Quick Fix: Roll Your Chords Right - PHH 092

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. This is a Quick Fix episode of the podcast. I love these episodes because I get to teach at the harp, which is just about my favorite thing. Well, actually playing music on the harp would be my favorite, but this runs a pretty close second. Today's quick fix is for rolled chords. Rolled chords are one of the most distinctive sounds of the harp and they are one of our most versatile expressive tools. They can be rolled crisply with lots of energy, or they can be lush and luxurious, almost like musical dark chocolate. But they can be tricky to play well. So today we're going to cover the three most critical factors of rolling the actual technique of rolling cords, how to get them to fit into your piece and not slow down the tempo, and how to practice the rolls so your fingers sound even and smooth. Now that's a lot to do in one podcast show, so we had better get started. If you are by your harp, you might find it helpful to try these techniques as I talk about them. Of course, if you're at work or in the car, you can get the concepts now and listen again later when you can play along with me. But before we get started, I just want to give you a quick reminder. Things are happening at the Harp Mastery Hub and if you haven't joined us there, please do that. This is our brand new online community. It's free and it's just harp. None of the hype of social media, none of the advertisements, none of the sneaky data kind of stuff. Just conversation about harp and conversation among harpists. That's it. Plus, of course, we've got challenges, we've got videos, we've got all kinds of things, tips. Everything is happening inside the hub. We'll be having live Q and A's there from time to time as we get all those things set up. There's so much going on and some great, great people who are contributing in the hub, and it's a lot of fun. And if you are not a fan of Facebook or Instagram or any of that, you're going to love this because it's a chance to talk with harpist just like you without feeling like you're, you know, giving all your personal data and information away. That's not what we're here for. It's just for you for talking harp. That's it. And all we ask is your email so you can log on. That's it, totally free. And I certainly hope to see you in the hub. Now it's time for a lesson, a quick fix on rolling cords. Before we get too deep into the technique of rolling cords and all the nitty gritty, I just want to talk about this. This is answering that question that people are often afraid to ask. When to roll a cord and when not to roll a cord. Well, you know, sometimes it's marked to roll a chord and then, you know. Right. But if you've just got chords in your page, how do you know whether or not you're supposed to roll them? Well, here's the deal. Harp music from, oh, gosh, up until the 20th century and even into the 20th century, chords in harp music were rolled. Rolling chords is part of what we harp players do. It's beautiful. It adds to the sound of a chord. It's, you know, it's one, it's very expressive and it's what we do. Now, there is a lot of contemporary music that demands the clarity of a chord that's not broken. But in most music, particularly harp music, that predates the 20th century, the mid part, maybe even of the 20th century, unless it is marked not to roll the chord, you will probably roll the chord. So just a little quick primer there. It doesn't hold true 100% of the time, but then like most rules, it was just sort of made to be broken. It's just that most of the time, you will find that to be true. On the other hand, rolling cords, how you roll them, the way you roll them, whether or not you roll them, is often up to the performer. And it's your personal taste. So, you know, so don't feel like there's a hard and fast rule you have to follow. If you feel moved to roll a chord, then roll it. And if you don't, then don't but let's just talk about sort of the degrees of rolling here. If you think about an arpeggio.

It is an arpeggio, right? It's a chord that is so stretched out that it happens in measurable time.

So, right. The arpeggio, actually, you could count, right, one and two. And, for instance.

An arpeggio, you can count. A rolled chord, you can't count. It doesn't work quite that way. It's just. And it's usually rolled bottom to top, of course, sometimes top down. And sometimes both hands roll at the same time, if you're playing a chord in both hands. But.

Rolled chords can be majestic, they can be powerful, they can be warm, they can be rich, they can be gentle.

Yeah. So rolled chords can be incredibly expressive and warm, and they're just wonderful when they're played well, which is partly what we're talking about today. Now, contrast a rolled chord, where we can hear every individual note, right? It's not an arpeggio, but it's a rolled chord, where we hear all the individual notes to something that we might call a broken chord or a cracked chord. It's not a real roll. It's just a very quick roll, Right.

The notes are happening one after the other, but they're so quick that we don't hear it as an arpeggiation of a chord. We just sort of hear it as a richer sound.

