Spice Up Your Scales for Technique, Flexibility and Speed - PHH 064

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. Scales are so simple on the harp. Unlike on other instruments, all of our scales have the same fingering. I remember being a young piano student and struggling with the fingering patterns that seemed different for each major and minor key. Those black and white keys caused a lot of fingering complications. But on the harp, all our scales are fingered exactly alike. All the changes are in our levers or our pedals, not our fingers. It couldn't get any easier. Ironically, this is the reason that many harpists don't bother practicing their scales. After all, if they're this easy, what could be the benefit?

Well, scales, along with chords and arpeggios, are one of the technical building blocks for every harpist. In every piece we play, our fingers need to move sequentially, right as they do in a scale. They need to play evenly, smoothly, and musically. They need to play fast. And the single best way to develop that level of facility is by practicing scales. So why aren't you practicing your scales? Or are you practicing them but not seeing any improvement? Well, as with most things, there are more effective and less effective ways to practice scales. On this episode today, I will review the most important basics of scale technique. After all, if you don't know the right way to play a scale, practicing them wrong won't help. Plus, afterward, I'll share some ways to practice scales that will almost instantly add flexibility and speed to your fingers. Trust me, these scale patterns are fun. Now, I'm going to be covering quite a lot in this episode, and a lot of it is going to be material that you wish you could see, not just listen to. Now, this is a podcast and so all I can do is talk to you and I can't show you. And that's probably a good thing because I know some of you listen to this podcast while you are in the car or while you are, you know, walking on the treadmill or something. And I don't want this to be a safety hazard, but because this is one of those things that would be so helpful to actually be able to see. There are some videos that go along with portions of this podcast, and they are available on our YouTube channel. So what I would suggest is sometime when you are not on the treadmill or driving the car or trying to. Trying to, you know, cook dinner, you can head over to our YouTube channel and look for the scale videos that would go with this podcast. You'll find them. They're. They're easy to spot. And you'll be able to subscribe to our channel while you're there, which will be the most efficient thing for you to do. Why? Because we are releasing video content over there on our YouTube channel all the time. Things that relate to the podcast, things that are just totally different. Some specific content just for YouTube. And if you subscribe to the channel, you'll get notified of everything as it goes up. So I'm not sure, as I voice record this right now, I'm not sure exactly when the video portions for this will be up, but I suggest you head over to the YouTube channel and take a look, because if they're not already up, they will be up very soon. So you can hit that subscribe button and you'll be all set, totally in the know. And now let's start talking about scales. And I'd like to start by talking about some fundamentals. Well, any discussion of scales needs to start with a discussion of the fundamentals, a quick review of what's really important about scales. Now, I think a lot of people believe that fingering is the most important thing about scales. But actually, I think that fingering is the most adjustable, the freest part of our scales. After all, all our scales are fingered the same. So we have a lot of fingering options for our scales, and you don't want to get locked into just one. So what I think is the most important aspect of scales to concentrate on from a technique aspect is, is the cross under or crossover. And we talked about this before, it's just really critical. I'm playing a G major scale here, just so you know. But when your hand is on the strings properly and it's centered, all your fingers are nicely curved and your thumb is high. You've got a nice big space. So that you can play your thumb properly, your fingers close into your hand. Those first three notes are great. And then you have to cross under with your fourth finger, or with your third finger perhaps would be another scale option. And you need to have enough room that your thumb can play. We talked about this just recently, didn't we, with thumbs. So you want to have enough room that your thumb can play. And you need to have enough security with the placing of your fourth finger that your thumb feels confident and your fourth finger isn't wiggly on the string so that your thumb can play. Then your fourth finger serves as the pivot point to go on from there, so you can finish that scale, in this case a one octave scale. So the most important aspects of the cross under here are going to be these. When you get to that thumb and you're crossing under, place your fourth finger far enough down the string, not way far down where you can't reach, but far enough down that your thumb still has room to play. And then when you end securely on the strings so that it's not wobbling, then play your thumb, use your fourth finger to pivot, place the rest of your fingers on the string, center your hand over those four notes and then go right. So we've got the placement of your fourth finger, you know, not scrunched up against your thumb, nice and lowish, naturally low, not stretched down way too low, but just naturally low. And then we've got that, you know, we want that space for your thumb so that the cross under is nice and even. Remember also that this is going to involve shifting your arm. This isn't just a hand thing. So that when your hand is centered over those first four notes.

