What Does a Shaky Technique Really Cost You? - PHH 004

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.

Wouldn't you love a flashy, fluid technique? I know I would. As many years as I've been learning, teaching, practicing and playing the harp, probably half of that time has been spent working on my technique. And it hasn't always been pretty. It wasn't that I couldn't play fast. I've always been able to play fast.

And technique isn't always about playing evenly either, although that was a struggle for me. I'm double jointed and I always had to work at making sure my fingers were even. But your technique is vital to just about every other aspect of your music as well. So if you've never thought about your technique as anything other than exercises and scales and etudes, I think you're going to learn something really new in this episode today. I think you're going to find that you have new concepts, new ideas, and new ways of practicing your technique that are going to serve your heart playing in so many different ways. And not only will we be talking concepts here, but at the end, I'm going to give you a very simple action step that you can implement today to start making the changes that you want to see in your technique.

Plus, I'm going to share something with you that will help you make the changes you want to make in your technique in just 10 minutes a day. Now, I know that sounds practically ridiculous, but it's absolutely true. And I'll tell you just what you need to do to start making that change as well at the end of the podcast. But for right now, let's start talking technique. What does technique practice mean to you? Does it dredge up images of endless drudgery of exercises and scales and etudes and all those things that you really don't want to do because you just want to get to the music. Does it make you think of endless drill or just patterns or things that don't really have anything to do with what you really want to do, like play the harp? Well, I'd like you to put those ideas about technique practice aside for the moment, because we're going to be talking about ways that your technique serves your music. Not just for speed, not just for fluidity, but in a bunch of other ways you might not have considered. And the fact is that if you're not thinking about your technique practice, or even worse, if you. If you're not doing it because you think it's just going to be time misspent, then I'd like you to consider what I'm going to talk about today. Listen carefully and think about how it's going to help you make your music sound the way you want it to. I'm not necessarily talking about doing more drill. And at the end of our time, I'll give you a little one quick action step that you can do that is surprisingly quick and easy to help implement the ideas I'm talking about today.

But we are talking about something that's so important that I don't want you to go another practice day without keeping this in mind. So let's dig in. What is your technique about? Well, technique primarily is mechanics, right? It's about how we play what we play physically. It's about our delicate little fingers. Those are tools of the trade. It's about how we do what we do easy enough, but it's a system of moving parts that has to be understood and can be worked on from a lot of different angles because all those parts have to move together in the right way for everything to happen properly. Sounds like a nice, simple mechanical system, but it doesn't work that way, partly because it's part of a creative endeavor. Right. And it's built. Or your technique should be built for flexibility. We don't always do things the same way on the harp, right? We know that a fifth, for instance, the interval of a fifth, we would play normally, perhaps with 1 and 3 fingers. 1 and 3. But what if we used 1 and 2? Sometimes we need to. Or what if we used 1 and 4? Sometimes we need to do that, too. So your technique has to be built for flexibility. It can't be built around hard and fast rules.

And primarily, your technique's purpose is to allow you to create music.

Music is something that is endlessly varied, always changing, never the same twice. Subject to the moment and whatever else is happening in that moment. So your technique has to be built to support that flexibility, that change, that variety, that artistic whim, whatever it is. Your technique needs to be built to support that. And that's where the sheer mechanical aspect of working on your technique, and not enough. It needs to connect to your music.

So if we're trying to connect your technique to your music, I'm not talking today about just doing that pattern in an etude and that pattern in an exercise, and eventually that pattern in a piece. What I'm really talking about is something much more foundational than that.

Your technique is a direct driver of some very important aspects of your music learning and music playing. And these are the three things that I think you absolutely must be working on. Because if you're not working on these things in your technique study, then you really are sabotaging your own progress or your own music or both. So let's talk about the first one. The first one is musical expression. I find that a lot of students don't understand the connection between technique and expression. And they want to play more expressively. They want to play with a great dynamic range and depth of feeling. But it's your technique that is responsible for doing that. You need the control over your fingers to be able to make a beautiful crescendo or an evenly rolled cord, or a nicely graduated Rallen tondo, for instance. Your fingers need to do that. So what we're talking about is control. But, of course, control. Not from the sense of tension and forcing your fingers to do something. They need to be able to do what you want them to do with ease and with confidence.

