Quick Fix Episode: Fixing 3 Common Thumb Issues - PHH 058

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. Today's episode is a brand new podcast feature, a Quick Fix episode. These are going to be special episodes designed to take your harp learning out of the realm of the theoretical and get totally practical. It's obviously not enough to just know why something is important, although that's a great place to start the but sooner or later, you have to actually do whatever it is, and for that you need to know how. So from time to time here on the podcast, I'll be sharing my favorite quick fixes, the nuts and bolts, step by step instructions to put some of the things we've talked about or that you've asked me about into place in your heart. Playing now the inspiration for today's show was a comment I received in response to a podcast episode I did nearly a year ago. That was episode 14 about taming the terrible thumb. Now, on that podcast, I talked about how your thumb should work, the proper mechanics, and the reasons why those mechanics were important.

But more recently, I got a comment from a listener asking for more detailed instructions about how to implement some of the things I mentioned on that show. And I have to tell you, it was a wake up call. It's so easy for a teacher to assume that a student knows something, and unfortunately, many students are hesitant to ask for the information they need. They think it's their fault that everyone else already knows it and they'll just have to figure it out for themselves. Well, I'm very grateful that this particular listener reached out to me and you know who you are, because I'm certain that there are other listeners out there with the same question.

Answering your questions. Being a resource to harpists is a main part of what we at Harp Mastery are committed to doing. We don't want you to have to figure it out for yourself. There are plenty of things that are hard about playing the harp, but getting answers to your questions, especially the questions that are stopping you from making progress, shouldn't be one of them. So today, for our inaugural quick fix episode, we will not merely be talking about what your thumb should be doing. I'll be sharing how you can fix the issues you might be having with your thumbs. Actually, there are three common complaints that harpists have about their thumbs. That their thumb is too soft, their thumb is too loud, or their thumb is just too tense and uncoordinated. In fact, most playing challenges related to your thumbs come down to one of these three, even if they seem to come from a different cause. So as you listen, don't be afraid to push, pause, and try some of these techniques at your harp. That's what a quick fix is all about. Now, speaking of getting answers to your questions, I wanted to remind you that you have just three more days to become a member of our My Heart Mastery community. One of the hallmarks of the My Heart Mastery membership program is getting answers to your questions. We have live calls every Monday, every single week, and usually I'm on the calls. Occasionally one of our certified coaches is on the call. But these are places where we not only teach you some of these topics and techniques that you need to know, teach you in more detail than. Certainly more detail than we could on the podcast. And of course, there's video, too, so you get to see it. But we also answer your questions right there in real time. And this may not seem like a big deal, but if you stop and think how many times you've had a question and you've, you know, looked around on YouTube, tried to find an answer, or you've, you know, put it in your, you know, on your. In your journal or something, and you've written it down and you're thinking that, you know, one of these days you'll remember to ask somebody if that has ever happened to you, then you know what I mean about this being a big deal to be able to say, you know, I was working on this piece this week and I couldn't figure out what this marking on the page was, or I couldn't figure out why the. The. The composer was trying to tell me to use this fingering, or I didn't understand what this marking was, or I'm not quite sure how fast this is supposed to go. All those kinds of questions you need answers to pretty quickly because it's going to guide your practice. And so that's a lot of what we do. We answer your questions not just about those incidental things that are really important that come up in your daily practice, but the larger topics too, like how do I know I'm making progress? Or what's the next skill for me to learn? Learn My Harp Mastery as a program has so much in it. We've got the courses and all of these courses are are open just to my Heart Mastery members. Most of these courses don't exist anywhere else in our program and mo many of them consist of a seminar and a workshop. Some of them have actually four or five live videos that we've done that that walk you through different aspects of a particular topic. Whether it's working on your left hand or being more expressive or learning how to do glissandos or smoothing out your arpeggios or practice techniques or performance practice or anything else. We have something for it on my Heart Mastery for sure. And the whole point of this community is not only to get the answers to your questions, but but to be part of a community that right alongside you is striving to make their harp playing better, to get to their greatest harp happiness just the same way you are. We've got all different kinds of harpists with all different kinds of personal harp goals, but the community is a strong one, it's a generous one and I'd love for you to be part of it. And I'm mentioning it and pitching it strong to you right now because we only