Summer’s a comin’

There are so many things to do in the summer!  And so many of them occur at the same time that you probably need to do a little calendar management, just so you can get to as many events as possible. 

I’m excited to be thinking about all the fun things on offer this summer – especially the ones I’ll be participating in.  I hope you’ll look this over and consider joining me for at least one of them!

1. Harpa!

If you’re not already signed up, you don’t have much time – we start next week, 7 – 15 May. (OK, if you seriously want to go to this, please email me immediately, because, we’re already leaving!).  If you can’t turn on that thin a dime (which would be almost everyone on the earth), you might want to start planning to come on the 2020 Harp the Highlands and Islands trip (more on that soon).

PS – watch my Facebook page and the Harpa FB page – I know we’ll post lots of fun photos while we’re in Scotland!

 

2. Ohio Scottish Games

Stolen directly from the Games website: OSG will be held June 22, 2019 and there will be loads to see and do…but why would you when you’ll want to get there early and be at the Harp Competition all day long!?!?!

This games was established in 1977, and is presented by members of The Ohio Scottish American Cultural Society of Ohio, an organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of their proud Scottish Heritage and ancestry.  OSG highlights traditional dance, music and athletics of the ancient highland games.  

And this year, Ohio is hosting the US National Scottish Harp Championship ^TM and I’m so excited to be one of the judges.  If you’ve never been, it’s worth coming out - hear the train, meet new (to you) harpers.  It’s a tradition!  They also have all the other cool festival stuff like food, athletics, pipe bands, classic cars, and loads of vendors.  But you won’t care if you miss that – because you’ll be at the Harp Competition!  Go to https://www.ohioscottishgames.com/competitions for more details.

3. Ohio Scottish Arts School

Once you’ve been dazzled by the competition (or delighted by your performance in the competition), you can head right over to OSAS. I’m so looking forward to teaching this summer.  OSAS is celebrating 41 years of educating artists in the traditional music and dance of Scotland.

Again, shamelessly stolen from the website: The Scottish Harp classes will focus on basic harp technique for beginners and intermediates. repertoire at all levels, including tunes for competition sets, and Scottish style, including ornaments, lilt, and dance types.  We will study Scottish dance music, airs, and songs, focusing on ornamentation, Scottish style, accompaniment, and learning by ear. Afternoons will include lectures, practice time, and playing in sessions. Classes will be available for beginners who have played for a few months, intermediates, and advanced players.  And we’ll have a delightful Tea presented by Ringgold Harp Ensemble, a highlight! 

I’m so excited to be teaching with the incomparable Sue Richards as well as the stunning and delightful Rachels – Rachel Hair and Rachel Clemente (an OSAS alum!).  There is probably no other place you can go to learn so much so quickly and s-t-i-l-l have a great time. 

4. Somerset Harp Festival

Somewhere on the Somerset website it says, “Play the Harp better” – and boy oh boy, will you!  I am so pleased to have been invited to teach here and will be even more thrilled to teach with Donna Bennett.

 

Together Donna and I will deliver the Creativity Tools to Improve Practice & Performance workshop – and we’re building on some previous work teaching skills, tools, and techniques that bring the creativity secret to your music. We’ll show you how to use creativity tools and techniques to practice and play better, arrange more, compose, perform – however you let your creativity out! More Info   

And I’ll be teaching a workshop we’ve entitled Sounding Scottish in which you will learn how to make your tunes sound more Scottish.  I’m going to leverage all the stuff I’ve learned to date (especially while in Scotland!) to each specific elements and techniques to ensure your tunes sound Scottish. I’ll teach a tune (or two!) to learn and practice all the good juicy stuff that will highlight the tune's authentic self.  More Info   

5. Harp Quest

Harp Quest is a great opportunity to teach with my friend Kris Snyder in idyllic southern Pennsylvania.  

 We have moved from summer camp to pursuing our Harp Quest.  And we are looking forward to this year’s journey! We have so much fun putting it together!  As with any Quest, we each have a different journey as we seek to learn what our harp is there to teach us.  Plan to join us for our 24th year and a new Journey with our harps – becoming what we’re meant to be.

This year’s Quest will be focused on Planning Ahead.  As always, our Quest will remain easily accessible to harpers from anywhere and at any level.  Our focus will be a short and intense experience that we will each take with us into the coming months and years – perhaps not fully appreciating what we have learned until much later.  But secure in knowing that we will get there – each of us.  And we’ll get there together!

The Quest will be August 16, 17, and 18, 2019 and we are looking forward to a very personalized time of sharing and learning.  We will have fun, support one another, and work together to get as much from our lever harps as we can get!  Because a quest is pretty intense, we will fill up fast, so be sure to get your reservation in.

So you can see that it’s going to be a busy summer – hope you’ll come spend some of it with me!  Let me know what you’re planning to do this summer – in the comments below.

