Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - PHH 022

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 today's show. This past week, my husband and I went into one of the home improvement stores near us and there was just no escaping the fact that the holiday rush has already started. It's not even Halloween, but the store was just jam packed with Christmas decorations. Now, I'm not ready to think about Christmas yet. I'm not one of those that does their holiday shopping in the summer, but I do still plan ahead, particularly when it comes to my music. Maybe you started practicing your Christmas music last year. Maybe you started in the summer or even earlier, and that's really great. But even if you started, then there's still that last minute rush that happens with the music that you need or want to prepare for for the holidays. And that's our topic for today. Think about it. When it comes to holiday music, there's often music that you need to play. People have asked you to play somewhere and they have specific things you want that they want you to play, so you have to get those ready. Then there's the music that you want to play that you think, oh, this would be really great and I really would love to play this. And maybe you even have that music that has been on your someday list that you keep thinking, oh, this is gonna be the year I finally get this piece together and I finally have it ready for the holidays. Well, all that is wonderful, but it adds up to probably too much music and it's likely to add up to a little bit of stress, stress that you certainly don't need added onto your plate at this time of year. So today I'm gonna be talking to you about how to use these next six weeks between now and and Thanksgiving, the end of November, how to use these six weeks so that you can actually be ready to play, so that you can avoid that last minute practice crunch that always seems to come up. You might not be able to avoid it entirely, but you'll be able to approach the holidays knowing that you're really feeling ready for a change. So I'm going to be sharing with you the three approaches that you can combine to help eliminate these that frustration and that last minute panic. And I'm framing them as reduce, reuse and recycle. It's a familiar phrase for sure. And it works really, really well when you're trying to put together your holiday music practice or your holiday music repertoire. In fact, you will find that these particular strategies work for whatever kind of repertoire you're trying to develop. It will help you plan a basic repertoire if you don't have one, or it will help you create repertoire for maybe ongoing performances you might have at nursing homes or something like that. So it's really going to be helpful to help you see possibilities with the music that you have. And of course, I'm going to be sharing how to use these next six weeks, specifically these next six weeks, to get your music ready to go before the holidays start. So you'll be able to be playing for success and not playing stressed. So that's our topic for today. I do have some extra resources on that same topic to share with you and you will find those links in the show notes. For today's episode, there's a blog post with five steps to building your repertoire. You might find that helpful. And of course, we also at Heart Mastery have a course called 30 days to done. And that course is essentially a four week plan to taking any piece from first sight to finish. And it's a pretty speedy way to learn a piece, but it will show you exactly the system that I prefer to get started on a piece and to keep it moving through the middle so you don't get stuck. So you will find those links in the show notes. And a quick reminder, I hope that you are joining us for the Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza challenge. This is a brand new challenge. We've never run this one before and it fits right in with this holiday theme. Plus, of course, if you take the challenge, the idea is that you'll have that Waltz of the Flowers cadenza ready to go before you even have to think about roasting that Thanksgiving turkey. So the deal here is that I have created different levels of the cadenza. I mean, I know Tchaikovsky only wrote one, but I have arranged it so that there's not just that advanced version, but there are also easy and intermediate versions that can be played on lever or pedal harp. And in fact, I've even created a 26 string lever harp version. So if you have a smaller harp, you can play along with us too. It's not all about learning the cadenza, although that's certainly a big part of it. And you will have that cadenza ready, I'm sure, by the end of the challenge. But it's also about seeing patterns in the music, learning how to see them, learning how to play them, learning how to drill some of the patterns that are so essential in that cadenza and in all of our playing. So you will learn a lot, not just about learning the cadenza, but about how to learn other things. Plus, it's going to be fun. So the challenge starts November 1st, and as I said, we'll be done before Turkey Day. So no problem there. You can head over to heartmastery.com and look in upcoming events and you will find the link to join the challenge or you'll find the link right in the show notes for this episode too. Whatever it is, whatever your level is, whatever you, whatever kind of harp you're playing, you will find that there's something here in the challenge for, for you. So I certainly hope you join us. But right now we better get to this all important and timely topic about getting your music ready for the holidays. Now, not far from where I live is a big smorgasbord restaurant. It also has a campground. It's got some other stuff associated with it, but it is a big smorgasbord restaurant and that's an understatement. And I've been there not only once or twice, but. But I need to tell you just a little bit about this smorgasbord for you to understand how big it is. So their website talks about facts from the year 2019. In that year, they served over 1.2 million customers.

