Tips to get you started

When it comes to tackling music you aren’t keen on, getting started can be the biggest obstacle to overcome. Scroll down for a few tips to get you moving.

I open the score. Staring back at me are 39 pages of small hand-written manuscript, including numerous gestures and many moving notes in all registers of the harp, in rhythms I have never even seen before. It’s Luciano Berio’s Circles, a 20-minute long work for voice, two percussionists, and harp, and the contemporary music ensemble at my grad school is performing this fiercely difficult piece. After listening to it for the first time, I hate the piece. I literally sigh and say to myself, “Do I have to learn this?”

We all have been there. As students or as professionals, on occasion we are required to learn and perform music that we don’t like or want to learn for one reason or another. This attitude is natural, and finding the energy to work on these pieces or parts can be frustrating, laborious, and feel like a waste of time. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are many benefits to learning repertoire that doesn’t exactly light you on fire. Focusing on those benefits can be the  key to meeting the challenge of a piece your don’t want to learn.

A shift in perspective

From top: High school harp student Greta Wodny; Twin Cities teacher Jann Stein; High school harp student
Julia Lewit; and St. Paul harp teacher
Stephanie Claussen

When faced with a piece we don’t want to learn, we tend to focus on the downside of the process. There are many advantages to valuing and embracing this process, especially when music looks involved at first glance. Self-help guru Wayne Dyer challenges us to “change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.” Have you ever tried this approach with pieces you don’t like? If you begin to view these projects as an adventure or a great learning opportunity, this shift of outlook can help you forge through tough times in the practice room. Greta Wodny, a high school junior, says she challenges herself to find creative ways to practice, making this process more interesting. “The more I know a piece inside and out, the more confidence I have to play it really well time and time again.”

Perhaps a piece of music doesn’t speak to you, and you don’t connect with it. Artistic development is a valuable component of widening your comfort zone. Playing music in a different style or harmonic language stretches your imagination and musical creativity, and broadens your knowledge of different kinds of music.

Securing technical proficiency is huge, and repetitive practice of the notes leads to technical fluidity. Joan Holland, professor of harp at University of Michigan and Interlochen Arts Academy, believes in assigning exercises and etudes in addition to regular repertoire to help students develop a relaxed technique when approaching difficult pieces. Holland says once students have the technical proficiency, they have room to then focus on the piece musically without worrying about the technique. Holland assigns etudes based on repertoire challenges, such as physical endurance, or a specific technical element so that the work won’t feel so daunting. Atlanta harpist Ellen Heinicke Foster often takes just one section of an etude and asks her students to learn it so that they will likewise become proficient with a targeted element. She tells her students, “…this (element) is something we find all the time in harp music. Let’s learn how to do it using this etude, so when we encounter it in a piece, it won’t be so tricky.”

Acquiring theoretical and historical knowledge of the music are more great reasons to dive into different sorts of literature that you may not like or have never been exposed to. Foster always has a reason for assigning a certain type of music, which then prepares students for any piece they may encounter in their future. “The majority of music I assign is to increase the abilities of the student. They are always free to learn other music as long as the assigned music is practiced and prepared for the lesson.” Maybe the form of a piece is challenging to understand and very intricate, and you shy away from learning it. It is important to label what is challenging in order to address it head-on. Doing this serves as a reminder that there is always a purpose to your work even when presented with diversity or adversity. This reminder can get you through a tough practice session.

De-clutter

Clearing your physical space gives you lots of mental room to focus.

“As I get to know my students, I try to get a feel for the types of music they like the most. This is important for all ages, but I think even more so for adult learners,” says Twin Cities harpist and teacher Jann Stein. “This not only makes lessons more fun and engaging, but more effective. I’ve been teaching for many years, and recently I’ve spent more time helping my students learn to improvise. For instance, we work on learning how to make music using a lead line with chord symbols. Developing this ability to improvise is incredibly empowering for them and helps them become more creative in formulating their own arrangements. Incorporating this with other repertoire enriches the learning experience and offers a more balanced musical diet.”

Stephanie Claussen, a St. Paul performer and teacher, shares a triumph of her own: “We can’t always go with our first impression. The first 20 times I heard the Hindemith Sonata I hated it. Once I started working on the piece, I discovered that I could savor the process of simply mastering the notes and the nuances. I learned to find beauty on a more-subtle level, to revel in how one note resolves to another, or how two melodic lines clash and then diverge.” She adds, “We need to learn to enjoy the process of mastering a piece regardless of whether we like the end-product, otherwise our practice time becomes a hardship.”

