The Fourth Thing You Need to Know About Rolling Chords - PHH 181

But honing in on the musical intent for any particular chord is where the real magic is. The difficulty, I think, is that thinking about intent requires us to play beyond the page to play something that isn't necessarily written there. And I think that this is where most well meaning students can just miss out.

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 plan. 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. When you think of harp music Is there a characteristic harp sound that comes to mind? Maybe a musical gesture that belongs to the harp more than to any other instrument? A glissando, maybe? Well, that's certainly one of them, and it's a favorite one of mine. But another one that I find very powerful and very harpy is a rolled chord. Harps were meant to play chords, especially rolled chords. They sound liquid and rich, even pulse plummy. You can listen to an orchestral recording, and when the harpist plays a rolled chord, you know it. It's almost as if everything melts for a moment. If you want to check out some of those moments, just stick with me, because we'll be talking about a couple. But I also want to talk to you about how to make your rolled chords sound just that magical. In my opinion, we often forget that our rolled chords play a significant role in our musical expression. I hear so many harpists playing all of their chords, blocked or flat, when the music clearly calls for a chord that's more lush and romantic. In fact, this is one of my pet peeves and something I'm likely to go into a rant over, given the opportunity. I'm not ashamed about this, though, and in fact, I felt totally vindicated when I was in a workshop given at the World Harp Congress by the famous French harpist Isabelle Perrin. She was talking about the opening chords of the Foray Impromptu, and suddenly she was off on a rant just like mine would have been. The frustration she expressed was that too many harpists play blocked chords all the time, when rolled chords would be infinitely more musical. She didn't know it, but she was ranting to the choir where I was concerned. I think rolled chords are part of the native language of the harp, and today I want to help you roll them well, to understand how to fit them in and most of all, how to use them to add expression to your music. We'll explore the differences between flat or blocked chords and cracked chords and rolled chords. We'll deal with some of the critical technical aspects of rolled chords, too, but mainly I want you to learn how to love them and how to use them to create more depth of expression, more beauty in everything you play.

I've also linked in the show notes to a podcast episode I did a while back. It's episode 92, and it's called Quick Fix Roll youl Chords Right. And in that episode I give you a lot of drills and a lot of exercises for rolling your chords better, for making your fingers more even and placing those chords exactly right. We're not going to deal with those aspects so much today because I really want to talk about the musicality of it. We'll touch on those for sure, but I've linked to that podcast episode in the show notes so that you can find it and reference that one as well. If you're one of our My Harp Mastery members, then you know that today, the day this podcast goes live, which is Monday, November 4th. Today is the day we start our new November monthly course called On a Roll, and it's all about rolling chords. So my hope for you is that today's podcast gets you excited about that before you jump on the live call tonight. And of course, if you're not a MyHeart Mastery member, you can still join us for this month long course. It's four Monday nights dealing with four different aspects of rolling chords. Some pretty robust PDF worksheets to go along with that. Each live call is hosted by me or by one of our certified coaches and there's lots to learn about rolling cords on these calls. I Obviously there's a lot more to My Harp Mastery than just this one course, but if you'd like to join us just for this one course, then you can do that by subscribing to our seminar series. The November seminar series is something you can purchase through our app or on our website and that will give you access to those Monday calls, all of which have replays which you can watch and download and of course to all the PDFs. So if you can't be on the calls live, you can still get the replays and get all that fabulous instruction on rolling chords. So today's podcast episode will be sort of a nice introduction to that and hopefully a nice compliment, and I'd love to get started on that topic with you right now. I titled this episode the fourth thing you need to know about rolling cords because I think there are a few things that you probably already know and you've probably maybe gotten tired of hearing, but I think there's a fourth one that you really need to know. So we're going to talk about all four of those today. The first couple I know you spend a lot of time on. The third one I think that we need to confirm because I've heard some people with some.