They have a main dining room. This doesn't count their banquet rooms. Their main dining room set seats more than 1200 people. I've played in theaters that were smaller than that. 1200 people. It's actually about the size of the Opera house in Wilmington, Delaware where the Delaware Symphony plays something I used to play with them many years ago. And so that's a fact and figure that I've got in my head stored there. So 1200 people. On Saturday mornings they serve lots of omelets and they use routinely more than 3000 eggs. Serving omelettes On a typical Saturday, they will serve more than 800 pounds of bacon. Now, I'm not trying to gross you out with all these food facts, but just really to stress how enormous this place is. Their buffet line features over 200ft food.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I go into a place like that, I'm sort of overwhelmed. But there's that moment when you walk by the food tables and you think, wow, I'd like to taste that and that and that and that. And it becomes really difficult to choose one plate of food. And of course, that's the point of a buffet like that, right? You can go back and go back and go back. And frankly, just talking about it is making my belt feel a little bit tighter. But the world of harp music, particularly the world of holiday heart music, is a lot like that. It's overwhelming. There is a glut of holiday heart music, and so much of it is so wonderful. And it's very, very hard to resist, and it's hard to limit yourself, for sure. But the thing is there, there just will never be enough Christmases for you to play all the holiday harp music that you want to. That's just fact. And so we might as well figure out how we're going to pick and choose from this enormous buffet of music, some things that we are actually going to learn and be able to. To play. So when it comes to reducing the amount of music that's on your plate to learn for the holidays, you have to remember that it's really about managing your resources. So it's about managing your time, for one thing. Right? Because as the holidays approach, you're going to have less practice time and at the same time, probably more music to play. And this is true even if you're not playing someplace, even if you're not, you know, a freelance harpist with lots of responsibilities, even if you're just playing for yourself, you are going to be busier, because holidays are busy. That's what they're about. And it's a wonderful time of year and you want to be part of that. But things get busy. And even in this run up to Thanksgiving, when we're certainly not really in the holiday season yet, it's going to be getting busier. And you know that. I don't have to tell you that, right? So you're going to have less practice time, and at the same time, you're going to be wanting to learn more music. Not a good combination, not one that's built for success, for sure. Plus the other big resource, the other thing that's so essential to learning music well and learning it quickly is that you're going to be short on focus. Right. There's much more to do, there's a lot of stuff to think about and your thoughts, your energies are going to be more scattered. And of course, the closer we get to the holidays, the truer this is. Right? So at the same time that you have less practice time and more music you want to learn, your thoughts are going to be going in a million different directions and it's going to be harder to concentrate in the practice time that you do have. So realize that not only will you have less time and lots of music to learn, but your learning speed is likely to be a little bit slower. So how do you manage your time? Well, the first way you can reduce to manage your time a little bit better is of course you can plan to learn fewer pieces. I know that's the hardest part. That's like going to that buffet and saying, well, I'm only going to take a salad size plate. It's a good idea, we all know we should do it, but it's really hard to do. And even with a salad size plate, you can still fit a lot on it, can't you? I mean, I've been known to take a small plate and heap it high. Well, that defeats the purpose. So certainly a great first step is in choosing fewer pieces. And then when you've got those pieces that you think you want to learn, let's reduce that even further by saying, okay, of those pieces, these pieces are going to be definites. They're going to be the ones that I work on first. And I'm going to put these others on a possible list, like if I have time, so that once again, you're reducing your, the use, the strain on your resources, on your time and your energy by saying, all right, these are still on my list and they're still there, but they're a little, they're below the line. These are the ones I'm really going to plan on doing and these I'm going to do if I can manage them. Starting from that kind of a standpoint gives you a real way to feel good about learning the pieces you learn while not feeling bad in some way that you didn't get to everything that you wanted to. The next step in managing your time, I would choose the pieces that you start with pretty carefully so that you've got this list of pieces, you've got your definite pieces. Now start Right away with learning a couple of the easiest ones and one of the very hardest ones so that you're working on something that you know is going to take a long time. Get working on that. Now, I know that makes sense to you, right? Because you're thinking, okay, this is going to take a lot of time, so I really want to start it. But don't start all your hard pieces at once, because it's better to learn one of those well than learn a few of them halfway. Halfway done doesn't help us for the holidays, right? So learn one of your hardest pieces, start that right away, but at the same time, pick a couple of the very easiest ones and start playing those, because those are easy boxes to check off, right? Once you've learned those first two easy ones, you. They can become part of the things that you play once a day, but you don't have to spend time on. And you can bring another easy piece in. So that's a rotation that's going to allow you to manage your time well. You're putting in focus