That'S one position. Then it recenters just a little bit for the cross under. Then it recenters big time as you place those next four notes. And that placement involves moving your arm, involves moving your arm, upper arm, back, bending that elbow so that you can keep your hand centered. Now, crossing over on the way down is very similar. You're going to start just those first three notes are kind of nothing, right? But then your fourth finger's on the string. Don't place your thumb too low. That's a big mistake. If you place your thumb too low, your hand is all scrunched up and nothing will play well. So let your thumb place so that your hand doesn't feel scrunched, but that it feels open. This will give your fourth finger room to play, and it will keep your thumb high enough that you can place your other Fingers on the string.

And play with a nice equal sound. That's not all, all tense and tight because it's scrunched up. So once again, you're re centering your hand, aren't you? Because your hand is centered over those first notes, it pivots, it moves for the crossover and then recenters again for those last four notes. Don't do it all with your wrist. Remember to move your arm, right? We've got that whole arm to support our hand. That's what's important. Now if in a cross under or crossover situation you feel like you're getting too far up the strings or too far down the strings, you can slide. You can slide so that.

If your cross under is too low and you feel like you're playing too far down on the strings, after you play your thumb, but before you play your fourth finger, slide up just a little bit as you replace your other fingers, it's almost one motion so that you're going to play your thumb. And then as you replace your other fingers, you can slide up a little bit. Just be sure to complete your slide before you play your fourth finger, otherwise you won't get the same kind of sound. So that's our brief review of scale fundamentals. Center your hand. Let's leave enough room when you cross under or cross over so that your thumb and fourth finger can both play. Then move your arm to keep your hand centered. So those are the basic fundamentals. Now the basic fundamental fingering, that's something else we can talk about. As I have mentioned before, scale fingering on the harp is terrific because it's very flexible. Our scales can all have the same fingering if we want, or we can use different fingering. So let's start by talking about the basic scale fingering in a one octave scale. It's pretty simple. We've got eight notes and four fingers, so we use them twice, right? 4, 3, 2, 1. 4, 3, 2, 1 and then right back down with the same fingering. Easy. But what if we add extra octaves? What if the scale is longer than one octave? Well, remember that only one octave of the scale is going to actually have eight notes. All the other octaves really have seven. Because there are, and I know this seems sort of counterintuitive, but there are seven different notes in an octave, right? I'm in G major here. So this is G, A, B, C, D, F sharp.

And then the next note's a G, so that repeats. So those seven notes, G, A, B, C, D E, F sharp and G Form the octave, they form the eight notes. But the next octave is only going to have seven different notes. So when we play a multiple octave scale, we want to have only seven fingers. So one of those groups of fingers can't be a group of four if we want to come out even on our thumb.

So one way to look at it is that while that first octave is going to have eight notes in it, and you can use a four finger group and a four finger group, each successive octave is going to require a three finger group and a four finger group for you to come out even. And that would be even on, on your thumb with your thumb at the top of the scale, right. So that you don't have sort of extra fingers kind of hanging in there. So I mean, we could play 4, 3, 2, 1, all the way up as many octaves as we would want.

But in three octaves my thumb doesn't get to a G. And so that's what I'm talking about. So now, having said that, that we've got one octave that's going to have two groups of four and every other octave having a group of three and a group of four. The order in which you put those is pretty much up to you. There's no one right way to do it. So one way I often do it is to start.

