The Wrong Way to Practice Etudes - and 3 Right Ways - PHH 086

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.

Fundamentals, exercises, and etudes are the three pillars of harp technique, or any instrumental technique for that matter. And I'm sure this is not news to you, but the reminder never hurts. Fundamentals, like scales, arpeggios, and chords 4 form the basis of our technique because they're the patterns most prevalent in the music we play. Exercises help our fingers become familiar with the characteristic patterns that aren't quite as straightforward as the fundamentals. And etudes help us put the technical skills from our exercises and fundamentals into a more musical context, a sort of a test drive for our technique. Together, they help us develop facility, agility, and musical understanding. Pretty powerful stuff. I know you knew that already, but like me and most of the harpists I know you may have trouble fitting all three of those into your practice time. Most of us have limited practice time anyway, and it would be so easy to let our technical work crowd out everything else or just never get to the technical work. So this is why I want to talk with you today about the right way to practice an etude. Actually, there are a number of right ways to practice an etude, but there is definitely a wrong way to practice an etude too. None of us has time or effort to spare. We need to use every practice minute wisely. And when you practice an etude properly, you'll increase your technical accuracy, which can make you more confident about your playing as a whole. You'll also increase your finger agility and flexibility as you develop more comfort playing over a wide range of tempos. And you'll have the focus to work on the more musical aspects of your playing, like dynamics, tone, articulation, and flow, without setting the right intention for your etude. Practice or without knowing the steps to achieve that intention. Though your etude practice and your efforts might not bring you the results you want.

So we're going to start our discussion today with a quick quiz to see how effective your etude practice is right now. And then we can talk about the strategies you need to power it up. It's a fun little quiz, but don't let that fool you. This is an important topic. And why? Because the more confident you are in your technique, the more freedom you will have. Freedom to learn the music you want to play, to learn more music, maybe even to play more for others. A secure technique equals harp freedom. And etudes can be a shortcut path to get there. Freedom, particularly harp freedom, is a subject I'm really interested in right now. Freedom is one of my goal words for 2023. And thinking about harp freedom is something that I want, not just for me, but for all of the students and harpists that I work with. And of course, it's something I want for you, too. And so we're going to kick off 2023 with a brand new webinar. It's called Creating Harp Freedom. Three keys to breaking down the barriers between you and the music. Kind of like a get out of jail free card for all of us harpists. So if you've ever thought that you're maybe aren't going to be able to play the music that you want to play, you're just not getting results from your practicing. You're doing a lot of work, but it's just not showing up in the music that you're playing with. The. It's not bringing you that satisfaction or that musical expression and flow that you had hoped for. This webinar is going to be for you. It's a free webinar and it is happening on January 25th. And of course it's going to be recorded. So if you can't make it live, you can always watch the replay. But I highly recommend that you get there live. We're going to be talking about the sneaky habits and attitudes that actually SAP your energy and can get in the way of your harp happiness. Because if you're spending more time practicing, more energy practicing, and it's still not getting you the results you want. Let me tell you, trying to double down on your efforts of what's not working already is still not going to work. So we're going to be talking about ways to create more harp freedom, not necessarily in what you do, but in how you do it. We're going to be talking about the five eyes, which are sort of harp happiness black holes. And believe me, we all get trapped in one or more of these from time to time. So we want to look at what might be keeping us stuck and forming those barriers between us and the music. We're going to talk about why what you think ought to work for you isn't working and what will work instead. We'll talk about all the important things, especially the three most important ones, about playing the music the way you want those keys to help you do that better. And we'll discover how your personal definition of heart freedom can empower and energize your heart playing. So it's going to be really fun. Plus, I've got something brand new that I'm going to be launching. It's brand new and it's free, and I'm going to be launching that, telling everybody on the webinar about it first. So if you are on that webinar, you'll get the scoop before everybody else. So once again, that's creating harp Freedom. Three keys to breaking down the barriers between you and the music. It's a free webinar. It's happening January 25th. You can head over to harpmastery.com, look under events, and you'll find the link to register for the webinar there. Or you can just use the link that's in the show notes here in the podcast. So either way, get over there and register. And I will look forward to talking about harp freedom with you on that webinar. But right now, it's time for our etude quiz. All right, this is just a real easy, real quick true or false quiz. Okay? I'll read all the questions. You just need to answer true or false. And, you know, you don't have to write your answers down. You can keep on going on the treadmill or, you know, driving to work, whatever it is you're doing right now. But you can just think about your answers, and I'll go through all the questions and then we'll go back and talk about them just a little bit. Okay, question number one. Etudes are part of your practice each day. True or false for you. Okay, next one. True or false. You usually work on one etude until it's nearly perfect before you learn a new one. Okay, that question again. You usually work on one etude until it's nearly perfect before you learn a new one. Okay, question three. You always practice your etudes slowly and carefully.

