Your Next Piece: Too Easy, Too Hard or Just Right? - PHH 274

What if playing the harp felt easier the way you thought it would be?

Not because you practiced more, but because you finally understood what was getting in your way. I'm Anne Sullivan, and welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness. Here we tackle the real challenges harpists struggle with: the sticky passages, the tricky fingerings, prepping for performance, and all the ingredients that go into making music sound the way you want it to. I've studied with world-class harpists, taught at a top conservatory for 20 years, and I love playing the harp. But what I love just as much is breaking down the real challenges harpists face and turning them into clear step-by-step solutions. The same ones I teach my students and use myself. So if you're ready to play the music you love with more confidence, clarity, and joy, you're in the right place. So let's get started.

Welcome to the show. Imagine this. I want to say congratulations, you finished your piece. Well done. It's time to take a breather and relax before you get onto the next piece. But that's the problem, right? What piece is your next right piece? How can you choose one that you like, that's a challenge but not too hard, and one that you can finish in a reasonable amount of time so that you still like it when it's done? If you're currently working with a teacher or a coach, you know you can rely on their expert advice as you choose your next piece. But if you're trying to make this choice on your own, it can seem daunting. There are so many wonderful pieces, how could any harpist possibly choose? This is a topic that we all deal with repeatedly, so I thought it might be a good time for us to revisit a podcast I aired over a year ago on May 5th, 2025. Cinco de Mayo, actually. I wouldn't mention Cinco de Mayo except that it played a role in that episode as I suggested 5 categories of pieces you could consider for your next piece, just as a way to narrow the field somewhat. Those categories are still relevant, and I know they'll be helpful for you right now if you're nearing a decision point about new music. But I've also added a little bit to the end of the episode, 2 brand new ideas— well, at least new to my podcast— that can help you clarify your choices even more. By helping you plan not just your next piece but your entire practice strategy. And it can help you create more of a sense of direction with your choices. It's all about making decisions, and these new frameworks should help. Now, first you'll hear the replay of Episode 207, and then stay tuned for those new decision frameworks that I want to teach you. Now, while we're talking about new pieces, maybe you're looking at a bunch of different arrangements and you're trying choose between them, or maybe you're working on creating an arrangement of your own. And so I wanted to point you to a couple of really good resources. One is a blog post that I had done that it's living in our archives, and it's called "The Easy Way to Choose an Arrangement," and that might help you make your choice. And then the other resource is a blog post on arranging that my friend and composer Louis Anthony DeLeese has written. It's a little bit about what arranging is like. And it starts with sort of a humorous look at the kinds of things you might be asked to arrange for, particularly if you're playing for weddings or something where people are going to make a request. So it, it's a little bit about arranging. And of course, in that article, he makes mention of our Chrysalis Workshop because he, along with my flutist friend Joan Marsh and I, are doing this group workshop. It's for flutists, harpists, and composers of all levels and abilities, and we'll be working with you on developing your repertoire. If you've never played with a duo partner before, this will be a great opportunity to do that. And we'll be working in small groups and in big ensembles and with composers who are also attending the event, and of course with my friend Louis. And we'll be talking about how to work with a composer, working on pieces that are specific for flute and harp, as well as thinking about arrangements. So that is also important. So that's the Chrysalis Music Workshop, and I'll be sure to get a link in the show notes to that as well. But do check out the blog post on arranging, and of course the blog post that I wrote some time ago called The Easy Way to Choose an Arrangement. But what we want to talk about today is which arrangement is right.

How do you choose that next piece?

So we'll start with episode 207. You'll hear that replay, and then I'll be back with some new information for you.