And I start with a group of four, then a group of three and I use a group of four and a group of three until I get to my last octave. And then my last group is a group of four. So I use four and three and four and three and. And then my last octave is going to be 4 and 4. Now this allows me to play as long a scale as I want and just get that last group of four in at the end. And then going down, I can do the same thing I could do kind of in reverse. A group of four, then a group of three, a group of four, a group of three, a group of four. And then finally my last group is all is another group of four. So this gives me a way to continue the scale, stop it when I want, and have a pretty consistent fingering. However, there's nothing to say that you couldn't start with a group of three than a group of four.

And there's nothing to say you couldn't start with the two groups of four and do the threes or fours in either order after that, because the scale is going to come out the same. We don't have like pianists do, we don't have black keys and White keys to have to maneuver around, which might make one fingering more convenient than another. So my suggestion for basic scale fingering is this.

Pick one that you like and you need to work these in multiple octaves. You need to be able to be comfortable with a 2 octave scale and a 3 octave scale in each hand. And of course, you're going to practice them hands alone and hands together, right? But you're going to want to be comfortable with those multi octave scales. But because they come up and because scales are a great way to practice finger flexibility. And I'll show you some fingering patterns that will push you even a little further in just a moment. But you want that fingering flexibility that a scale gives you in a way that no other technique really does on the harp. So scales are worthwhile, multiple octave scales especially. So pick a fingering that you like. If you want to start with three and then four, if you want to start with four and four, however you want to do it. But I would suggest that you try all of them and that you sort of mix that up so that you don't feel locked into one scale. Fingering, having that flexibility, having all those fingering things in your toolbox, right? Your little technique toolbox is wonderful. It's what's going to give you the ability to react.

To sight read, to do all the fingering that you might need to do for a specific piece, to do that well and to do it pretty much instantly, because all of those options will be open to you. So maybe you want to write out sort of one or two or maybe three different ways to finger scales that you really like and practice them on successive days. You don't need to do these the same every time. And in fact, I think it's a good idea that you don't. So that's one level of flexible fingering that you can get from practicing scales. But let's take that to the next level and I'm going to show you a few scales that have very different fingering patterns that just test your finger flexibility in ways that may or may not show up in real music, but are really good for your technique. And they're kind of fun too. So one of the scale fingerings that's very useful is a scale fingering in just three fingers. Three, two, one, three, two, one. Three, two, one, 3, two, one, three, 2. One, two, three. One, two, three, two, three. One, 2, 3. One, two, three. Now that comes out even. I mean, with your thumb on the top note, that comes out even in two octaves. But you know what? You can just keep going and do another octave if you like.

Or half an octave even.

However you like. You know what's different about a 3, 2, 1 scale? Well, the cross under and cross unders are now with three and one. So. And you'll find that this feels very different from a four, one, cross under or crossover, right? It just feels different. And you want to think about it the same way that we have talked about before, so that your third finger and thumb feel balanced, that there's enough room for your thumb to play, and that your third finger is securely on the string to serve as a pivot as you replace the other fingers. Because you want to replace them all at the same time, right? So a 3, 2, 1 scale fingering, you've seen that before. You've used it very, very useful. You'll find plenty of situations in real music where the 3, 2, 1 scale is exactly what you need. And of course, practicing a 3, 2, 1 scale gives you options for combining groups of three and groups of four in a way that's situation specific and can solve a specific, specific issue for you in a piece, rather than just being. This is the way I play a regular scale. When I'm warming up on scales or practicing scales, I do a group of four, a group of three, a group of four, a group of 3. This will give you the ability to mix it up a little bit more. But let's go to one more level with that. What about a scale that's just two and one? Oh, I know you hadn't thought of that, right? Well, this may or may not be something that's useful in real music, but my goodness, is it useful for your fingers just to do 2 and 1 and then cross under with your second finger? This gives you a chance from a technique perspective. This gives you a chance to see how even your second finger and thumb can be in terms of dynamic and tone and to keep that really even. It also helps you really increase the space for your thumb so that you're. Because if your second finger places too high, your thumb has no place to play at all. You want your second finger to place low and it without pointing downward. We don't want that. And two in one so that it's light and fast and you know, whether you're going up or down is a wonderful, freeing sort of a thing. So two in one, easy and good fingering to practice. What if we do the last combination that keeps the fingers in order but removes a very critical finger? What if you were to practice a scale that didn't use your thumb. Now, this is one that I find a lot of fun and it's a challenge because we're used to using that thumb as an anchor for the rest of our hand. But if you just play 4, 3, 2 and then cross under with 4, you've got your second finger on the string and then you're crossing under with four and replacing three and two.

