Shaped, Stable, Supple: A New Approach to Technique - PHH 155

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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. Have you ever had one of those moments when you wonder if maybe you've been doing it all wrong? I mean, it might be something that you've taken for granted. A habit, maybe, or a process, something you thought was the perfect system. You. You've always done it that way, but suddenly you have that moment of doubt. Maybe it felt like a blinding flash of clarity. The clouds part and suddenly you see the thing in a new light. But just as quickly, that clarity fades and you're left with this nagging feeling that you're missing something important.

Okay, maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. I think we all encounter things that we thought were working until we see that maybe they aren't.

And I think that many of us actually feel that way about our harp technique. We go along just fine for a while, and then we hit a wall. There's a piece or a performance that shakes things up, and all of a sudden, our technique doesn't seem so trustworthy anymore. We need to strengthen it, to sharpen our skills, maybe even rethink our technique altogether.

I think that's the right time to take a step back and look at what we really want from our technique. I'm not just talking about playing faster or with more control or having fingers that work better under pressure. Of course we want all that. But at the most fundamental level, we don't want a stronger, more reliable technique just for itself. We want what that technique will do for us. We want our fingers to make beautiful music. So today we're going to talk about technique a little differently. We're going to look at what our technique should do for us and then look at any changes we might want to make to our technique through that lens. And I have a new way to consider this with the three S's. We'll talk about those in a minute, and I'll give you some practice ideas, too. And I promise no exercises today. So, of course we're going to be talking about growing your technique today. But I wanted to tell you first about something that has been growing for the last 10 years, and that's the My Harp Mastery community. It was 10 years ago this year that I started My Harp Mastery. My Harp Mastery is our online membership community that is part of what we do here at Harp Mastery. And I started it in February of 2014. So that's 10 years of courses and now all kinds of other things that go with it. But the core of My Heart Mastery are the weekly calls. We have a live weekly call that helps you grow as a harpist in all kinds of ways and helps keep you connected to this wide community of all kinds of harpists from all over the world. But when I think about starting My Harp Mastery as sort of an experiment that I was doing all by myself in 2014, and now 10 years and, you know, 500 weekly calls later, we now have the certified coaches participating in the calls. We've got things like sounding boards and practice labs. We have the scale of success. We have so much that's available to you through the My Heart Mastery community. And as we're celebrating this 10th anniversary of my Heart Mastery, we're about to get even more. And I'm so excited about two things in particular. Well, okay, three that are coming up here and we're going to be celebrating. So this week that's starting Monday, May 6th, and going through next Friday, that would be Friday, May 17th. If you're listening, when this podcast goes live, those are the dates. These 10 days will let you rest on the weekend, but we've got fun stuff planned, and it's all culminating in a special party on Friday, May 17, and that will be at 11:00am Eastern Time. Now you'll be able to find out about everything that's going on as part of this celebration if you're on our email list, so watch your email and we will be getting you all the information you need and some of this fun stuff that's going on in these two weeks, plus this special party a week from this Friday. So I'm having a really hard time not spilling the beans and telling you about what's coming out. But you'll have to pay attention because at that launch party on Friday, we will be telling you all about the new things that are coming your way in the My Heart Mastery community. And of course, if you're not a My Heart Mastery member, I am. I would love for you to join us. That almost goes without saying, but I want to be sure that you consider yourself invited because I'd love to have you be part of this group. And when you see what's going on, you're going to want to be part of it, too. I am sure. Now whether you're a part of My Heart Mastery right now or not, I invite you to join a special challenge contest that we are holding during the entire month of May. You may remember that last week on the podcast I talked about the music of Bach and we talked about in particular that one chorale, the very famous melody that Bach used in his St. Matthew passion and a couple of other places. And in fact, it's often called the Passion Chorale. So I have created a brand new arrangement of that chorale specifically for harp, and of course it's for lever or petal harp. And we are not only going to have a challenge around that corral, but we are also having a contest. So all of the My Heart Mastery members are invited to this and the everybody who is in the hub who is a member of our Free Heart Mastery Hub is also invited. So I would love for you to join us and for that contest as well. So you don't have to do the contest, but you can do the challenge. And the challenge is simply to play and learn my arrangement of the very famous Passion Chorale. So the sheet music is there in the hub for you, and you don't have to learn the whole thing. But every week during the month of May, starting today, I will have a prompt for you, some ideas to help you think about the chorale and practice it, practicing in particular this arrangement. And then what do you do to enter the contest? Well, just upload a video of yourself playing at least the first page of the chorale. You don't have to learn the whole thing. It's three pages long and a couple of the pages are more difficult. But if you can play at least the first page, I upload that video or email it to me. All the directions are in the hub. You can send in your video and then from everyone who submits a video, we will randomly pick a winner. It has nothing to do with how well you play. I promise it's going to be a random drawing. And the winner of the contest will win a 30 minute online call with me, which we can use for coaching or conversation or whatever you like. So that 30 minute conversation or coaching call call is the prize. And this contest is open to all our My Heart Mastery members and to everyone who was a member in the Harp Mastery Hub. Now, the hub, in case you don't remember, is our free sort of social platform. It's like Facebook, but without the food. So it's our private community. There are no ads, there's no trolling for anything. All you need to do is to sign up with your email and then you're in there. We have monthly challenges. I just told you about what we have going on in May. And we have access to the live Monday warmups right through the hub. So if you're a fan of those, that's the easiest way to attend those. And of course, there's conversation there as well. So it's a great, safe, you know, social media free way to be part of an online harp community. So if you're not a Facebook fan, this is the place for you to be. So there is a link in today's show notes, of course, to the page that has all the information about the chorale challenge and the contest. It has the direct link to the contest if you. And the challenge if you're a hub member, and if you're not, you can easily sign up right in the hub. So. And you can do that right from this page. So easy peasy. I would love to have you join the challenge and of course, to participate in the contest. It's going to be a lot of fun. My Heart Mastery members, you will be getting some extra bonus help because you have coach Christina tonight and you have me next week teaching you the chorale. So step by step, we'll get in there and help you learn it so you've got a little extra edge. So that is our special challenge to celebrate our 10th anniversary of my Heart Mastery. And I hope that you come on in, join the challenge, the contest, and join us at the party on May 17th. Okay, so back to your technique.