Questionable cord rolling tactics when it comes to this. So we're going to talk about that a little bit and hopefully clarify the situation and then we'll talk about the fourth one. So first on my list is placing right you in order to roll a chord well, you need to Place it properly and in general, most of the time, that means placing all the notes at once. And it means if the chord is in both hands, if it's a two handed chord, you need to place both hands at once. No, placing the right hand and then the left hand, or even the left hand and then the right hand. If that chord has eight notes that you have to play, you place all eight notes. So that's the general rule. Every once in a while there will be an exception. But placing is really key because once your fingers are all on the strings, then you can roll it with security or not, if it's not going to be a rolled chord. So this means learning a little bit about chord patterns and shapes, a little bit of music theory and harmony won't hurt, right, to say, okay, this is a root position chord. This is a first inversion chord. That doesn't hurt because it helps you recognize what's going on in the chord so you don't have to read every note. Let's face it, when chords come up in our music, it's a lot of notes coming at us at once. And if you're scrambling to read each note, okay, that's a C and it's an E, and it's an A, and it's A, it's going to take you a long time to place that chord. The problem, obviously is that music doesn't usually give us a lot of extra time to place a chord. So you want to be able to recognize not just the individual notes, but, but the chord as a whole. And the more quickly you can recognize, oh, it's an A chord or it's a D7 chord, or, oh, all right, this is a chord, it's a G chord, but it's got a B on the bottom. The more quickly you can recognize that, the more quickly you can place the chord. And so this will help you play the entire passage with a little bit more speed. So recognizing the patterns and the shapes is critical. And this is where drill comes into play. You can practice those chords, you can practice all those shapes, and so that's something you ought to be doing. I don't need to belabor that point here. You know that. So the chord patterns and shapes absolutely essential for placing. And then we have to hope that all of your fingers get to those strings at the right time. So practicing simultaneous placing is part of this. But once you've got your fingers on the strings, then the placing has been accomplished. And we're on to step two, which is playing the chord we're going to be talking a lot about different ways to play these chords. But the very basic idea is that when you roll a chord, you want all those notes to sound evenly. And this means that all your fingers need to work evenly. So you can see, if you haven't already experienced this, you can see where the difficulty with chords comes. The more notes you have to place, the more all of your fingers have to be independent. And then playing those notes, those fingers have to be equally independent and equally strong to play equally. This is why three finger chords are much easier to play than four finger chords. Adding on that fourth finger is just really exponentially increasing the difficulty of the chords. So that's part of it. So what do you do? Well, to make your fingers a little bit more even, you can start rolling those chords in rhythmic patterns just the same way you would practice arpeggios. You can even do something fun with two handed chords. Start from the middle. Check that your thumb and your your left hand thumb and your right hand fourth finger are even, that they sound the same. For one hand chords you can build up from the bottom. There are a lot of drills and I know all of you who are taking the the seminar series course and the My Heart Mastery course on a roll. You're going to be getting plenty of those drills. And even if you're not, you will be able to go to the podcast episode 92 and you'll get a lot of practice on those kinds of things there. So placing and playing are those two first critical things. Prompt, simultaneous placing and even playing. Right? You knew those. I'll bet you you've practiced those a lot. So let's go on to the third factor for chords, that's timing. It can be really hard when you roll a chord to time it correctly. I'm sure that at some point you've had a chord passage to play and your teacher has said for right now, play all those chords flat or blocked. We use those words interchangeably, right? They mean unbroken, unrolled, all the notes exactly at the same time. So you know this is a standard way to practice a chord passage. If you've got a lot of rolled chords, practice them blocked because it's going to help you practice two things. It won't help you playing the role, but it will help you place all the notes at once so that you get used to getting your fingers to the strings all at the same time and on time for the piece that you're playing.

And it will also accustom your ear to the way the chords have to fit in the rhythm of the piece. The short version of this is that your chords can't add extra time to the music. Now, we love luxurious rolled chords and they're beautiful. Nobody loves one of those chords more than I do. But they can't take away from the flow of the music. We don't get to add extra time just to roll our chords. Say, okay, I know everybody who has melody here. You just hold on because I have a pretty chord. So you'll have to wait for your next note until I'm done. We don't get to do that. It'd be nice if we did sometimes, but we don't get to play diva with our rolled chords. The rolled chords have to fit in to the flow of the music. And so timing these chords becomes really important.

