The Genetics of Musical Genre: Do You Have to Choose? - PHH 035

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. In my work, I get to know lots of harpists and I am blessed that my harp circle of colleagues, acquaintances and close friends is so big and so rich. I don't mean rich in terms of wealth. I mean, let's face it, we've all spent money on harps and lessons, so you know who has spare cash, right? I mean rich in terms of harp diversity. Concert harpists, beginner students, college teachers, harpists who play world music or healing music or sacred music. Wonderful, energetic people who play the harp at all different levels and who play lots of different kinds of music. That diversity, that richness, is part of my own personal harp happiness. Just thinking about it makes me excited. But I do come across other harpists who feel differently, who tend to categorize their harp playing or the playing of others. I'm a beginner. I'm a therapy harpist, or a Celtic Harper or an amateur. Sometimes there's a tell. There's a giveaway to this mindset. It's one of the most dangerous four letter words. I know the word just. I'm just. Just a beginner. I'm just a lever harpist. I'm just a folk player. Harp playing and harp music is never that simple. There are lots of avenues to explore along those lines. In other words, I will never run out of podcast topics. But. But on today's show, I want to explore harp music genres and styles. What makes one style of music speak to you more than another one? What is your personal connection to the harp and to music? Plus, I want to discuss musical genres and styles, what each one of those terms means in general terms, and how we harpists interpret them. But I promise this isn't Going to be a mini lecture like you might find in a music appreciation course. As always, I want to give you something actionable, something you can take away with you to think about, to do something to make your heart playing experience deeper, more meaningful and more fun. Without giving too much away too soon, I can tell you that you're going to discover some new ways to consider, analyze and even practice the music that you love to play. You'll learn ways to feel connected to music that you love and learn how to bring more breadth and variety to your harp playing. Now, perhaps my favorite thing about playing the harp is that I continually make new discoveries. I love investigating new music, even if it's only new to me and it's really, you know, hundreds of years years old. I love new techniques, new strategies, meeting new people. I even love watching my practicing turn a piece from a messy tangle of notes and fingers to a beautiful expression of an idea or a feeling through music. That's what excites me about teaching too. Watching other harpists make those discoveries have those light bulb moments. And I am totally looking forward to those moments that are going to happen at our getaway retreat in March. By the way, there is nothing more powerful than learning with a small group of other harpists who were learning alongside you, working together in master classes and workshops, working one on one with a, a a teacher to put that learning into practice immediately and to share conversation and friendship with other harp players just like you. The harp is a special bond, right? And our retreaters always tell us how they come away from the retreats with renewed connection to their heart playing and of course, new connections to heart friends. I have so missed having our retreats. I mean, our last one was almost two years ago, right? We finished the retreat and then the, you know, the world shut down with the pandemic the next week. But we are going to have this one as long as we can have it safely, of course. And I would love for you to be a part of it. In fact, we just found out this past week that we will be in a new house just down the street from the house we were in two years ago. And it is really beautiful looking. The screened in pool area at the house backs up onto a small lake. Each bedroom has its own refrigerator and tea kettle. Most bath, most bedrooms have their own, you know, en suite bathroom. My dear friend and colleague Mary Jane d' Arville is going to be teaching with me. And of course we have our own wonderful harpist chef Denise back with us this time too. So it is Going to be great if you can spare those six days at the end of March, it's the 23rd to the 28th of March, if you can spare those days to join us in Florida. We are near Orlando so it's convenient to get to and I can guarantee you'll have a great time. The link is in the show notes so that you can find out more about the retreat or you can find it on the Heart Mastery website under the Upcoming Events tab. Or you can just search in your browser for Harp Mastery Getaway Retreat. I believe we have four rooms left, so don't ditch delay now. Getting away from the world to retreat with your harp is a fun thing, right? But does getting away from the music that you know and love scare you a little? Do you prefer to stick with what you know? Well, I'd like to challenge you just a little on that today you might remember that famous saying attributed to Orson Welles, I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like. Well, I think that most of us harpists, maybe most musicians of any sort, I don't know, have probably only given fleeting thought to what it is about music that they like. Sure, we know what we don't like, right? But being able to discern what it is that we do like requires a little investigation, particularly into genre and style. We all have musical preferences, right? I mean, it wouldn't be natural for us to all like the same thing. That's why there are all those different flavors of ice cream, right? We all have different tastes and that's great. The, the one example that I love to cite of people who have different musical tastes were my parents. My parents both loved classical music. In fact, they got to know each other while they were doing dishes at a church supper and they discovered that they were both knew a lot of lyrics to Gilbert and Sullivan operas. So they, they formed a connection over classical music. But.