Technique practice for us is usually very finger driven. It's all mechanical. Without considering those results beyond the technical results that we really, really want. The stuff that our technique is supposed to serve. Right. Talked about that a few minutes ago. Serving the music. And when you consider what we want our fingers to be able to do, we want them to be trustworthy, right? We want them to be adaptable, we want them to be relaxed. We Want them to sound beautiful. That's so much more than just playing the right notes at the right time. So when you think about working on your technique, you're probably. I know I am thinking about all the usual things, right? All those things that I talk to you about all the time. Stuff like scales and arpeggios, chords, exercises and etudes. That's the stuff that we do. These are the drills that build our technique. There's no doubt about that. And I don't have to tell you that the key to success with all of those things is the focus that you bring to them.

And that's what I think we can tweak. We are taught to focus on how our fingers move and how they perform the tasks that we want them to do. But what we really want from our technique is so much more than that. Ultimately, we want not to have to think about it, right? I know. I don't want to have to think about my technique. I want to know that my fingers are going to do what I want them to do when I want them to do it, at least most of the time. Now, I had this sort of a discussion with a student the other day. It's the discussion that starts out, you know, ah, but I thought I fixed that. You know, when it comes to technique, there's no once and done sort of solution. We have to think about it every day. It's something that we work at every day. Something we have to work at every day because our technique is what allows us to do what we want to do. So, yeah, we have to think about it. We can't just say, well, you know, I'm playing and playing and that's good enough. I think sometimes we think that one of the things that I used to come up against when I was doing a lot of background music work when I was, you know, a young struggling musician, I would do a lot of background music stuff. So I'd be playing, you know, four hours a night in addition to doing some practice and stuff for my lesson. But, you know, so it didn't feel like I needed to do any technique work. My fingers were working all the time. But after a while, I realized that just playing all the time wasn't enough to keep the bad habits away. Even though I was playing hard stuff and I was working at the technical passages while I was doing my practice, that wasn't enough. I needed to take time to focus on my technique separately. And then everything else went more easily. It was just easier to play everything else. So we have to think about our technique. But how we think about it is what I want to talk to you about today. Because I think it's very helpful to think of your technique in terms of the critical ways in which it serves your playing. Kind of like thinking about the why rather than about the how.

The how is always easier. Right? Because we get in there and we can do the how. We can play these exercises, play these scales. But thinking about the why is much more difficult. And I know that we aren't thinking about the why because when I do these live Monday warmups, those are the kinds of questions that come up. The, oh, gosh, I haven't thought about that, or nobody told me that, or oh, my gosh, when I do this, it makes everything easier. Yeah, it's because of the why. It's not just about doing the. The exercises and the drills. It's about what's important, what's behind that. So that's why I've come up with three S's. So these are three words that can help. Think about your technique and your technique study in a slightly different way. And we're going to go through them one by one. We'll talk about why they're important and the different components that go with it. And after we've gone through all three, I'm going to give you some practice ideas for each. And as I mentioned, they're not exercises. They're different ideas. And you'll see what I mean. So the first S is we want our technique to be stable. Yeah. Stable, as in secure, as in not wiggly or movie. Right. Not moving around. We want it to be stable. Why? Because a stable hand, stable fingers, a stable technique can be speedy and nimble. It can make adjustments. It can get the right fingers to the right strings. But. But it has to be stable. This isn't about rigidity. It's not about control. It's about support, and it's about efficiency of movement. We don't want any extraneous movement because the more we move around.

