those are the kinds of patterns that you can practice. And here's the key. When you're doing them and you're paying attention to clean replacing, what you want to do is play them quite slowly at a medium dynamic, you know, medium volume, or maybe even softer, so that you can stay very relaxed. Now, you want your, you know, your hand to be steady, your fingers to be relaxed, your motion to be simple, all of that good stuff. But you also need to listen. Don't listen for the buzzes. Listen to your sound. You'll hear if there's a buzz that interrupts the sound, you'll hear it. But something very simple, very relaxed is excellent.

And that's all you need to do. Now you can do a scale pattern like that and patterns that are sort of close together and repeating more than a straight up and down scale. Something that has a turnaround is always tricky.

You can hear that, can't you? Right?

You could hear that. That's just my finger going on.

So something with turnarounds is a great way to do that. And as you listen to your sound, you'll hear what happens and you'll start to think about when your finger goes on the string.

You will discover that the later you put your finger on the string, the better it sounds. I mean, the harp is all about resonance, right? It's all about that vibrating string. So if we interrupt the vibration, we hear that as a replacing sound. So putting your fingers on as late as possible, as close to the time that they need to be on the string for you to play.

Oops, I made a fingernail noise there. I'm also not looking at my hand. I'm looking, looking at the computer as I'm talking to you. So, but.

But this kind of fingering thing should be something that you can do without looking at your fingers. For this kind of practice, you're going to start with looking because you need to help guide your fingers. But you want to do this without looking at your fingers. Your fingers need to be able to do this on their own, however. So scale exercises like that with turnarounds and replacing will be great practice. Also work on arpeggio patterns. Now, when you have a stretch like you would for an arpeggio, maybe we'll cross under, I don't know, and replace. I Don't know.

There are plenty of arpeggio exercises to pick from. When you have stretches like that in an arpeggio thing, it makes the centering of your hand very important so that as your hand moves up or plays different patterns.

Keeping your hand centered is going to be key. When your hand is centered, then your fingers can be curved and relaxed. They're not stretched out. When they're stretched out trying to reach big intervals, that's when they're more likely to, to buzz and they're more likely to be stiff. So. And when they're stiff, you know, they're not, they're not going to play with a lot of control and they're not going to give you the sound that you want.

And there might, they might be making extra noise too, in terms of buzzes. Now, chords have the same kind of issues, right? Because stretches are a problem here too. Replacing chords is very tricky. Now.

If you're replacing the same chord the way I am here, you know, it's a four note chord. I've got four different fingers that could be buzzing and they probably will if I'm not looking.

You can hear. You can hear them even if you can hear, if they don't replace at the same time, right? You could hear one finger buzz more than another. Now those weren't those fingernail buzzes. That was just my finger on the string. But still, that's one of those things that you want to practice. Now if you practice chords in a scale.

Now, I did okay there, but there are lots of places for the ugly fingernail buzzes. I promise we'll get to working on those, working on eliminating those in just a second. But when you're working with chords.

Closing is important. So is raising, letting your hand be away from the strings. However you do that in your method is fine, you know, so you're going to close your fingers and raise them away from the harp. Then on the way down, open your hand, get it ready to replace on the strings, but replace as late as possible. Here's the difference. If you replace your chord right away, the strings are still vibrating and we hear it, right? So I'm playing and then getting, oops, I missed playing. Getting right back on the strings.

You can hear that for sure. Now that might be an effect that you need in your piece. Something very staccato and short.

Right? But more likely you're replacing that chord.

To play it again.

And the trick to not getting a finger buzz is to replace as late as possible. I often call this dive bomb. Placing because you're going to have your hand open and ready to get on the strings. But it only gets on the string just in time to play it, and that will help eliminate buzzing.

Okay? So we've talked about working on exercise patterns with a medium dynamic, maybe softer. Once you get the hang of this and you're ready, you can add more sound. You can go for a very full sound as long as you stay relaxed. Be sure that you're staying relaxed. Keep your fingers curved. Keep your hand and wrist steady. Look for simple motions. You're not going to play better by wiggling your hands all the way around, trying to avoid the strings. Now, having said that, I'm going to tell you something totally different in a moment. So what I want you to do is to remember that I've told you the basic, important stuff. A steady hand, curved fingers, simple motions. Keep everything relaxed. Use your best technique, and that that's going to be the foundation for your best sound, which also means not buzzing and clean replacing. So knowing that that's the foundation, we're going to talk about some exceptions to that idea in a moment. I'm just sort of warning you because I want you to know what's important as a foundation. And we'll give you some of those exceptions in just a second. Now, of course, I've been recommending exercises, but you can use this same slow, deliberate, attentive work with any part in any piece that you want to learn and want to make a little bit cleaner. You can take anything and do it hands separately, do it hands together, do it quite slowly, that medium dynamic. Watch your technique and just listen to the sound, thinking about those simple motions that are going to be the most efficient to get you to the right string at the right time. So you can use this for any kind of spot practice you want to do, and it will work wonders, I promise.

