The Technique Triangle: Fingers, Flow and Faith - PHH 191

You're going to make mistakes along the way. This is one of those places I see so many harpists struggle. They're afraid that if they make some mistakes while they're trying to get their piece up to tempo or make it more musical, that they're damaging or somehow destroying all the wonderful work they've already done to make the piece correct. And that's not going to happen. I guarantee that's not going to happen.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

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Welcome to the show. Now, the title of today's show is the Technique Triangle. Fingers, Flow and Faith. And I realize it's kind of an unusual title. After all, what do fingers, flow and faith have to do with each other? Well, absolutely everything. These three things are totally interdependent. You can think of them as three corners of a triangle, each corner being connected to the other corners. And just like the legs of a three legged stool, all three support your playing. Now, I'm guessing you haven't thought of these three elements together before or how together they form the core of your playing. So I'm going to give you a quick sketch of what we're going to talk about today. Also, I should be clear that we're not talking about religious faith here on the podcast. We're talking about trusting yourself. Now, the idea is this. Your technique, your fingers produce flow and they give you faith or confidence in your playing. You have to have faith in your fingers doing what you have trained them to do because they really don't need you to micromanage them. And you have to have faith that the flow of the piece is what you need to communicate the music. And focusing on flow frees your fingers and gives you faith in your expression the piece. Now, I realize that short explanation probably raises more questions than it answers. And that's what the rest of this show is all about, answering those questions. My hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll have a new perspective on how your technique could be serving you better. How focusing on flow can make your music come together faster, and how faith in the process will flow free you to get to the music and out of the slow practice a little bit faster. I think we all want to get to the music faster, right? That's one of those things, I'm sure that, like me, you've got a pile of music that you really want to learn. You bought it, you're excited about it, and you just want to be able to get in there and play it. So that's what these three things will hopefully help you do. Think about how you learn in a new way. And of course, while we're here at the beginning of the year, we're talking a lot about new things and I would invite you to consider refocusing your goals right now for your heart. Playing right here at the beginning of a new year is a great time to do that. And right now you can still join our January seminar series, and that's all about helping your progress in this year. So not just your practice, but your progress and planning for it and building it and being able to stick with the goals that you have. We'll be teaching you all about that using my 90371 framework, talking about how to avoid the distraction that often derails us on their way to our goals. Planning your weekly practice, planning what to do in a day's practice so that you can keep moving ahead. All of these lessons, there are four live calls and the PDFs that go with them, taught by me and some of the Heart Mastery Certified coaches. Some so our January seminar series is still available for purchase. It's just $12. $12 is so little to spend to get this kind of benefit for your goal, and you can find that either by going to heartmastery.com using the link in today's Show Notes or purchasing it directly from the Heart Mastery app. Also, if you want to go deeper with your goals, that's what we're going to be doing at the Getaway retreat. That's in February, February 12th to 16th in Kissimmee, Florida. We have a few spots left and I'd love to fill them, but we will be closing registration soon. If you want my personal help to help you hone in on your goals and help you kickstart them and maybe jump over a few hurdles along the way, we can help you activate those 2025 HARP goals at that getaway retreat. I'd love to work with you. The retreat is one of my favorite places to work with students because it's such a small, intimate setting and because we don't have any distractions. Right. It's just harp playing and it's about you and your playing and, you know, having good times with heart friends and that's pretty much it. So I'd love for you to take advantage of that. Join me at our getaway retreat. As I said, registration is closing soon, so you'll find the link again in the Show Notes, in the app, or on heartmastery.com but register, save your place and let's get working together. So speaking of working together, that's part of my definition of technique. I think if you're thinking about technique, what you're really talking about is developing your fingers to work together to serve the music. Isn't that a nice way to think about technique? It's a little bit less dry, I think, than we often consider. Right. Fingers working together to serve the music. Sounds like the Team effort that it really is. But technique, that's our foundation, right? It is the core for everything we do. If our fingers can't do it, then it doesn't matter how great we are in every other aspect of our musicianship. If our fingers can't do it, we can't play it. So technique is our enabler, right? Our fingers enable us to play music, but it's also our limiter. Whatever our fingers can't do is going to hold us back. So when we're thinking about working with our fingers and working with our technique, we're really talking about looking at a few different things, like what's necessary for just general harp competency at whatever our current level is, what's necessary technique wise in order to play a particular piece or a particular passage, and what's necessary for growth. So when we're talking about these three things working together, fingers, flow and faith. We need to start with fingers, obviously, because that's where everything else will come from. When you feel confident in your fingers ability to play what's on the page and to play what you need them to play, then you know that you can make the music flow. And that knowledge is going to give you confidence, going to give you faith in your playing. So it's going to allow you so much freedom. And it starts here with your fingers. Your fingers. Your technique requires regular work and that's the basic ingredient here for general technical competency. In order for you to start being able to rely on your fingers, you need to do regular playing at the very basic level. You know, if, if you do nothing else, you need to play the harp every day to keep your fingers in the loop, to keep your fingers not just fresh and resilient and, you know, rust free, all that kind of stuff, but to just keep them familiar with the patterns that you've instilled. If you've ever gone away for a while, ever, you know, taken a vacation without playing, we all have, right? I certainly have. And you come back and your fingers are just like, oh, they just don't want to move. They don't seem to remember everything they learned before you went away. Technique goes very quickly. There's that old quote that's been attributed to any number of famous musicians over the years. And it goes like this. If I don't practice for a day, I notice it. If I don't practice for two days, the critics notice it. If I don't practice for three days, the audience notices it. You might not have that level of attention paid to your playing however.

