Why Every Harpist Needs a Method - PHH 227

But when you have that solid methodology, you have something where all the pieces fit together. Now you can play, mix and match with these methods. You can say, well, I like this from this and I like this from this. But sort of like when you order aftermarket parts for your lawnmower from Amazon, those aftermarket parts may or may not fit exactly right. So that's why it makes sense to sort of take one methodology and follow it all the way through. 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 place. 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 Miharp 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 and 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. When I was a beginning harp student, the technical method I was learning, the Salzido Method, was something I took very seriously. From my very first harp lessons, I learned the important points of technique as Salzato taught it. Of course, I wasn't studying with Salzato, but my teacher, Marilyn Costello, was a student of his, and his method was what she taught her students. For a long time, I played the harp in innocent ignorance of the fact that there were other harp methods. In fact, it was a revelation to me in those early years when I discovered that most harpists in the world didn't use the Salzato method. Truly, all the harpists I knew in the Philadelphia area were Salzato method players, and it never occurred to me that this wasn't true across the wider harposphere. But once that realization hit, I went into what I'll call Stage two of my education about HAARP methods. That was the stage where I believed that everyone who didn't play Salzato method wasn't playing the right way and they would never be good harpists. Ah, the foolishness of youth. Well, it didn't take me long to realize how ridiculous that was. After all, there were many harp legends I admired who weren't Salzato players. Okay, time for another outlook adjustment. My outlook has undergone many such adjustments in the ensuing years, mostly due to the evolution of my teaching philosophy. The basic underpinning for my thoughts on harp methods can be summed up like the method itself doesn't matter. What matters more is that you follow one without a method, your technique and your technique practice merely a collection of skills. The method is the organizational plan that brings together skills and sound and ergonomics and more, and unifies them with a cohesive set of whys and hows. A method doesn't leave you guessing about how to do something. It gives you the system to find solutions. In this episode, I will talk about the key points of technique that every method addresses, and I'll explore a few of the differences in approach between some common harp methods and why each approach works. It's not about one way being right and the other wrong. It's about having a plan you can follow. I'm hoping that by expanding your ideas about technique and method, I can encourage you to consider how following a harp method will make everything about your technique finally makes sense to you. Now, if I inspire you to do that, let me remind you that the best way to learn about a harp method, sure, you can read the books, but the best way is to work with a teacher who follows that method and who can instruct you in what you need to know and how to apply it. Now, in our certified coaching program, we have harpists who have studied in a variety of methods. And so there's going to be an instructor for you there who can help you walk through the steps that you need to say, okay, these are the important things in my technique. This is why they work, this is how they work, and this is how I should work on them. So if this is something that interests you, please, please consider working with one of our certified coaches. You'll find a link to the coaching program page in the show notes. Of course, you can always find it in@harpmastery.com in the our programs tab. You'll find the coaching page there and you can learn more about our coaches and how that program works. If you're looking for someone a little bit closer to home, perhaps who might be able to work with you not only virtually, but perhaps in person, consider working with one of our accredited teachers. Teachers. You'll also find a page with our accredited teachers information on that same tab, the programs tab, at heartmastery.com and of course, I've put a link here in the show notes as well. Our accredited teachers have taken a course with me so they understand about how I teach and how I believe students and teachers can work together to make more progress and to help the students achieve their goals and play the way they want. So I do recommend these accredited teachers and as I said, one of them might be close to you, and so that's something to explore as well. So those options exist, of course, explore the teachers that might be right in your own town if you can. That's a wonderful resource because you can be in touch with them so often. So look at that. Remember that someone who understands the entire method concept will be able to help you through the mysteries of the method. And that's what we're trying to talk about today. So I'll try to demystify some of those things and explain some of those differences and why I think they're so important and why one method as opposed to another might resonate particularly with you. So let's get started and dig in here. I think the first thing that we need to come to an understanding about is what harp method is, not what a particular method is or even what it's really about in terms of fingers and thumbs and Elbows, elbows, and all that kind of thing. A method starts with a philosophy. It starts with the understanding of what the harp should sound like, the way it should be played to produce that kind of a sound that is desired. So when you talk about the founder of a method, that's what all their ideas are geared