They had a. An opera company subscription for a while. And it was so interesting. My mother was a huge fan of the, the grand Italian operas, Puccini and Verdi. I mean, she would just melt. She lived for that kind of opera. My dad, on the other hand, had no particular liking for any of those kinds of operas. But somewhere in every opera season there was a Mozart opera. And that was the opera he stayed awake for. Puccini put him right to sleep. Mozart, he stayed awake and loved every second of it. Of course, that was the one my mother slept through. So, you know, they shared this subscription and shared it quite happily. Very happy to go along to the opera with the other one knowing that at least one of them was going to enjoy it. So, you know, it's preference is natural and it's good, right? It's often not a question of genre.

Both my parents loved opera, but of style, right? A Mozart opera is very different from a Puccini opera. And most musicians like music from different genres. But frequently there's a particular style that draws them, that connects with them more than another. So what I'd like to do is just clarify some of the terms as we're going to use them in our discussion today. When we're talking about genres, we're really talking about three main kinds of music. One of those would be art music, sometimes called classical music or concert music. Another would be traditional music, which is also called folk music or world music. And then of course there's popular music, which as you can guess, encompasses a lot of stuff right now there are some other kinds of music you could consider a genre. Sacred music could be considered that. So could healing music be considered a genre just because it doesn't? Some of those kinds of music don't fit very neatly into one of the other genres. But when we're talking about classical music or traditional music or popular music, you can see we're talking about big broad categories.

The term genre is generally related to music that can be defined by a time or a place or a purpose.

When we talk about classical music, and by the way, the classical music is one of those really artificial terms, right? The first reference that anybody knows about that where classical music was, was, you know, officially referenced, was recorded by the Oxford English dictionary in about 1836. So, you know, classical music is certainly a newish term when you compare it to some of the music that, that preceded that actual definition. And of course, it's a big genre, isn't it? I mean, we can include opera or instrumental music, voc. And then of course there are music from all those different historic periods, like baroque or romantic music or impressionist music or Renaissance. So, you know, classical music incorporates that genre, includes a lot of, you know, sub genres, if you want to talk about it that way.

Traditional music, which would be, you know, folk music or world music that would incorporate everything from, you know, what we often think of we harpist anyway, you know, Celtic music, right? Anything that would be, you know, Celtic or Latin American, American or it could be Indian music, any kind of Asian music, African music, you know, music from Appalachia, anything that is traditional. Often it has been said that the difference between classical music and traditional Music is that classical music is composed and traditional music is just sort of.

Arrived at. You know, sort of grows out of a tradition. But they have found.

More recently that, you know, a lot of those traditional music tunes, things that are part of folk music traditions today, were actually attributable to a single person or a single source. So that's not as clear a definition as we would like. But then nothing about music is that cut and dried, right? So there's traditional music, and then, of course, there's popular music. Well, you know, it could be ragtime, jazz, rock, techno, pop, you know, everything, right? Just. I suppose you could say that everything was popular once. So at some point that. That category, that genre includes a lot of things. So. And when we're talking about classical music, one of the. The comments that I find interesting was a comment from the. The composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s and 60s, this wonderful program called Young People's Concerts. It was a, you know, a television program. And he talked about the orchestra and talked about music and tried to make it really very approachable. And his comment about the term classical music was this. He said that people use this word meaning classical music to describe music that isn't jazz or popular songs or folk music, just because there isn't any other word that seems to describe it better. He went on to say that classical as a term is better than the alternatives of things like good music. You know, there's a qualifier, right? Good music or serious music or art music, all of which, of course, also apply to many other genres. I mean, you know, there's nothing.

About, you know, jazz that's necessarily bad or unserious or not deserving of the term art, for instance. So, you know, those. Those particular terms are. Are less good even than classical music. So let's not get caught up in the terms. But I just want you to think about those genres as being huge, big categories of music. And to remind yourself that these definitions, these genres are really, you know, nearly sort of scientific or scientific as we get classifications. They're sort of academic, they're specific, and they're objective. Now, compare that to style. Style is the way the music sounds. And it can sound one way in one performer's hands, differently in another. It can sound one way to me and differently to you, because some of that is perception. But when we're talking about style, we're really talking about the way a particular piece of music.