There are some exceptions to what I'm about to tell you, but the general rule is to time the chord properly. The top note of the chord, which is usually the right thumb, the top note of the chord needs to come on the beat because usually the top note of the chord is going to be the melody note. If it's a right hand chord, okay, so that's going to come on the beat. And however many notes are in that chord, whether it's a one hand rolled chord or a two hand rolled chord, we have to fit those in before the beat.

So this is going to take time before the beat. It's taking time away from the actual duration of the beat before. It just is fitting in the gap so that we get the melody note at the right time. And this applies to every chord. So if you have a series of chords, all those chords are going to be rolled before the beat so that the top note can happen on time. Now if you've got a left hand chord that is supporting a single right hand melody note, then that timing is still sort of the same in that the top of the left hand chord needs to match the melody note.

That's the usual way to roll chords. Every once in a while we'll find something different. Every once in a great while, you'll see a composer indicate to roll a from the top to the bottom. So in these cases, you need to really check out and see where that beat is going to be. But the basic principle still holds. Your chords can't take extra time. So we've got placing, we've got playing, and we've got timing. So what's the fourth thing that you need to know about rolling cords? It's the fun one, but it's the one we spend the least time on, I believe. And, and I'm calling it intent, perhaps the right phrase is really musical intent. But honing in on the musical intent for any particular chord is where the real magic is. The difficulty, I think, is that thinking about intent requires us to play beyond the page, to play something that isn't necessarily written there. And I think that this is where most well meaning students can just miss out. Because if you're just looking at the page, then if a chord doesn't have a roll sign, you might think that it's not meant to be rolled. But I'll tell you this, this is my general rule of thumb. If the piece was written before about 1950, then every harp chord was expected to be rolled to some degree. Maybe not a big roll. And for those bigger rolls, you'll see that squiggly roll sign in front of the chord. But it was not intended, most likely to be played unbroken. That's not the default for a harp chord to be flat. Pianists do that all the time. We're not pianists. So our default chord playing is a broken chord, whether it's quickly broken, in which case we might call it cracked. Right. It's just got that little bit of a roll to it that gives it that extra oomph. And it could be a big luxurious chord, could be that too. But our standard procedure is not going to be to play a flat chord. Now in music that's been written more recently, that's, oh, that's not quite as hard and fast a rule. And you need to use your own musical instincts a little bit more. But remember that composers still understand that the harp isn't all about just flat, unbroken chords. We're about those rolled chords. And so rolling chords isn't just restricted or shouldn't be, I believe, to chords that have the squiggly line in front.