Welcome to the show. The author Shel Silverstein— maybe you know his book, The Giving Tree— wrote a beautiful and supremely short poem that perfectly fits today's topic. The poem is called "Woulda Coulda Shoulda," and in just 7 short lines, Silverstein sums up the ultimate way to prevent regret. He tells us that all those woulda coulda shouldas vanish with one little "did." Doing beats wishing every day. So if we were sitting in the same room together sharing a cup of tea and you asked me what I thought your next piece should be, I'd have to ask you a question right back: What do you think you want to do? Life is filled with shoulds and have-tos, but our music doesn't need to be. Our music is personal to us. The music we play, our repertoire, is something that reflects what we like and who we are. It's a personal expression at every playing level. Your personal musical expression starts from the very first day you are capable of playing a melody on the harp. Your music is in you And your music is you. So if you need to choose your next piece to learn, it should be something you want to learn. I know I just said "should," but there you go. This is a good kind of a "should," I think. It should be something you want to learn. So back to our conversation at the tea table. When I ask you what piece you'd like to do, you're probably going to tell me you don't know. So we'll dig a little deeper. If you're thinking that there is a skill you need to develop and you're looking for a piece that will help you do that, that's great. I can suggest half a dozen pieces that will help you with that specific skill. But have you considered trying a sort of piece you've never done before? Or what about that bucket list piece that you weren't sure if you're ready for? This is the problem, right? There are too many choices. There is simply too much music in the world and it's impossible to play everything we want to. So we need to choose. And what if you chose to make your next piece one that created a did? It filled a want or prevented a future regret. That's what I wanna help you with today. I wanna give you a little system to help you choose. I also decided to take a sort of lighthearted, fun approach to this topic. So since today is the 5th of May, I've created 5 possible categories to choose from in honor of Cinco de Mayo. After all, we can't take ourselves too seriously. Now, in our discussion today, I really don't want to focus on regrets. I really want to focus on possibilities. I mean, I don't know, I think this might be a uniquely American thing, and perhaps not to our credit, but this is sort of the, the all-you-can-eat buffet syndrome. Not too far from us, there's a huge restaurant that is a buffet, and it is a huge— it's got different rooms, it seats hundreds of people at a time. I've been there a couple of times. It's not my favorite place to go. I'm not really a a buffet sort of eater. You know, it's the kind of thing where you go in and you just get plate after plate after plate of food. And the fact is that you really couldn't sample everything even if you wanted to, or at least I certainly couldn't. And while the plates are reasonably small, most people at a buffet tend to just sort of heap them, right? Because the possibilities are endless. You could have so much food. I don't need that much food. Doesn't mean I don't want it, but I certainly don't want all the stuff that comes with eating too much food either. And the same sort of thing is happening in our music. It's not that we don't have enough choices, especially with the prevalence of music that you can just download. I mean, you know, you don't even have to store pieces of paper of music anymore, right? You can store it all digitally.

It doesn't take up any room.