open membership a couple of times a year. I'm not sure if we'll be opening it again this year. Probably we'll be opening it just close to the very end of the year, but this is the first time we've opened it this year and I want to be sure that you take advantage of the opportunity or at least investigate the opportunity to join us before it goes away. The doors close on June 30th and that's the Thursday after your after this podcast goes live, it goes live on the 27th. So you're on the last few days to get in. We've got a special Heart Mastery anniversary deal for people who join this month, so it's a great time to try this out and see if this community is for you. I mean you. It's not a long term commitment. You can cancel at any time, but I really think you owe it to yourself to give it a try. So I will put that link in the show notes if you don't want to scroll all the way through to the show notes. Just go to heartmastery. Com, look for my heart mastery, and you can. You'll find the link to join right there. So we're talking about getting answers to your questions, and it's time to talk about those quick fixes, those answers to your questions about your thumb. I'd like to start with a quick review, a little thumbnail sketch, if you will, of the principles that we talked about in episode 14 of the podcast where we talked about taming your terrible thumb. And I've come up with sort of a shorthand way for you to think about these. The first one we talked about was, was that length equals strength. Remember, your thumb is a long finger. I know it tends to look short, but that's only because of the way it's connected to your hand. The bottom of your thumb is actually that big bone that connects to your wrist. So your thumb is long. And when you remember that your thumb is long and you think about using that entire length, then you'll find the strength for your thumb. By thinking about moving your thumb from that very back joint, you'll discover that your thumb moves very, very differently. If you were to hold your. Hold your hand in front of you and squish your thumb up next to your hand, you could only move that top little digit, right? Your hand, your thumb's all squished, squished against your hand, and only that top little knuckle of your thumb can move. But when you pick your thumb up so that there's a space between your second finger and your thumb, then you can move your thumb from the very base of your thumb, and you'll find that it's quite strong, right? It's a nice long finger. So length equals strength. Now, following up on that is about that room to move, because your motion of your thumb is. Equals the tone of your thumb. Motion equals tone. And so this means that when your thumb has room to move, then you have the ability to make a beautiful sound. This is where your sound is going to come from. So once again, put your hand in front of you. It doesn't have to be on the harp strings. Hold your thumb up high. Think about it being, you know, nice and long and tall, and it's pointing, maybe pointing up toward the ceiling, and your second finger is pointing back toward you, right? Then you have a nice big space where we call it sort of a C, where your thumb is up. And then your second finger is more. Maybe you could think of it as parallel to the floor, and your thumb almost at right angles to that, sticking straight up, right? You've got that nice big space. That space is going to be the room for your thumb to move. And when your thumb moves, that's how we get the sound. Once again, squish your thumb up right next to your hand, and you realize you can only move that top little, little knuckle of it, right? How much sound are you going to get? How much ability to control that sound will you have? Virtually none. But when you're thumb is away from your second finger and it feels, you know, long and tall, and you can close it, boom, over that whole space so that the tip of your thumb then lands on that middle knuckle of your second finger and closes over to that, it's got a lot of room to move. That's where your sound is going to be. And then there's the third point, which is that relaxation equals control. When your thumb is relaxed, then you have the ability to control.

Its speed, right? Exactly. When it plays, right? So that it can play at the precise, correct rhythmic moment. And you have the ability to control its dynamic, whether it's soft or loud. And you have the ability to control its tone, whether it is a gentle releasing of the sound, one of those words I used before in the other podcast episode. Whether it's that beautiful release that sort of pulling the sound out of the string, or a nice sharp attack which has an accent, or anything in between, right? You have the ability to control it because your thumb is relaxed. Often, I think we tend to treat our thumb as an anchor finger, right? And we're using it to support our other fingers, and we're afraid to let go. That's not the right plan. Your arm is supposed to support your hand, not your thumb. Your thumb has its own playing job to do. It doesn't have to be that anchor for your other fingers. So a quick little review here of those key points, and then we'll get on to addressing the specific issues. Length equals strength, motion equals tone, and relaxation equals control.

So here's that first common complaint, that first issue. I often hear my thumb is too soft when I'm playing a passage that's like a scale or I'm even working on my scales. My thumb doesn't sound like the other, other fingers. It's just really soft. And so let me play for you an example of something that might sound like that. Now, in order to do this, I have to. I have to sort of change my usual technique. So we'll see if I can do it. Let's see. This is an example of a too soft thumb.