toward. The harp should sound like this. I personally, if I'm the method's creator, and I'm not, but me personally, this is what I want the harp to sound like. And so in order to make the harp sound like that, these are the elements that I think should be in place. So when you're looking at a method like Carlos Salzado's or Henriette Reynier's, two of the biggest harp methods in the world, when you're looking at those, you're looking at two magnificent harp players who had distinct and personal ideas of what the harp should be, what it should sound like. And that's the personality that they brought, that they started with. That was the reason for creating the method. It was, I think the harp should sound like this. And therefore, this is what you need to do to make the harp sound like that. When we think of method and technique, we often think fingers first. Right? Okay, what do I need to do? I need to play this way. I need to put my finger this way. My thumb needs to look this way. But that's not where these method founders started. They started from their idea of what a harp should sound like. But having started with that end result, what they have done is given us the set of steps to follow to achieve that same result. Okay, so we might not sound exactly like them, but it gives us a reason for everything that we do in our technique work. We do it this way because. And it's amazing how much more you'll pay attention to keeping your thumb up or your wrist in or whatever it is. It's amazing how. How much more importance those things will take on when you know that they're there for this specific reason. So they started with the idea. They've given us the steps, they've given us the roadmap for us to be able to get there. That's what a method is. Now, can you see how different that is from just thinking about technique as a bunch of exercises? Yeah, we want our fingers to be fast, we want our fingers to be strong, we want a good tone. We want them to be musical, we want them to be relaxed. All of those things, and all of those things are inherent in these harp methods. Whichever method you're looking at that's part of it, because we all want to play beautifully. We want to have fast fingers, we want to be relaxed when we play. We all want that. There are just different ways of arriving at that same result. And what's fascinating about these methods is that they started from such varied points in the way that they looked at harp playing. Their philosophies might have been very different, but in following the steps, we still arrive at beautiful playing, even if the emphasis is just a little bit different. And of course, over generations, people have borrowed a little bit from this method and a little bit from this method and sort of merged them. And that's okay, because I think that the understanding of the why this works this way because is so powerful, and it's so much different than the kind of random technique study that a lot of harpists do. So if you're one of those who has done kind of random technique study, let me help you sort of put this in perspective and think about those elements of technique from a method standpoint instead of just an exercise standpoint. I'm going to be talking mainly about Rainier's method and Salzido's method because they contrast so beautifully. And of course, what's interesting is that both Rainier and Salzato studied with Alphonse Hasselman, and each of them had little disagreements with Hasselman about various points. And each went their own way to do their own thing with the harp, which of course sounds very 21st century, but it's absolutely part of their own experiences and their studies. So they went their own way, started very different schools of harp playing, but they've produced generations since then of really magnificent harp players. So all of that is sort of an interesting thing to look at. I'll also be talking a little bit about Celtic and folk harp playing. The methodology there is not as strong, but I want to point out what's different about the technique for those kinds of instruments and the traditions that they grew out of. So we'll talk a little bit about that, too. But let's start by looking at Rainier and Salzedo. A little disclaimer here. I'm not able to go into depth today on both of these players and both of their methods. So this is a really brief sort of skim the surface survey. If you're a real Rainier partisan or you're a real Salcedo partisan, please don't take umbrage at any facts that I've left out or concepts that I've sort of. Oh, just sort of Painted generally, instead of getting real specific about. I just don't have the time in a podcast episode to do justice to all of the important things that each of them contributed to the harp world. So understand that these are just sort of very general surveys. If you're interested in either of these players and their philosophies, go check out the books, check out the harp books, check out the books written about them, and understand more about where they came from. They're both fascinating personalities and just riveting stories for each of them. And to think about how different their harp lives were. They were only about 10 years difference in age, Salzaido being about 10 years younger than Rainier. And so you can see they both sort of came up through the same world. They came up through the Paris Conservatory studying with Hasselmann, but they just had very different ideas. And so let's start with Reinier. I think that Rainier's philosophy was essentially colored by her own playing, which was always acknowledged to be beautiful and lyrical and remarkable for its singing quality. And I think it was also influenced by her teaching. Rainier was a truly dedicated teacher, and she found that there wasn't a resource that she could use to. To help students develop their technique, not only mechanically, you know, physically, but musically, in a structured and comprehensive