These cracked chords or broken chords can be crisp, but they can also add depth to the sound and richness and volume and energy. So that's another kind of role. And there's not a distinctive symbol for this. It's just another way to do it. So that might suit the mood of your piece, or. Or maybe this suits the mood of your piece, or maybe a flat chord, an unbroken chord.

Suits the mood of your piece better. A flat chord is very crisp, Right. It has a lot of clarity and a lot of precision, particularly at a fast tempo. So on the one hand, you've got an arpeggio, which is a.

Which happens over time, like a rolled chord that has that. You could count. And then we have the rolled chords, which are sort of like a faster arpeggio. And then a broken chord, which is that quick, just crisp, roll bottom to top, just. And then a flat or unbroken chord. And that's sort of the range we're working with. And I wanted to be sure we started with that kind of terminology. All right, so what physically happens when you roll a chord? Well, when you roll a chord, the obvious thing happens. You're going to start with your fourth finger, then play your third finger, then your second finger, then your thumb. But there are a few key factors that are going to be important in this. Certainly, an arpeggio and a rolled chord involve the same technique. So you're not going to play a rolled chord technically any differently than you would play an arpeggio, which means that you're going to keep your hand still, you're not going to roll your hand, and you're going to close all your fingers.

So that when you have the chord placed and all your fingers are on the strings. Let's try a different chord. How about this one? Oh, isn't that pretty little minor seventh chord for today?

When you roll the chord, all four fingers close into your hand, and your hand stays in one place until after your thumb closes, and then you can raise. But you don't roll your hand back as you roll the chord because that changes the way your fingers are placed on the string. And you're not going to get an even sound.

And you certainly don't pull away from the harp because you won't get a roll or a sound there. You must close your fingers, close them one after the other, right into your hand, keeping your hand steady.

Do keep your hand relaxed. The harder you try to roll a cord, the more uneven it's going to get. So be sure that your hand is relaxed and your fingers are just closing into your hand easily.

Start your roll slowly. I mean, not every chord you're going to start slowly. But if you're working on your rolled chords.

Play it like an arpeggio for a moment by itself, and then speed up your roll just a little bit so that you can be sure that you're keeping all your fingers even.

This is also a great way to experiment with the speed of your roll.

Kind of a slower roll.

A faster one, a faster one, still a very fast one. So the speed of your roll is going to be something that you get to play with, just like a dynamic. It's gonna be something that can help you, you set the mood for your piece. Now, if you're having trouble with the evenness of your fingers, often the second and third finger.

Are the ones who are at fault here. And sometimes it's because you're moving your hand after you play your fourth finger, you want to not move your hand there, as I said a moment ago.

But make sure that 3 and 2.

Can maintain a rhythmic evenness.

I like to think of it often as controlling the speed of your second and third finger. But every time I try to use that word to describe it to a student, they start getting tense and they start trying to control it. So it's control, yes, but it's control you have to release. You have to let your second and third fingers particularly be relaxed enough that they can play in the right time without rushing or without getting stuck on the strings. We'll work a little bit at making your fingers even in just a moment. We've got a little exercise for that. So that's the basic of rolling the a steady hand, closing your fingers all the way, one after another, and stay relaxed. A very important point about rolled chords, though, is that you have to know when they fall rhythmically. I talked a moment ago about how an arpeggio has a count. You can count it 1 and 2 and. Or 1E and A, or whatever it happens to be. You can count an arpeggio. You can't count a roll, but the roll has a specific place to be. And here it is, the top note of a rolled chord, with a few exceptions, like perhaps the last chord of a piece. Aside from that.

The top note of a rolled chord is the note that comes on the beat.

So whatever happens, however many notes you have in the roll, it's the top, usually the right thumb, that's going to come on the beat.

The roll itself happens in the beat before that. So that if your rolled chord is on the first beat of a measure, you're going to use part of the fourth beat of the measure before in order to get the chord rolled. This is really important because if you're just playing along and you're playing, you.

Know, 1, 2, 3, 4 chord.

And.

You'Re starting the chord perhaps on the.

Count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, your.