time on that really hard piece, but you're learning the easy ones, too, so that you can get those in your repertoire right away. Now, once you start thinking about your music that way, you might find that your definite and possible list is tweaked a little bit. You also might find that if you load your list with some easier pieces, you can actually play more pieces. An extra bonus right there. Now, also, one success tip. Give yourself an extra week. Like a week of grace. Like, if you figure, okay, well, it's going to take me four weeks to learn this figure. On five, it's going to take me two weeks to learn this figure. On three, just so that you build in a little bit of breathing room, a little bit of flex time. If things don't go quite the way you expect, whether it's because you end up with other pressing matters that take practice time away from you, or just something's a little bit more complicated than you thought, build in the flex time. You will thank yourself for it later. So if reducing the strain on you is not just about reducing the music, but learning how to manage your time in this particular circumstance, it's also about managing your expectations, right? Just like the buffet where your eyes might be bigger than your stomach and you need to sort of curtail things a little bit, I want you to pick that small plate. I want you to set easy goals for yourself. This is not the time to be ambitious. You know, you can be ambitious when the pressure's off. That's the summer, perhaps, is the time to be ambitious about something. But give yourself goals that you think you can achieve. Resist the temptation to load your plate with all the. All the sparkly music, all the really hard stuff. You know, give yourself some easy, easy wins. And the thing is that once you've accomplished those easy wins, if they take you less time, you can always go back and put more on, right? You can always go back to the buffet for more if you're still hungry, right? So if you still have time and you still have energy after you've, you know, checked off those easy goals, then sure, add on more. Why not? But once again, you're building your holiday music schedule from what you believe is truly and easily achievable, not from a dream or a wish or a someday. So we're trying to create a program that's going to allow you to win. Makes a huge difference going into the holidays. So there's the reduce strategy in a nutshell. Reduce the number of pieces that you're trying to play. Reduce the strain on your practice time by going for the easy wins and one of the harder pieces. At the same time, reduce the panic possibility by allowing yourself some flex time in there in case things don't go exactly the way you expect. And then do reduce your expectations just a little bit. This is not the time to, you know, put the pedal to the metal and.

You know, challenge yourself to do something really spectacular. Keep these challenges in this time of the year easier for yourself. Go for the easy one. So let's start with reducing. Once we've done that, let's. Let's get a little bit more creative and let's look at what I call the strategy for reusing your music. Now, I'm not just talking about bringing out old music again, and we're. We'll talk about that in a little bit more depth in a moment. But what I'm really talking about with reusing is repurposing about finding creative ways to fill holes in your holiday repertoire or to expand it, or to just refresh it with things that you already know, but using them in a slightly different way. This is really helpful if you need to play holiday music in quantities. You know, if you have nursing home programs or programs like that where you need a bunch of music or any kind of background music opportunity, or maybe playing preludes for church services, this kind of thing. We're going to look at ways to expand your repertoire list or create new feeling repertoire lists that keep you interested and feeling like you're presenting music in new ways or, you know, entirely new ideas and keep you learning a little bit, keep your learning interesting, but really using what you already know you to create these new things. So this again, going back to what we just talked about, this is helping you manage your time and your energy just a little bit more by not filling your holiday repertoire with all new music we're going to reuse. So I have two specific things I want to suggest for you here. Ways that you can expand your repertoire without necessarily greatly expanding your learning time. First of all, remember to include music in your repertoire that is not by definition holiday specific. I mean, this is not a bad thing to have some not holiday music in your repertoire. First of all, we all get tired of hearing the same holiday tunes rehashed over and over. I mean, you know, I love Joy to the World, but there are only so many times in one season that I can hear it. So I don't know why I picked on that carol. I happen to like it. So, you know, nothing against that one, but you know exactly what I mean, right? So think about expanding your holiday repertoire using some of these ideas. First of all, the holidays seems. It seems to be a time when people who would not ordinarily enjoy listening to classical music seek it out. You know, all of a sudden it becomes part of a holiday experience for them. I mean, think about the people who would never go to a ballet, who go to see the Nutcracker, or people who would never go to a concert of classical music who go to hear Handel's Messiah. So remember that classical music to many people is going to sound like a holiday special thing, even if it doesn't feel that way to you. And if it's a sort of familiar piece, that's even better, right? The Pachelbel canon doesn't say Christmas to most people, but played at Christmas time, it does feel like part of a holiday celebration. So do a lot, a lot of pieces by other Baroque composers like Bach or Handel. These are pieces that sound to lots of listeners like part of their holiday celebration the way they want it, even though it's not holiday specific. So things that you already know along that line can go a long way toward expanding your holiday repertoire. Especially.