Uses the elements of music. Now, we can talk about this in terms of some of the sub genres of Music, too. Like, if we think about impressionist music, we think about, you know, Debussy and Ravel, and we think about the way they used melody and harmony and how that was different from the group of composers that came before them in the Romantic era. So, you know, we can use those to discriminate between sub genres of music as well. But.

One way to think of the difference between a genre and a style, Mozart and Puccini, to go back to my opera example, they belong to the same classical music genre, don't they? Right. They're both classical composers. We would call that classical music. But their styles are incredibly different.

And, you know, for in a traditional music realm or genre, you would never confuse the, you know, music from Ireland with ragas from India or traditional music from the Far east, even though they're all traditional styles of, you know, world and folk music. Right. So they belong to the same genre, but they sound very different.

Now, here's another way to consider style. Think about a tune like Greensleeves. Green Sleeves itself very definitely could fall. Would fall into a traditional music sort of category. But think how many different versions and arrangements you have heard of Greensleeves.

You might have heard some that sound very, very traditional. Kind of like, you know, a troubadour or minstrel strumming a lute or something. Right? Very traditional. Very appropriate to the time, perhaps when it was written. But maybe you've heard some that are totally different, sounding like a more orchestral version. I'm thinking of the Ralph Vaughan Williams fantasia on Greensleeves. Very different sound. And of course, there are millions in between. Right. So here we've got one piece of music. So the genre is the same. Doesn't matter what the piece sounds like. It still belongs to traditional music as a genre. But what has changed is the style. Style is where it gets personal. It's about the way those basic elements are, are used, those basic elements of music. And they would be rhythm, melody and harmony are the three most basic ones. Right. Rhythm could be anything from just a simple, steady, unrelenting kind of drum beat to complicated polyrhythms, things, you know, with three against two. Or in exotic meters like 5, 8 or 7, 8. Or very syncopated like. Like a jazz song might be. Right. So rhythm is something that varies very much between different styles. And it can define a style. Right. We can think of a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom kind of rhythm. And if we do it just a little bit slower, bum, bum, bum, bum bum we get a barcarolle. If we put a Little bit of lilt to it, dum ba dum. But we get a swing rhythm. There's nothing that's totally different about the rhythm, but the way it's used is different. And that is style. When it comes to melody, they're very simple, pure, basic melodies like I'm thinking of. There's the plains song that the, you know, medieval monks used to sing, right? But then there's something like a Bach chorale that has a very simple, plain melody. But then think about those fugues that Bach wrote, right? Incredibly complex combinations of notes that form these, you know, really intricate melodies or a really fun and intricate popular melody like Gershwin's fascinating rhythm.

Very different approaches to melody. And then there's harmony, right? Now, harmony didn't really develop until about the 16th century. Until then, music was really more than one melody combined. People didn't. Composers didn't think in terms of chords. They weren't creating vertical sonorities in terms of those, you know, a I chord, a IV chord and a V chord. They were putting different voices together. Think again about, you know.

A choir of nuns or something singing, you know, plain song, right? So they were putting different melodies together and getting combinations of sound that we would call chords today. But they didn't compose from that end. So, you know, harmony's come a long way since then, right? There are those sort of open chords that happen in Renaissance music. There are those rich harmonies of composers like Brahms or Debussy. And then, of course, we have those, you know, those very extreme experiments in dissonance by composers like Charles Ives or the composers of the 12 tone movement or jazz harmonies that get so complex and intricate.

So the way a piece uses harmony can help define its style or give it a style. Now, aside from those big three, I think the other big consideration is texture. Think about the difference when you're listening to.

A medieval song.

And then something that, you know. And then, for instance, the. The Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, right? Something. One is very clear, very simple, very transparent. The other has a texture that is complex and rich and dramatic and full and, you know. And of course, there's everything in between, right?

Now, of all these things, rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, you probably have some that you prefer more than others. You might like really jazzy, syncopated rhythms. You might like music that's very plain and pure sounding. You might like, as I do, lots of different kinds of music, but you might find that there's one that you just gravitate to more than another.