Okay, again. You always practice your etudes slowly and carefully. True or false. Okay, question number four. You have a good balance between fundamentals, exercises, and etudes in your practice. That's a tough one, isn't it? Okay, let's go on to question five. True or false. You don't practice etudes because you use parts of your pieces as etudes.

All right, let me say that one again. You don't practice etudes because you use parts of your pieces as etudes. All right, question six. Etudes mostly feel like another piece you have to learn, except that they're pieces you don't really like.

I know you were waiting for this question, right? I'll say it again. Okay. Etudes mostly feel like another piece you have to learn, except that they're pieces you don't really like.

Okay, and our last question. Question seven. True or false? Etudes don't seem to make any difference to your technique or your ability to play smoothly.

I'll read it once more. True or false? Etudes don't seem to make any difference to your technique or your ability to play smoothly. Okay. See, I told you it was quick, right? Quick quiz. All right, let's just go back over those questions and see what the meat is behind them. All right, so etudes are part of your practice each day? Well, I think they should be. And if they're not, we'll talk about how to do that, and we'll hopefully give you some pretty compelling reasons for making them part of your practice each day. All right? No, no shame. No worries if you answered false to that and you're not doing them daily. We'll see what we can do, though. Okay, question two. You usually work on one etude until it's nearly perfect before learning a new one. Okay. You get points for being really diligent and doing, you know, the good thing here. But truthfully, variety is the spice of life, and it is the key to progress. So moving through etudes more quickly will probably get you better results. We'll talk about it. Okay, question number three. You always practice your etudes slowly and carefully. Once again, you get points for doing the right thing, but an etude isn't an exercise. There's more to an etude than slowly and carefully. There's actually music there. And we'll talk about how to. How to practice your etude for the music, not just slowly and carefully. Okay, next question was, you have a good balance between fundamentals, exercises, and etudes in your practice. Obviously, it's ideal to have that, but it's really hard to manage. And so we'll talk about how to get a better balance without necessarily adding practice time. So we'll we'll. I sympathize and we'll talk about it. Question five was you don't practice etudes because you use, you use parts of your pieces as etudes. Once again, if that's true for you, you get credit for.

Thinking about it and using parts of your pieces to help your technique. These can be really good technical challenges. But they're not etudes. Etudes are more intentionally composed and they're different, they serve a different place in your musical training. So, um, it may be a great exercise. Doesn't count as an etude. So we'll talk about that a little bit more too. Next, Etudes mostly feel like another piece you have to learn, except that they're pieces you don't really like. I get it, I get it, I get it. But there are some really great sounding etudes out there, and they're for every kind of harp and every musical taste. And so, you know, we can find etudes that you like. I am pretty positive about that. And the last question. Etudes don't seem to make any difference to your technique or your ability to play smoothly. Ouch. If that's true for you, if etudes aren't making a difference, then keep on listening because I have some game changing info for you in just a second here. So that's our quick quiz. Once again, none of these answers are necessarily wrong. But. But I think we can use your answers as a way to think about stepping up your etude game. Now, see, here's the thing. Any etude works for multiple purposes, not just for fixing your technique. It's not just a bunch of, you know, just not an expanded exercise. That's not the point. There is more to it than that. So it's not just an expanded exercise, and it's certainly not just another repertoire piece that you have to learn that maybe you do or don't like.

