It’s August – stay strong!

It’s stinkin’ hot. It’s boiling!  It’s August.  And you know what that means?  It’s nearly Autumn!

Cooler days. Clearer skies.  Longer nights.  And, oh yeah, the winter holidays are coming.  Whether you have a house full of family for Thanksgiving or if you have booked a full schedule of holiday party gigs – you will need to be ready.  And now is the time!

Let’s face it, no matter the reason you play, it is easier to play if you are ready – and if you feel ready.  Nope, this is not another post on practicing.  Rather, let’s take a broader look.  The mere act of sitting and bringing the harp to you requires an element of strength, stamina and self-possession (read balance – but didn’t that string of S words feel good to read?!).

Most of us are not about to build and keep a rigorous workout routine.  But, what if it helped you to play better, longer, with less fatigue?  Then it would be worth it!

Now, I’m not a physician, a physiologist, or a physical therapist*.  Ok, really, the word “physical” may actually cause me to break out into hives!  But, a little bit of physical exertion could make all the difference in being able to practice (or perform) for as long as you like at each sitting – without your back hurting, feeling exhausted, or falling flat before your time is over (any of which is embarrassing).

So, what should you do?  Well, first, consult your physician – no doing stuff that’s not good for you (or worse, stuff that’s contraindicated for your condition!).  Assuming you are well enough, consider adding a few things to your day.  All of them are brief.  Any one of them may help.  If you’re an overachiever, you could try adding all of them!

1. Go for a walk.  Walking is good for many reasons.  It’s a gentle exercise.  You already know how to do it.  You probably already have the shoes.  Head out for 30 minutes.  If you’re a total couch spud or have a condition, start where you are and build up to 30 minutes. Research suggests that 30 minutes a day will be enough to help you become more fit.  If you’re not sure what to do, there are loads of programs available online that can suggest an appropriate buildup and level of exertion.  Don’t want to walk outside?  Go to the pool and walk there (pool walking is easier on your joints and - did I mention that it's hot?  it's certainly cooler to walk in the pool!).  Or you can get on a treadmill.  Walking is good on many levels – good for your heart, works your body, gets you some fresh air.  It can also give you a chance to clear your mind.  And it can be part of your practice – the rhythm allows you to think about your tunes with an active metronome.
2. Stretches.  I’ve talked about stretching before [here and subsequent weeks] and it bears repeating.  But I wont' - click the link and read those!  Stretching helps you recover but also helps overcome the stultifying sameness of sitting all day (even if you’re sitting at the harp!).
3. Calisthenics.  If you’re of a certain age, you might remember calisthenics from PE class.  No, it doesn’t require a lot of equipment, space, or time.  Just some exercises that help make you beautiful  and strong (from the Greek kali - beauty and sthenos - strong).  You know all these – pushups (full on, or from your knees, or against the counter or wall – it’s not a contest!  Do what you can); squats (like you’re sitting on a chair but not using your arms or moaning on the way down or up); jumping jacks; crunches or planks; and maybe some arm curls and extensions, and a few back rows.  You don’t have to be all CrossFit about it!  Just move and work a little everyday.  That will help you become stronger which will improve your harp playing and may impact other parts of your life too (carrying laundry? groceries? moving your harp? A load of things will be easier).  You can put these all together – walk to the park and use the playground equipment to exercise – or you can also do them as they fit into your day – just as long as you fit them in!

It does help to add these activities to your journal so you can see how you’re coming along – to see your strength improvements (and if you wall off the wagon – you can see by how much – and how quickly you came to where you were before your wagon departed…and how quickly you can get back on it!).  Noting it in your journal will also help capture when you notice the impact of this to your playing – as well as when you notice you just feel better. 

You don’t have to be a gym rat or an aerobics bunny to benefit – but your playing will tell the story of how you are staying strong!

*as always, I am not a health care provider - check with yours before beginning a-n-y type of exercise or before changing what you are already doing!

What are your worst habits? Four ways to identify and then fix them

Habits are supposed to serve us.  They are behaviors we perform without thinking. 

Habits can be good – like brushing your teeth, putting on your seat belt, or going to bed on time. 

Or habits can be bad – like eating ice cream every day, biting your nails, checking your phone during dinner. 

Habits are like callouses – forming slowly over time.  They form when we’re busy paying attention to other things.  And so, insidiously, they creep into your processing, your playing, and you never notice. 

And while you are not noticing, the bad habits grow stronger.  Until one day – you see a photo, a reflection, or a friend laughingly points out that you look like a troll with a harp! Or worse, you develop pain in your neck, shoulder, hip, hand, arm that you d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y notice after you’ve been playing.  Or sometimes you notice it when you’re away from the harp – and you wonder what you’ve done.