It's a three finger scale. Sure, but no thumb. I had to look for that one.

So. And then on the way down, the same thing. Close your fingers, keep your arms steady.

And as they used to say about the Yellow Pages back when we had telephone directories, let your fingers do the walking, right? They're just going to walk their way up and down the strings. Without that extra support of your thumb, it will help you find the balance point of your arm because the support of your arm here becomes super critical. You really need to use your arm to keep your hand steady because your thumb is not involved. When might you use this? All kinds of times. Perhaps your thumb is busy, you've got a some kind of situation, some kind of.

Little melody there going on in your thumb. And you want these fingers, four, three, two, to be even. Maybe they're in a scale.

And you want those fingers to be really even. This is a great way to do it. So these scales, working them slowly and then increasing in tempo are terrific for working on your finger flexibility. But what about speed? Well, let's talk about that next. Working in scales is a great way to speed up your fingers. Now, I'm not talking about just playing your scales faster. I mean, that's a great thing to do. But there are specific ways to work on your scales that will help your fingers get faster in your scales and elsewhere. And the best way I have found to work on this particular thing is to use rhythms. So we're going to play your scales, but in different rhythms. Now, certainly to help speed up your scales in your fingers, you could just start playing your scales faster. And that's a great way to do it. That works. But there are some other ways that are at least as effective and have some other little benefits built into them. And really working your scales in rhythms is terrific for this. And it's because we get a chance to put accents on different fingers. We get a chance to play some notes fast, but others not, which helps us sort of ease into a faster tempo. It's great for your rhythm training and it's kind of fun to do too. So, you know yes, you can play your scales just plain old doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. And all that works. But what if we mix it up? Well, let me show you how I like to do that. First of all, one of my favorite rhythms, and perhaps the simplest to work in, is a long, short rhythm. And it would be similar to a dotted 8th and a 16th, a long note and a short note. And it just, it gives you the chance to have every other note be accented just the way you might in a regular scale. But it also speeds up some of those vital connections in a scale. So that in a two octave scale you have different fingers that have that extra urgency to go from a short note to a long note and have to place quickly. So it would be something like this long, short, long, short, long, short, long.

Now, I didn't do that as crisply as a real dotted 8th 16th would be. This was kind of like a, a moderate triplet kind of thing. A pretty easy rhythm. You could do it more crisply and more 16th. Notice like this one E and a two E and a one E and a two E and A one E and a two E and the one E and a two E and.

And so you see how that can really, you know, you've get, you've got plenty of time to think on the long notes, but then those short notes have to get to the next long note pretty quickly. This is a great way to speed things up and it's a great practice technique for sections that maybe even aren't in scales to help speed those up. But we can talk about that another time. So what if you started with a long, short rhythm and then what if you move to triplets? 2, 3, 4, 1. 2, 3, 4, 1. Okay, so it didn't come out even in a two octave scale, but that doesn't matter. But think about the difference in the accents that your finger has. Right? The accents are going to come on a different finger. Now I'm going to put my metronome on.

Nice. And just listen to the difference. If I do a plain old scale using this as sort of my quarter note, it'll be sort of, you know, and I'll start in my regular scale, might be in eighth notes.

Right? Okay.