kind of way. So her method was really designed to do that, and it was drawn from her teaching. She created her method book, which is quite comprehensive. It's, you know, two volumes. She created the book at the request of her publishers, and it was published during World War II. And so this was something that then became a public resource as opposed to just something that was her teaching in her own studio. But what's so wonderful about the method is that as you go through the books, since that's the resource we have now, as you go through that book step by step, you can see it build and build toward her philosophy of playing. Every exercise in that book points toward the goal of beauty and musical artistry and a beautiful sound. All of that is inherent in every step of the technique. So what are some of the things that she has students do in order to create that beautiful sound? In her book, she talks about keeping a rounded hand with curved fingers that close naturally into your palm and your thumb set apart from your fingers, playing on the side of the pad of the thumb. And she talks about creating that beautiful sound by an economy of motion. The fingers move in the most efficient way they can with no extra gestures whatsoever. So that it's very efficient, and you can be very Relaxed and calm playing this way, Right? So that's the core of the mechanical part of this technique. And her ideas about posture go along in this same relaxed, natural idea with just sitting naturally, holding your arms, what feels very naturally, and staying relaxed throughout. That's a core Rainier principle. And that's where things are a little bit different, or perhaps a lot different with Salzido's teachings. Salzido was very much taken with the whole modern music era that was starting at the beginning of the 20th century. Things were changing and things were becoming dynamic and exciting in the music world. And he wanted the harp to be a part of it. That was the core of his personal idea. He wanted the harp to come into the modern 20th century world. He wanted it to be strong. He wanted it to be powerful. He wanted it to be able to play with dynamism and to be visually impactful. Not just a strong sound, but something that looked impressive as well. So he developed an entire idea of playing the harp that was so different from what had come before. What's interesting is that he wrote his Modern Study of the Harp book, which talks a lot about this philosophy. He wrote that in 1921. So that was published right in the era where he wanted to be. This was what the harp needed to do. And so, of course, Modern Study Book is filled with all sorts of different and unusual harp effects. Some of them have become pretty standard, like tapping on the soundboard sort of things. But some are things we don't often see. Sometimes we do the xylophonic sounds or the thunder effect, but this is the kind of thing that interested him. And so with that as his end result, he developed a method that would enable his students to play that way and to play that music and to play with the kind of sound that he wanted the harp to have. Here's a funny aside. As I'm recording this and listening to myself talk about these players, I realized that I have absorbed their philosophies so entirely that when I was talking about Renier, my voice was calm and it was a little bit slower. Start talking about Salzedo. And I'm talking about the energy of the 20th century. And my tone is very different. So something to think about. This philosophy of playing can be very powerful. All right, let's talk more about Salzido technique. Sorry for that digression. So what's interesting is that some of what we think of as basic technique is the same. Salzetto wanted you to have a round hand, but the position of the hand is More turned upright rather than, you know, sort of naturally pointed. So think about more like holding a flagpole. That would have been traditional Salzido technique with the thumb nearly parallel to the string. But again, the fingers are closing into the palm. That's where our tone comes from. Again, the thumb has a space. That's where the thumb sound comes from. Not that different from what Rainier was teaching Salzato's understanding of tone. His idea of tone was a little bit different. He wasn't going for the beautiful and the natural as much as he was going for projection. A sound that was strong, a sound that was full, a sound that was brilliant when it was called for. That was the sort of sound that he was going for. And so it took a little bit more strength to get that. So this is part of where his elbows up thing came from. If you've been around Salcedo players at all, you know that that's one of the things that they were taught, as I was taught, elbows up. And it's not that we want our elbows to be sticking out and looking ugly. Salzato didn't want any harpist to look ugly. But his idea was that when you raised your elbows, you created freedom for your forearm and your fingers, and you removed the weight of your arm from your fingers. That was his idea. So elbows up was, for him, an ergonomic decision. To him, it made sense to use those big muscles of your arm to support your arm so that your fingers didn't have to. Rainier had a different idea, and guess what? They both work. Just a thought. This was part of Salcedo's idea. He felt you could get more strength by doing this. His gesture idea was also an innovation and one that was not universally admired. But we call it raising. He often called it, or started out calling it the aesthetic gesture, where after you close your fingers, you lift your hands away from the strings. It helps to project the sound. I mean, it has an actual audible difference. You can hear that. It's a little bit different. It helps to project the sound. It also creates a moment for relaxation. Rainier built that into her technique differently. What I think is so interesting is that some of the