Starting a Piece? Don’t Take It From the Top - PHH 232

I think this is not dissimilar to the kind of results that we can get if we start by alright, I'm going to take these first couple measures and I'm going to learn them. I'm going to do the whole thing hands separately and then I'm going to put it hands together. I'm going to work on just the first page and when I get that exactly right, then I'll go on to the next one. Those approaches seem very sensible, they seem organized, they seem systematic, and I think that they're wrong.

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 place. 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.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the Miharp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists and anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join us. Just go to harpmastery.comjoinnow. that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. So you decided to learn a new piece for the holidays. Good for you. When I think of all the years I've been playing the harp, it's a little amazing that I still feel that little thrill when I pick up a new piece of music to learn. And I'm sure you feel the same. Starting a new piece is a voyage of discovery with the promise of adventure, new notes to conquer, a few challenges to meet along the way, and finally, a beautiful piece of music we can play. Of course, the voyage is often a little tougher than we anticipate. It can take longer than we thought and can be more discouraging. We can't always eliminate the difficulties or estimate exactly how long it will take us to learn a piece. However, we can give ourselves the biggest advantage we can by getting the strongest and fastest start we can to the piece. One of my frustrations with the way harp learning is often taught is that it teaches the student to be slow. Certainly playing slowly and learning carefully are necessary to developing good habits, to creating and maintaining a strong technique, and to playing with relaxation and fluidity. But slow playing doesn't have to be the first step in learning a new piece. In fact, it really shouldn't be. It may be the way you learned to start new pieces when you were a harp newbie, but. But if you have become a more experienced harpist since then, if you're still learning with the same processes, it's time for an update. So today I'm going to give you a faster system for starting a piece. It works for any harpist at any level. And even if you've already started your piece, you can put this system in play now and you'll cut out days or maybe weeks of your learning curve. But don't think this is all about playing faster. It's about starting with the music so you can end up playing the music instead of just practicing it. Last week's podcast episode was about creating that six week holiday plan so that you could play your music and be sure that it was ready for those holiday performances you have coming up. And I got so much response to that, people, you know, asking about creating a holiday plan and what that was going to be like. And so I have decided to offer five one on one coaching slots with me to work on that six week plan. So this is like a little mini coaching program. We're going to start with a 30 minute strategy call to create that holiday plan and of course base this around your own goals, your own music and your practice time. We'll also include a backup plan because it's nice to know that we're not hanging all of our holiday plans on one specific schedule in case something goes a little sideways. So we'll follow up that strategy call with a one hour lesson that's a week later to really make sure that we're honing in on everything that needs to happen and needs to be ready and make sure you know how to do that. And then we'll have another 30 minute call two weeks after that so that we can review what's done, what's left to do, and see what needs to happen if we need to adjust what's going on. So this is one way that I can help you personally be sure that you're ready for the holidays. So this is, as I said, a little mini coaching package and I'm only opening five slots because in my holiday plan that's all I have time for. So you'll find the link to register for one of those spots. Now. Registration is opening today and the registration for this is only open for a week. Because we have to get going right now. We'll set up these calls at a mutually convenient time so we can find a scheduled time that works. But if you want my help getting your music ready, getting it organized, strategized, creating those plans so that you're ready on time, this is your chance. I've never offered this exactly like this before, so I'm looking forward to having the chance to work with you. But you need to get in and get that spot secured right now. But I also want to let you know about something else that's coming up. Another opportunity for in person learning. We're going to be opening registration for our getaway retreat at the end of this week. So the very last weekend in October going into November. So Friday October 31st to Sunday, November 2nd. So if you're listening to this podcast now, this is the thing you want to take away if you are interested in registering for our getaway retreat which will be at the end of February, February 2026. We are opening registration this weekend and we are opening with a flash sale. So we're putting our retreat tickets on sale for this very first weekend only. And you'll find all the details about this on our registration page. But we not opening the registration until Friday and then Our flash sale will be open until Sunday, and then those prices will go away, and we'll be back on sort of our regular pricing schedule. So we're going to start with a bang here and see what we can do to inspire you to put some me time in your harp playing. So those are two things that are coming up that I wanted to be sure you knew about, because they're ways to make your harp learning even more personal and to speed your learning along the path. Nothing like learning one on one to really make that happen. Right. I mentioned that. I think that when it comes to learning music, we don't often, as teachers, tell our students when they need to speed up their learning processes or maybe even how to do it. And so that's what we're talking about today. Not just speeding up what you're doing, but getting to the music faster by starting faster. Not faster in terms of tempo necessarily, but starting faster in terms of how you look at a piece and how you expect to get it done. So think about what happens when you first look at a piece and you get ready to play it. Now, you might do all kinds of looking and all kinds of thinking about what's there about the piece, and. And that's a very good thing. And we'll talk more about that in a moment, because I have ideas. What a surprise about how you want to do that, too. I want you to think about that moment when you are at the harp. The music's in front of you. What's the first thing that you do? Well, this might not be your particular method, but I know for a lot of people it's all right. I'm going to dig in and I'm going to just learn those notes, and they pick it apart and learn it and note by note. This may be hands separately, it may be hands together, but it's just digging in and starting to get it done. Like, all right, I'm going to roll up my sleeves and I'm going to get to work. And that's where we can make a big mistake in our learning. And that's where I want to start. So take the music out of the. Out of the equation for a moment and consider this as a metaphor for what I'm talking about. Imagine you were going to paint a portrait. Now, for me, that takes quite a bit of imagining because I'm not that kind of visual artist at all. But imagine you were going to paint a portrait, and so you're going to start by making a sketch, right? So you start and you make that sketch, and it's the outline, and you get all the basic shapes in, and then you can start adding to the portrait. You can start making all the. All the colors exactly the way you want them and filling in all those details and making that sketch come to life. And that sounds normal, right? But what if you were a different kind of artist? And you said, well, okay, I'm going to start with the ear, and I'm going to get every single thing about that ear, right? And then I'm going to add to it, and maybe I'll work on the nose and you work on it piece by piece. Well, you could end up with something much more, I don't know, Picasso esque, couldn't you? Because you. You didn't start with the sketch. You didn't start with that outline and gradually fill in the details. You started with one portion of the portrait and then began to create other portions of the portrait from there. A very piecemeal approach that may or may not get you the portrait that you really want.

