What to Do When Your Music is Boring You - PHH 196

And the reason I think this is important is because often when we're bored with a piece, for whatever reason and for whatever reason we're playing the piece, we feel trapped. We feel like we've committed to it and we have to see it through. And we're going to grit our teeth and just stick with it. And I'll tell you, gritting your teeth is no way to play the harp.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to emp 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.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the My Harp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join us just go to harpmastery.com join now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. They say that familiarity breeds contempt. Unfortunately, when it comes to our music, familiarity also breeds secure and confident playing. We want to play our music well, and so we need to know it inside and out. That takes time. Learning music also takes time. And the longer we take to learn our music, the harder it can be to stay interested in it. No matter how much we love a piece of music, it is possible to get bored with it. Also, there are times when we're required to learn a piece that we don't really like. Perhaps for a performance or an exam or an ensemble concert. Practicing a piece we don't like can feel like torture. I believe there is no upside to playing or practicing a piece you're bored with. If you're trying to learn it, your practice won't be focused. Your heart won't be in it. If you're performing it, your lack of interest in the piece will communicate itself to the listener. It might be a flawless performance, but it won't have you. Your personality, your energy, your it. And those are the things that bring a performance to life. This is true not only for concert performances. This is true for every performance, whether it's a video for Facebook, or playing in church or playing for friends. If you are bored with the piece you're playing, you are, in effect, cheating your listeners. So I want to start by saying right now that you can choose to stop playing. Playing any piece that bores you. You have the power to choose. You could even say you have the obligation to choose. You owe it to yourself not to spend your time on something that doesn't interest you. And you owe it to a potential listener not to present something that you don't care about. But maybe you don't want to just put the piece aside, or maybe you can't. Well, that's a situation worth investigating. When is it worth persisting with a piece that you don't like or has become boring to you? When should you just put it away? And if you decide to persist, what can you do to make the piece interesting to you or to at least help you endure practicing it? Well, I have some valuable ideas to share with you today. Even if you haven't run across a piece that bores you, and maybe we should say haven't yet, you can use these ideas to keep that musical love light burning. The whole idea of becoming bored with your music is something that I have some very strong opinions about, and I'm really excited to share those with you today. So before I get all wrapped up in that and forget about some of the things I need to remind you about, I'm going to take that moment and remind you about them now. So remember, we are in the middle of our February seminar series, and that series is all about scales and arpeggios. It's called Just Scales and Arpeggios too. But it's about developing your fingers in four important ways. Developing them for evenness, for the ability to place and play cleanly and evenly, for rhythmic precision, for, yes, speed. Right. We all want to play faster. And for being flexible and agile and having the facility to get around those notes with ease and some degree of comfort level and certainly a degree of musicianship. So that's what we're talking about in this theme. And of course, this course is part of our My Heart Mastery membership. But if you're not a My Heart Mastery member, by purchasing the seminar series, you'll get all the goodies that are part of this particular course without getting all the rest of the membership, which is something you may not be interested in at this point. Although I certainly hope that participating in the seminar series will give you more of an idea of what My Heart Mastery membership might be like and will inspire you to join us. There are so many resources for you there, no matter what your heart playing level is. So that's our seminar series for February. It's still going on. You can still register for that, and I wanted to be sure that you knew that. So you'll find the link to that in the show notes or@harpmastery.com or in the Harp Mastery app. Wanted to be sure to let you know about those, to remind you about those. And now I feel like I need to get back to our topic for today because I don't want you to be bored with your music. Even more importantly, I don't want you to think it's your fault. I mean, let's take a look at why you might be bored with it. Sometimes we are given a piece of music to learn that's just a piece of music we don't like, and that's really hard to practice. I've had that happen. I've played concerts where I was given an orchestra part or a chamber music piece or occasionally a solo.