This is the key, right? We need regular playing in order to keep our technique up to whatever level our technique is. So starts with regular playing. Beyond that, your general competency is a regular refreshing on the basics of your technique. Those basic things that have to do with position. Are your thumbs up, are your elbows up, whatever your technique is. Some techniques have elbows up, some don't. Whatever those mechanics are, every technique has them. Even if you're not a student of a particular method, you have a way that you play. And if you don't, I urge you to talk to a teacher and have one, you know, have your teacher develop one with you. Because your consistency in the way you use your fingers is part of the reliability of your technique. That's that faith component again. When I was a young beginning harp student, my very first harp teacher was absolutely certain that she was going to teach me the core principles of the salzato technique. That's the technique that I learned. And so there are, like with any other harp technique, there are core principles and the ones that I learned, thumb up, fingers back, wrist in, elbow, bow up, your hand forming a round ball. These were the important principles that guided my learning. Now, it was years before I could do them very well. My fingers had a lot of growing to do and a lot of strengthening along the way. But the idea that this is how my fingers would serve the music, by establishing that pattern, that consistent physical action. So a method, a basic technique is really important. And if you don't feel like you have one, pick up a book. There are plenty of method books, and follow the principles that are in there. You'll see that the more consistent you are with your technique, the more your fingers do what you want them to do. It's that simple. So that's part of your general competency with your technique. And of course, along with those fundamental skills like scales, arpeggios, chords, those are the core that you need to have for general technical skill at whatever level you're playing. Beyond that, your fingers need to know how to do what is necessary for any given piece or a passage. In that piece, you know, you get that sticky spot that needs extra practice because your fingers don't want to get around those str. So that's when you can pull out a couple of tricks from your practice toolbox. And you can use some slow, precise and relaxed playing to get you through that passage. This is when you bring out all those basics of your technique and you use them in that particular instance. And you're very, very careful with how Every finger plays. You can also practice in rhythms. Of course, we've talked before about those sort of super rhyth that help you make your fingers even and can help you learn a difficult passage more easily. If you need a refresher on those, you'll find a podcast on those. I'm not sure what podcast episode. I'll have to look that up for you. But you'll also find a video on YouTube called the Seven Super Rhythms. Go to the Heart Mastery YouTube channel and you can just search there for the Seven Super Rhythms and you'll learn all about those. And of course, you need to practice the piece and the passage at varying speeds so that you're not just playing it at whatever that speed is, that is your target tempo, but that you're playing it slowly and medium and fast. And you're building in the ability to respond to a given mood, a given situation. You're building in flexibility and you're building an understanding about that passage too. So there are those precise finger skills that you need for any given piece or passage, but beyond that, your technique. Your fingers need to be doing what is necessary for their growth. Doing the same old, same old exercise routine for your fingers every day for years is not good enough. You want to be stretching your skills. Professional harpists do this all the time. They may have exercises that they know work to help them maintain their technique, but to grow their technique. And believe me, yes, there's no end point to technique. Professional harpists are always seeking to make their technique better, faster, more secure, more flexible. Whatever it is, we're stretching our skills too. You need to remember to do different things because different exercises will work your skills differently. So remember to switch out your exercises and your etudes for new ones. You can have a rotation of many of them that you work through, that have new patterns and work your fingers in new ways. Also, remember not to do all your exercises at the same tempo. Slow practice is wonderful and I highly recommend it, but you need to be doing fast practice as well. If you are one of those harpists who's troubled by not being able to play things up to the right tempo or play them fast enough, develop speed in your technical work. You can do that here and it will help give you the flexibility that you want in your repertoire. Practice as well. So there are three levels that your fingers need to be working at, and obviously your fingers are important, but I want to go now to those two other components of our triangle, faith and flow. And I want to start by talking about flow. Now, the connection between your fingers. And flow. Is this your ultimate goal of your technical work, is to make your fingers what I call smart, to make them able to respond without your attention or your conscious thought. Now, the more you've practiced anything, any kind of piece or passage, but of course, especially your exercises, your etudes, your foundational skills, the more you've practiced your technical work, then the more your fingers know I'm using that word in quotes here, and the less attention they're going to need. In other words, the more musical experience you give them, the more playing experience you give your fingers, the more they're going to respond to the next musical situation with ease and with comfort. I know I'm sort of talking about them as if they're separate from you, but this is the idea. You are training your fingers to respond automatically. Think about any other athlete. It works the same way. We want to be able to respond instantly and without conscious thought. And this is what I mean by your technique limits your music. When you haven't done enough work that your fingers know what to do on their own, then you really can't play music beyond their level. But when your finger work has provided that sort of automatic response, then not only can you learn your music faster, but. But that's when flow develops. Oh, you knew flow was going to get in there at some point. Right? And what I mean by flow is that it's sort of the breath of life that's in your music. It's that element that takes those notes, those little dots on the page, and makes them communicate. It's more than just getting from one note to the next at the right time. It's putting that musical meaning, that expression behind them. Every musical piece has a few different levels of flow. First of all, there's the rhythmic flow, and that would be that, you know, I'm getting to the right note, the next right note at the right time, it's steady. And that's great when it's steady. But we want to go beyond that to the musical flow. You can think of it also as the melodic flow, where you're pacing the melody as you would pace a sentence that you read out loud. Not every note is the same, and it's not a mechanical sort of note, note, note, note, note. Right. It's just as. It's not a monotonous reading of a sentence, but it has give and take. It has ebb and flow. I'm not talking perhaps about a rhythmic ebb and flow, but the idea that it starts from the beginning of the thought and it moves into the idea of the thought and then comes to a conclusion. And, of course, harmony comes in here, too, because it supports the phrasing. So we've got rhythmic flow, which is kind of the basic level. We've got that melodic and harmonic flow, which is the voice of the piece. And then, of course, there's the overall pacing of the piece, beginning to end, so that your piece tells a story. It doesn't just have this part and this part and this part, but all those parts of the piece go together and relate to each other. That's the story your piece tells. And obviously, the degree of flow that you are able to incorporate in any piece is totally dependent on your fingers, on your technique. But here's where faith comes in. You have to have enough faith to let go of the idea that your music must be correct in order for your music to flow. I know music is supposed to be correct, right? You're supposed to play the right notes at the right time. But particularly in your practice, if you're always focused on the right notes at the right time, you might never get to experience the flow. Flow is something you have to practice, and you limit your flow. If you're limiting yourself to the right notes at the right time, you're going to make mistakes along the way. This is one of those places I see so many harpists struggle. They're afraid that if they make some mistakes while they're trying to get their piece up to tempo or make it more musical, that they're damaging or somehow destroying all the wonderful work they've already done to make the piece correct. And that's not going to happen. I guarantee that's not going to happen. But you have to let go of that idea of correct. And you have to have faith that the work you've already done is still going to pay off. It's still going to be there. But you're taking that next step, and you're making sure that your piece turns into music, that it has flow. And along the way, you're going to need to let go of some of those other things to incorporate the flow. It will all come back together. As you find the flow, you'll be able to put those right notes at the right time back in. But you need a little bit of faith in the process in order to do that. I realize that it's scary, but here's the key. Without your faith, without your belief in the importance of the musical flow, your music will stay rooted in your technique, in your fingers, without the expression that you Want.