Melody note is going to be late and your tempo is going to slow down. The melody note, which is usually the right thumb for this kind of stuff, needs to be on. On the right beat, so the roll will happen before that. So a great way to practice this. You can use a passage that has a lot of rolled chords, or you can just do this little drill that I'm going to do with you. So a great way to do that is to make sure that you have.

A melody that happens and has a beat, has a time to it, and then we're going to roll chords with it. So here's our melody, and I'm going to play it with my right thumb. And because in my little drill.

My right thumb is the melody note. So my right thumb is going to.

Play 1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

Now, if I'm playing the chords flat, they would be exactly all the notes on the beat.

1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

All those notes come together, but if I'm going to roll the chords, I don't count from the bottom note of the roll.

1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

Don't count that way because the bottom note is not the note that comes on the beat. The top note comes on the beat and everything else comes before.

So it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

Now, those rolls were pretty slow, but you could tell they happened before the beat, right?

2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

You could do the same thing, but with a faster roll. Now, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4.

One. The idea is to practice that melody, whatever your melody happens to be, exactly on time. And you can do this with the metronome, right?

1, 2, 3, 4.

1. Then test all your chords as flat chords.

1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

Then practice rolling those chords with just that one hand. This is easiest. One hand together, still making sure that your thumb is on the beat.

1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

And you can practice those rolls fast or slow to give it a little bit more variety. But the timing is everything. And if you practice the melody exactly the way it's supposed to be, perhaps your melody has some rolled chords and just some simple melody notes. Practice the melody without the chords first so that you know how the melody is supposed to be timed. And then make sure that your chords are fitting in before that melody note. It makes sense, right? Okay. Well, that's how to make sure that your chords aren't going to slow down the tempo. Of course, this means that you have to place your chords at accurately. So one of the things you will need to practice, which doesn't have anything specific to do with rolling, is just making sure that you can get all.

Four notes.

Or three notes, if it's.

A three note chord, to the strings at the right time. At the same time, you don't want to place those rolled chords one note at a time. That's kind of scary. You want all those notes to place at once.

So be sure that you're checking your placing as you do that. All right, Now I'd like to go through a little exercise to help you get your fingers just a little bit more even for rolled chords. So we're going to start by. Let's see what would be a nice chord to play. Why don't we play that, that Lovely D minor 7th chord, D, F, A and C. It's A nice chord to work on, you know. And we're going to practice the notes, rolling them from the bottom up, starting with your fourth finger. So let's try it. Just right hand. Just your fourth finger now, okay? Not much to a fourth finger, you say, but I'd like you to do it this way. Put all four fingers on the strings, then take 1, 2, and 3 off. Close them into your hand and. And don't move your hand. Just play your fourth finger. Why is this important? Because it's going to remind your fourth finger where the hand is going to be when it has to play. But it's not giving it the anchors, right. It's teaching it to play on its own at that particular angle. So that's why that's important.

Stay relaxed and just play that fourth finger for a little bit. Now we're going to add the third finger. Put all four fingers back on the strings. D, F, A, c. Take off 1 and 2. 4 and 3 should be in playing position now. And play them one after the other.

4, 3, 4, 3.

Do not let your hand move. Just close your fingers in. Check your hand position by putting all your fingers back on the strings if you need to. And then take 1 and 2 off without moving your hand.

Play 4 and 3.

If 4 and 3 have any weak knuckles, I guarantee you'll find them here. Your knuckles should be curved, and you should be able to play them both fingers while you're staying relaxed.

And keeping your hand in one place, not pulling away, not making accommodations for these fingers. These fingers are key to the role. Remember, I said that third finger is sometimes a culprit in rolled chords, keeping them from sounding even. Well, this is how you train it.

All right, now put all four fingers back on again and just take off your thumb without moving your hand. We're going to roll.

4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2.

Close those fingers into your hand. Now, this is nice and slow, but try rolling it just a little faster.

See if you can get those notes nice and.

All right, now we're going to put all four fingers back on, and we're going to roll the whole chord. Right.

There you go.

Don't twist your hand. Just close your fingers. Keep your hand and fingers relaxed.

You can roll it more slowly.

You can roll it faster. You can crack it. Yeah.

And that's how to check for even fingers in a roll. Of course, you'll do the same thing with your left hand. And then when you're done with that, do both hands. So D, F, A, C, D, F, A, C, now, when you have a chord, an eight note chord.

