Memorize or learn?

A few years ago, I set myself a goal of having enough music in my head so that I could play a three-hour background gig without sheet music.  This was largely driven by my innate laziness -   

Some of you have asked me how you could memorize all that music.  And you’ve likely seen the questions of memorization come up repeatedly in forums.  So many people believe that they must have sheet music.  

Be comfortable that those tunes will be there when you need them – and you can lose your music stand too!  Read the rest of the post on the website.  And subscribe to be sure to get notified about each blog post. 

Stay between the lines!

I was driving down the highway the other day.  I was going about 1000 miles, so on one particularly long, straight stretch, I started remembering when I learned to drive.   

For me, one of the hardest things to learn was staying in the middle of the lane.  When you start to drive, you know you need to stay in the lane – and between the lines.  The lane is defined by the lines, so I looked at the lines - constantly.  But you know how that goes – the more you look at the lines, the farther you are from your desired position – in the middle of the lane.  The best advice (or training) I got was to look down the road – look way down the road.  After I (finally) learned that, staying in the lane was so easy.  Now, as an experienced driver, I don't even see the lines close to me and keeping the vehicle in the middle of the lane is something I take for granted.  It seems that I just go where I meant to be.   

The reality is, no matter how good a driver you are, you will never stay in your lane to get where you’re going if you don’t look ahead.  So, what does that have to do with playing the harp?  Everything!

When you’re learning a new tune – what do you do?  I don’t know about you, but when I’m having trouble getting a tune into my head, I naturally narrow my thinking down to just what comes next - what’s the next note.  But this doesn’t actually help me learn the tune.  It just frustrates me (thus drawing my focus away from what I’m trying to do – learn the tune).  If I lift my head and keep my focus “down the road”, then I can think of the phrases (as phrases, not as a trickle of sounds).  When I can hear the tune in my head, the notes that come next become so much easier to remember.

When you’re reading music, the notation (the lines and everything else) are helpful – but can be distracting.  Again, sometimes just having all that ink only serves to draw your attention to the individual blops – and you lose track of where you are on the page, in the phrase, in the music.  When you lose your place, your hands may not end up in the right place, or they might be going the wrong direction or be overstretched!  Keeping the long view will allow you to read the music rather than focusing on the ink and better allow you to be more able to play.

When you’re playing, you have learned the tune or become familiar with the dots on the sheet.  When you’re playing, you want to be “in the moment” – and that is important.  But remember that music isn’t static or fixed.  Music is serial, it comes out over time - like the road!  It can’t come out all at once (although there are some composers who clearly do not agree with me on that!).  So being in the moment has to include the plans for this moment, and then for the next moment, and then the following moment, and on and on until the end of the piece - as a flow.  This is not contradictory, rather, you need to hold the music in your head as a piece rather than as a set of notes.  Looking at the whole of the music, rather than on just it’s representation (that you learned or are reading), will help keep you on track.

When you’re performing, you really are taking all that you have learned and putting it out there in the world to share.  This is more than just playing in that now.  Because now, in addition to being in the moment with the music, you must also be present with the listeners.  Whether there are 2 or 200 or 2000 in the audience, your focus has to be “farther down the road” to include not only the music but also the hearers and what your message to them/with them is.  Here, your long view includes them, the music, and the presentation.  Keeping an eye on where you want to take them with the music, what it is you want to share, and how you mean to do that will help give you a smooth ride.

Of course, this is a simple analogy.  There are many things on the road that require attention (like stop signs, traffic, pedestrians, etc.).  And just like that, music (written or aural, practice or performance) has details (like dynamics, tempo, timbre, etc.) which enrich the ride and improve the experience.  But, just as staying between the lines becomes second nature, learning, reading, playing and performing can also become second nature so that your music grows, flourishes, and delights.  And just like any journey, when staying between the lines comes naturally and effortlessly, you can enjoy the journey so much more easily.  What are the lines you have a hard time not looking at?  How do you stay in the lane? When you look down the road – what do you see?  Leave me a comment and share how you do it!

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Box it up!