So the thing is, the style of music that you like is probably found in multiple genres of music that, you know, that the rhythms and the harmonies and the melodies that you like might be found in, you know, in classical music and traditional music and popular music. And that's, you know, where we get that term crossover, right? It's not so much how the music is written that makes it a crossover or the music itself, but it's the way those elements are used and the fact that perhaps they've taken, you know, the composer has taken elements of one style and put it into another genre. And, of course, that kind of thing isn't new, right? Composers have always borrowed from traditional music, whether it was a setting of a folk song like the Vaughan Williams Green Sleeves, Fantasia on Greensleeves I mentioned, or let's see, Dvorak in the New World Symphony using the. The tune Coming Home. Or there were plenty of harpist composers like Sophia Dussek or John Thomas or, you know, Granjani or Salzato who took folk tunes and turned them into their own compositions, right? And, of course, countless others. I mean, it's. That's a style that. That kind of thing has always been happening. We borrow, right? And of course, people have used traditional court dance forms as inspiration, like a pavane or a cavatt or a minuet. Sometimes composers have even created totally new compositions that sound like traditional music or sound like something else. You know, a composer in this century might write a piece that uses style elements from the baroque era of the 18th century. So, you know, it's a style, right?

Now, of course, you don't have to be a composer to think about the crossing over. And that's where the interesting part, I think, of our little discussion could be. Because here's where I want you to take a little bit of time and explore your own musical style preferences. Now, why would you want to do this? Why would you want to explore your own personal tastes? After all, to borrow from Orson Welles a little bit, right? You know what you like. But do you really? How much do you know about what you like? Well, there's a lot of value in learning more about the music that you play, and learning more about the music that you really love helps you love it more. I mean, discovering the way a piece is put together, the way the music, that particular piece of music combines notes and rhythm to create its magic is really fascinating. Getting into the. The nuts and bolts, the stuff beyond just practicing and getting the correct notes and the correct fingering, but to think about the choices that the composer made.

And how you relate to them, how much you like them or maybe how much you don't. Right? So, I mean, those choices that that composer or the arranger of a piece made make that particular music connect with you. And therefore they are really worth your attention. The more you know, the more you know, the more you are able to pull information from the page and the more you are able to infuse the music with the meaning that you feel. Right. So this is a core part of your musicality. Now, in a practical sense, this kind of investigation, thinking more about those elements of style, the rhythm, the melody, the harmony, and how they're used in any given piece. Thinking more about those elements and exploring them in a piece of. Helps you learn the piece better. You're going to. You're going to discover patterns that you hadn't seen. You're going to find details that you would have overlooked had you just been focusing on playing what was in front of you.

So here's what I would like you to try. It's a little bit of an experiment, but it's a little bit of an exploration, too, and it should be fun for you. But I want you to start by resisting, at least for a moment, the idea that you can define your heart, your own harp playing, by a single genre. Right? I don't want you to be a particular kind of harpist. I want you to be someone who loves playing music on the harp.

Now, we're going to consider the style that you like rather than the genre that you like. For instance, now, I studied and play primarily classical harp music, but that's certainly not the only music that I love to play. And I don't call myself a classical harpist or a pedal harpist. I love the harp too much to limit myself that way. I'm a harpist. What kind of music do I love to play? I love music that has some complexity. I love music that has energy.

Even if it's a very mournful energy, like an elegiac kind of a piece or a sad sort of a nocturne. I love finding that depth in a piece. So I like music that really lets me dig into that. So I love things that have rich harmonies. I like things that have some.

Some challenge to them, not in terms of playing, but in terms of finding the composer's intention. And in fact, if you sort of. You could probably have deduced this for yourself just by looking at my arrangements. When I arrange something, even if I'm arranging it for, you know, a beginner player or, you know, Easier kind of a version of a piece. What I do is I look for ways to use interesting harmonies. I look for ways to make chords that are not difficult to play but are rich sounding.

And that's what's interesting to me about music. And so that's what you would find if you looked through the music that I was practicing, looked through the music on my music stand, that's what you would be able to see, and that's what you can find in the music that I arrange as well.