I think this is not dissimilar to the kind of results that we can get if we start by. All right, I'm going to take these first couple measures, and I'm going to learn them. I'm going to do the whole thing hands separately, and then I'm going to put it hands together. I'm going to work on just the first page, and when I get that exactly right, then I'll go on to the next one. Those approaches seem very sensible. They seem organized, they seem systematic. And I think that they're wrong. And it's not that you can't learn a piece that way, but it doesn't give you the best perspective on the piece right from the beginning. And it can actually cost you a lot of practice time. You don't want to make every little detail right without looking at that big picture. And there are some ways I want to give you today to look at that big picture and to keep that front of mind so that you don't end up with, you know, an ear that's really huge and a nose that's really small and an eye that's in the wrong place in your portrait, if you know what I mean. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. It's not just starting with the end in mind. It's starting with the big picture right in view. It's making that total sketch so that you know where everything's going to go. And then you can work on the individual components of that from there. Now, that may or may not make a lot of sense to you right now, so I need to explain it. So let's dig into this concept just a little bit. Think about how you listen to a piece of music. When a piece of music is playing, are you listening to the individual notes or are you listening to what the music is saying? Are you listening to the way it flows and to sort of the overall idea of the music? Well, most of us listen to that bigger musical picture, right? That's the thing I want you to compare to that sketch of the piece. We're looking at the whole thing. We're listening to the whole thing, which means that those notes that we're working so hard on, and the fingerings and the rhythms and all that, they're the details. That's what we're going to fill in as we go. Now, you and I both know we're going to spend a lot of time making those details, right? But they're the details. They're not what actually matters in the piece. That's why when we make a mistake as we're playing, if we can play past the mistake, it doesn't actually hurt the overall experience of the piece for a listener.