Now, at the top it was too loud, but in the middle it was too soft. Did you hear? Let me try it again.

Oh, goodness, I fell right off the strings. I can't play wrong. Let me try it again. Of course I can play wrong. Let's try it.

Well, I fell off the strings again, but I got the right sound for you. Or the right lack of sound, I should say. So this comes from a basic mechanics problem that's easy to fix. And it comes back to the fact that you. Your hand is probably too squished up. You haven't given your thumb room to move. We know that motion equals your tone. That's where your tone comes from. So your thumb has to have room to move. Now, if I were to hear a student play that scale just the way you heard me play the scale without looking.

What I would ask them to check. The very first thing is how much space do you have between your second finger and your thumb? Is your second finger squished up against your thumb?

And they might think that there's plenty of space in there. But then I would suggest that they turn their hand a little forward so that instead of having their knuckles sort of face the ceiling, the knuckles of their fingers, their knuckles are facing more forward. Then their thumb can be nice and long and tall. And it will have room to play when your hand is too. Oh, I was going to say vertical. And that might be the wrong thing to. Wrong way to describe it. When your knuckles are facing the ceiling, then there's not room for your thumb to move. Just try it. You can try it away from the harp, right? If you have your fingers closed the way they would be close your thumb and your fingers the way they would be after you play something. Then turn your hand so that your knuckles of your fingers are facing the ceiling and your thumb is sort of facing you, right? The back of your thumb is facing you.

Then move your thumb and see what happens. It can't get to the string that it would want to get to because it's pointing back at you, right? And if you put your hand on the strings that way, with your knuckles facing up and your thumb is facing up too, there's no room for your thumb to play. So that as you play a scale passage, when you have to cross under with your fourth finger or with any finger that you're crossing under with your hands too squished, your thumb will be too soft. It won't play. So the difference would be when you're having your knuckles facing the ceiling, your thumb doesn't have room to move, so it's going to be too soft. But the second you turn your hand so that your fingers are pointing more back toward you and your knuckles more toward the column of your harp, then when your thumb points up toward the ceiling, it has room to close.

And it has sound, it has volume. Now, this gives you room to cross under as well, so that when you're replacing your fourth finger underneath, you're going to replace your fourth finger a little bit low on the string so that your thumb still has room to move. And then you can replace your other fingers and play your fourth finger as you continue up the scale. Now, if your fourth finger feels like it's too low on the string before you play it, just slide your hand up the strings just a little bit to recenter it so that before you play your fourth finger, before you place three, two, one on the strings, you can recenter your hand. And it can happen all in one motion if you need. But don't let your fourth finger place so high that it scrunches up your thumb, even if you've put your hand in the right position to start with. Okay? So if your thumb is too soft, this is about space, it's about room. Now, this does not just happen with scales, of course. It can happen with a cross under in an arpeggio too.

Right? That if I allow my hand to come too far back.

Before I place under, then my thumb is going to be too soft again. Think about what happens when you do an arpeggio like that. Let me do a nice big arpeggio, C, E, G, C. And then I'm going to cross under to the E with my fourth finger. So as I play, that's great, then I need to put my fourth finger on the E. So I shift my hand quite properly. And then at that same moment, without realizing what I'm doing, if I shift my hand to center it and turn it at the same time as if I were trying to reach further. Now my second finger scrunched up against my thumb again, and it won't play. So as you shift your hand to recenter it so that you can reach that fourth finger cross under, keep it facing forward rather than facing up.

And your thumb has room to do what it needs to do. Now, there are very simple exercises, right, that you can do. I would start with placing your thumb on one string and then your fourth finger on the string right above it. So here I have my thumb placed on AN F, my fourth finger placed on a G. And just play those two fingers, 1, 4, 1 4, back and forth. Now what you're looking for here as you do it, is closing your finger that space to close your thumb rather over onto your second finger. You won't need to move your hand, you won't need to recenter it because it's centered nicely over those two strings. So your hand is going to stay still and your thumb is going to close right over that second finger knuckle. And your thumb and fourth finger should be able to sound pretty equal. Then move the step. Move this drill one step further. Start from your second finger. So I'm going to put my second finger on the E, my thumb on the F and my fourth finger on the G.