So it's not like you can't get plenty of music. It's not that we lack choices, it's that we really can't figure out what we need to do next. So this is the buffet syndrome, I think, and it's how to fill your musical repertoire reasonably, your little musical plate. You don't need to play everything, even though it would kind of be nice. It's not gonna be possible. So we really need to decide what we want to do. And so from those endless possibilities, how do we know what to choose? Well, let's figure this out and let's start with our shouldas, right? In our woulda, coulda, shouldas, we're gonna start with the shoulds to start with. And I think in this category, belong the pieces that we think we ought to know. We ought to learn them. We ought to be able to play them. And it could be everything from repertoire that we ourselves consider standard that, you know, I think, "Oh gosh, I ought to do that. Everybody knows that and I don't know that." Or pieces that you think everybody expects you to play. So let's start by saying, all right, there are very few circumstances in which you actually have to have a particular piece in your repertoire. Just because everybody— and I'm using that word advisedly— everybody knows how to play Moonlight doesn't mean you have to. Actually, Moonlight is not a piece I ever learned. I mean, I have taught it. It's a little beginner piece. It wasn't written when I was a beginner, so that wasn't around then. So I don't know that. I had an interesting experience a little while ago. I had a student who was graduating and playing her graduation recital from college. She was studying at a university with a really well-respected teacher. I mean, just, you know, she's a great, great teacher, great harpist, great colleague. And we were talking afterward about some of the pieces that were on the program, and I said, you know, that's just one of those pieces I've never played. And truthfully it could be in the category of standard recital repertoire for a concert harpist. And she looked at me, "You've never played it?" And I said, "Well, no." And it led to a little discussion about the traditions that each of us grew up in, because the tradition, the music tradition that I grew up in was very heavily focused on Salzedo's music. I mean, I grew up in the Philadelphia area. This was where he taught at the Curtis Institute, and I was studying with students of his. So this meant that his music was a large, you know, portion of the music that I learned. And there were other things, part— things in standard French repertoire that I had to learn later for myself. So this, you know, my, my growing-up diet was very different than this other teacher's. Hers was much much more in the French tradition. So there are Salsetto pieces that I know well that she's never played, but there are other pieces by Regnier, for instance, that I have had to pick up later or haven't gotten around to yet. So we have these different traditions that we came from, and it's not that either of us lacks repertoire, and you couldn't say that, you know, we're incomplete harpists because we don't know these other pieces. It's just that there's too much music in the world, right? So it's just a personal repertoire— things you know, things you don't, and it's okay that you don't know them. So when it comes to standard— and I'm putting that word in air quotes— standard repertoire, there are no real "shoulds" here. There are only pieces that you like and pieces that you know and pieces that you think you might want to know someday. But unless you're in music school and your teacher is telling you you have to play this particular piece, there's nothing that's telling you you have to, or that you should, or that you're missing something if you don't. So I'll say that one more time: when it comes to repertoire that you think you should know, there really are no shoulds. It's only music that you like. All right, so I've released you from the idea that you are not a harpist if you don't know any particular piece— fill in the blank there. But there are other things that sometimes we think we probably ought to know, and sometimes we're actually right. For instance, if you are interested in playing for weddings You should know the Pachelbel Canon because people often request that. And that would be something that, you know, if they think of you as a harpist who plays weddings and they come and they talk to you and you say, what, you don't know that piece? You don't play that piece? And you say, oh no, they start to wonder how many weddings you've really played because this is standard wedding repertoire. Even if it's something that you don't particularly like to play, This might be something that you decide that you should know. So that's one kind of should that you really probably do want to fill that box, and that's an important thing, right? It might be learning wedding marches, or maybe you play at church, so you really should know some hymns or, you know, some arrangements of church music. So there are those repertoire gaps that are important for what you play, the kind of places that you play. Those are gaps that might be shoulds that you want to fill in. But once again, those are your choices. So let's take our first category then of pieces in my 5 categories, and one of them is right there in the shouldas, and that's something to play somewhere. Right? Something that you really need to know in order to fill a requirement for a place or an occasion that you want to play. Okay, legitimate should. There are very specific choices there. That's an easy box to fill in. Oh gosh, I'm going to play this. I probably should have one of those. There's another kind of should piece though as well. This is the "should" piece that we think we should study because it's going to help us level up a particular skill. Now this is a piece to consider, right? This is a "should" that you might, like the other kind of "should," you really might want to think about this. Do I want to level up my downward arpeggios so that I'm going to practice Little Fountain or I'm going to practice La Source or I'm going to practice Ribbons or any one of these pieces? That focuses on that particular skill. If there is a skill that you want to work on, choosing a repertoire piece to help you develop it along with appropriate exercises is a really good way to do it. Now, I don't suggest that you just do the piece because I think