Quiet Distractions

Silence your phone, mute your computer, and remove any other distractions from your practice area.

Wodny recalls, “I remember learning a piece of music where I didn’t comprehend the structure. As I kept practicing it, I began to like the piece more and more, and began to understand the purpose of what was written and why. I appreciated the style and musical form much more as I dove into it.”

Olympia by Paul Creston was required repertoire for a competition I entered while in college. I remember not understanding the form or harmonic language, and not connecting with it at all. As I learned the piece, I began to see and hear how Creston used reoccurring motives and in what manners. The lines, phrases, and form finally started becoming clearer as the notes became more secure. I began enjoying and mastering the piece! Instead of pushing away a great learning opportunity, I changed the way I looked at the piece and tried to embrace it in that way. Learning Olympia turned out to be a terrific memory and accomplishment.

Activating your courage

“Taking on a challenge not in the student’s comfort zone can produce not only improvement but also a strong sense of satisfaction and accomplishment,” Holland attests. “I start getting excited while being a cheerleader for my students. My confidence in them helps build their confidence in themselves.”

Let There Be Light

Make sure you have plenty of light to read the music and see your strings

Foster also works on confidence building in lessons. “I try to turn on at least one light bulb in every lesson so the student leaves feeling they have accomplished something. I instill courage by telling them stories about my own experiences. I always let my students know that I have challenges that I work through every day to be the best the harpist I can be. Usually these stories can be pretty funny, which lightens the mood and helps the student put the situation back into perspective.”

Stein observes positive changes in her students as time goes by. “I would often remind my children when they face challenges that ‘by the yard it’s hard, but by the inch it’s a cinch.’ I’ve used this same principle in helping my harp students overcome pieces they saw as impossible. I ask them to at least give it a try. Inevitably they master a song and it becomes their own. They find more enjoyment than when they first began. My job is to motivate them in positive ways, and to patiently encourage them to work through the tough times.”

“I try to find two or three pieces that fit the criteria I’m looking for and allow the student to pick which one they like best.” Claussen engages the student in the learning process, allowing repertoire choices to be a group effort. “That helps them feel like they’re involved in the decision.”

Tough Stuff First

Start your practice session with your most difficult material while your mind and body are fresh.

You, too, can activate your courage! Setting goals, naming goals each practice session, and reaching daily goals is extremely satisfying and energizing. Let’s say you’re trying to learn a piece from an era or genre that you don’t understand. Make learning fun by listening to lots of music in this area to accustom your ear to its flavors. You may end up learning quite a lot about Spanish Flamenco music, for example! You want to be ready for any repertoire that comes your way.

It is sometimes difficult to trust that you will play or perform pieces securely that don’t spark your interest. Regardless, dive into your music with a positive outlook, believing that you will ace the phrase, passage, or piece. Be sure to give yourself positive reinforcement along the way just as you would give your friend, colleague, or student. Condition yourself to think in a positive direction because the effects quickly build upon themselves and help you realize your limitless potential.

Active learning strategies

Clearly define what you set out to do in a passage; this solidifies the information as well as makes the process more productive. For instance, try saying fingering, chords, pedals, or solfège a melody because engaging more senses when practicing always enhances your learning. This is done by actively seeing, really listening, singing, and physically memorizing what something feels like when you get it right in your playing so that you may do it well multiple times. Trust that your work will stick in your mind from day to day!

Map It

Before jumping in, create a thorough road map of the piece to help you compartmentalize the material and learn it more quickly.

Clear intention always solidifies learning. It also holds you accountable in the practice session and keeps you focused instead of practicing on “automatic pilot.” Learning music well is knowing it “inside-out” as well as “outside-in.” Implementing an active learning style is one detail of a quality over quantity work-ethic. Engagement and focus while completing a task is like a muscle because the more efficiently it is used, the stronger and more reliably it develops!

Awareness of how hard work on one piece helps learning the next one is significant because it allows you to see a common learning thread within all of your repertoire. A work with similar challenges should be easier the next time around. “I learn pieces whose elements help other pieces in many ways. For instance, working on rolled chords in Siciliana helps solidify the chords in ‘Maid with the Flaxen Hair,’” observes high school senior Julia Lewit. “Every element builds upon other elements, piece after piece.” Valuing the opportunity to stretch your capabilities, especially through tackling a piece outside of your comfort zone, will always make you a better musician and harpist.

Patient practicing

It takes seven times longer to unlearn something learned wrong than it does to learn something right in the first place. I once taught an 11-year-old student who prepared music for a national exam. She received a pretty solid score, but in her mind, she didn’t quite meet her goal. She didn’t feel that she really knew her music. After her exam we discussed the experience and what she learned from it. She readily admitted that she practiced too quickly and really wished that she took the time to learn everything right the first time around.