So there are those same kinds of clues in the music that you play. So take a look at the music that's on your stand right now. Think about the music that you play most often or that you listen to most, or music that you just totally love. Then consider it aside from any kind of actual playing or practice. Consider it in terms of the characteristics of rhythm or melody or harmony, and perhaps even texture that are in those various pieces of music. For instance, if you play a lot of. Let's just say you play a lot of Celtic music, what is it that you love about it? Do you love the rhythms that are there? Do you like a clear, simple texture for it? Does that clarity appeal to you? Do you look for music that has a soaring kind of a melody? Or do you look for dance like kind of music? And you probably have a lot of different kinds of music that you absolutely love. But take a moment and just think about those characteristics as you look at the different pieces of music that you know, maybe even ones that you would never play. You know, maybe they're an orchestral piece, or maybe it's something by, you know, a classic rock band or something. But think about the music that just turns your head every time you hear it, or that you wake up singing. Think about what kind. How would you describe the rhythm? Right. How would you describe the melody and the harmony? You don't have to have big fancy words for it. Just, you know, the rhythm sounds jazzy. I love pieces that have a jazzy rhythm. You might think, or I love pieces that are very straightforward and.

Take me to another world. Okay, this is good. So think about what do you like about that melody? What do you like about the harmony? Describe it in any way you can that makes sense to you. But see what you can discover about what, what style of music and which styles. Let's use plural of music that you like, as opposed to a particular genre that you like.

You could also approach it, you know, from the other end. If you love one particular genre, then think about those elements that seem to be key in that genre and the ways they're usually used there. And think about how that might apply in another genre of music or to another. To another kind, right? But what you want to get out of this is to have a couple of things that you've identified. You don't have to have a long list, but just a couple of things that you think. I love music that has that open sound like the Renaissance or, or like medieval music. Right. You want to think about I love a Strauss waltz or I love the, the Passion of Tchaikovsky, something like that. Just a couple of things that you've identified.

Style elements like those that are common to music that you love, even if the music that you love doesn't belong to the same genre.

So this will help you understand your music. It will make investigating new music a little bit more interesting for you. It helps you, helps open your mind to explore and to experience other styles of music. So that when you're ready to step outside of your comfort zone and try something you haven't tried before, take your first venture into pop harp. Maybe, I don't know, just saying. But when you're ready to do that, you're going to have a good idea of what is going to be different about that from the kind of music that you usually play and what might be similar. It will help you look for an arrangement of something that suits you.

It will help you find a sound, it will help you identify a sound.

And in case you think I'm totally wacky, these are the very same elements that.

You will, you will find being explored in different college curriculum. You know where they do those? They, they still call it this, I think, even though they, even though they don't do it this way anymore. These drop the needle things, right? If you picture an old fashioned record player, right, and you just dropped the needle down into the middle of a piece of music, what would the style elements, the rhythm, harmony, the melody tell you about that particular piece? When do you suppose it was written? Who would you suppose it was written by? How would you know all of these things inform your music, whether you're good at drop the needle or not. And you don't need to be that good at it. But it is important to know a little bit about what it is you really like. And then the why is, is only important to you. But just knowing a little bit more about it will help you find more joy in what you're playing and probably help you learn that music just a little bit better too. Well, I'm hoping Our discussion just has you itching to run over to your harp and look at the music on your stand and start thinking about those style elements and thinking about what you love about music. Not just the music, but what's in it. Right. I just think it's. I think it's a fascinating study and I think you will find it very interesting, too. I certainly hope you do. And I'd love to hear the results of your discoveries and experiments. If you feel like sharing them, you can always reach me at the podcast here@podcastarpmastery.com is the easiest way to reach me. So that will. I would love to hear what you find out about your own musical tastes and preferences from that. Now, next week we're talking about something a little bit more practical. We're going to be talking about sight reading, sight reading and note reading and how to get from where you are right now to where you might want to be with your sight reading. How do you train it and. And of course, how do you practice it? Right. You will also discover on next week's show that there are some surprising things that skills that seem to have nothing to do with reading that are absolutely critical to good sight reading. So we'll be talking about that and you might discover that one of those is enough to take your sight reading and free it up so that you can get to that next level with your sight reading. So that will be next week. And in the meantime, I hope you certainly experiment with your different styles of music. Please don't forget to head over to Heart Mastery. And if you possibly can, we'd love to have you join us for the Getaway retreat and you can find much more information about it using the link here in the show notes or just going over to heartmastery.com and looking under upcoming events and you'll find all the information that you need to reserve your spot for the retreat. I would love to see you there. It's gonna be a lot of fun. In the meantime, have a wonderful week. Experiment with your music today and find out a little bit more about what you love. And I'll be ready to check in with you about that when we meet next week. All right, see you then. 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.