That's just the way it is. You're going to have to let go, to let flow. One of those things I've said before, but there it is. You need to have faith that by practicing the flow, your music is going to work. You trust your fingers to do what you've trained them to do. And that's what faith is all about here. It's about trusting the training of your fingers and understanding that you know your fingers don't need your attention all the time. You've done your technical work, you've done your exercises, you've done your scales and you've been doing them for years. You don't need to watch your fingers while you're playing because that's not what you want to do, right? You don't want to be playing a piece for an audience and having your attention on your technique. That's not what you want. You want your technique to be just practically invisible as it supports the music. So trust the training you've given your fingers. Trust them to do their job. Have faith in that part of the process. Also trust your own musical instincts. You have them. If you didn't have good musical instincts, you wouldn't have stuck with all the tough learning that is required to play the harp. I know you've got good sound musical instincts. You listen to music, you understand how music connects people. Trust those instincts. If you feel like you are just playing the music without the flow, what can you do to put the flow in it? Understand that you can do that. You just need to remember to engage those instincts in your practice. And I'm going to ask you to have faith in one last thing that's really difficult. It's this. Trust the idea that being correct isn't the best result you could hope for. I'm going to say that again. Trust that being correct isn't the best result you could hope for. I know that might be a mind blower for you, but correct is just where the music starts. And it's not 100% necessary for a beautiful musical result.