That was given to me with the idea that that was the piece I was going to play on this concert. Maybe it was a concert of music by a particular composer or somebody else had chosen the music and I was there to play it. That's not unusual. Particularly for a professional, it's not unusual. It's like, well, okay, here we go. This is it. But it can happen in other instances, too. Like you are committed to playing a Christmas concert, and they give you the part for the cantata that they're doing, and you just don't like it. Well, you know what? You're allowed not to like it. And I've had that happen where I've had to spend quite a bit of time working on something that was really, really. But because I had committed to the performance that it was a part of, I really had to learn it and I needed to do a good job. The fact that I didn't like the piece was totally beside the point, and I couldn't afford to be bored working on it for the very reasons I talked about a moment ago. I know that if I'm bored with a piece, my practicing won't have the same level of attention. My performance won't have the same kind of commitment and energy to it. So I know that it's important for me not to be bored with it. And we'll come up to how to not be bored with it in that kind of a circumstance in just a little bit. But perhaps you're bored with it because your teacher assigned you a piece and you just like, I don't know. And your teacher said, oh, I really think you should do it. It's going to be very good for you. And so you said, okay, all right, I'll do it. But your heart isn't in it. You don't really like it. Well, we can deal with that situation, too. But maybe you're just bored with the piece because you've been playing it a long time. Maybe it took you too long to learn it in the first place, or maybe it's just taking too long to finish. These are not uncommon things to have happen, right? You start the piece and you've got lots of energy for it, but it just takes so long that before you know it, a year has gone by and you're still playing the thing, and you really want to get onto something else. I understand that, too. And we will have remedies for these situations, but I kind of want to work through them and through your choices in sort of a flowchart kind of way, sort of a choose your own ending idea. We're going to be looking at, these are your options, and which ones do you want to choose? And we're going to look at the possibilities that you have. And the reason I think this is important is because Often when we're bored with a piece, for whatever reason, and for whatever reason we're playing the piece, we feel trapped. We feel like we've committed to it and we have to see it through. And we're gonna grit our teeth and, and just stick with it. And I'll tell you, gritting your teeth is no way to play the harp. Creates extra tension, for one thing, doesn't look very attractive for another. Not good for your teeth, for sure, or your jaw. Right? Not good for you. And it certainly doesn't serve the music. So we're gon take away that, you know, just gut it out and go through it kind of mentality. We're going to look at the choices you have and ones that will feel comfortable for you to take. I want you to feel empowered by these choices. So let's get started with the fact that, okay, you're bored with your piece. What are your top level choices? Well, you could choose to put it away. You could choose to keep going. Easy choice. I put it away or I keep going. Well, if you're going to put it away, you have two choices there as well. You can choose to put it away temporarily or to put it away forever. If you're done with this piece, like, I never want to see it again, go ahead, put it in the, in the deepest, darkest corner of your music closet and leave it there. Or even better, give it to somebody else and say, here, you might like this. Unless you don't think even your friends would like it. That's, you know, don't pass along something that you think will torture your friends as well. So you can put it away forever. You're allowed to do that. It's okay. Or you could say, okay, I'm going to put it away for now and I'm going to look at it again in a year. Or I'm going to look it again, look at it again in six months. Give yourself a date. In fact, you could even put it on your calendar. And that may make you feel better about putting it away. I know, it feels like you've lost, right? It feels like you're quitting. It doesn't necessarily feel good to just give up on a piece, but it doesn't feel good to keep practicing when you hate your practicing on it either. So you're better served by putting it away.

Okay, but there are a couple of considerations here, right? What if it's a piece you absolutely have to play, You've committed to it, you're playing it in this ensemble concert, and you Just have to learn it. Well, we'll talk about some strategies for that, but let's hang on to that and save that for a moment. What if it's your teacher's assignment? Well, you know, you might want to just talk to your teacher about it. So there are some strategies there. We're coming back to the strategies. Let's keep looking at the top level. So, first of all, we know that, yes, you can put it away. Good job. All right, we can put it away. But what if you don't want to put it away? What if you want to keep going? The first thing I want you to do, if you think you want to keep going with that piece, is to take a moment, take a breath, and examine why. Is it because you used to love the piece and you really want to play it, but you just can't stand to practice it another moment? And that's where you are right now, but you really love it and you want to learn it? Or is it because you feel like you just want to finish this sucker and get it done? That's legitimate, too. So think about why you want to finish it. And your answer to that question isn't important. What is important is that you have one. Because if you don't have a reason to keep going, then you should put the piece away.