When you have two and one on the E and the F, be sure you have plenty of room. Close your second finger, but don't turn the angle of your hand turn. Just reach under with your fourth finger and make sure that your fourth finger is placed on the string properly. Then you can go back and forth, listening for all three fingers to be equal and making sure that the angle of your hand stays the same so that your thumb can close over with room. It's got room because say it with me, motion equals tone. Okay, so that's how to do that. Now, I've talked a lot about cross unders crossovers, for instance, in a descending scale.

The technique, the idea is the same. So that when you cross over with your thumb. Here's my crossover. Place your thumb high so that it has room to close. So that when you.

I placed my thumb high, then I put my other fingers on the string and I put them not low, but when I put them on the strings, I'm making sure to preserve that space again between 1 and 2. And that way you still have room for your thumb to move. So the, the going downward is a little bit easier. You just have to be very aware of how you place where you place 2, 3 and 4 so that you preserve the space. Give your thumb room to move. Okay, now that will keep your thumb from being too soft. But what about if your thumb is too loud? There are lots of pieces where we have descending arpeggios and the melody note is up here in the thumb. And the first thing we tell our students when they're studying those is to remember to bring out the thumb. Bring out the thumb. So we end up with something that sounds like this.

And it's not a pleasant thumb sound at all. So to achieve a better balance, you have to remember that even if your thumb is the melody note, it doesn't necessarily need to be accented. And the secret here is in the releasing of the sound. And it's sort of in the. In a press that happens right before you play it. We want that melody note to come out, but we want it to come out nicely. We want it to be beautiful and round and rich and lush. We don't want it to pow. To hit us in the. You know, hit us in the nose, right? We don't want that kind of a sound. We want a beautiful sound. And one way to think of it is about pressing the sound out of the string. It takes just a little smidgen of time.

A skosh of time. I can't think of a word that's small enough. It's like a microsecond. It. It's thinking about getting your thumb securely on the string and then pressing the sound out of it, not plucking the sound out of it. You hear the difference, right?

It's funny, as I'm recording this, I'm watching the meter, you know, and I'm watching where the sound level goes up and where it gets into that distortion range. And if I just pluck it nice and hard, the poor thing overloads. I can see it. But when I press the sound out.

Does. It does something completely different.

It's a completely different sound just from taking that second. So there's the secret of the press, right? That avoids a harsh beginning to the sound, and it creates tone control. Now you can work on an entire range of dynamics for your thumb. Putting your thumb, your fingers, on any string. Start by just playing your thumb very, very softly.

Then gradually increase the dynamic. Oh, that was a. Not a gradual increase.

There we go.

But try to do it just with volume.

And not with accent. And then decrescendo as well.

I'm going to go kind of.

When you do that drill, you need to be very aware of the spacing of your thumb so that it has room to move. Remember, because motion equals tone. But this will give you an idea of how to balance the sound of your thumb. Another great drill for this is to just do little intervals. You can do two note intervals. You can do three or four note chords. But I'm playing two and one. I'm playing on an E and a G here.

You want the two and the one to feel comfortably opposed, like those beautiful equal but opposite forces that are totally relaxed but totally complementary. And you want Those notes to sound at exactly the same time. And you want them to sound with the same volume and the same level of accent or non accent, whatever that is that you choose.

But they need to be precisely at the same time and precisely the same. Now if you're having trouble getting them to be exactly the same sound, or even if you just want to experiment a little bit, try playing that same interval or chord and and on purpose making your thumb the louder note.

They still have to sound at the same time, but your thumb has to be louder. This will probably not be too difficult. Our thumb is used to being the big boss. But then try making your other finger or fingers, if you're doing this with a chord, making that the louder note.

Still sounding at the same time. But thinking about the sound of your finger being more than the sound of your thumb, you still want both of them to sound.

You know, you don't want a non existent thumb sound. Oops, that was a little bit more than I meant. But practicing balancing your fingers and your thumb in this way is a great way to really find out where that dynamic control comes from. And teaching you how to control it, teaching you where that is. Remember always that your thumb needs to be nice and long and it needs to have that room to move because that's the only way you can control the sound.