Reminiscent of the holidays is Renaissance music. It's cheerful, it's got kind of an old fashioned sound that sort of would remind people of, you know, some of those peppy Renaissance kinds of Christmas carols. So even if they have never heard that Renaissance tune before, it can sound like Christmas. And if you happen to have those in your repertoire, bring them on out. Same for a lot of folk music, particularly Celtic music, particularly if it's, you know, not specific. Danny Boy, for instance, is not going to sound like Christmas to anybody who has the slightest connection with it. But there are plenty of other Celtic tunes that most people wouldn't know that can serve to expand a holiday repertoire quite nicely. So don't overlook those.

Another source of ideas for you for holiday music. You know, think about those New Year's Eve concerts that orchestras give. Maybe you've seen the New Year's Day concert they always broadcast, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic. Anything from a concert like that would be fair game for holiday music, whether it's Christmassy or. Or not. So the, the. The big thing here is to use what you already have in your repertoire. Don't go learning new stuff for this. But if you already have it in your repertoire and you just have never thought of it as holiday music before, maybe you should be thinking about it. So that's one way to creatively reuse your music to fill out your holiday list, right? But here's another one, and I think this one is really fun, particularly if you wish you had something new to play and you're looking for that, but maybe not the time to learn a lot of new things. I want you to consider making combinations from music that, you know. I mean, the most obvious combination would be to make a medley of your holiday tunes. Find some that are in compatible keys or feel like they go together for you, and just string them together, play one after the other. This has a couple of advantages, depending on the situation you're playing in. For one thing, it can take a lot of very short pieces and make them feel like a more substantial piece. So, you know, you can take some easy Christmas carols and string them together, and poof, you have a medley of Christmas carols that takes a few minutes to play instead of just 30 seconds. Which, if you're looking for something to fill out a program or take or be a part of a church prelude, it's nice to have something that, you know, lasts just a little bit longer. And a medley is a really easy way to do that. If you're up for getting a little bit more creative, try making a mashup. And by this I mean to take two unrelated pieces of music. They could both be holiday or not necessarily, and interweave them. Maybe start with one, then go to the other, then go back to the first one again so that it sort of, you know, creates two unrelated pieces and Combines them into one. Um, I'm thinking there are a lot of examples, of course, that you can. That you can see or hear on YouTube or find sheet music for. But one example, you might try the. The Bach Minuet in G and Away in a Manger could go very nicely together. And, you know, you can combine those. Brahms Lullaby is another one that people often use with different manger songs. So, you know, those things combine and you can mash them up if you want to get a little bit more creative. You can actually sort of interweave the two in a. In a more sophisticated way, if that appeals to you and suits your strengths. And one of my own arrangements I'm thinking of, I used the Pachelbel canon and the Austrian Carol. Still, still, still. And made those sort of mesh together a little bit. And that's one, you know, another nice combination that you can use. So, you know, those are all kinds of things you can do. There are lots of those around that you can purchase and use if you want to do that. But I like the idea of taking two things you already know and combining them. That's the secret to reusing what you've got. So don't be afraid to be creative here, but do use what you know in a new way to expand your repertoire. All right, let's get on to recycle. Recycle is the easy one, but that doesn't mean that it's not the one we overlook a lot. Recycle is just bringing back music that you've played before. I know we all tend to discard the things that we already know in favor of the shiny new arrangements that have come out. And, you know, I'm as subject to that kind of temptation as anyone else. But it's really important that you don't neglect your favorite things that you've already played in previous years. After all, you've put in all the work to make those polished and to make those presentable. So don't just, you know, let them gather dust. It's time to bring them out. So what I would suggest is that you go through your stacks of music from or from holidays past and pull out some oldies but goodies, some pieces that you used to like and used to play. Don't feel that, oh, they're beneath you. They're too easy for you. Nobody but you will know that they're easy. So, you know, if it's something that you loved playing, bring it out and let's play it again. We can always use trade up in another year if we want. But bring those pieces out and you might find that there are some things in your oldies but goodies pile that you want to incorporate as part of your plan for this year. Maybe they'll be the easy pieces on your list for this year. Some of those definite, you know, that you