All right, so we'll imagine that you have found and identified your why you want to keep going. What are your choices from there? I think it's important to say also that your why probably falls into one of two categories. It might fall into the, well, I feel like I have to do this. Maybe your teacher assigned it. Maybe you just see it as a step in your progress and you really feel like you have to do it, as opposed to the other kind of why, which is, well, I really want to do it. So the have to and the want to don't have a lot of difference in terms of what you're going to do next and what's important about what you're going to do next. But those whys are a little bit different, and they require a little bit different energy to commit to. Obviously, if you really want to play the piece, what you need is more of a redirect and a way to get out. Perhaps you're stuck in the weeds. Right. And a way to get out of those. And if you feel like you have to, we may need to work a little bit harder to create the right kind of positive energy to keep you moving forward. But in essence, we're looking at three specific things. In order for you to be able to keep going, we need to create necessity around it, we need to create connection around it, and we need to create an end point or a time frame.

Now, some of you may be saying, oh, duh, I hadn't sort of thought of it that way, and that's great, and we're going to explore each one of those right now. But maybe you haven't thought of it in these terms. We tend to think that music is this sort of, you know, amorphous. It's this creative sort of thing. And we can't put it into the same kind of buckets that we would any other life choice or anything else that we do that seems a little bit more concrete. But it works the same way. Because the diligence and the discipline that we need to bring to studying our music and to learning to play it are precisely the same that we would need to bring to any other endeavor. So that's why these particular buckets that we're talking about, necessity, connection, and time frame, are going to be the same that you would apply to just about anything you do. And we'll look at them one by one, and we'll look at them in terms of music. So what do I mean by create necessity? Well, it has to be important to you to continue working with this piece, and you need to be able to answer that question. Now, maybe you already have when you found your initial why for this, right? Why am I going to keep going? Why is it important to you? Is it because you love the piece? Is it because you just plain want to finish it? Is it because your teacher wants you to finish it? Is it because you think it's going to be good for you? Any of those is fine, but identifying why you want to keep going with this piece is going to be the only thing that's going to give you the energy to continue it. When the going gets rough, well, let's face it, it's already rough. And getting over this hump, the one that says, ugh, I don't want to go and practice it anymore, that's a difficult hump to get over. So you need to be very firm in your understanding of why it's important for you to continue.

That'S necessity. Now, the next one's a lot more fun, and that's about creating connection. You've heard me talk about connection before. But the connection that we have to our music is where we start. We start from that connection that we don't even understand. But something in us responds to music in general and a particular piece of music in particular. So that connection is there. And what has happened is that our practice has dulled that connection. Now, you don't necessarily have to try to fall back in love with the piece. That could be a little artificial feeling, but you do need to find things that you like about it. Do you like the composer? Do you like the way the right hand pattern feels? Do you love a particular chord? Do you like the title? It doesn't have to be much, but you need to find at least one thing that you love about the piece so that you can go on with it. You need to reconnect. You could think about the composer, or about the time period, or about an image you have of the piece. You could connect with a performance that you've heard of that piece that really speaks to you, that you want to recreate through your own playing and in your own way. Sometimes one of the easiest ways to reconnect with a piece is to stop practicing it for a little bit and just listen to it. Spend a week where you just listen to the piece and maybe dance around the room to it, or write a story that goes with it, or imagine a beautiful scene that goes with the piece, but let your imagination reconnect to the music that's there. Generally when we have disconnected from a piece, it's because we've spent too much time working at the notes, drilling and redrilling and digging in and getting down into the nitty gritty of the piece. And we need to step back and remember the big picture that all those notes are creating, that they're creating something that is beautiful and that we are creating something that's beautiful. And it's not about the little notes, it's about the entire piece. This is a perspective issue, and sometimes just taking a few days saying, okay, I'm not going to play it, I'm just going to listen to it and I'm going to remember why I love it. That can be enough to re establish that connection. It has worked for me, it has worked for students of mine, and it can work for you too. So that's creating necessity and creating connection. The third thing we need to create is an end point. It's our time frame. The thing is that when you've been working on a piece for a long time and you're tired of working on it, you don't have any more energy for it. We can give it an energy infusion, and that's what we're talking about here. By creating necessity and creating connection but we still are going to find it hard to maintain that energy.