And this will. When your technique is functioning properly, you will be able to have a greater dynamic range. You'll be able to have variety in your tone.

All those things are part of that, and they need to be part of your technique practice, too. So that when you're practicing your scales and your arpeggios and your exercises and your etudes or whatever technical work you like to do, focusing on each one of those things in turn will help you develop them in the right way, because they start with your technique.

For instance, think about the range of dynamics from piano to forte. Your fingers need to work equally well at a piano dynamic and a forte dynamic and every gradation in between.

So your technique practice needs to take this into account. You'll find that many technique books don't. Or exercise books don't even put dynamics in there. It's up to you to remember to work These things at different dynamics, can you play each measure perhaps at a different dynamic? Or just play every day at a different dynamic? Or practice the crescendos and the decrescendos? Can you do them evenly? This sort of thing is easily practiced in scale and arpeggio practice.

So if you're stopping at just practicing those things for even fingers and for fast tempo, you haven't begun to scratch the surface of how your scales and arpeggios can. Can help to strengthen your technique and your music at the same time.

All right, so that's expression. What else does your technique do for you or not do for you if you don't have it?

Your technique determines your speed of acquisition. Isn't that a great phrase, speed of acquisition? And what that means is it's just how fast and how automatically your fingers respond to the patterns that you read. So that when you see notes on the page, can your fingers just play it? When this happens, we often talk about, oh, you know, my fingers just saw that and did it. My fingers read this. My fingers read it wrong. My fingers read it right. But we talk about your. That instantaneous or nearly instantaneous connection between seeing it on the printed page and having your fingers do it.

Speed of acquisition is the difference between a beginner and an intermediate student, and between an intermediate student and an advanced student how quickly they recognize on the page what they need to do and how automatically their fingers respond.

So this is a big deal. And why? It's not just about that instantaneous connection. It's about what that connection can do for you.

When you have a nice fast speed of acquisition, your music learning is faster. You don't have to spend time figuring out what fingers you're going to use. You don't have to write in all the fingering. Yeah, you'll probably need to write in fingering for specific moments. In any piece, we all do that. But most of the fingering will be automatic. You won't need to tell yourself what finger to play. Your fingers will look at the notes and decide for themselves, because you will have trained them through your proper technique. Practice. Wouldn't it be nice to learn music faster? Of course it would. And your technique is a big part of that.

Also, part of the speed of acquisition idea is sight reading. It really comes into play here, doesn't it? All you have to do is sort of give it a moment's thought, and you realize that if your fingers are responding nearly instantaneously to what you're reading, think how much faster your sight reading would Be you're not thinking about which finger to use for what your fingers see the patterns and they play them. That's not to say that they won't trip up or that there aren't passages you're going to have to practice. But your sight reading will improve dramatically as your technique does, especially if you're working your technique the right way. Speed of acquisition, isn't that a great thing? But imagine the freedom that would come from not having to spend all that time figuring out the fingering and then practicing the fingering. You've done that in your technique study. Brilliant, right? Yeah, it is. Okay, so how's the third. What's the third thing, that third way that you might want your technique to help you.

Your technique provides alternatives. A well developed technique.

Is a technique where the fingers are facile, they have a certain amount of flexibility. And I'm not talking in terms of bending and stretching as much as I'm talking about in terms of any finger can do any other finger's job.

So that you can choose to play an interval with 1 and 2 or 1 and 3 or 1 and 4. You can find alternative fingerings for arpeggios or for scale passages, or for twisty little things. But the options are open to you and not just in your practice. This is what can make your performances much more secure. Let me start with a little illustration here. Suppose you were driving.