it's important to not only take the, the technique as it's presented in that piece of music to work on it, but also to take the technique as a whole, as a, as a general technique, and work on it. And you'll— any of these things you'll find in exercise and etude books, and they give you more ways to explore them that'll make your overall technique a little stronger. But to take a piece and say, okay, I want to level up a particular skill— not a bad thing to do. But once again, choose, because you will have more than one choice for this. So if there's a thing that you think, yeah, I probably should do that, I should work on something with arpeggios, or I should work on something with 4-note chords, that's okay. Don't take it as a— as something that you absolutely have to do, though. Make sure that it's a choice, like, oh yeah, I like that piece and it will help me with 4-note chords, or yeah, I really think that's a pretty piece and it will help me with polyrhythms, or whatever it is that you want to level up and work on. Be sure this is a piece that you really like. Now compare this just for a second to the other should that I talked about. If you have to play weddings and— or if you are choosing rather to play weddings, and so you think you should know the Pachelbel Canon, which you probably should. It doesn't matter if you like the Pachelbel Canon or not, you probably need to know it. In this category of shoulds, be sure that you're picking a piece that you like to help you level up. This is where the, the wealth of harp music that is available to us is really helpful because whatever skill you want to develop, there's not just one piece to help you do it. So be sure that you're choosing a piece that you actually like. Gosh, what a concept, right? So those are our two shouldas. When you think that you should have something special to play in some special place or occasion, you think there's something you absolutely need to know because it's important to have that piece for a particular reason, that's a legitimate should. And so is having a piece to level up a skill. Just remember that in that second should category, be sure you're picking something that you like, because there are plenty of choices. All right, let's go on and let's look at the couldas. We started with the shouldas. Let's look at the couldas. The couldas are interesting because they give you the chance to either indulge yourself or to try something new. I mean, "could" is about possibility, right? Well, I could do this, I could do that. And I think that the second we start thinking about things that we could do, many times we load that "could" with, "Oh well, but maybe I should do this," and we start thinking about things that other people might think are important for us. Instead of treating this category as the possibilities, right? If the shoulds were about, you know, meeting obligations one way or another— and I don't mean to make that sound onerous, right? The shoulds were about, okay, this is something I need to know or something that I think is going to be important for me. The coulds are about experimentation. The coulds are about Wow, there's a lot of music in the world, and I don't know, I could try this. But experimentation and just, you know, opening that door to the wider world of harp music can be a little bit scary and/or intimidating, or at least confusing, because there is so much to choose from. And I think this is where the buffet issue really comes into play, right? You're looking at— I mean, Okay, so I like desserts. So I'm standing there at this big dessert table in the buffet, and I'm looking at it thinking, wow, I don't know, I've— I always love crème brûlée. I am a crème brûlée person, truthfully. So it's like, oh, I don't know, that's there, but look, here are some things I haven't tried yet, and I could try those. Or, but I know I love the crème brûlée. Or, oh gosh, look at that Black Forest cake. I'm a sucker for anything chocolate too. So although I Probably I've never met a dessert I don't like. It's just amazing that I'm not, you know, 1,000 pounds. But I'm looking at the buffet table and I'm trying to be good. I'm thinking, well, I'm going to choose one, well, maybe two. Well, it's really hard to limit yourself. And so that's where it gets confusing and that's where you end up taking too much on your plate and you think, well, you know, I'll just try a little bit of it and I'll put it on my plate, but I don't have to eat the whole thing. And then you find that you do eat the whole thing and First of all, when it comes to music, you're not going to gain any weight. Hey, okay. But you— I think you can put your coulds into two categories that will help you make choices and feel good about your choices. One is the category I call playing favorites. I mean, if there is a style of music that you love, or a composer or arranger whose music you love, go there first. It doesn't matter if the last 10 pieces you've learned have been by Haussmann. If you love Haussmann's music, go ahead and specialize. Who is going to tell you you can't, right? I mean, you know, if there is, you know, if you are, let's see, I mean, if you love Celtic music, don't get caught up in the idea that if you play another Celtic piece, somebody's going to say, no, you know, you really need to learn this other kind of music. You need to learn some classical music, or you need to learn some Latin American music. Whatever it is, if that's what you like, play it. Now, I know that there are a lot of people for whom this is an easy choice. They've declared their specialty and it's like, "Oop, yep, no, that's what I do." Well, that's excellent. Nothing wrong with that. And remember to, you know, to be proud of that at every moment. But for others of you who haven't made those kinds of choices, you don't have to. I mean, I have a very wide range of music that I love, and so this is not an easy category for me. Playing favorites? Oh, I've got a million favorites. But if there's one you think, oh gosh, I love Debussy's music and I've never played it, well, go for it. Choose a style or a composer that you love or one that is your favorite and take one more from there. That's a great opportunity. That's a great coulda moment. Your other coulda category might be the total opposite, going off the board. This could be an opportunity to do something you've never tried before. Never played any Latin American music?