Blogspotters - I am gradually moving the blog over to my website - please go over there, subscribe (on the upper left of the screen) so you don't miss anything. Unfortunately, blogspot doesn't have all the functionality available on the website, so this site will eventually go away. Until then, I'll post the same content but please begin to watch that space!

Let the silence speak volumes

Blogspotters - I am gradually moving the blog over to my website - please go over there, subscribe (on the upper left of the screen) so you don't miss anything. Unfortunately, blogspot doesn't have all the functionality available on the website, so this site will eventually go away. Until then, I'll post the same content but please begin to watch that space!

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!

Blogspotters - I am gradually moving the blog over to my website - please go over there, subscribe (on the upper left of the screen) so you don't miss anything. Unfortunately, blogspot doesn't have all the functionality available on the website, so this site will eventually go away. Until then, I'll post the same content but please begin to watch that space!

Permission Granted x20

Playing the harp is more challenging than it looks.  You already know that.  That’s why we work hard during practices.  It’s why we try to practice regularly – so that we enjoy small, incremental improvements each day.  And this is one reason I’m always suggesting that we track our progress – to acknowledge, accept, and grow from that practice.

Practicing certainly gives us a way to work on the technical aspects of playing, but there is so much more to playing – things that go beyond the technical.  However, to get to those things we sometimes need to get out of our own way.

So, how do we do that?  We start by giving ourselves permission.  Permission for lots of things.  But mostly, you have to give yourself permission to be YOU!

Here are 20 types of permission you might consider giving yourself:

1. Permission to fail.  It happens.  Actually, if you’re learning, you’ll fail a lot on the way.  But if you refuse yourself the opportunity to fail, you won’t learn…and that would be a shame.
2. Permission to be silly.  There is so much seriousness in music, but a little silly will probably help you enjoy more.
3. Permission to give it rest. Sometimes you need to percolate – and taking a little break will give you the option to do just that.
4. Permission to be as good as you are (and no better). You are where you are.  Be there.
5. Permission to work on just one thing (until you get it right).  Sometimes we think we have to master everything, all at once.  But this doesn’t really do much except frustrate you.
6. Permission to do scary things.  When you scare yourself, you learnt that it didn’t kill you to try something new.  We’re usually most scared that we will embarrass ourselves – you're going to embarrass yourself one way or another, so embarrass yourself your own way!
7. Permission to get out there and share.  We often huddle in the safe cocoon of our harp room at home.  But the music is best shared – so get out there!
8. Permission to fail again (and again and again and again).  You can’t just stop at one failure – do it over and over and over – and each time you’ll learn more that you can apply to the next failure.
9. Permission to make art in multiple ways.  This can be as small as playing a new kind of music or as big as learning to sculpt or paint or write.  All your art will work to help you in the others.
10. Permission to create “first drafts” (and second and third and on and on as needed).  You know that what you see on stage or on YouTube is not spontaneous, right? So why do you expect your initial efforts to be performance ready?  Think of the pre-work as your “drafts” that you will continue to refine and develop – until they are ready to share.
11. Permission to have fun.  Ok, this is pretty self-explanatory!
12. Permission to laugh at yourself.  No really, you should be able to laugh at yourself.  Keep it light – it’s not rocket surgery after all.
13. Permission to expect more from yourself.  You don’t have to be content with your lot – you can want more (as long as you’re willing to work for it).
14. Permission to be good at some things, not good at some others, and even to be terrible at a few.  Here’s an example – I’m good at playing the harp, I’m not as good at cooking and I’m terrible at gardening.  I’m ok with that – I allocate my time and resources accordingly (e.g., I practice for hours, I heat soup for dinner, and I pay a kid in the neighborhood to tend the garden – that's that sorted!).
15. Permission to practice as much as you need – and no more.  I know some of you struggle to get your butt on the bench, but others spend too much time there – practice while it’s productive, and then go do something else.  Got a deadline?  Try a little practice multiple times in the day.
16. Permission to be happy with where you are. This might seem counterintuitive (or counter to development) but it’s not – you are where you are.  Be there.  Right then. Realize too that time is a river – there is only constant change and you are changing when you are where you are – give yourself permission to accept that.
17. Permission to want more.  You think I’m contradicting myself – but remember I said there is constant change – if you want more, want it – and work for it!
18. Permission to change your mind. Playing classical music and tired of it? Trapped in session tunes but longing for something more “substantial”?  OK. It’s ok to change your mind about what you want to play.  Just do it.
19. Permission to keep track of what you are doing…and what you want to do next.  However, you need to – keep track in your own way and build on that.
20. Permission to spend your valuable time doing what you love. After all, time may be your most precious commodity – so spend the time you have doing what you love.

There are plenty of permissions to give yourself.  What other ones do you give yourself (or do you need to give yourself)? Share that in the comments!

Blogspotters - I am gradually moving the blog over to my website - please go over there, subscribe (on the upper left of the screen) so you don't miss anything. Unfortunately, blogspot doesn't have all the functionality available on the website, so this site will eventually go away. Until then, I'll post the same content but please begin to watch that space!