Bad habits can be general – you’re slouching on the bench or your head is thrust forward as you look at the strings.  Or they may be quite specific – your hands are not closing on your elbow is dragging your forearm along the edge of the soundboard, your feet are not flat on the floor.  But all bad habits are called “bad” for a reason – these habits are not serving you or your harp playing!

What?  You’re not screaming in pain? No one has laughed at your bad posture? Maybe you don’t have any bad habits…or maybe you just haven’t noticed! Insidious, remember?

How would you know? Here are four surefire ways to find your bad habits –

1. Check it out.  Hang a full-length mirror where you can check your look while you’re practicing.  This is not a decorating tip (although you can also use it to help light your space better too!).  Whether you hang the mirror or get a cheval glass on a stand – put it where you can look up and see what you look like while playing.  This requires no help or technology.
2. Have a photo shoot.  Enlist a friend or family member to photograph you “in the act” when you don’t expect it.  This is the same idea but might be a little less discombobulating – having the photos will also tell you things you might rather know before you sit to your next practice session.
3. Star in your own show.  Videotape yourself - this is relatively easy now – just prop your phone on your music stand and prepare to learn all sorts of things (that you might rather not know – but will help you!).  The second step is the most important – watch the video!  See what you’re doing when you aren’t watching.
4. Play freeze tag.  Remember freeze tag? When you begin to practice, set a timer for some random number of minutes.  When it dings – freeze! Then very carefully check yourself out – look at your hands, arms, legs, head and back – are you where you want to be? How’s your posture?  Make corrections, reset the timer, and go back practicing.  If you are sitting for a long practice session, plan to do those a number of times including toward the end of your practice when fatigue will contribute to bad habits – you might even have some that don’t come up until later when your fatigue enhances them.

Any of these ways will help.  A combination of them will give you a fuller picture of what you need to fix.   

How do you fix your bad habits?  Go back to the fundamentals! They are called fundamentals for a reason!

When you started playing, you learned these fundamentals – go back to them.  Pull out your beginning book – whether it’s Sylvia Woods, Deb Friou, Bonnie Mohr, Maria Grossi, or any of the other beginning books – and head to the beginning, working slowly and carefully on the exercises that first helped you to learn those fundamentals.

Of course, there’s a whole other set of musicality bad habits but we can deal with those another time.  Work on the fundamentals of playing first.   

What are your worst habits? Let me know and we can compare notes!

Practice made simple - Make and Keep a Schedule

I’m always nattering on at you about how important practice is – for lots of reasons.  And you probably laugh and think (or say out loud?) “easy for you – that’s what you do for a living!”  Well, let’s pull that thread, shall we?

First, like you, I have a life – a home and house that need care and tending.  And perhaps like you, I’m not big on housework or tending to anything!  But these things must be done.  Groceries, call my Mom, laundry, prune the dog, take out the trash – it’s all there.

Second – only in my dreams do I have all day to play the harp!  Yes, I’m a professional, so yes, it is work and it is a business.  And yes, that means I often get trapped in Administrivialand - doing paperwork, making phone calls, sending email.  On the package its all flowers and hearts, but on the inside, it’s still work!  Booking students, gigs, networking, advertising, blogging, website maintenance, teaching students, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera*.

Third – I have a day job too – just like you.  With its commutes and joys and challenges.

And somewhere in there – I still need to fit in practicing.  So, how to do that?  I find a schedule is very very helpful.  But you need more than that.  You need to keep the schedule.  And in doing that you will allow yourself to meet some other gates as well:

• You will be better able to focus – this is time you have set aside, so you don’t need to be thinking about how it’s time to wash the dog or vacuum the garden.  Focus on your practicing.
• You will have built in time for self-evaluation – because you have dedicated time, you can apportion it to include self-evaluation.  Are you playing as well as you’d like? If not, how should you change your practice to improve?  If you are playing as well as you’d like – what should you take on as a new challenge?
• You will have time to get stuff done – because you have identified time to work, you won’t have to just “cross stuff off the list” but rather, you can bear down and work on individual elements of your playing until they are smoothed out while you also identify other things that need work.
• You will have time to be generous – to yourself (and by extension others) you will have dedicated time to play more fluidly so you can be more comfortable while performing, all the while learning to be nice to yourself as you progress and develop as a harper.
• You will have time to schedule for your best – you control your schedule so you decide when to practice.  If you’re not a morning person, do not bother scheduling your practice for 6am!  It’s your day, if you need to practice from midnight – do it! Just be sure you work with yourself.  And be flexible – if you need to change the schedule, change the schedule!
• You will have built in time to capture everything – be sure to include journaling and recording as part of your practice time.  They need to be – and if you plan them that way, they will get done.
• You will have built in time to be creative – creativity requires time and tools and time – if you add creativity time into your practice – you will have the time!