Pah!

It's a great moment to experiment. Go ahead and try it. Why not, right? Or you've never tried music by any, you know, insert your favorite harpist composer here. You've never tried any of their music? Well, this is a great idea. Experimentation is terrific. And remember that if you go off the board and you choose a particular piece and you think, I really want to try this, there is nothing that says that once you get into it, you have to stick with it, right? This is not you have to eat everything on your plate moment. This is a, ooh, I tried it and you know what? 'For whatever reason, this is not for me. My technique doesn't like this. I'm not having as much fun working on it as I thought. I'm not going to be able to use this anywhere,' is, you know, if you don't like it, you don't have to play it. Once again, this is different from standard food thinking, right, where we were taught growing up, eat everything on your plate. You don't have to do that with harp music. You don't have to do it with food either, but you don't have to do it with harp music for sure. If you start it and you don't like it, There's a lot of music in the world. Go on to something else and don't feel bad about your experiment. That's part of what music is all about— looking at everything that there is and trying it. And then if you like it, terrific, you've found something new, and maybe you'll go there as a new favorite next time. But maybe it's something like, oh, okay, did this, I don't have to go back, I don't have to play that again. And that's okay. You're allowed. Remember, your repertoire is personal. That's the whole point. So when it comes to thinking about, I could do this, indulge yourself a little bit. And if it's something that you want to play more of because you love it, do it. Or if it's something that you've never tried and you think you want to, do it. Don't ignore possibilities just because there's something that you think that you ought to do. Those kind of shoulds are not the kind of shoulds that we're looking for, and they certainly don't help you find more joy in music, which is where those coulds— which is what those coulds are all about. But let's get to the woulda category. The woulda category is the scary one because this is the one that can be loaded with regret. If only I would have done this. If only I would have— this is the, that if only category. If only I would have tried this piece. It's, it's about your bucket list piece. It's about things that you don't feel you're ready for but you really want to do. It's about those things that you think, well, but this is why I started the harp and I'm not doing it yet. And, and the thing that you think, if I leave it undone, I'm going to have missed something. And you don't have to do that. In most cases, the wood is something that you can at least try and something that is probably able to be worked into your, uh, your skill level, your world of possibilities anyway. Now, there are some things that might be beyond you. You know, just like if you're 70 years old, that's probably too old to be a professional baseball player for the first time. Okay, so there are some things that might be off the harp plate for you, like, okay, well, you know, I'm just a newbie and, um, I'm probably not going to, um, you know, get into a music conservatory in the next 2 years. I don't know, there are some things that are unlikely. I am reluctant to call anything impossible because I've seen all kinds of things happen in this world. And I know that whatever your skill level now, whatever your age is now, whatever your harp status is right now— whatever that means, I have no clue— but wherever you are right now, there are possibilities for you that we don't even know about until you try. And that's what the WOODEH is about. You won't know until you try. That piece that you are pretty sure is way too hard for you, but you really want to play it. Well, you know, what's wrong with putting it on your music stand and just seeing what it's like, seeing what all those notes are? And if you can't even figure out what's on the page and you can't get beyond the first couple measures, that's okay. You've given something a try, and it's not that you're going to try it and maybe put it away forever, but you now know something. You know what you don't know and what you need to know in order to play this piece, and that's more powerful than you might think. Let me explain. Let's say you've got that big hard piece in front of you, and you know, you've never played anything more than 2 pages, and this piece is 15 pages, and it's got stuff you don't understand in it at all. Well, this is the time to start understanding. Now, if you're working with a teacher, your teacher can really help you hone this down and say, okay, well, you know, this piece— let's learn about this piece. It may not be the time to learn this piece yet because you're still pretty far away from the level you need to be in order to play this piece well. But this piece has this particular skill. Maybe it's got a whole lot of big arpeggios all around the harp with lots of enharmonics and pedals. So let's take 2 or 3 of those arpeggios and let's work on them so that you understand what they look like in the music, how they work on the harp, and you get some extra pedal practice. We're going to get some technical practice at getting all the way around the harp, and we're going to learn that first. Then we're going to go to this other part and we're going to work on some of those big chords, and we're going to work through some of the chord passages. And you can do this for yourself. You don't have to do it with a teacher, but look at it in tiny, tiny morsel, like kernel of corn size chunks, so that you can see a little bit of what's there. Now imagine you may be on your way to playing that piece someday, which would be really cool, but you're also learning skills that are going to play into your learning of pieces that are a lot closer to your level. You're stepping up your skills without saying, okay, well, I have to tackle this entire huge piece right now, which is too daunting and possibly just outside the realm of possibility, at least frustrationless possibility for you at the, at this particular point in your studies. So let's take some of those things and learn what you need to learn in order to play them. This gives you a chance to try a little bit of that piece that you really love and want to play. And as I mentioned a second ago, it may be the start of your journey with that piece. Okay, I'm going to learn this skill and then I'll learn that skill, and it may take me 2 years to get through the piece, but I'm not going to leave it off my list. I'm not going to let it be one of those regrets, one of those pieces that I never ever learn. It's going to become not a 'Gosh, I wish I had tried this. I wish I woulda tried it.' But hey, I gave it a shot. I wasn't able to play it, or I was, or I was able to play part of it, and that gave me a lot of pleasure. But it's not going to be the regret. It's not going to be that, 'Oh, I've never been good enough to do this.' You are good enough to try it. You are good enough to look at some of it, to figure it out, to play at least part of it, at least part of it somehow. I've done this with my students over and over again, taken a piece that's too big and we'll cut it down into a little bite-sized version, or we'll work on just a page or a part of it and work into it that way. It can become a lifetime project if that's what you want it to be, but it can just be a sampler that takes that longing off of your plate, your metaphorical plate, and it keeps that regret from gnawing away at you. It may not feel like it's a powerful thing, regret, at least not that one, but who needs it? That's not part of Harp Happiness, and there's nothing that says that you can't try it now. Nothing in the world. There is nothing that's stopping you from any of those things.