And we're going to keep that beat the same, but we'll do it with a long, short rhythm. Ready? And it goes like this.

Okay, now the same beat but with triplets. So now all my fingers are moving just a little bit faster than they were in my first scale. And the accents are going to be very different. And I'm going to make those accents a little bit stronger than I would have in my. In just a regular legato sort of a scale, just to give my fingers practice at having to be the strong finger. So one triplet, two triplets.

Once again, doesn't come out even. That's okay. That's all right. That doesn't matter. So there's triplets. Now already my scale is a little bit faster, right? I kept the pulse the same. I haven't changed the metronome. But playing three notes to a beat is certainly faster than playing two notes to a beat, which is where I started. Now let's do some other rhythms. I have a couple others that are real favorites and very useful. We're going to do. It's a variation on a. On a triplet idea. We're going to have three notes to the beat, but we're going to have long, short, short, long, short, short. Sort of like an 8th and 2:16. And so that would go this way. Long, short, short. Ready?

Already you can see that we've sped up those notes because those 16th notes are faster than the triplets. So we've got one note that's going a little slower, but the other two are going faster. Your fingers are moving faster to keep up with it. And then you can do the reverse of that. So instead of long, short, short, we can do short, short, long. This moves the accents and moves the fast fingers. So we'll do short, short, long.

And you can do this for two octave scales, three octave scales, one octave scales, whichever you like. But you can see how those different accents and the different speeds is going to help you move faster. Now, from here, if you like, you can take. I'm going to turn my metronome off. You can take the metronome up a couple of notches. And you'll find that having done your rhythm scales at that speed, your plain old regular, straight scales will be able to go a little bit faster. Your fingers will naturally speed up. And it's. It's fun. It's really good for your rhythm. It's good for your. All kinds of things, right? You can sense that. Now, one of the patterns that I really like, and you don't have to do this one if you don't feel up to it. But I like. I would challenge you to give it a try because it's going to really help mix things up. Just. And you know, when you mix things up, you learn more things, right? So I'M going to put my metronome back on. Same beat.

What if you played five notes to the beat? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 4,. 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5. It's hard to say that fast. It's not that hard to play that fast. Not as hard as saying it. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.

But that's the next step up from everything we've done, is to play quintuplets. Now, there are a lot of other rhythms that you can play and you can, you know, I have a blog post and I think a video on YouTube that talks about seven different rhythms that you can try because there are certainly others that you can do as well. But these are the rhythms that I recommend to really help jumpstart your scales and get your fingers, in addition to just playing your scales, to get your fingers in general moving a little faster to free them up. So today we've talked about scale fundamentals, we've talked about freeing your fingers and flexibility and, and we've talked about different rhythmic patterns that will help your scales go faster. Pretty nice.

I told you these patterns would be fun, right? Some fun fingerings, some fun rhythms, and ones that will not only be fun to play, but will really make a difference in the flexibility and the speed of your fingers. And it's a great, great thing to add to any sort of warm up regimen as well. So don't forget, we will be posting the video portions from this podcast also. So head on over to our YouTube channel. You will find the link to our channel right in the show notes. Although you can search for heart mastery on YouTube and we'll come right up. But while you're there, please subscribe to our channel because that's how we can get you notified of all the new video content that we put up there. And we're putting a lot of content up pretty regularly and I don't have time to let all the email subscribers and podcast subscribers know about it. So if you subscribe on YouTube, you'll get instantly notified. And I know that there are things relating to this podcast for sure that you're going to want to look at and not just hear about. So head on over to YouTube and I look forward to interacting with you there Next week on the podcast. Podcast, we'll be talking about 10 harp adventures that you can have and adventures you can create before the summer is over. I know the summer is flying by, isn't it? We're, you know, coming up on the middle of August and it's not too late to have some harp adventures, and you can create them right from your own harp room. So we'll be talking about those on the podcast next time. Kind of a fun summary sort of podcast. But until then, remember that 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. All right, I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.