What really is important is that you work on an etude every day for a little chunk of time. I mean, no particular etude is a magic bullet for a particular issue all by itself. But it's your approach to the etude that is going to determine your results. Right? The fundamentals are, you know, are essential for us to practice exercises, drill your fingers in a particular pattern, but the etude combines all these things and it combines your technique with your musicianship in a way that the fundamentals and the exercises do not. And it's different, of course, from a plain old piece of music that you're practicing because it's designed to have a limited context. Right? That's one of the Reasons that so many etudes just sound so boring. They're sort of supposed to. Now, there are some that are much more musical and much better crafted than others. But the etudes that you like are going to be able to help you use your technical skills in a particularly limited way. Right? It's sort of like having that safety net or having, you know, rubber cushions to bounce off of. We're going to put it in a small little box. You don't have to take your technique out into the wild and crazy world of repertoire to give it a test drive. We're going to test drive it in this, on a test track. And that's what the etude's all about. So the wrong way to practice an etude, and this is what you were listening for, right the wrong way. The wrong way to practice an etude is to practice it the same way you would an exercise, to think about it in terms only of fingers and fingering and technique and accuracy. Because the etude should move your technique and your skill level forward, not just repeat what you're already doing in your exercises, and not just be a place to keep it at the same level. It should be really a way to move your skills forward. So if the wrong way to practice an etude is just making another exercise out of it, or on the other end of that, if the wrong way to practice an etude is just looking at it like another piece that you have to practice.

Then what are the right ways? Well, let's talk about them. And I think that there are essentially three specific approaches to etude practice that are all right ways to practice an etude. So we're going to talk about them one at a time. Then we'll talk about how to fit this technique, all of your technique practice, including etudes, into 15 minutes a day.

I'll share with you some of my favorite etude books, and then you will be well on your way to working on etudes in a completely different way. Here we go with Etude practice, method number one. It's not necessarily as much a method as it is a focus. So this is the easy one. This is the one we usually default to, or at least I usually default to. I don't know about you, but it's thinking about the etude and working on it, focused on technical precision.

And that would be stuff like, you know, placing accuracy, thinking about making your fingers placed cleanly so that there aren't buzzes, so that they're very secure on the strings. It's about refreshing your mechanics and the basis, basic things of your playing, you know, closing your fingers and keeping your arms and wrists and fingers and hands and everything in the right place and thinking about all that mechanical, technical kind of stuff.

But it's also thinking about musical precision. So that while the technical precision is part of this, we're going to add that musical precision to it. Because the etudes, as you look at them, etudes don't just come with a single dynamic, right? They're going to come with a dynamic plan, they're going to come with phrases. They're going to have some music, physical components, things that make it sound like music.

So you need to pay attention to those. So that in your etude practice, unlike in your exercise practice, you're going to be thinking about dynamics, thinking about phrasing, thinking about your tone, thinking about your articulation, whether you're playing with a very legato touch or something a little bit more accented. Because the etude isn't just notes, it's notes with a purpose, notes with a musical purpose. And so you can practice precision for these musical elements. How are your dynamics? Are they really what you say they are? Right? You know, I mean, are you making the difference between a mezzo piano and a mezzo forte?

Are you really doing a crescendo? Are you paying attention to the phrasing? Are you making this musical? Remember, if the etude is a test track, you actually have to test something, right? So you can play this slowly and accurately, but your accuracy needs to extend beyond just technical accuracy and extend to musical precision, musical detail as well, looking at the dynamics, looking at the phrasing, looking at the articulation.

And I'm going to remind you that this is part of what makes an etude different from a repertoire piece that you're practicing. When you're practicing a repertoire piece, there are all kinds of complications, right? The texture changes. You know, we've got chords here, we've got arpeggios here, we've got little twisty twirly things here. We've got things that stop and start and sections that are vastly different from one another. In an etude, it's much more homogenous, it's much more, I won't use the word monotonous because it shouldn't be, but it's single skill. We're working on, oops, three note arpeggios, we're working on octaves, we're working on four finger chords, whatever it is, there's that one big technical focus.

Perhaps there's even a single musical focus that's part of this, too. But you're taking that technical focus and you're putting it into a musical context. So the musical detail, the way you think about it, and the level of attention you give it in your etude practice is important, and it should be easier to do than in one of your repertoire pieces. Your repertoire pieces have a lot more complexity than the etude. And that's the point.

That's why in some etude books, you'll see several etudes, right, in a row that seem to be working on the same thing. I know I was working not long ago with a student who was working on four finger chords, and we looked through some of the etudes in the Pozzolli book, and there were three or four right, in a row that worked on four finger chords, but in different ways. And so we looked at how those etudes were different from each other, how they tested that four finger chord skill differently, and.