Okay, I'm back. Now that was the original episode, but I told you I wanted to share two decision-making frameworks with you. And these frameworks are really based on the way I try to help my students make decisions about their next pieces. Because frankly, you know, that, well, what should my next piece be? Is a question that I get asked more than any other. And I always encourage my students to come up with ideas rather than just say, "You know, you're the teacher. You tell me what I should be playing." I like students to take part in their own musical journey. After all, it's your music, right? And I can tell you a piece that I like that I think you might like, but you have to actually like it and it has to feel right to you. So I prefer my students to have a say in the music that we choose, but this is the thing: it's still a decision. So what we try to do when we are choosing new pieces is to approach it with the idea of just making a plan. It's not that your whole harp life comes down to just choosing that one piece. We're going to make sure that as you're working, you're working sort of around your skills. We're going to work as a whole so that you're not just working on a challenge piece, but that you have other things to actually balance it at the same time. One of the benefits of this approach is that it takes the pressure off. Let me tell you what I mean, and then we'll come back to that point. The first thing is, I think that that piece you're looking for— choose a stretch piece, absolutely one that's above your current level, and, you know, not too much, right? But one that's that's above your current level that's going to move you forward technically or musically. This is the piece that's going to grow, you know, going to grow your skills. Expect it to be a little bit challenging.

Expect it to take a while.