Now, some evidence for this is that in earlier music, when a composer didn't want a chord to be rolled, they indicated it. Chords unbroken, or the little sort of bracket that some composers used instead of a roll sign to indicate that that chord should not be broken. Because they knew that the harpist standard procedure was to break those chords to roll them. And if they didn't want that, they indicated it. It's a little bit different now, but I want you to know that rolling chords, unless there's a specific indication that says do roll it or don't roll it, the rolling of a chord and the way you roll it is your musical choice. And that's where intent comes into play. Not just your intent, but what you believe the intent of the composer is or was. Think about the nature of the piece. Is it a romantic, slower kind of piece that might want a very lushly chord, a little bit slower, a little bit juicier, or is it a faster paced piece that's going to want something perhaps just cracked quickly to give it some energy? Or maybe it's something that's very syncopated, that needs the crispness of an unbroken chord. But thinking about your chords as an expressive technique, something beyond dynamics, for instance. Right. Just the way you roll chords, it's a valuable contribution to the expression and musicality of the piece, and it's one you really need to explore. But I think you might need to hear it. So let me go over to the harp and let you listen to some examples. Now, I want to say, for those of you who don't know my teacher, from the time I was 9 or 10, all the way through my studies at the Curtis Institute, my teacher was Marilyn Costello, who was principal harpist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and. And just a beautiful, beautiful player. And I grew up listening to her play for me, of course, and play in the orchestra and play just so beautifully. And her rolled chords were magnificent. So when I was looking for examples for today's podcast, I didn't go automatically to the harp solo literature, I went to the orchestral literature. And I realized that many of you listening to this podcast aren't going to have that as a base of knowledge, but you're going to be able to hear in these excerpts, I think, quite clearly what can happen, the different characters that rolled chords can create and how they can. How they can add to the musicality and expression of a piece. And I've also included in today's show notes links to the Philadelphia Orchestra performances that my teacher played on of these two particular works. And I hope that you enjoy them. So the first one I want to look at is Rimsky Korsakov's Scheherazade. Scheherazade, of course, was the Arabian storyteller who managed to stay alive by telling the sultan tale after tale after tale. And Rimsky Korsakov's musical version of Scheherazade is wonderful and it's great for harpists because there are so many opportunities in the piece to play beautiful, beautiful chords and solo chords. Some of the chords support violin solos and they are particularly magical. And I'd like to talk about them because they are indicated by Rimsky Korsakoff in the Score with different dynamics. But dynamics only tell a part of the story. And when I first played this piece, my teacher was trying to tell me about how these chords needed to be different. So this was one of the ways I learned about rolling chords. So I'm going to play for you the. The four chords that come at the beginning of the second movement of Scheherazade. And the violin solo is there. Once again, you can listen to the recording. And the recording I've given you a link to is not the greatest high fidelity recording. It's a video from the 1960s when this was made. So it's a little bit fuzzy and the sound isn't excellent. You can find other recordings and listen to this, but I just wanted to share the one that had my teacher on it. So that's that recording. And you'll be able to hear all the parts that go with it. But here are these chords. The first one that opens the second movement after the violin plays its first note is a big eight note chord that's indicated to be rolled from bottom to top. And it's got a forte dynamic.

Now, there are lots of ways to play a forte rolled chord. And you can play it with different.

Roles. You can play it with an emphasis on that low note the way I just did, or maybe more directed toward the top.

Two different looks at that chord. They sound just a little bit different. They're still really nice rolled chords, but just a little bit different. But the forte lets us know that this chord should have some energy. So we'll direct that energy and we'll imagine that we've heard that violin note. And.

This is Scheherazade starting her story. Now, the next chord in the next measure is only a mezzo forte. Slightly different notes.

Followed by a chord that is only piano.

Those three chords, three different dynamics. But we don't want to play the same chord with just different dynamics. We don't want to take the forte chord and just play it softer for the mezzo forte and just play it softer for the piano.

We can do so much more. We can make that forte chord full of energy and drama. And the next one a little bit more moderate.

And the last one maybe more mysterious, a slower roll.

And then the cadenza ends with a forte chord.

Something a little bit different. But just those three chords set the mood in a way that both supports the violin solo and creates that mysterious Scheherazade kind of feeling. Now, shortly after that in the piece is a section where the harp accompanies the orchestra with some mezzo forte chords with a couple little dynamic changes, but all the chords are indicated to be rolled. And so you're going to roll them, but that doesn't mean they all have to be the same. So that where we might have chords that are just 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1- 2, 3. They've got to have a quick enough roll that they move along because that's going to be the tempo. We can't linger over these chords, but they're not quite all the same. They have energy and they move particularly as the line goes along. The next line is sort of the smaller chords.

And then we have a little bit more motion here.

And some dramatic ones here that go with a solo again, and a very dramatic one.

So rolled chords, yes. Rolled all the same, no. So I suggest that you listen to this entire movement and listen to the different ways that the harp chords work. You'll find those big harp chord passages toward the beginning of the movement and then again toward the end. But do pay attention to them because they are really, really beautiful. And if you're watching it on YouTube, you'll see a little glimpse of my teacher as she plays, too, which is always kind of fun. At least it's fun for me. And by way of contrast, I thought I'd share the music to the pas de deux from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet. This is an exquisite piece of music. It starts with a harp cadenza that is really sort of spectacular. And I certainly hope you take the time to listen to the recording that I've linked to in the show notes for today's episode. But after this harp cadenza, there's this just exquisite is the only word I have for it. Piece that is mostly harp and cello and violin. And it's just a melody that is so spun out and beautiful, it's almost static in its beauty. It's just. It just makes you hold your breath and just wait. So the harp part by itself doesn't exactly bring out that character because it doesn't have any melody. But that's exactly what the harp part needs to reflect, so that even when that melody isn't there, it's not in the heart part. We have to be playing in a way that matches that and blends with it. And, of course, that's part of being an orchestral harpist, right? Not just knowing what your part is, but knowing the role that it plays in the piece and to make sure that you're fitting with the entire picture of the piece. So the harp part, after the cadenza Starts very simply with an octave in the left hand and a chord in the right hand. And it's quite slow.