Of course, there's that third dimension, right, that your thumb needs to be relaxed in order for any of these techniques to work. If you're holding tension in your thumb, it's not going to come out sounding controlled. And even whether you want it to sound too soft or too loud, you won't be able to know until after it plays how it's going to play because it's too tense for you to be able to, to control it and be confident in the kind of sound it's going to make. Now if you're moving your thumb already and thinking about it being nice and long and strong, you have the best chance at being relaxed. But there's another step that you can take to help teach you how to relax your thumb. There's a wonderful technique called oscillation, like oscillate, you know, something that moves back and forth, right. And what we do is we actually turn our wrist to help us play our thumb. And oscillation is a great technique. Um, we use it in a passage that has trills. We use it to play a trill and stay relaxed. We use it to do any kind of repetitive pattern, especially a fast one involving our thumb and maybe something like this.

Or.

So you can see, it's a pattern that we might want to use in our left hand too. It's a technique rather that we might want to use in our left hand because that pattern happens in the left hand. And when it goes nice and fast, oscillation helps keep your thumb relaxed. So what is oscillation? Well, it's a turn of the wrist that helps you play your thumb. So that instead of just closing your thumb over, I'm going to go back to the G here. Instead of just closing your thumb over you, turn your wrist away from you toward the column of the harp just a little bit. Think about it as if you were turning a spring loaded doorknob. You're going to turn the doorknob in one direction. And in this case for us harpists, the direction is toward the column of the harp, thumb over toward the column of the harp. You're going to turn your thumb over that way and then it's going to spring load back to where you started. You don't oscillate in reverse. You're not going to turn your hand so that those knuckles face upward and you're turning your hand toward you because if you do that, you're going to fall off the strings. That's not efficient. But using your wrist, that slight motion of your wrist to turn your hand forward and help your thumb play helps it stay relaxed. This is also great for practicing wrist relaxation and it's just great for your flexibility. Oscillation is not a big motion, but it's an important motion to learn to make. And the easiest drill to practice this with is the one I'm going to tell you about right now. Now I'm going to put my fourth finger on middle C, my third finger on D, second finger on E and thumb on G. So I have C, D, E and G. And I'm going to start from my thumb on the G. And then I'm going to alternate my thumb and each of the other fingers. 1, 2, 1, 3, 1 4. And go back and forth slowly. And as my thumb plays, I'm turning my wrist just a little bit forward.

Be sure that as you do this, you use a nice soft dynamic. But think about turning your wrist as you play your thumb. Keep everything relaxed. And the more you play, the more I want you to relax into it, to just learn to relax. You'll find that that little motion of your wrist really helps you to do that. Do remember to close your thumb. This is not a substitute for closing your thumb. We still need it to be nice and long and strong and mo. But it is a wonderful way to get a little bit of extra relaxation in there. So if your thumb is too soft, look for the space, create the space for it to move. Think about your thumb being nice and long and moving for its whole length. If your thumb is too loud, we're looking for that space as well. But we're also thinking about the secret of the press, right? Press the sound out, don't pluck the sound out of it. And use that to give you to practice your range of dynamics with your thumb and to add some confidence and control to how your thumb plays. And then we talked about oscillation, a great drill for relaxation and for flexibility. Keeps your wrist loose, keeps your thumb loose, and keeps you from creating more tension than you need.

So I would love you to try those how to ideas that I have just shared with you. Those little, those little steps, those quick fixes. I'd love you to try them and see if that makes a difference with whatever your thumb issue is or maybe just helps your thumb play just a little bit better. And I'd love to hear from you. So go ahead and send me an email. Remember, you can always email me@podcastarpmastery.com let me know or what happened with with your thumb when you tried these. Did they work? Did they not work? Do you have questions? That's what I'm here for. So please, I'd love to hear from you, find out what's going on. A quick reminder, these are your last few days to join us at My Heart Mastery, where I get to answer your questions personally and not just through a podcast, but there's a lot more to My Heart Mastery membership than that. And I urge you to go to the My Heart Mastery link that's here in the show notes or or you'll find the link to My Heart Mastery right on the homepage in the navigation bar of our harpmastery.com website and you'll find it there. But please do join us. I know that you will find so much inspiration and wonderful connection and plenty of information in our community. We'd love to have you join us next week right here on the podcast I will be talking about harp markings. I'll hope to clear up some of the mystery around harp markings and talk to you just a little bit about what some of them mean and how you can figure out what they mean in whatever piece you happen to be seeing them in. So it's harp markings next week. In the meantime, remember every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. 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.