That's the point. But we're going to balance that with a comfortable piece, a piece that's right in your wheelhouse, something within your ability that you can learn quickly and play well and really enjoy playing. This piece is going to help you stay connected. You could call it the Harp Happiness piece if you want, right? This is what's going to reassure you that yes, you do know how to play the harp, so that when the going gets rough with your stretch piece, you have something you can rely on. Obviously, over the time you're working on that stretch piece, you might have 3 or 4 or even more comfort pieces that come in and out while you're working on that. And that's terrific. You're developing a repertoire while you're growing your skills. But it's not just about those two pieces. I like a third piece as well. A discovery piece. Something that's a little bit outside the box for you. Maybe from a style of music or a time of music that you don't usually play. You know, if you're usually a classical player, well, let's try a Celtic piece. Or let's try a folk song from Eastern Europe or some romantic music or popular music, something that's just a little bit different, because it's going to really expand your musical horizons and your technical skills, your reading skills. All of that is going to come into play. Your musical skills, particularly your expression, all of that is going to find a new way to grow in that discovery piece. So we've got the stretch piece, the comfort piece, and the discovery piece. And remember, what these extra pieces will do is allow you to work on that stretch piece even if it's a little too hard. They will allow you to work on that stretch piece with a little bit more comfort because your whole practice life doesn't depend on that piece. It just takes the pressure off, which makes the learning easier and makes it go faster. So this 3-part framework is a really helpful one. And I have one more decision-making tool for you. It's actually just a question, usually the kind of question that comes up around New Year's for us, but I think it's appropriate any time of year. And I think it's really helpful in the summer when you have a little bit more of a relaxed schedule, a little bit more ease in your mind, and you can really sort of mull this question over. Because if you want to know what to play next and you really want to make some progress, this is where you want to aim. It's this scenario that I want you to think about. You're sitting at your harp and it's one year from today, so next August, right? Next August 10th, you're sitting at your harp and you can play one new piece beautifully, confidently, maybe even from memory, or maybe not, but you can play it in a way that makes you feel really good and you're proud of this piece that you learned. What would that piece be? I mean, it's not just about choosing a piece, it's really about what kind of a harpist you want to be, what your longer-range harp goals. And I would encourage you, when you're thinking about that and you're imagining— remember, it is just imagining, you're not getting to anything. So don't think too practically. Don't put the kibosh on any idea that comes to your mind like, oh no, I can't do that one, that was too hard, let me think again. Don't think about what's too hard. Don't think about a piece your teacher would have in mind for you. Don't think about what's at your level. Just what piece, if you could play it, right, a year from now, plenty of time to do it, what would that piece be that would make you feel like you'd really spent your year well, what would that be? That's what you're looking for. That piece, that one that you just thought of right now, it's almost certainly the right next piece, or at least it's the right direction. If you need a step-up piece in the middle, we can do that. Because if a piece that you're thinking of can survive that one-year-from-now test—

I mean, a year's a long way, right?

If it can survive that test, it has something that no amount of you know, just regular old repertoire that you, you know, you know you can play, can give you. It has your, yourself, your desire, your own identity as a harpist in there. And that is the biggest predictor of whether or not you can actually achieve it, because you're going to want to do the work to achieve that. So that's worth thinking about, and I'm going to leave you today with that little thought to cogitate on. What would your one year now, one year from now piece be?

Hmm, interesting, right?

Okay, in the meantime, don't forget to check out the resources I've put for you in the show notes. They are helpful and they'll give you a little bit of a different look at what you need to think about, about what's possible for you. Just different ideas. Never hurts to get different ideas, right? Next week on the podcast, we're going to be talking about a very important topic, and that is how to not look at your hands so much while you're playing and practicing. I mean, it's one thing to look if you are playing without the music. Look at your hands, what else are you going to look at? But if you're trying to learn music and play from the music, you have to learn how not to look at your fingers. So that's our topic for next week's podcast, and I certainly hope you join me for that. In the meantime, 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.

Enjoyed today's episode? Then share it with a harpist friend, subscribe for your weekly harp happiness and check out harpmastery.com or the Harp Mastery app in your app store for more resources and ways to connect. I'll see you next time.