So, yes, we want those things to be right, but that's not where we start. That's like starting with the ear. We're going to start with that bigger musical idea. So the very first thing we need to do, I think, is to start with thinking about the structure of the piece. Now, when I mean structure, I don't mean theoretical form. We don't need to get involved in big words or in anything that's complex. We need to start with the structure as we understand it. What is it like? What is the piece about? Is it a minuet? Is it moonlight? Does it have a picture? Does it have an idea that we associate with it? Or what do we want it to be like when it grows up? Right? What's the mood of the piece? What kind of dynamics? What kind of tempo idea? What are the pieces of the piece? The structural parts. Does it have an introduction? Does it have sort of an opening part, Maybe a verse one? And maybe it does the same thing again, kind of like a verse two. Maybe it's got an interlude. Maybe it's got a whole different section. Maybe it has a special ending. You know, what happens in it. We need that overall view of the picture. And why do we need this? Because it puts the notes in perspective. Now, it can also save us a lot of learning time if we Realize that, oh, look, the beginning and the interlude and the ending are all kind of similar.

That's going to save us some time, because we know that when we practice the beginning, the very introduction, the opening, and we're going to see that same thing again in the interlude. And we can learn those almost at the same time and say, okay, this is the same between these two sections, but this is a little bit different. And we can do the same with the ending. So that can save us time right there. But also, when you're looking at that big musical idea, that structure of the piece, it helps you formulate what you want it to be, and it gives you kind of a goal. It gives you a. This is what I want the piece to be when it grows up. And it gives you a destination. It gives you a reason for doing everything else you're going to do in your practice. I mean, it's not just learning notes. It's learning these particular notes so that they sound a particular way, because that's how they serve the piece. And this is what saves so much practice time, because it lets you practice the notes the right way, not just so that they're correct, but so that the practice that you're doing gives them the ultimate meaning you want them to have. And this plays out in terms of dynamics, in terms of flow, in terms of how you balance a melody and a harmony. When you know what something means, it's much easier to do it the right way so that you get that result. We don't want to practice it. Practice it and then figure out how those pieces fit together. We want to know how they fit together from the beginning. So that's why starting with the structure, maybe you want to call it something else. Starting with the big, big musical idea, starting with something. But starting with that whole musical picture in mind is so important. And looking at the music, this is what you do, right? You listen to it maybe, but you look at the music and you say, oh, all right. These are the big sections. This is the big story that this piece is going to tell. That's where you start. Now we can start digging into the notes just a little bit. And I know that might make you breathe a sigh of relief because you were worried there for a second, right? Okay, well, let's talk about how you approach those notes. Let's remember that we're starting with a sketch. We're not trying to create the finished product as we go. We're going to start with the basic outline and the sketch. And that's not just Looking at the musical story or structure, the way I said a moment ago, when we start playing, we're going to make that sketch too. So this is why I often talk about the first experience with the piece should be playing all the way through it, doing as much hands together as you can, going hands separately when you need to, and if you can get it close to the kind of tempo you think you might want, that's great. If you can't, that's okay, too. But let's go all the way through it. We need to know what. What's there. Now, this has a couple of advantages. First of all, it doesn't leave us starting from the beginning of the piece and then working really hard on that, and then down the line finding out that actually the part we needed to really work on was further on in that second page, and that that was the really hard part. And it would have been really good if we'd known that and been drilling that all the way along. That's one way to slow down your progress. If you spend a lot of time getting one part of it right, and then discover that the hard part is yet to come. Okay, so playing all the way through it can help you get a much better idea of what the entire piece looks like. That's one good reason to start that way. But there's another. As you're going through that piece for that initial playthrough, you might discover that there are parts of it that you actually can play kind of okay, the very first time you go through a piece. That's important, too, because now you know what? You don't have to practice, or at least practice so hard. Because here's one of my cardinal rules that works that I think is the most important thing, and one of those things we tend to forget. Don't practice anything you don't have to. I mean, suppose you start a piece and you dig in from the beginning and you say, okay, I'm going to work on these first 16 bars, and I'm going to get them, you know, really polished. And you think, okay, these aren't so hard, but you practice them anyway because you want to get them exactly right. And then you discover that the stuff that comes later is a lot harder. You've put a lot of practice time into something you really didn't need to. Lots of times what happens at the beginning of a piece shows up later on in the piece. And so you're going to get lots of practice time on that. Anyway, we don't want you to spend practice Time that you don't have to working on something. We want it to be right and you will practice it. But in that initial playthrough, you're going to find out what does work or kind of works in addition to finding out what doesn't work. Please don't think that this is just a technique for advanced harpists and that you can't do this if you're a beginner. This is super important, even for beginners. Now, understand that it's going to be messy. We understand that it's not going to be right. That's okay. I want you to look at it as a learning experience and not just learning how to play this piece or learning about this piece, but how to move your learning forward in general. And if you're past those beginning stages of your harp journey, this is one way to keep your reading skills sharp or to sharpen them if your reading skills aren't exactly where you want them to be. So here's what's happening when you play through that piece. Initially, if you have to do it hands separately, do it hands separately. But if you can do it hands together, even little bits and pieces of it say, okay, you're playing through and this part I have to do hands separately. But oh, look, these next few bars I can do hands together. That's great. Do it as close to tempo as you can, at least where you can manage it. This initial playthrough doesn't have to sound like a polished performance. It's going to have stops and starts and it's going to. Oh, all right. Hands separately here. Let me see what the melody is. Fine, let me just keep going through. Oh, I can do hands together here. Oh, look at this part. You know, it's not going to sound like a polished read through. Now maybe you're a really good sight reader and maybe this piece isn't super difficult and you will be able to read it all the way through at tempo. Terrific. This is why I tell you, don't practice anything you don't have to, because you're going to speed your way to your destination pretty quickly here, whether you can sight read it well or not. The idea is that you're just going to get through the piece so that you have experienced everything that's there.