However, you will find that sometimes accurate replacing is just not enough. So we're going to make some adjustments. This is what I was telling you about just a moment ago. We're going to make some adjustments without going crazy. You know, I don't want you twisting things up and trying to do all kinds of weird contortions so that your fingers can play very cleanly. But we're going to make very slight adjustments either in the timing of your replacing or in the angle of your fingers. Now, this is the good stuff that nobody tells you. So when you're replacing something and you're worried about making the. You're making those fingernail buzzes just like that, and they're so ugly, aren't they? When you're making those kinds of buzzes, you can sometimes alleviate the situation by placing some fingers earlier or later than others to make your placing more accurate. So that would be the timing of replacing. I'll demonstrate this in a moment. Or you can make slight, very, very slight adjustments to the angle of your fingers in order to minimize buzzing too. Now this is one of those things that people might tell you that you can do that, but it's very hard to tell you exactly how because the instances in real music are so different. I'm going to try to make some general.

Some general categories of things to look for and things to try, if that's what you need. So let's talk about that. But please, once again, remember that the simpler way is the best way. But sometimes that doesn't work. And so here are some of the things you can do when the best practices for eliminating buzzing don't work. This little excerpt is from Linda Wood's composition Processional. And it's just a three note chord melody. The melody is made up of just these three note chords.

Now, there's no reason to need to do anything extra to avoid buzzing. If you're watching, you're replacing and doing it carefully, it should all work. But.

It doesn't always work for everybody all the time.

So with a chord passage like this, where you're playing a lot on strings that are already vibrating, there are a few things you can do. But one of them, of course, is to practice it slowly and carefully and watch where all your replacing is. Another strategy here actually might be to roll the chord. You might notice the buzzing less if the cords are rolled. The timing will offset that. So that's one other thing. But what I wanted to show you here.

Is that with this kind of a passage, you can find the anchor finger. And often there's one finger that if you replace it properly, the other fingers will fall into place and they won't buzz. In this particular passage, all these chords I'm playing with 1, 2 and 3. And if I get my third finger on the string.

My thumb and second finger find the nodes just fine and my third finger won't buzz. So what I'm doing is replacing my third finger a fraction of a second earlier than my other fingers. Now think about what I've just told you to do, right? How many times has your teacher told you to place all those notes at once?

And your teacher was right. But this is an instance where you can elaborate on that technique Just a little bit to help you avoid the buzzing. And that's the kind of thing that we're talking about in terms of timing. Replacing your one finger just a little earlier or a little later can help make an anchor for your other fingers and avoid buzzing, making all your replacing cleaner. So that's one of the techniques I wanted to tell you. And it comes into play in more than just a chord passage too. Another rule, and I'm putting that word in quotes that we harp teachers tell our students all the time, is in a scale passage or an arpeggio passage, you want to place all your fingers at once so that you on that entire grouping.

And that's true, that's a very good practice. But there are some times when that causes more interruption in the sound than we want. So I'm thinking about the, the famous Bach Prelude in C.

You know, it's a beautiful piece. Right. Well, in that right hand part we have a three note arpeggio that repeats itself.

And if you follow the rule about replacing all those notes at once, you're going to play 3, 2, 1, rep, put on your third finger to get to the next arpeggio and then you're going to put two and one on as soon as you can after you've placed three. Right.

You can hear that the resonance of the top note is cut off by that replacing. I mean, that's not even a buzzing issue at the moment. But listen to what happens if I replace my fingers one at a time. Just placing them after the first three.

I'm going to replace them just as they come. So I'm replacing one finger at a time. First, you know, my third finger goes on and then my second finger and then my thumb. They're still all connected, but they're not placed in advance. The difference is this here they are placed in advance.

And you can hear that finger noise or placed one at a time.