Unless we give ourselves a limit, a time frame, an end point, a due date, whatever you want to call it. It's going to be much easier to keep our energy up for the practicing that we need to do if we know it only needs to go so long.

So you need to decide what that end point is like. And depending on how frustrated you've been with the piece or how long you've been playing it, or how disconnected you feel from it, I would say, you know, look at a time frame that's relatively short. You could look at it anywhere from a week or two to a month or two. But whatever it is, give yourself a concrete time frame to say, okay, by the end of this time, I will hopefully be able to do this. But even if I can't, I'm going to put the piece away for a while.

There are a couple things that happen when you put a deadline, a due date on a piece like that. First of all, it helps you organize your practice more, and it can and should help you move ahead faster. Because if you know that you're going to put the piece away on, oh, April 1st, just to pick a date if you're going to. And I thought April Fool's Day was kind of nice. So if you're going to put the piece away on April 1, and you want to have it finished or playable to this particular point, whatever that point is, then you have a way to gauge what has to happen between now and then. And I would encourage you to say, okay, well, I'm going to back out from that if I want it to be that way by April 1st. Let me give myself an extra week to get that done. So by a week before that, I'm going to have it where I want it to be on April 1st, in case I need a little bit of leeway there. And then these things still need to happen in the piece and push yourself forward to meet those goals. Don't let yourself hang back. If, for instance, for a, you know you're coming to the end of week four on the piece, and you know that week five starts with moving the tempo up to this particular point. But at the end of week four, you still don't feel ready for that. Do it anyway. Do it anyway. Don't let yourself languish and not stay on target to meet your due date just because you don't think you're ready.

Make yourself ready. Just go on as much as you can. Once again, don't do that to the point where it frustrates you. We're trying to get rid of frustration, not add more. But try to stay on track. Even if. Even if it's not ready, even if you don't feel ready about it, try to stay on track. The pressure of the deadline can help you work a little bit faster. And often the slow workings that we do and the careful learning that we do is part of what slows our whole process down and part maybe of what got us stuck and in this situation to start with. So use that deadline to push you forward. But that's an external time frame. I want you to think about having an internal time frame as well. And that would be just the time frame that says, okay, I only need to get it this far, and then I can be done with it. This is the time frame that's not really dependent on dates, but the time frame that says, okay, you know, I just need to get it to sort of 80%. And if you know me, my mythical 80%, which is not mathematical at all, is that you can play most of the notes correctly, most of the time at a tempo that's maybe not at the goal tempo, but is steady and reliable.

So that's kind of my 80% ish. And it's. If you can get it to 80% and you're happy with that, then you're done and you can put it away. Nobody says you have to polish every piece to performance standards. Once again, this is a decision you get to make. So you set your internal endpoint for that piece as well. Okay? Necessity, connection, and endpoint. Those are the things you need to think about, what you need to come up with, why am I doing it? That's the necessity. Why is this important to me? The connection is, why do I like this? What do I like about this piece? And you can find something, trust me. Even if it's, oh, I get to not have to push any levers or pedals in this piece. Okay, start there. Start with the easy ones, but find something that you like about it, and then give yourself the external and the internal endpoints that will allow you to say, okay, I'm done. Now I can put it away.

Let's look at some other techniques that will help you through some of these questions. If this is a piece that you have to play.

I suggest that you consider that due date. Obviously, the due date is probably not in your control at this point. If it's something you have to play, it might be for a performance, and it's like, okay, well, you know, May 15th. Once again, pulling a date out of the hat. You I have till May 15 and May 15 is the day, the last day I ever have to play this piece. Well, consider what you're going to practice on May 16th. Have a plan for what you are going to play or learn right after that so that you have something to look forward to and you have a reason to get to the harp the very next day. Again, if this is something you have to play, you could consider setting a minimum daily requirement practice plan. This can work if you're dedicated to finishing the piece or continuing to work on it, but you just need to take a little bit of a break. The minimum daily requirement practice plan is all about how little can you do to still kind of stay in touch with it. Like, well, maybe you just need to play it once through daily for a while, or maybe you need to play it every other day, or maybe you need to play it twice a day. Think about what it is you want to do, what feels good to you, or if it's something that you're playing for a performance and you know you have to have it ready. How little can you do right now until your energy is a little bit, a little bit more on the positive side here. So set your minimum daily requirement practice plan and do as little as you need to to stay in touch with the piece. You could also try the, you know, the dreaded vegetable plan, right? Which is to just practice it first and get it, practice it, get it done, get on to something else. Or you could play something you love before you play it and play something you love afterward. So it's kind of like sandwiched in the middle there between two things that you really do. Like, that can be a helpful approach. I know it seems so basic, but sometimes that's all we need. We harpists are just simple people and maybe we don't need anything more than that to help us just get some breathing space and get a little bit of distance from the piece enough so that we can come back to it and finish it.