Watch out for a couple of traps. Don't assume that you need to get every finger right on this first playthrough. Don't pay so much attention to the fingering. Let your fingers just kind of stumble through what's there. Believe me, you're going to spend plenty of time with this piece, and you're going to fix that fingering. But don't start with that. That's too small a detail to start with. Trust your fingers to sort of understand that they can read the notes and they'll get on the right strings. And if they stumble and trip over themselves, that's okay. We're going to play it through first. Once we start working on it, we can start sorting out the fingering. So don't get stuck on that at this point. And when it comes to tempo, I really do want you to see what it's like to play it through as close to tempo as you can. And it may not be very close at the beginning, but try it anyway. I want you to test that tempo even if you can't do it. I mean, maybe there are a few measures, maybe just the first two, I don't know, or maybe even a line or two that work at tempo or close to it. Hands separately, if not hands together. So don't slow those down. For everything else, let them be faster. We'll even it out. We'll fill in those details. But let those measures that you can play at tempo set the standard for the rest of what you're working on. Don't slow those down if you don't have to.

Do you see how this fits with the whole idea of working toward the end and getting as big, big a step forward toward it as you can right at the beginning? If we don't need to take something slowly, let's not. Even if it's eight measures here and eight measures there, that's okay if we don't need to drill the fingering, because our fingers can figure it out on their own. Terrific. If we don't need to play at hand separately, let's not. As we become more familiar with the piece, as we put more of those details into it, we'll have plenty of time to work at the fingering that we need to. And to make sure that everything is at the same tempo. We'll do that. But let's start from that bigger picture. Then we'll start to add in and to perfect and to drill and to pay attention to all the little nitty gritty. But we don't want to start there. We want to start from that bigger picture. And I know that's a little scary. I know it feels uncertain. And you think, okay, I'll do this. I'll play through it once, and then I'm going to get back to the details. But see how much work you can do on the piece without the detail work yet. You can work on the bigger picture. After your initial playthrough, you can say, all right, I'm going to take these first eight bars and I'm just going to play them through. I'll play the right hand kind of at tempo a few times, and the left hand kind of at tempo a few times. And then I'll do it hands together, a little bit slower, and then I'll move on to the next section. Don't get stuck on one place. Your piece will move forward faster if you're looking at more of it.