can get those ready, and this can help bring back a larger holiday repertoire for you than perhaps you thought you had because you've already done the hard work, right? So pull out those pieces and if you see some that you want to incorporate into this year's plan, go for it. But the other thing I would encourage you to do is to make a list and keep that list at the top of your holiday music pile so that next year you're going to have that list and you're going to be able to come back to it. You can make it a real fancy spreadsheet if you want, but just a simple list like, oh, yeah, I love these pieces, and write down the name of the piece and the book that it's in. And maybe if you know it the last year you played it, then this year, after the holidays are all done, add to that list with the things that you played this holiday season so that you'll know to come back to those another time, too. Doesn't mean that you have to play every one of those next year, but it's going to keep your favorites top of mind, or in this case, top of the pile, so that when you get to next year, you'll be able to reduce the amount of effort you have to spend by going to that list and saying, all right, going to pull up not just easy things, but maybe I'll pull up a few of my past things that I really liked and I'll put those on my list. In addition to learning one or two new things, it's a wonderful way to keep your holiday repertoire to save yourself some time and energy and feel like you're using all your resources. Well, right, you spent money for that music, might as well use it again. So in a nutshell, that is reduce, reuse and recycle. So great strategies, right? And great approaches all by themselves. But how would you combine them into a plan that you could use in the next six weeks? Well, here goes. So the first thing you need to do is spend a day, and not more than one day, doing your research and making your decisions. The first thing you have to do is research whatever music you think you want to play. Whether you've decided on some ideas or not, this is the time to create your Long list. If you were going to, you know, do your pieces for this year, your holiday pieces, what would they be? Go ahead, don't limit yourself here. We're just looking at the buffet. We're not going to put it all on our plate. But, you know, if you're going to populate your buffet with music, what would be on there? Then pare that down to a list of possibles. And I would suggest that your possibles include no more than two pieces that you know are going to be a stretch that you know are going to be hard for you. One of them can be new, but one of them ideally should be one that you have played in the past and want to bring back. So two harder pieces, three easy pieces that are new. Yeah. You get to play new music. Yeah. And three easy pieces that you've played before and want to review. So you've got eight pieces on your list of possibles. Now, you know, your numbers may vary depending on your level of experience, but this is a good starting point. Then look at your weekly practice time. How much practice time are you going to be able to devote just to holiday music?

Right. You probably have other practice you want to be doing too. So figure out how much practice time you want to devote and will be able to devote to just holiday music. Then build in some flex time immediately by cutting your expectations and cutting that practice time by 25%. So if you think, ah, I have an hour a day I could spend just on holiday music, well, aren't you lucky? But if you had an hour a day, let's say, okay, I'm going to spend 45 minutes a day on holiday music. Or if you think you could do 30 music, 30 minutes of practice a day on holiday music, cut it down to 20, right. So that you're building in some flex time, so that if you miss some practice time or something doesn't happen the way you expect, you haven't over programmed your practice time. So we're going to cut it right there. Then having looked at your practice time, your reduced practice time, now review your list of possibles and choose your definites from that list based on the time you have to practice. I'm guessing that this is something you probably haven't done before, choosing your music based on your practice time. It's not how we like to work, we harp us, but it's a good way to strategize for this. So once you've done that, you've got your music that you're going to learn. Figure out where you're going to start and get practicing now. I'm going to. Before you do that, I'm going to share one more rule with you. You've created your list of definites and possibles. I love what I call the Coco Chanel rule. Coco Chanel, you know, the. The famous designer and, you know, style maven, for sure. I have no pretense to anything near that level of style. But she was known to have said that, you know, she would create her outfit. She'd, you know, dress herself and accessorize. And when she thought she had everything just perfect, she took away one item, whether it was removing a pin or a bracelet or a hat. You know, she took away one accessory, and then she knew that she was right. So I urge you in this instance to follow the Coco Chanel rule. You've, you know, judged your practice time. You've created your list of definites. Move one thing from a definite list to a possible list. It will save you a ton of aggravation and frustration. You can always bring it back. But take one of those definites away now.