The less secure our fingers are going to be, because they might not know exactly where they are in relation to the strings. If our hand is in one position at one moment and another position at another. But this isn't about being stiff. This is about deciding what your entire posture is like at the harp and then creating that as a foundation for your hand. So let me describe what I'm talking about. We'll talk about the different pieces of this. So start by thinking about your body. Right? That's you sitting on your harp. Bench. It's the way you're sitting at your harp and where your stand is. Now, most of us get pretty comfortable with a specific setup. And you know, if your stand is off an inch, if it's an inch too high, an inch too low, an inch too far to the left, we know that and we need to adjust for that, and that's great. But when you're sitting there and you have your heart pulled back, think about how your body is lined up. You should be pretty straight, right? Not hunched forward, not leaning backward. Your shoulders need to be relaxed and, you know, relaxed downward, right? Not hunched up. And then we can think more about how that structure allows us to support the parts that are really going to do the playing. Oh, by the way, your feet play a part in this, too. Now, if you play a pedal harp, you know that your feet probably have a resting position on the F and C pedals. That's probably right. And you know that, you know, you're very conscious of your feet. If you're a pedal harpist, you learn how to use them and how to keep them steady on the floor. But if you don't play a pedal harp, if you play a lever harp, you might not be so concerned about where your feet are. But your feet should be flat on the floor. Don't cross them under your bench. Don't stick them out to one side. They are part of your support system. And you want to use your feet to help just give you some stability, make you feel like you're grounded just a little bit, so they're part of this. So think about your entire posture, from your head down your back to your feet, seated at your harp on the bench. Then we're going to work down from your nice relaxed shoulders down to your arm. And then finally we get your hand and your wrist and your fingers and your thumb. And all of those need to be in a relaxed position and in a position where they can move. I often talk about the way your hand needs to be centered over the strings that you're playing. That's the job of your arm. Your arm has that wonderful elbow, right? It's our, our all important hinge. And it can help you move your hand to where it needs to be without adjusting or changing the angle of your elbow, the angle of your wrist, so that your hand can be in the same position wherever you are playing on the harp. So that's what your arms can do for you. So this is about working at stability. Just imagine when your technique has that nice stable foundation, then your Fingers will be in the same place with regard to the strings. Wherever you are on the harp, they'll be more likely to get where you want them to go and play what you want them to play. And if you're changing the angle of your wrist, right, doing all the kind of wiggly stuff, then it's hard to be speedy and nimble because you're trying to adjust your hand all the time. This is about support, relaxed support, not rigid support, so that you can create a very efficient movement around the harp. Okay, so there's stability. Second word is strong. Okay. That's not a real surprise, right? We want our technique to be strong. And why? Well, because a strong technique, and in particularly, we usually think of strong fingers, equals a nice rich, big sound. But strength doesn't come from working harder. And I do not believe that we strengthen our fingers in a healthy way by using, you know, strengthening devices. You know, those grip strengtheners. I don't believe in those. I think they cause more injuries than they actually help you develop strength in your fingers. Your fingers are delicate. I mean, they will be strong. But physically speaking, there are a lot of ways in which we can injure them and you don't want to over tax them. And the good news is that when it comes to heart playing, strength, strong fingers doesn't come from working harder. The physical mechanics of a big sound all come down to motion.