Musical performances, whether they're for an audience or just, you know, for your dog, I don't know. Musical performances aren't flawed by a wrong note. That's part of live performance. A certain amount of correctness we need for the music to speak. But it doesn't have to be a hundred percent correct. What it does have to be is 100% from the heart.

Correct. Those are dry bones being just correct. That's one of the weakest results you could hope for. Oh, well, you know, she played it and it was all exactly correct. Wouldn't you rather have someone say about your playing, she played it and it was beautiful? Yeah. That may turn around a lot of your thinking in your practicing. I certainly hope that whether it's an aha moment for you or just a reminder that it brings that. That level of enjoyment to your practice, knowing that you're creating music and not just playing notes. And that's the core of this discussion. We've talked about how fingers and flow and faith interact and support your playing, but what are they really supporting? Well, that at that center of that triangle, there's the music. When you put the music in the center of the triangle, when you put it at the heart of your practice every day, then there's a different way that you practice. You know that the. The way you need to practice, the things you need to practice, they become clear and they're probably different because it's not just about playing it right. It's about playing it. It's about making it music. Now, that doesn't mean that this journey is easy, but it does become a more instinctive journey because you're following the direction of the music, and that's what this is all about. Your fingers are supporting the music. The musical flow that you're giving to those notes, that's very obviously supporting the music. And you couldn't do that if you didn't have faith in the training you've given your fingers, faith in your own ability to express the music. All of those things come together. One last thought. If you're having difficulty implementing this and figuring out how to put it in your practice, consider this. Put the flow first. If your music is stuck, if you can't get it to the right tempo, if you can't figure out what it's trying to say, if it sounds or feels dull to you, look for the flow, find the flow, and then everything else will come together. Now, if this discussion today has energized you, has inspired you to think about things in a new way, or maybe just confused you, remember, we have lots of resources in heart mastery to help you get the clarity you need to move forward. We have all kinds of resources in the Hub. As I mentioned before, our January seminar series, which will help you organize your practice and your goals. My harp mastery, which is such a wonderful community, and it's so much more than just the community. So many learning resources, new courses all the time. In fact, the seminar series, those are just the Monday night call portions of our My Harp Mastery Membership. My Harp Mastery Membership has a lot of other things to it, including.

A private member forum, including an archive of 60 or 70 courses and a couple dozen featured pieces where the sheet music and the instructions, the video lessons and calls are all right there for you. We have our Scale of Success curriculum to help you go through these things. So much included in my Heart Mastery Membership. That's a resource for you. And of course, the Getaway retreat, that's like the resource on steroids, right? If you want that quick jump start that's going to propel you, the retreat is the place to get it. And I urge you to register before we have to close close the doors on registration. Still a couple of spots left and I'd love to be able to work with you there. So many resources. Take advantage of whatever resource works for you, whatever you can manage, whatever seems like it's doable for you. Dip your toe in or jump all the way in, whatever. But don't let this moment pass you by. This is the moment to make something new out of your heart. Playing this year, whatever your level, right, you can take it to another another level and find new levels of harp happiness as you go. Next week on the podcast, we're going to be talking about things every harp newbie needs to know. So if you are at those early stages of your harp journey, this is going to be really helpful for you, save you lots of time and trouble. We'll be Talking about a 4P framework, four elements, things you need to know that all start with the letter P. And trust me, if you're not a harp newbie, this is still going to be a really terrific reminder of what you need to be doing every day. I know when I put this together it reminded me, it's like, oh, yeah, okay, I could probably do a little bit better with that in my own harp life. So these are things that are really going to help you whether you're a harp newbie or not. But that's what I'll be talking about with you next week. Remember, until then, 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.