How they sort of leveled up through those four etudes, and what the difference was there. It was very interesting to look at. And that's what makes an etude different, right? We're not using all of those skills in one thing. We're limiting what we're doing. So the technical and musical detail is the first right way to practice an etude. And, you know, as I said before, this is probably where most of us default. So what would another right way to practice an etude be? Well, the next most obvious one, I think, is to practice it for technical facility or agility. And primarily, we're talking about speed, right? We're talking about tempo. Etudes have a musical purpose, and that comes with a tempo. Now, some etudes in some books actually give you a goal tempo, and it may be too fast for you. When we're thinking about fast etudes, that's okay. You don't have to do that particular metronome marking, but do push yourself beyond slow and careful to think about achieving a tempo that has a different musical.

Point, right? So that if the thing is supposed to be allegretto, it needs to sort of go along at a happy, cheerful little pace. So the etude is not just testing how well you play those four finger scale groupings, but it's also helping you play those four finger scale groupings a little bit more lightly, a little bit faster, testing your agility. Don't ignore this part of etude practice. Don't get stuck in only slow and accurate. We want to, you know, bridge that gap right, between exercise and music. And speed is a big part of that. So if you're one of those people who always worries that you never play fast enough. Well, let's start doing that in the context of an etude, where the etudes themselves aren't quite so difficult and you can start to get comfortable playing faster.

Now, in this same sort of category, we've got a wider variety. Fingering. You know, you can use this to stretch your fingering repertoire ideas, right? You don't have to use just one fingering. You could try the etude with different kinds of fingerings. You could make sure that they, as you're playing this etude just a little bit faster, maybe you're not looking at the strings, not looking at your hands, but tracking the music and practicing your music, reading a little bit more, and you're working on the independence of your fingers and your hands also. So this is about playing the etude pretty much the way it wants to go in a musical, with a musical idea. Pushing the tempo, pushing the requirements.

The things that you're asking of your fingers, taking them to that next level quite literally. So we've, you know, started at that basic, slow and careful, gotten all the detail. And this second way to practice it adds that agility component where you're asking your fingers to do more. Nice. Okay. The third right way to practice an etude, and this is probably the one you were waiting for, is to practice it for musical flow. Now, obviously, precision is part of this, the detail that we talked about before, because when your fingers are accurate and even and clean, the music's going to flow better. And obviously, the second way that we just talked about to practice an etude, practicing it for speed, adding speed is going to help develop the flow as well. But at this level, you're going to be practicing the etude more the way you would a regular piece of music. But again, because the etude has that limited technical focus and limited musical context, there's a little bit less challenge.

To bringing flow to an etude. Now, perhaps you haven't thought of your etudes this way before, but if getting that flow, getting that continuity in a regular piece is a challenge for you, pull out some simple etudes. You don't have to start with hard ones. Find ones that are fairly easy for you and fairly short, or take just a portion of one and work on the continuity here.

That limited focus again, right, We've got one basic technical skill we're working on, and, you know, we're not branching out into lots of different musical ideas. That limited context is going to make it easier for you to practice for flow, to practice for continuity. So this is the perfect way to use an etude.

Not just for technical precision, not just for facility and speed, but. But for getting your music to flow.

When you work on that particular skill, because it's its own skill. When you work on that in the context of an etude, to make your fingers flow in that one pattern that the etude is focusing on, you're practicing a skill that is going to carry over directly into the music that you're playing. And I hope you can also see that if you're not using your etude practice, or at least some of it, to practice for musical flow, you are not giving yourself the best kind of training that you can have for trying to get flow into a real piece of music. Okay, I know etudes are real music, too, but you know what I mean? So this is the greatest way that I know to work at that continuity. Find a small, fairly easy etude. And because it doesn't require a lot of.