Specifically one particular motion. You're going to hate this. You're going to just, you know, do one of those dope slaps. I can hear you hear you saying, ugh already. The motion that it comes from is closing your fingers. When we close our fingers, we are able to create a nice, rich, big sound. That's. That is beautiful. That is not tense, not relaxed. It's not tense. It is relaxed. And that comes just from closing. And think about this for a second, right? If, you know, think back to your physics class, if you had one in high school, simple physics, a lever or, you know, something with a fulcrum, right? Our fingers, if you consider the most important joint here that you're closing your fingers from, the all important knuckle. It's the one where your fingers join your hand all the way at the back of your finger, right? That's where you want to close your fingers from. And that's because it gives you nice long fingers with a nice big motion. And so that nice big motion allows you to get the sound that you want without having to work hard because you're only playing with a couple knuckles of your Finger, we want to use the whole thing. So closing from that back knuckle is what we're looking for. And that's where your strength is going to come from. It doesn't come from more effort. It comes from closing your fingers properly. And the proof that I offer for this, this may have happened to you. It may not. At least maybe not yet. But you might have had one of those moments where you're playing along and you're saying, ah, the sound just isn't quite right. Maybe it's in a lesson. And your teacher says, well, you're not closing your fingers. And so you start closing your fingers, and magically your sound is better. It might have happened to you in practice. You're thinking, boy, that sound isn't right. And so the thought occurs to you, oh, maybe I'm not closing my fingers. And you start closing your fingers, and voila, the tension's gone. You're not working so hard, and you're getting a big sound. It's like magic. And I'll give you a way to work at your closing in just a second. But first we need to get to that third S. That third S word is supple. Supple is such a wonderful word. It's so evocative. You think of things that are fluid and flowing and sinuous and just, you know, supple is wonderful. And when you think about having a supple technique or supple fingers, it just feels good, at least in your imagination. Right. So, but what would supple fingers or a supple technique do for you? Well, just imagine how deep your expression could go. It's that range of expression, that range of tone colors that flow to your music. You can just feel the relaxation in it. Right. Well, that's what suppleness is all about. It's about physical relaxation. It's also about, you know, mental focus and energy, putting that focus not into the fingers and what they need to do, but into what they need to create.