Somewhere, anywhere, and you make a wrong turn. You instantly recognize you've made a wrong turn. It's like, oh, what was I thinking? I turned too soon. And you know, you correct course easily by just going around the block and getting back on track.

You don't have to stop the car, turn it off, look for directions. You don't have to go back home and start over. You just readjust as you go.

That's really nice to do. Of course, with something like, you know, Google Maps and navigation, gets a lot easier, doesn't it? Well, that's the kind of direction that your technique can give you. Suppose you're playing any kind of performance, even if it's just playing a piece for your teacher and you use the wrong fingering.

What if you didn't have to stop and start over, or stop and redo it with the right finger, but you could just throw on any finger that could reach the string until you could recover and get back on track. You didn't have to stop, stop to fix the mistake because your technique would allow you to just keep playing. Sometimes it'll sound a little fumbly, but at least you're keeping going.

And it might be that you can handle it without anybody even noticing. You might even, and this has happened to me, discover a better fingering by accident.

But because you have alternatives and options and that kind of flexibility built into your technique, you can keep going. It saves you from a fatal error, saves you having to stop and start over. And looked at from a slightly larger perspective, you can go into any performance more confidently because you know that one wrong finger isn't going to blow the whole thing up. Your fingers will take care of you. That's what your technique practice is for, so that your fingers will take care of you. Now, in fact, my advice to my students always includes this little bit of things. So say you're playing through a passage in a piece or you're playing through a piece. Don't stop to fix a fingering just because you did the fingering wrong. You can go back and correct it later. But allow yourself to to play through the wrong fingering and keep going. Let your fingers bail you out. Let your fingers solve the problem. Teach them that they can do that. They can be flexible enough to solve the problem. Think about how freeing this will be next time you have to play someplace. Are you feeling energized? Are you feeling motivated? I certainly hope so. And so, before we close, let me give you one quick action step that I would like you to take today. When you do your usual warm up. Instead of just doing your warm up, try choosing one of the things we talked about and making that the focus of your warmup. You could work on tone or dynamic range or maybe fingering options. Practicing patterns. How can your warm up make a difference to your music as well as to your fingers? You'll be amazed at how this small shift in your focus will bring a new level of awareness and purpose to just your warm up routine. Imagine what it could do with your whole technique practice, right? It will make a difference. And you'll be amazed how interesting and fun it is to be thinking about your warmup in this way. Now, if you want to know exactly how to level up your technique even more without spending hours playing exercises and etudes, you need to join my free masterclass. From fumbles to fabulous. Build the technique you want in 10 minutes a day. Now, I know it sounds like you know one of those wacky diet plans, right? But the fact is, you know that you absolutely can create significant growth in your technique in just those few minutes a day. I know it may sound a little radical, but the secret is in the system and I will share that system with you. In this masterclass, we'll talk about the four key finger patterns you must review regularly, how to ensure that your fingers work in your music and not just in your exercises, what I recommend you do instead of all those really thick exercise books and how to know if you are doing too much technique Practice. Yes, it is possible and I come across it more often than you might think. Now the masterclass is on on Monday, June 28th at 7:30pm Eastern Time. You can just use the link in the Show Notes here to register or go to heartmastery.com and you'll find the link there. As always with our masterclasses, there will be a replay, but only if you register, so don't miss this. So if you're listening to this around the time when I've put it out, you have time to join that masterclass and I certainly, certainly hope to see you there. Now, next week on the podcast we're going to be talking about how to know when your piece is done. Have you ever had a piece and you know, you practice it, you practice it, you don't have a particular place to play it and you're not quite sure if it's finished. But what do you do with it? Do you. Do you just keep working on it forever? Do you put it in a review pile? Do you have a rotation? Do you put it away in the drawer when you what do you do with that piece when it's done? And how do you know when it's done? So this is a stage of practice we don't often talk about. We like to get you there, but if there's not a performance on the other end, it can be really hard to tell if your piece is finished. And that's what we'll be talking about here on the podcast next week. So don't miss that and I look forward to seeing 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.