Now, if you have spent no more than a day making these decisions, and I certainly hope that you don't, it's time to start practicing. Start immediately with that hard piece. Figure out how many weeks you think that's going to take you. Program it into your. To your practice for those. For those days, for that many weeks. At the same time, you're going to start for the first one to two weeks with a couple of those easy pieces that you want to do. So we're going to start with those couple of easy pieces and your hard piece, and you'll do your first two weeks of practice like that. At the end of week two, you need to review your plan. This is the time to get really strategic. How is your hard piece going? Is it on track for where you thought you were? Okay, well, then, if it is, fabulous. If it isn't, what do you need to do to adjust the. The amount of work that you need to put in on it? Do you need to cut down on your easy pieces so you can spend more time on the hard one? Do you need to cut the length of the hard piece so that you're not quite so burdened? Or do you maybe need to jettison that hard piece now, figuring that, ooh, this isn't going to work. I'm going to have to save it for later. So, you know, think about that. Do you have. Are your easy pieces ready for their review status? If they are, put them into that place where you play them once a day in your practice and bring out another easy piece or two to add to the rotation.

So that's how that rotation is going to work. And then you do your next two weeks of practice with that hard piece again. If you're ready to go to the next hard piece, well, then by all means do it. But that it's likely that you're going to need another couple weeks on that. So let's keep doing that and your new easy pieces as well. Now, at the end of week four, this is the critical week, because this is where you really need to make your decisions. You need to decide if you're going to bring up a second more difficult piece and do that, or if you really can't do that and that needs to be back burnered and saved for later. Maybe the one hard piece you're working on is still too hard. Maybe you were able to bring that second hard piece up already and that's fine too. Do you have room, depending on how things are going now, do you have room to bring up any of your possibles? Perfect. But I want you to make the decisions about your music now with this question in mind. If this was all the holiday music you got to, would you be able to get it ready and just polish it in the next two weeks?

And if your answer is yes, then you're ready to polish that and bring something up. But if you think that it's going to take you more than two weeks to polish these pieces, maybe it's not time to bring anything else up and it's time to just keep working on what you've got.

Now when you get to the end of week five, this is when you get to review and you get to polish everything. Play what you've got. Figure that you're not going to add anything new for this last week. We just want to polish the pieces that we already have done. Whether you've gotten to everything on your list or not, when you start week six, those are the pieces you've got to play and you're going to stick with them. Now, if in the couple of weeks after that before you might have to play something on Christmas Eve, if you want to bring something else up and you have the bandwidth to do it, that's great. But in these six weeks, you have created that repertoire of pieces that you have practiced and polished and you've got them ready, you don't have to do anything more. And that's how you work through these next six weeks and come up with the holiday music that you want to play now, your six week plan is going to look a little bit different from everybody else's. And that's fine because you are the one that knows your playing and your music and how much of it you want to do. So you adjust that six week plan to fit you. But do keep in mind that we're trying to reduce the strain on you by managing your time and your expectations. We're trying to reuse music you already know in creative ways to stretch your repertoire without adding much extra work. And then recycling pieces you already know can save you lots and lots of time. So with if you've done those steps well, you might even be able to go through more music than I talked through in this six week plan. And I certainly hope so because playing holiday music is so much fun. So I urge you again, if you are, you know, ready for a Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza to add to your holiday plan, this is the time. Do it now. You've got plenty of time to get it done before Thanksgiving and you know, and it will be ready to go. You can incorporate it into your Reduce, Reuse, Recycle plan right now so you can join us on that challenge. You'll find the link in the show notes. I'm just wishing you lots of success with your holiday music this year because it is the most wonderful time of year for any number of reasons. But it's certainly a wonderful time of year to be playing the harp. So thank you so much for joining me today. Next week we are going to be talking about how to personalize your music, how to know if a piece is too hard for you or if you can manage to make it happen. Even though it seems like it's really difficult, the choices that you can make, there are lots of ways to work with a piece that seems to be too hard for you other than just putting it back in the drawer. So that's what we'll be talking about on the podcast next week. I certainly hope that you join me for that and I look forward to talking with you then. See you next week. 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.