It's all a piano dynamic. And the chords themselves aren't very much, not very difficult.

Pretty simple. But as the melody moves here, we're going to increase.

And end the phrase. So there's still that variation in the energy that we bring to the role and to the dynamic. So that the role can be sometimes more languid, sometimes a little bit more urgent. It can be louder, it can be softer, but it can reflect what's going on in the melody. Now, beyond that point, we get to some pretty interesting chords with some pedal changes, of course, that go with them.

Things begin to get a little bit more heated. Tchaikovsky indicates a little crescendo. Sam.

Lots of different kinds of chords in there. So many styles and so many ways that you can fit with the soloist, who, of course, is playing differently every time, too. So that's just so much beauty in one little segment of chords. And these chords aren't difficult, but there are so many possibilities for musical expression. And that's what I would love you to listen to. Listen to the recording. Listen to a bunch of recordings of these and hear how differently the different harpists play these roles. It's beautiful to listen to. And I want to share one more example of chord choices that you have. This is from the opening of the Debussy dances, the Danse Sacr et Profane. And this is the first one, the. The Sacred Dance, Danse Sacre. Much of this entire first movement is chords for the harp. But the opening, which is so famous and so ethereal, is all chords. And Debussy doesn't indicate whether they're supposed to be rolled or not. All he tells us is that they're pianissimo, they're doux et sout unous. So they're soft and sustained sous tonue. And we have something kind of like this.

That's all it is. And it's got to be rhythmic and it has to flow and it's soft, so there's not a lot to go on. Now, there are some articulation marks. We've got dots over some chords and dashes over some other ones. But putting those aside for the moment, I just played them all for you. These chords, all flat, all unbroken.

And that has a nice crystal sort of a sound. But that's not how I was taught. And in the recording I've linked to, you'll hear my teacher play it. She rolls all these chords.

A much warmer Sound.

It's very different, isn't it? The flat version.

A rolled version.

I do want to point out that they're both rhythmic.

Right? They both stick to the tempo. The roles don't take extra time, they don't take time away. We just have to fit the roll into the time we have. So, once again, timing is still important, but there's a lot of flexibility, too, here between the absolutely unbroken and the absolutely rolled cord. So we have lots of choices. We could roll one hand and play the other flat, or we could just sort of find an in between that wasn't completely rolled, but wasn't completely flat either.

So many options, and of course you can combine any of those. But that's what I mean about the chords really bringing out the musicality that you want from a piece. And so whether it's something as complex and sophisticated as the pieces that you heard today, or whether it's just a simple version of green sleeves, you have choices with those rolled cords, and I want you to start thinking about them. I want you to start making them, and I would love you to start enjoying them. So remember our four important items for rolled cords chords. It's placing, it's playing, it's timing and it's intent. Whatever you do, make your rolled chords beautifully rolled. Make them on time and make them beautiful. Make them serve that musical purpose. Use them to make the music you love even more musical and even more expressive and even more beautiful. That's what they're for. Next week on the podcast, we'll be talking about another element of musical expression. And particularly, we'll be exploring the reason that maybe it's not your dynamics that are holding your musical expression back. It might be something else entirely. So we're going to be looking at how to create musical expression beyond the dynamics next week on the podcast. Remember that our on the Roll course on rolling cords starts this evening, Monday, November 4th. And if you're a My Heart Mastery member, be on the call and you'll get everything you need right there on our regular call. The seminar series participants will be joining us on that call as well. If you're not a My Heart Mastery member, you can join us by purchasing that seminar series. And you'll be on the call, too. And we'll be looking at rolled chords all month long. So I hope to see you on the call tonight. But whether I do or not, 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.