You can choose to roll it. If it's not marked, you can choose to roll it one of two ways. You can roll both hands together sort of like that. It's going to go faster. It kind of cracks it a little bit, right?

But those are both hands rolling together.

Or you can make it longer and more, more luscious by rolling it from bottom to top. Left hand, then right hand.

4, 3, 2, 1.

4, 3, 2, one. We'll do it a little bit faster, but.

Yeah.

And that's a bottom to top roll. Now, sometimes you'll see that indicated by one of those squiggly little rolled chord lines that, that goes by both chords and is unbroken, right? So like a squiggly line that goes all the way from the bottom of the left hand all the way to the top note of the right hand through both staves. And that would be an indicator that the composer wants you to play the chord just like that, rolled from the bottom of the left hand all the way through to the top of the right hand.

But sometimes the piece is going along a little bit more quickly and you won't want to do that. You'll just want to rol both together.

And if you. It's one thing to roll it bottom to top.

That's usually a little bit slower. When you have that, be sure you check it with the drill I was working, I was telling you about before with that melody note, right? Check your melody note and be sure that you're rolling the chord in the right amount of time and you're not adding beats in the measure. To roll the chord means you have to start it earlier or roll it faster perhaps, right? So be sure that it fits in. But if you want to practice rolling both hands at the same time, then here's what you can do. Put both hands on the string so I have my DFAC again. And then with all four fingers on, play your thumbs at the same time just to give them some ballast.

Then take three and four off the strings. So all you have is two and one in both hands.

And do those at the same time, left hand and right hand simultaneously.

Then add your third finger.

Now, just like the the drill we were doing earlier, don't move your hands, right? Your hands should stay motionless unless you're raising after the chord, of course, but not twisting back and forth. Just have your fingers close into your hands, but play the two hands simultaneously.

And then you can add your fourth finger. And if you need to start More slowly to be sure that all those notes happen at the same time. That's fine.

And then you can do a series of chords, if you like.

Nice, right? Rolled cords are wonderful. So we want to make them even, we want to make them on time, and we want to make them expressive. So one last quick point. When you're doing a rolled cord, especially a longer one, like maybe one with both hands, you could try it with different dynamics. You could put a crescendo to the top.

So my right thumb is the loudest of the notes here. A little upward motion that just makes it feel so uplifting. Or perhaps you want something a little bit more gentle and subdued. And you might even try a diminuendo to the top.

Now, that would be less likely, except perhaps at the end of a piece, where you get to the end of a piece.

In which case you might have a very slow expressive roll that even has a little retard in it, just like an arpeggio might. That final chord of a piece is one where all the usual rules of rolling chords kind of go out the window. It might have a diminuendo, it might have a retard. The top note might not be on the beat. It might be later. That very final chord often has lots of room for expression. But remember that those chords are there for that. And if you're not rolling your chords when you're playing and you're tending to stick in the realm of flat chords, you're missing out on one of the most exciting dimensions of harp playing. Rolled chords are fabulous, and I don't want you to miss out on them. So you can give them a try working through some of the techniques that we worked through today. And you should be getting a little bit more comfortable with rolled chords. But if you have questions about those rolled chords and you want me to cover a little bit more in a future podcast episode, go ahead and email me podcastarpmastery.com that will get the email to my team, and we'll start thinking about what we need to do to help you further with your rolled chords. All right. This has been certainly fun. I love these Quick Fix episodes. They're always fun. Once again, don't forget to check out the Hub. The Hub is just so much fun, and I'd love to see you there. By the way, if you want to follow up a little bit more on on rolled chords, and I just thought of this, we have a chord placing drill that I talked about in an earlier podcast episode. And if you'd like to go back that you can check out the podcast episode number 39, and there's a chord placing drill there that might help you if placing is an issue for you. Just thought of that Now. Next week on the podcast, we'll be talking about priority practice and how to practice when you seem like you have way more to practice than you can fit in the time you've got. So we're going to be talking about truly prioritizing your practice so that you can eliminate that sense of overwhelm and confusion and frustration and make sure that you feel like you're making progress, because that's what we want. All right. So I look forward to talking with you about that next week. In the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.