A lot of different skills, it's going to be easier to achieve the flow you want. Practice it here. All right, so I've just given you all these wonderful ways to practice etudes, but how do you actually fit them into a day? All right, let's say you have 15 minutes a day to devote to your technique practice, all of your technique practice. You have pieces you want to work on and things you want to review and other kinds of stuff. But we're going to have 15 minutes a day for your technique practice. If you have more, that's terrific. If you have less, you know, you can pare this down a little bit, but here's one suggestion, and it is only that a suggestion. But here's one suggestion for fitting everything in in 15 minutes. Let's spend the first two minutes of your technique practice on a fundamentals warmup. We know we need to warm up our fingers kind of slowly and carefully. Let's limit it to two minutes. And let's use our fundamentals as warmups. Scales, chords, arpeggios. And just two minutes, if you like to do it, hands separately. That's a minute each hand. That's really enough, because you're going to follow up those two minutes with five minutes of an exercise. Choose one exercise. Be sure that each hand gets its chance at it, right? Don't just do right hand, do, you know, so split it, right? Two and a half minutes for right hand, two and a half minutes for left hand. Um, you don't have to be quite so dogmatic about, but the idea is that each hand needs to get through an exercise. And just pick one.

And then let's leave you seven minutes here for an etude or for part of an etude, and choose one of those ways we just talked about technical precision or technical facility or musical flow to be your focus for that etude for that day.

Just give yourself seven minutes on it. Now, if you're adding up as we go along, you realize that's 14. Well, I gave you an extra minute so that when you're done with that, you can, you know, catch your breath, change gears, refocus, and then get on with the rest of your practice.

So once again, I'll repeat that for you. Right? Two minutes of a fundamentals warmup, five minutes on an exercise, seven minutes on an etude. But with one of those focuses we talked about today, I mean, you can't get to everything every day. So, you know, maybe your fundamentals warm up, is going to alternate scales and arpeggios and chords. You'll do scales, you know, every third day and arpeggios every third day and chords on those other third days. And that's six days of practice. Boom. Okay.

If you're choosing one exercise a day, rotate, maybe you have two exercises and you alternate them, you know, day one and day two, or set up a weekly rotation. I've got five exercises, and I'm going to do one each day. And then change your exercises up maybe every month. Right. The key for your exercises is to do them with focus. And then for your etude, set a task that you can manage in the time that you have one page or one section or an extra short etude, and then rotate your focus there, too, between the precision or the agility and the musicality, you can get it all done. But just probably, if you're like most of us, certainly if you're like me, you can't get everything done every day. So you have to, you know, choose what you're going to do and rotate. Now, if you want some suggestions for some etudes that maybe you haven't thought of, here are some that I like. There are lots of. Lots of etudes in the world in the. The Pozzoli Etudes, the ones in the Grossi book. And the Medium Difficulty Etudes are fabulous, of course, and classic E.T. i like the Alfred, Holy 24 easy studies. Now, they're really only for pedal harp. You can, you can adapt them a little bit for lever harp, but they're not as satisfactory. But I love those. Alfred Holy 24 easy studies on lever harp or pedal harp, of course. Bernard Undress has pieces that are beautiful for etude study. The Morels, the Ribbon Bells, the Charades, they're all wonderful pieces for that.

There are some etudes for concert or Celtic harp, mostly classical studies or studies from the classical repertoire that have been either edited, transcribed, or arranged by Bonnie Shaljean. S H A L G E A N They're wonderful and they're totally lever friendly, so you can play them on pedal or lever harp.

And then I love Felice Pomeranz's new collection of contemporary Etudes for harp. They are for pedal and lever harpists, and they're written by some of the most amazing harpists around at the moment. So those contemporary Etudes for harp, Fabulous. So there are some suggestions for that. And what I want you to take away from today is, is that there are different focuses than maybe you've thought of for your etudes, and that the Etudes can be the real key to progress here for you as long as you have these different focused ways to practice them right, not just for precision and detail, but also for facility and speed and for musical flow.

Don't forget also that I'd love you to register for our upcoming webinar Creating Harp Freedom. Three Keys to breaking down the barriers between you and the music. It's going to be fun, and I think there are some different ideas. Plus, as I mentioned before, I'm going to be telling you about a brand new thing that we're offering at Heart Mastery, and that's the webinar is free coming up on January 25th. You can use the link under eventsartmastery.com or on our show Notes here for this podcast episode and you can register there now. Next week we're going to be continuing our Harp Freedom theme and we'll be talking about that on our podcast next week, so you won't want to miss that.

But between now and 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.