Oops, I made a buzz there. Let me try that again, see if I can show you. Here it is, placed one at a time.

There we go. Yep. It has much more resonance to it. And this is what I was trying to help you understand before. It's not just about eliminating noise, it's about creating more resonance. Right. So that's an instance where the finger noise is only part of the issue and that we can, by removing the finger noise, create more resonance and create a more musical presentation. Left hand passages and the low notes, particularly on the wire strings, if they've got a lot of, you know, little fast, faster notes, they often have a lot of buzzing in them, and it could be so difficult to try to get rid of that. Here's just a little figure that is typical of what I mean. I'm going to play it with a lot of buzzing for you.

Okay, there. That had a couple good buzzes in it anyway. So this is a good passage to take and to work slowly. But one of the keys to eliminating the buzzing and making this passage cleaner is to actually change the angle of your hand just a little bit. So it's. Instead of keeping your hand centered over the string the way you normally would, you're going to just pull it back toward you, back towards your thumb a little bit. So your fourth finger actually probably wouldn't even be able to reach the bottom string until after you've played. But it will keep your second finger away from the string that it's most likely to buzz against. So by pulling your hand back.

It lets your second finger be very. O. That was my thumb. It lets your second finger be very clean on the string.

And you don't get that fingernail noise. You might. This way. Like that. There we go. There you go. Some nice replacing noise there. So it gives you the opportunity to just change the angle of your hand a tiny bit, pulling it back toward you. Sometimes you'll find that dipping your second finger just a little bit and having it play more on a slant instead of curved might also be a way out of the difficulty so that you don't have that buzz. That can be a nice way to do that. So it's a tiny, tiny change, but it can shift the angle of your hand or of your finger just enough that you don't buzz. And this is exactly why nobody tells you these things, because every case is a little bit different. Everybody's hand is a little bit different. And every piece has slightly different.

Combinations of notes and fingers. So it's hard to give a hard and fast rule and say, well, when this happens, do this. When this happens, do this. So that's why I'm trying to give you some general precepts, but also to give you a couple of those ideas and examples, examples of ways you might think of getting out of your own buzzing difficulties. So to quickly summarize in general, to make your replacing as clean as possible, you want to use a simple, relaxed finger motion that is very efficient and doesn't have extra motion in it. Keep your hand and wrist steady. Relaxed, but at a comfortable, steady angle so that your hand isn't twisting around. And keep your fingers curved and relaxed Start by practicing for clean replacing with your exercises at a very slow tempo and no louder than a mezzo forte. To start, maybe softer. The key is to stay relaxed and to listen for your sound. You'll pick up quickly enough on whatever buzzes you're making, but make the aim to produce a beautiful sound.

Think about replacing your fingers cleanly, but also think about replacing on those strings, particularly with chords, as late as possible, and that will help avoid some of that buzzing. Then we talked about a couple of those ways to get around issues. Like we talked about anchor fingers placing one finger earlier than the other fingers in a cord to help give you a little bit more security when you place and make your replacing cleaner. We talked about shifting the angle of your hand just a little bit. Either maybe pulling it slightly back towards you, or you could push it away from you. Maybe if you have a big cord you're rolling from the bottom, you want to put your hand a little bit toward the column of the harp to help that cord not be buzzy. And then, of course, you can also dip your fingers a little bit, turn your hand sort of palm down just a tiny bit to help elongate your finger if you need to do that, too. So there are some of the options that you have. But I think if you could take one thing away from this, it would be that we want your sound to be beautiful. And within those certain parameters, you can do whatever you need to do to make your sound beautiful. Okay, well, I hope that's given you a lot of food for thought and different strategies you can use to help yourself avoid buzzing. Next week on the podcast, we're talking about the beauty of Bach. I promise Bach is not just about too many notes. It's not just about how many notes you can fit into one measure. But I want to talk about why it's. Why his music is so remarkable, why it's important for harpists to learn, even though he didn't write anything for the harp. And we'll talk about all different kinds of interesting, fun facts that I think you'll enjoy as we talk a little bit about the music of Bach. Remember, I do have two retreat spots left, and I would love to fill them. So if you would love to work with me in that kind of setting, it's the perfect opportunity. The retreat starts August 13th. You'll find all the information on the Harp Mastery page under upcoming events or in the show notes. I'd love to have you there, but between now and then, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit and and all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening 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 every day. See you next time.