basic tenets of heart playing, you've got to close your fingers. You've got to have your thumbs away from your hands so they have room to close. You have to think about your posture and support, what's happening. All of those big things are in common to the technique. Sure, there are small points. How curved are your fingers? How do you use your Fingers, what knuckles do you have to think about? All those are the smaller points that guide you toward one or the other technique. It's fascinating to read the books that these artists have written and think about how they're used differently and to read the books written by their students so that you can see how that translated into the next generation. Both of these harpists started with the philosophy what harp playing meant to them. And then they worked backward, thinking about, okay, what posture supports that? And of course, both of them are all about being physically set in a healthy way at the harp. It's just that healthy looks a little bit different to Salzato and Rainier. So after posture, then that would include your arms as well. Where are your arms, then? Your hand shape and your hand position on the strings, the angle of your wrist, your fingers and your thumbs, how they're placed on the strings, how they play, where they play, from which knuckle is the one that's doing the work, and how do they follow through. And then, of course, after you've played, what happens then? Salzedo with his bigger gestures, Rainier with her compact and efficient movements. There are different ways of looking at playing the harp, but when you have that solid methodology, you have something where all the pieces fit together. Now you can play mix and match with these methods. You can say, well, I like this from this, and I like this from this. But sort of like when you order aftermarket parts for your lawnmower from Amazon, those aftermarket parts may or may not fit exactly right. So that's why it makes sense to sort of take one methodology and follow it all the way through. Because then you know that, oh, if I'm not getting the sound that I want, I know where to go back to. If that finger sounds harsh. Let me see what she says about that and take a look at my finger and see where it is on the string. Is it in the right place? Is it playing the right way? Am I following through properly? Are all the other components of my technique put together? Right, so you have all you need to know about what works and what doesn't work for your harp playing right there in the method, because all the whys are written into it. That's what's different about having a method and not having a method. I said I would talk a little bit about Celtic and folk harp technique. And of course, folk harp technique is very, very different, very varied. It depends on what country you're in, what kind of harp you have. Wire strung, gut strung. There's an incredible variety in technique. So I can't really talk about specifics except to say this. The hand shape is often a little bit more relaxed, less formalized. Because you're playing a smaller harp, your fingers might be just a little bit flatter. Your posture is going to be adapted because of the smaller instrument. So you're going to use your entire body just a little bit differently. The gesturing will be minimal here because again, the small instrument, you don't usually need to use as much strength to play the small harps as you need to play a big concert harp. So the technique is going to be built around lighter playing and fast nimble techniques. After all, a lot of the music that would be played traditionally on these instruments would be very rhythmic, possibly dance music. So it's that clean approach, it's that very crisp technical sort of thing that happens. Think about all the ornamentation we hear in Irish music, for instance. So all that clarity of sound is built into this technique. So you're going to use your hands a little bit differently. Technique itself is generally sort of passed on from teacher to student. So it's a little bit less formalized or maybe a lot less formalized. This doesn't mean that some of the basic principles of a concert harp technique won't work for you on a folk harp. They absolutely will. Particularly because so many of today's folk harps are made with concert harp string spacing and tension. So when you're talking about a harp that has that kind of tension, you can use a technique that was built for a bigger harp. But just remember, there's going to be some adaptation that happens too, because the size of the instrument, your physical approach to it is going to be a little bit different. So just a thought there. I know there is so much more that you want to know, so much more that I want to tell you about technique and method. This is an endlessly fascinating subject to me to think about why we do the things we do, because that's what method is about. Method isn't just about closing your fingers or keeping your elbows up or down or any other technical skill. Method isn't just about how to play, it's about why we do the things we do. And at its core, it's about why we play. It's about the music that we make and, and the music that we want to make. And so therefore, we have things that we need to do in order to make that music. That's what it's about. And of course, the method is the entire game plan, not just the list of things that we might want to include. It's the entire game plan for our overall technique for our harp playing as a whole. I don't know about you, but that whole idea is very exciting to me. So next week on the podcast, we're talking about To Memorize or Not. The big debate. What's good about memorization? When do you need to do it? When don't you need to do it? Should you do it? How do you do it? That's what we'll be talking about next week on the podcast. In the meantime, please 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 us every day. See you next time.