Harp in the Highlands and Islands Tour - only 2 seats remain!

Scotland was recently voted Most Beautiful Country in the World!  So jump on the opportunity to see it this year.  When you add in the wonder of having a harp and learning tunes that fit in with the highlights of your visit – you know you have a trip that’s the total package!

Join me and our tour guide David for the 2018 Harp the Highlands and Islands Tour 9 – 16 June.  David has crafted a journey that encompasses a magnificent route through to the west coast of Scotland, the source of so many wonderful tunes. We’ll see beautiful scenery and you will experience the majestic beauty of the Isle of Skye, the Western Highlands, the Spey valley and more!

This is no huge crowd on a giant tour bus chunterring down highways while you only see concrete and billboards!  Our visit is designed for people who want to see the country - and it’s for harp players at all levels. 

We’ll collect everyone in Edinburgh and then we’ll be off for a week of Dinner, Bed and Breakfast accommodation.  We’ll meander towards the Western Highlands and the west coast.  You’ll enjoy the unspoiled beauty of the Falls of Dochart and the haunting splendor of Glencoe, the Great Glen and the Caledonian Canal.  We’ll cross ‘over the sea to Skye’ for two nights, then spend the rest of our time seeing corners of the Highlands you didn’t even know were there.  On our final evening, David and his wife Heather will welcome you to their own home where you will be treated to authentic Scottish cuisine and hospitality. Our last day, we will speed you back to Edinburgh to complete your visit.

Each day you will enjoy a harp event – learn a tune, add to your harp lore, or learning songs – all while experiencing the history of the music. We will play together in the midst of incredible scenery. The tunes taught will be related to our visit - the places, the history, and the incredible Scots people we will meet.  To ease your travels, a lovely small harp will be awaiting you, ensuring that everyone can travel with a light heart, while your own harp stays home - not being treated roughly by airline baggage handlers. Invite another harp player or bring a harp loving companion (listeners are welcome too!). Play a different traditional instrument?  We’d be delighted if you’d join us in learning and sharing music!

We have honed our trip to assure that every day is full of amazing! Even the weather, which can be moody, only improves our visit. This intimate tour will consist of only five travelers.  This very small group size allows flexibility so that each day David can show you the very best Scotland has to offer while also including those special things that can’t be planned. Jen will flex the tunes to match our travels, experiences, and mood. 

There are only two seats remaining.  For details, look here.  Double or twin en-suite or private bathroom $3499 per person or if you prefer a room to yourself, single supplement is $350 (all prices US dollars (USD)).  If you’d like to come along, please complete and return this information form with your $1000 deposit before someone else snaps up those seats.  

Feel free to ask questions – I want to hear from you!

Being a Beginner

Today, I'm sitting below a poster with a quote from Marcel Proust,

”The voyage of discovery is not in seeking

new landscapes but in having new eyes.” 

It dovetails nicely with some of your comments to last week’s post - thanks so much for those! 

DB brought up the concept of the “beginner’s mind”.  This is the concept that a beginner may acknowledge that they don’t know much.  Beginners are open to learning and new experiences and don’t cloud their vision with preconceptions.  They don’t think they’re experts.  You might remember this phase from your early harp life? 
 

DB went on to say, “it seems that what separates the “masters” from the dilettantes is a maintenance and mastery of the basics, through a strong curiosity of what “new” thing they might or might not discover in that practice.”

KB suggested that, “Paying close attention to what causes something to go wrong is essential to avoiding the same problems repeatedly. Issues with hand position, fingering, placement, focus, etc. lead to mistakes. Find the underlying issue, then fix it through targeted practice. It works for both my playing and my knitting!”

This too is something we often do that appears to move us forward but actually holds us back – we are often satisfied with a “fix” but don’t do the additional work to find the underlying cause.  Without doing the technique work, you might never find that little nuance you need to get the fingering down or to drop your shoulder or read just a little ahead of where your playing or any of the other little things that are holding you back. 

DB pointed out that, “in many ways the lesson seems to be rooted in always finding time, and maintaining a strong curiosity in practicing the basics, no matter how far away from the basics, we think we’ve progressed.”  How can you do that in your everyday practice?  Here are six ideas to move you forward:

1. You can acknowledge that you will learn things at different rates, that some things will be harder than others to you, that you can only calmly evaluate and learn.  You can only take it one step at a time.
2. You can stop with the comparisons! You should not be playing like everyone around you. And remember that, like high school, facebook, and reality tv, nothing is what it seems when you look around you – just because the person next to you is sailing through something with which you are struggling doesn’t mean that they didn’t aslo struggle (just earlier) – it only means that you didn’t see it!
3. Actually LISTEN to the feedback you get – the best teachers use the praise and guide approach – they will provide actual praise (from which you can learn what you are doing well in terms of performance and practice) and guidance (from which you can learn what you need to do more of, learn how to do, or learn what to stop doing).
4. Remain a beginner – ask questions.  Do not assume that you know something just because you have been doing it. There is always something to learn that may (or may not) be good for you to incorporate.
5. Ignore what doesn’t fit. Some of the best advice I received early in my harp life was from my teacher at the time who told me that I should play what I liked and leave the rest on the floor.  Her point was sound – if you don’t like classical music, don’t play it!  (NB this is not the same as, “it’s hard and I don’t want to do the work!”.  But you are more likely to work hard if you’re mostly playing music you like. Don’t cut yourself off from a genre just because it’s challenging – learn what it can teach you and port that to what you do love).
6. Don’t worry! We (especially adults) worry that we’re not getting better, that we’ll never be good enough, that everyone else is making more progress. Let-It-Go!  Focus on you, what you need to learn, what you want to learn.  There is no need to train to go to Conservatory if your goal is to have a nice set of music to play for your friends and family. And if your goal is to go to Conservatory, then focus on the necessary development – but either way, channel your energy into learning, asking questions, and enjoying. Don’t waste it worrying.

Keep working on being a beginner – question, wonder, enjoy! Discover the landscape with new, beginners eyes.

Lessons Learned?

I had a lovely weekend spent with a small group of very good friends. That, in and of itself, was a delightful balm for the soul in this bleak midwinter but it really provided a great backdrop for insights.  Safe, warm, well fed, and alight with laughter, the scene was set to really inculcate what you might know but haven’t learned.  Two lessons stood out for me – both related to the potential outcomes that arise from good and continued practice.

The first is the importance of solid practicing of fundamentals.  We all know how essential warmups and exercises are.  When we are “young harpers” (by which I mean new to the harp, regardless of age) we do our exercises.  They may consume most of our early lessons as we work to learn how to control the beautiful beast we have chosen. 

But we progress, we think we have learned what we were meant to have learned from the exercises…but there are so many tunes…and obligations.  And soon, many of us have left the exercises and warmups out of practice time – to save time, to be efficient.  Then, because we aren’t practicing them, they fall out of our practice repertoire. Because there is always more music…and laundry…and day jobs…and other impediments and excuses.

In this gathering, one of us took 10 minutes each morning, like they do every morning, and did warmups and exercises.  The rest of us watched and commented – in admiration and surprise (and maybe chagrin).  Nothing overly complex – scales, arpeggios, running chords and inversions.  The “usual”.  The mundane.  The foundational!  It was clear why such gorgeousness pours forth from that harp – and with so much ease. A little hard work goes a long way. The lesson was further reconfirmed by the acknowledgement that there are typically only about 45 minutes a day to practice!  But because of this foundational work, the remaining time is spent focused on learning the music not struggling with fingers or patterns!  The small amounts of foundational work – practiced regularly – are central to a good practice routine.  It’s one thing to know it, but it's something altogether different to actually do it.

The second insight was the application of that same practice discipline to the rest of our lives.  Everyone (else) there is a knitter.  I want to be a knitter because it looks good – productive, industrious, practical, and artistic. And all my friends are doing it! And it looks easy - after all, it’s just tangling string with some sticks! Like the harp – knitting is (relatively) easy to start…and very challenging to get good at. My friends have all been knitting for decades! But, in that unhelpful way adults do, my attempts are at best, laughable compared to theirs. When I had finished my first project – a straight(ish) scarf, I decided I was ready to move on – to a lace cowl!  If you’re not a knitter, I’ll translate. It was the yarn equivalent of successfully plunking out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and deciding to follow that with Britten's Ceremony of Carols!  Of course you can make that leap, but it will be frustrating, daunting, difficult, fraught with little (and undeniable) failures – all of which will cause you to doubt yourself. Even if I was God’s gift to knitting, I’d need to practice for a long while to be able to show it.  I made two big (and typical) mistakes – I discounted all the time and practice my friends have put in over the years to learn, practice, and master knitting and I expected to be able to just knit without putting in the same kind of time and effort.

Foundational practice is the fundament of success!  You may be slapping your forehead at this point, dismayed at how thick I can be.  Nothing here is new.  I have not imparted any wisdom.  But knowing (in your mind) and knowing (in your heart) can be different. The need to practice knitting to get better at it was something I knew but hadn’t taken to heart.  The certainty that I need to make multiple straight scarves, really become comfortable with the skills, know when something is wrong (and how to fix it) is finally there. The willingness to do the work, to gain the skills, to ask myself to not just complete a project but to finish it well – to ask myself to not be satisfied by just “playing through” but to do more than settle for a sloppy end are all the elements I can bring from my harp to my knitting.  And if I begin by working diligently on one stitch for just 10 minutes a day, like the warmups and exercises, I will eventually be strong enough in the fundamentals to get to the lace.  And to see that the artistry arises from that foundation.

What will your 10 minutes be? Please share with me what warmups and exercises you do (or are going to be doing) at your harp.  Any ideas you can bring over from other instruments you play? Together we can come up with some cool stuff – I’ll compile your suggestions and share them later.