And if this is a piece that you feel you have to play or that you are now required to play for a performance or an exam or something. How did you get in this spot? Might be worth a moment to consider how you got here and if there's a way you could prevent it from happening again. Did you have to commit to this piece? And is the commitment that you made to this piece, maybe the commitment is worth the struggle that you've had to get this piece Finished. So think about, you know, where's my risk reward here? You know, it's the slog of the practice, but maybe the reward is worth it. Or could you just prevent the slog from happening again next time.

This comes up? Also, if your teacher has given you a piece and you've been working on it and you really don't like it, perhaps your teacher said, oh, this is going to be really good for you. It's going to do this and this and this. And it's a standard piece. Everybody learns it, you're going to love it. And guess what? You get into it and you find out you don't love it.

My suggestion, as a teacher who has worked with students like this, I would suggest that you go to your teacher and you say, you know, I've tried this, but I really don't like this piece. Is there another piece we could do instead? Maybe one that would have the same benefit, or one that's by the same composer, or one by a different composer. Whatever it is, do that. After all, your teacher's a harpist too. Your teacher understands that you don't have to like everything. And just because it's something that they like doesn't necessarily mean it's something you like like. And it's a great time to talk about music and about tastes and about goals and all that kind of thing with your teacher can be a great conversation. I encourage my students to talk to me about this. You know, I've often sat in a lesson and looked at a student's body language with a particular piece and thought, mmm, this doesn't look right. And I've asked them, do you like this piece? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. Really? Are you sure? Because it looks like you're just kind of slogging through it. And sometimes the student will still continue to say, oh, no, no, it's okay. I'm just. It's just really hard. And that's when I like to take the ball into my own hands and say, okay, would you prefer to work on another piece? Because I can find you another piece that works on these same things that will move you forward in the same way that you might prefer. I love to be able to solve a dilemma like that, so be sure to ask. Nothing wrong with asking. Lastly, I'm going to give you sort of the summary technique, the technique that all of these little techniques are part of. If you are going to continue working on a piece, one that has bored you for whatever reason, what you need to do is stop the pattern Break the cycle. Whatever kind of practicing you've been doing on it, stop doing that kind of practice right now and do something differently. So do a different kind of.

And do something different.

If you've been really working on those hard measures and trying to get all the technique and stuff in place, well, let's try just playing it through for a week. If you've been taking it slowly and carefully, let's play at a tempo for a week. If you've been really trying to perfect the notes, let's find the dynamics and the expression and let's go crazy with the piece and not worry about the mistakes for just a week. You need to break the cycle, do something else. It's not going to damage the learning that you've done. What it is going to do is get your head up out of the notes and give you a different perspective with the piece. And if you need to go back in and correct notes at the end of that week, go for it. But at the end of that week, you should have some of your energy for the piece back. If this is a piece that you used to like and no longer like, you should have found that again. And as I said, listen to the recordings of it. Just absorb the piece as a whole. Get out of the note note picky stuff and get back to the music.

That's all you need to do. And probably it's all you ever need to do. I do want to remind you that we have the February seminar series that's still available for you, which will help your fingers make the music nicely. Next week on the show, we are talking about refreshing your goals. It's time to refresh your goals and we'll talk about how you can tell if you're making progress or if you're on the right track, and maybe how to do a quick reset if that's what you think you need. So that's next week right here on the podcast. In the meantime, remember that 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. All right, 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. There.