That is a lot to schedule in so it’s important to remember that there are seven days in a week.  You don’t have to do the same thing every day.   

Having a schedule means that you can have hard days and easy days, days that focus on a specific thing and days when you “play around”. Having a schedule means that you know which days are which, and that you are actually getting to all the things you have identified as important.  

Be prepared to do work when you have scheduled it and include some “free time” to enjoy yourself! And what could be more simple than that?

* be the first to identify the source of this quote in a comment for a prize!

Do you smell that? Ten ways to make it through the Dog Days of Summer

It’s summer.  Ok, it’s epically hot (or maybe it's epochally hot) – after all, it is August.  One might argue that it is most augustly August.  One thing is for certain – it is one of those times in the year when it is challenging to get motivated to do work.  

I get it.  It’s a bit of a lull – school hasn’t started, the holidays are forever away (ha!), everyone is on vacation or wishing they were on vacation - and working hard just is not appealing.  And these are the Dog Days of summer.  Despite all this, we don’t want to our playing to stink - to smell like something left over from the Dog (days 😊).  So maybe take a moment for something better – take time to smell the roses. 

Huh? What does smelling the roses have to do with playing the harp?  Nothing.  And everything!

When it’s too hot to even think about sitting down and doing the work – maybe you need to not.  Maybe it is better to take the time to smell the roses (of your harp playing) if only to remember why you even do the work.  After all, if you aren’t motivated, you’re not going to get much work done anyway.  And a lot of us do this for fun (even though it can be work) – so it’s important to, on occasion, remember what it is you enjoy about it.

Maybe you need to give yourself a mini-vacation to beat the heat.  If you do need a vacation - here are ten ways you can give yourself a little break, to take time to smell the roses here at the height of the dog days:

1. Just start playing – then see what comes of it.  I get it, simply getting started is difficult.  Because – ugh.  Even with the air conditioner on, you are facing sticking to the bench, sweating on the soundboard, having your fingers feel tacky on the strings.  So, maybe, just sit down for 10 minutes.  That’s quick enough to be done before the sweat starts to drip.  Just feel your harp, hear the sweetness, and smell the wood….
2. Rest when you need it.  As I mentioned above – school will be starting, and the holidays are coming – and you’ll be inundated with life before you know it – so set this time aside to get a little rest.  It will help you enjoy being at your harp to practice so much more when you’re ready to start up again.  
3. Make a list – so you don’t forget what you wanted to do.  Especially if you are resting – that doesn’t mean you’re not thinking.  Use the rest time away from the harp to think – about what you are playing, what you’d like to be playing, what skills you need to work on (really – be honest – are your arpeggios smooth and flowing?  Are your glisses accurate? You know what I mean – there’s always something that needs work!).  Capture that in a list so you can be focused when you are ready to buckle down after your break.
4. Replan.  We were very careful to not set goals this winter but you have had half the year to progress – are you on target?  You can take this time to evaluate if you’re doing the things you think you need to do to make progress to get when you’d like to be.
5. Indulge yourself.  Yes, this could be pack it in and get a cookie.  Or you could simply play what you want – play things you know well, or things you haven’t played in a while, or things that just make you smile.
6. Switch it up.  Switching up can take a number of forms – you could turn your practice “upside down” (do all the activities backwards – end with exercises, start with polishing).  You could take your practice in 10-minute segments throughout the day. You could practice at some other time of the day than you usually do.  Just do something different to help you bring fresh perspective to your playing.
7. Take a walk.  I know, I’m always telling you to go for a walk. So maybe actually do it this time!
8. Read a book.  You can learn so much away from the harp.  There are prose books about the harp (have you read Tree of Strings? Or Pentacle: The Story of Carlos Salzedo and the Harp?) and about music (have you read Lies My Music Teacher Told Me?).  Learning new things might help you learn your music more quickly, or better, or just bring a new feel to your playing.
9. Go shopping – buy some new music!  Take yourself out for a music spree.  Buy some new downloads or some sheet music – having something to look forward to will be fun.
10. Smell the roses – literally!  Buy yourself some flowers for your harp room!  Brighten up the space.  Enjoy the scent and sight while you’re playing.  Try to play the flowers (make an improv that reflects what you see, what you smell, how you feel). Alternately – find some while you’re out walking.

No reason to let the Dog Days of summer be the dog doo days.  Smell the roses, treat yourself gently, and enjoy the time when you maybe don’t feel like playing.  What other things do you do to help motivate yourself through these doldrums?  I’d love to hear from you – I can always use new tips to avoid slacking.