Don't overwhelm yourself at the same time. I don't want this to feel overwhelming, but I want you to feel the freedom and to feel the different relationship you have with the music when you can take these bigger steps right at the beginning. So let me recap that starting process for a moment, and then I want to give you some pointers for going on from there. So remember, we started by looking at the piece and looking at the structure, looking at the form, deciding what we wanted that story of the piece to be like. That would be sort of like the artist looking at the face that he was going to paint and deciding what the. The portrait was going to look like, looking at the shapes, the planes, the angles of the face and deciding what that was going to be like. And then just the way the artist would make a sketch on the canvas. We're doing that initial playthrough, getting through the entire piece, figuring out what's there, playing as much of it as we can, as close to where we want it to be as we are able to. Realizing that may not be a lot, word may be very much, but this is what guides us because it'll tell us what we do and what we don't have to practice. Once we've done that, then we begin to add the colors, add the details, and work on the things that are going to fill in that picture. As I mentioned before, I don't want you to think that adding in the details means just working on the notes. There are some other things you can do to help keep moving faster and not getting stuck in those notes. To get your piece off to a really strong start. It's all around reminding yourself to let the piece grow, to not hold it back. Don't keep the tempo slow if you don't need to push that tempo, at least in your hands separately. Practice from that very first day. We want to get as much as we can up to tempo right away or as close to tempo as is possible, because that informs so many of our choices, choices about dynamics, choices about fingering. Because some of those things work differently, slowly than they do at the tempo the piece is supposed to go. So we want to make those decisions with the end in mind, right? With that goal, that musical goal in mind. Then every day you practice the piece, remember to put play it, not just practice it. Go all the way through it to remind yourself what that big idea is like. If you get to the point where you can play the beginning of the piece and the ending of the piece really well, and maybe even close to tempo, go ahead and do that. Even if the rest of the piece is still slow. Don't hold back some sections just because others aren't ready.

Remember, as you're working, always work for that steady flow. We don't want to try to get the flow of the piece correct after we've learned all the notes. We want that to be part of it. And the way you do that is by working some with the metronome so that you know your tempo is steady, even if it's still slow, and thinking about the melody, because the melody is so often where the flow of the piece lives. So pay attention to how you're creating the phrasing for that melody, even from the beginning of your work on the piece. Then remind yourself often of that big musical idea you will when you play it through, of course, but we I want you to actively reconnect with what you love about that piece. That may mean listening to recordings. Occasionally you don't listen to them every day. They don't have to become a template for your work, but they can be another way that you experience that piece, to listen to it and get that real musical idea from the outside, not just from the inside. So you can use those recordings as a reference or a touchstone, but you're not trying to copy them.

If you feel like you're having trouble moving through the piece, you could even play along with the recording if you can. Even if it's just playing a long hand separately or even airplaying, right? Just sort of moving your fingers without actually having them on the strings. Sometimes that can help you experience what the piece is really going to feel like when you play it. I hope you can see how some of these strategies are going to help you take a piece of from the very beginning and give it this big jump start so that you're moving way farther ahead way sooner than you might be doing. Right? Now, in your learning of a piece, and if you're looking at a holiday schedule with a lot of pieces you're trying to learn, this is a great way to make sure that they get learned on time. In that last podcast episode, I said, you know that you've got the time, you've got. There is no more time. So we know that this is the time frame to learn your piece and this is how to get a bigger start at it. Also, let me remind you that if you'd like me to help you through this process, I'm opening five coaching slots just for this limited kind of six week plan. We've got a 30 minute starting call where we set your plan and make sure we've got everything in place. We've got a one hour lesson and then another 30 minute call to make sure that you're on track and see where we need to go from there. So there are five coaching slots with me, one on one, and I've made those available and you'll find the link to register for those in in our podcast show notes for today, you can go to the Show Notes online and look at the podcast episode there. You'll be able to find it and register for those coaching slots because I want to make sure that if you think you need my help to get you through the holidays or you just want my help, this is one way to do it. So when those five slots are filled, I'm sorry, that's all the time I've got because I'm watching my own holiday practice schedule. Right. Okay. And do watch your email because we will be opening that flash sale for registration for our February getaway retreat at the end of this week. Next week on the podcast, I'm giving you a behind the scenes look at my practice. We're going through a week of my practice. You won't need to hear me practice anything, but we'll be talking about my practice rotation, how I fit my practice in, how I schedule it, what my week looks like, how I prioritize the things in my practice and I'll go through my practice plan for the week with you and day by day, how it pans out. Do I stick with my plan? Do I have to change it? What's coming up in my week? And so you'll do a behind the scenes week in my practice with me. So that's coming up on the podcast next week. In the meantime, until I talk to you, then 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.