It's a little bit Zen, you know, in that the more you let go as you're playing, the more control you're actually going to have. But suppleness feels like the opposite of control. You can't exactly practice suppleness. I suppose you can, and I'm going to give you an idea for it in a moment. But practicing suppleness kind of feels awkward. But you create suppleness through movement. It's your motion that creates that supple feeling. And yes, closing is part of that and so is raising. If that's part of your technique, so is breathing.

But I think one of the key things that prevents us from having a supple technique is tension. I think when you know how to release tension and to play in a relaxed way, your technique becomes supple. And to go back to the control thing again, this is about letting go of the need to control every note, every finger, to let them play, to release your control, to let your fingers relax and do their stuff.

That's where a supple technique comes from. And that's why I say it's really hard to practice. It's hard to think about.

So in order to help you find some suppleness in your technique, we're going to talk about some ways to experiment with tension and relaxation. There's nothing that creates more tension in your hands than trying to relax them and getting all tense about trying to relax. It's kind of a vicious circle, isn't it? But you can create the ability to relax. And in fact, you can create the skill of being able to relax. So here's what I'd like you to try. Away from the harp, put your hands in a playing position, Just sort of simulate a playing position, but don't do it near the harp, because it. It is going to complicate things. We'll get there in a second and put them in playing position and then just tense them up. Don't change their position. Just make them really tense and stiff and then relax. You might find that it's really hard to think about putting that tension in there and then relaxing. But the idea here is to learn how to relax. And so you have to create some tension to relax from. So what I'd like you to try is just to tense your fingers and hold it for two beats and then relax immediately and stay relaxed for four beats. So it's going to be like tense, tense, relax, two, three, four. Tense, tense, relax, two comma three, four. Being able to do that is its own skill, because we want you to learn the difference between what tension feels like, what relaxation feels like, and be able to control that. So once you can do that, then put your fingers on the strings in any kind of position, on any strings, you know, where it's comfortable, and repeat this same thing. Just tense your fingers. You don't have to squeeze the strings. Just tense up your fingers and hold it for two beats and then release and relax for four beats. You can create relaxation. And that little exercise is enough to put you on the path to that. Give that A try, see what you think. Now let's talk about stability and strength and how to create those, how to practice those, if you will. So stability. Now, it can be very difficult to sort of isolate the muscles that you want to support your playing. But in general, what we want is for your hands, your wrists, your fingers, all to be relaxed and your arms, your upper arms to be the support for your hands. Now, this requires you to sit straight. We talked about that a moment ago. Be sure that your feet are on the floor, and this is a good exercise to do on your harp bench, but facing away from your harp. So hold your hands and particularly your elbows in a position where you would normally play. You know, maybe you're an elbows up person, maybe you're an elbows down person, but put them in a playing position. Then keeping your arms, your upper arms still, just wiggle your hands, wiggle your fingers, just flop them around a little bit. So from your wrist to your fingers is supposed to be totally floppy, and you can just kind of wiggle them all around without moving your upper arms. Now, you will feel this in your upper arms. You'll feel the support that your upper arms is giving to your hands. You might even feel your chest or your upper back muscles. Just be sure you're keeping your shoulders down, but you'll feel those upper arms as that support system, the stabilizers for your hands. That's what we want. We want those places where you're gonna have muscles that you can use and develop your upper arms. Don't we all want nice, toned upper arms? Well, here's. Here's a thought. So we want those big muscles to be doing the support work so that those little tiny hand and finger muscles can do their stuff. So try that away from the heart. Then pull your heart back and do the same kind of thing. Don't put your hands on the strings yet. Keep them a little, you know, a little distance away from the strings. But once again, feel your body seated in a strong position and your upper arms are supporting your hands and wiggle your hands around, and that's pretty much the feeling that you want when you play. Then put those hands on the strings and see if you can still feel your arms supporting your hands. Feel how free that makes your fingers to have the support be in your upper arms and not trying to hold onto the strings with your fingers or creating tension in your forearms to try to stay where you need to be. This is about those upper arms, and that's how you can create a stable technique by having the right Support system. And then let's talk for just a moment about a little exercise for practicing strength. Okay? I told you, it's all about closing. And that's what I want you to work on. So I want you to learn to feel the right hinge that you need to close your fingers. A lot of people will think they're closing their fingers and they're only moving, you know, a third or maybe two thirds of their finger. They're not really closing all the way. So once again, face away from the harp and I want you to have your fingers straight out. So think about your, your arm. You don't have to be in playing position here. Just however, just put your hand out in front of you and think about a straight line from your elbow to the tip of your fingers, just so that it's nice and straight. Then keeping your fingers fairly straight, the, the joints of your fingers, close your fingers 90 degrees using that knuckle, that joint where your fingers join your hand. It's almost like kind of a, a silly version of like wave bye bye. Right? You're not going to move the little joints of your fingers. You're just moving from that back knuckle. Your fingers won't stay perfectly straight and that's okay, but you want to get the feeling of closing from that back knuckle all the way to your hand. This is where that long lever of finger comes in. Right. I often hear people say, oh, I wish I had long fingers. Well, you know, let's. No matter how long your fingers are, you can use the whole length of them and that would be a good idea. So that back knuckle, that's the joint where you're closing comes from. Now still facing away from the harp, start in the same kind of position, but close your entire finger this time the way you would when you would play. Not just the sort of 90 degree wave bye bye kind of thing. Close your fingers the way you would when you play. But be careful to still close from that back joint. And remember to close your fingers flat into your hand. You don't want to tuck that knuckle under. We're not punching anybody here. We're keeping, keeping those, those first knuckles, you know, like the ones with your fingernails on them, keeping them flat in the palm of your hand. We don't want to tuck them in. So closing from that back joint, closing your fingers all the way into your hand. That's what closing should feel like. Then put your hand on the harp and try one finger at a time. You can put you Know all four fingers on if you like, and just try one finger. Or you could put your thumb and one finger on at a time and you should try it to have them close all, all the way in. Now don't neglect your thumb with this one either. Your thumb should close from the very back joint of its thumb, right? So you know, there's your thumb. Your thumb isn't just those two stubby little joints at the top where the webbing is. It goes all the way back to the base of your hand. It's almost as long if you measure it, it's probably as long as your middle finger.