Being organized will help you get more from your practice time by allowing you to spend more of your precious time at the harp rather than trying to find music.  There are many ways to get organized – lists, practice journals, etc. will all help you focus your attention so you can spend the limited time you have to practice on practicing.  But once you learn tunes, then what?  How do you keep them in your head?  You can have a Tune Box.

This is a DIY project – you can be as creative (or not) as you choose on this project.  You can make it fit your décor, your time available, your favorite color, or you can leave it as you found it – it’s up to you!  Here are the Step by Step Instructions:

1. Get a packet of 3 x 5 (or 4 x 6) cards and a recipe card box (sized to the cards).  
2. Paint and decorate the recipe card box as you like (or leave it plain if you’d rather have more time to practice).  
3. While the box is drying (assuming you’ve painted, decoupaged, or glued things to the box), for each tune you know, write a card.  On the card put:

• Name of the tune (as well as it’s “real” name if it is in another language - if you’re squeamish, also include the phonetic pronunciation of the name).
• Key signature (or write out the key in which you play the tune) and mode (if you know it)
• Time signature
• Type of tune  (or how you tend to play it – air? song? march? reel? jig? etc.)
• You can also copy (and shrink) the first few measures and glue that onto the card to help you remember how the tune starts (if you only know a few tunes this seems silly….until the time you start to play Tune A and belatedly realize you’re actually playing Tune B which can be a bit disconcerting!)
• Other tunes with which you might put the tune to make a set
• Other items of interest you care to add – they are YOUR cards after all!

I’d suggest you put the cards in alphabetical order just to make them easier to locate in the box – I typically file by the way I think of the tune title (for instance, although the tune is Amhran na Leabhar, I think of it as The Song of the Books, so it is filed under Song not Amhran. But you can do them however you choose (I had them sorted by tune type but that didn’t work for me, so back to alphabetical).

After polishing but before you play your reward tune, pull a card at random and play that tune*.  As you learn more tunes this will become more challenging – but it will help you to remember what you have learned and to refresh (to keep in your fingers, not concert ready) all the tunes you have worked so hard to learn.  And you can also see physical proof of how much you have learned as you have worked so hard at the harp – it’s all in the Box!

*hopefully the tune (the melody at least!) goes swimmingly, but if it goes pear shaped, then you know you need to work on the tune some more, so you can leave the card out to remind yourself to give that tune a little extra practice so you remember it the next time

Give it a new twist

When you learn a new tune, there is a lot to learn and to remember.  You are trying to keep a lot in mind as you play – what are the notes of the melody? What are the needed dynamics? What about the phrasing?  And then there’s the accompaniment and harmonization!

You may recall that I am a big advocate for laziness and efficiency.  To that end, I try very hard to reduce the amount of stuff I have to learn, memorize, recall, and reproduce.  So it becomes essential to create a set of tools that allow you to wring the most playing and performance time out of each tune you learn.

One of my favorite tools is to stick to a basic chord progression – with a twist!  What is the twist?  Inversions!

Not sure what an inversion is?  It sounds complicated, but inversions are only a twist on a chord.  And with a little bit of practice, inversions can become second nature.    

How do you play inversions?  Here's an easy tutorial:

1. Place a root position C major chord*.  [Lost?  The root position is the 1 – 3 – 5 chord with the scale name on the bottom (in our example here it is a C – E – G chord).  This is the Root.] 
2. Now, twist that C off the bottom of the chord and place it on the top (so now you have a chord in the shape E – G – c) – that’s the first inversion.
3. To move to the second inversion, take that E off the bottom and twist it to the top (so now you have a chord in the shape G – c – e) – that’s the second inversion!
4. And, you guessed it, one more twist and you're back to the root chord, just up an octave!

As you play along (I know you rushed right over to your harp while you were reading!) you can hear that, while the chord is the same, each inversion is also different.  These differences meant that the inversions each give the tune a slightly different character!

Work on your inversions – practice them so they become second nature – and use them make subtle (but easy to remember) variations to your harmonies for the tunes in your repertoire and watch your repetitions become more interesting!

*I'm using the C major chord here but this applies to chords in any key - once you learn to do them, you can use them all over the place!