So it's nice and long. You want to lose. You want to use, not lose. You want to use that whole thumb. So think about it closing all the way as well.

So that closing practice away from the harp and at the harp is what's going to make your technique strong. And it can be relaxed and it should be even when you're doing these funny little drills, right? So we've talked about stability and in particular the support system that is your entire posture at the harp and then using your upper arms to support your fingers and hands. We talked about strength, particularly when it comes to closing, using that range of motion of your entire finger to make the biggest sound you can, because that's what we want from a strong technique. And then we talked about suppleness coming from relaxation. And I gave you that little drill to create the tension and then learn to release it. You can create relaxation even when you're playing. So these are sort of those non exercise exercises that are going to help you feel these three key elements to your technique. You can keep them in mind as you practice your exercises and your scales and and your technique will be improving in the way you want it to improve, to serve your music best, which is what we really want. As we wrap this up, I want to give you another reminder to check out the Chorale Challenge and contest in the Heart Mastery Hub. There's a link to the special page devoted to this in today's show notes. Also, I invite you to be part of our my Heart Mastery community. Watch your email because all kinds of special invitations and little tips and hints and videos and stuff will be coming your way in the next couple of weeks. And don't forget, put that launch party on your calendar for Friday, May 17th at 11am Eastern. And I'll be doing a big reveal of what's new at my Heart Mastery next week. Here on the podcast we're talking about music practice for the the free spirit. You don't like to be bound to a practice routine. You like to mix things up. We will talk about some great ways to do it, and if you're not a free spirit, maybe some reasons you'd like to try some of these things. So fun stuff on next week's podcast. In the meantime, until I see you next week, 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.