Never waste a good challenge. Lewit arrived at Interlochen Arts Camp this summer with the assignment from her teacher back home of learning a piece that she doesn’t like. She approached it positively. “Even if you don’t like the piece, you can still focus on what you are improving upon in your playing. You may not perform it a lot, but you can still get something out of it.” She adds, “Break down the piece, hands alone, and analyze the structure. This makes it easier to navigate.”

Claussen values building a solid practice regimen in her students while teaching them to keep the process in mind. “I remind them that learning is cumulative. Fingerings, rhythms, or techniques that stretch their abilities today won’t be as difficult in a few months or a year. It’s fun to go back to old pieces so they can see the progress they’ve made.”

Often we practice more quickly than we can conceptualize the music, especially if we are impatient or we have a deadline. Finding smart ways to work will help you slow down and be more efficiently engaged. Processing the material slower at first and then progressively speeding up this processing helps ingrain the material better. Fast or sloppy practicing will cause consistency issues in the long run.

Keeping some practice principles in mind will help you master the music efficiently.

Just like practicing sight-reading, minimize looking at your hands and strings if possible after you have learned the fingering and notes so that you can read ahead in the music. This will increase efficiency with your eye and head movements, therefore not looking in excess from the page to the hands.

Only practice one measure, one passage, or one hand at a time—especially if the material is extremely demanding. String the notes together slowly and don’t attempt too much material at once. Only use the metronome when you are sure you have all notes and fingerings correct, even if it is at a slow tempo.

If a passage written for one hand is tricky, practice the same passage with both hands. You might as well gain technique and facility in both at the same time. Be conscious of feeling really grounded at the harp, and really centered. Maintain good posture and never, ever, allow yourself to get tight when practicing an involved passage.

Tips and tricks for getting started

When it comes to a piece you don’t want to learn, getting started can be half the battle. Set yourself up for success. De-clutter your practice area and create lots of space to work, because clean surroundings give you plenty of mental room to focus. Always leave the cell phone in another room. Make sure you have plenty of light to see. This is easy to forget or overlook.

After your warm-ups, start your practice session with the hard stuff while your mind is fresh so that you aren’t mentally or physically fatigued from working on other pieces. Make sure the score is clean, big enough, legible, and that pedals are marked clearly. One option is to box or highlight the pedal markings because they often blend into the music or are already printed small. This extra visual feature draws attention to them so that you notice and process them quicker.

Do not dive into learning a piece without first creating a roadmap of it. This map helps compartmentalize the music and creates a blueprint for your mind to comprehend the material more quickly. It’s like seeing the picture of a puzzle and then working with the puzzle pieces. You would almost never start putting together a puzzle without first looking at its picture on the box! Divide the music into phrases or smaller sections based on its form. Get to know key areas, meters, patterns, and directional movement. Once you have your road map, you won’t feel as if you are wandering through your practice session.

Practicing strategies

Ask yourself a few questions as you prepare and practice.

  • Are my arm and hand movements and gestures appropriate for the speed of the passage, or from one register to the other?
  • Is my fingering the best choice for the job, and have I explored all options?
  • Are my eye movements efficient, therefore allowing me to play accurately from one register to the other? Am I taking “snapshots” of the notes, movement of phrases, direction, or fingering ahead of time, instead of getting caught up on beat-to-beat note reading?
  • Is the music visually prepared and cued? Is counting clearly noted, if needed? Examples of good visual cues include brackets over your fingering, parenthesis around repetitive sections, pedals clearly notated, enough pedal graphs, and various types of cues from one system or page to the other.

One more strategy that I have found invaluable is to copy a clean score, but strictly for your own use while respecting copyright laws. After you have learned the piece, read from this clean score occasionally to quiz your accuracy of the hand-written markings that you or your teacher has noted.

Courageous acts

Whether you’re learning a wild solo required for a competition, an orchestra part that feels way out of context, or a chamber music piece that you plum don’t like, there is hope for getting through music that can seem like a lifetime to learn. Choose the path of openness and courage while learning it, knowing your work will educate and broaden your musical sphere. “An approach that is new and stretches students’ boundaries lets in light as well as a new prospective to the repertoire that they know and love,” Holland shares. “Aligning new knowledge with old knowledge enlightens and brings new life to pieces that students are already comfortable with.” Claussen also puts a positive spin on empowering students. “I like to remind my students that our greatest challenges often turn into our greatest triumphs. The payoff is so much greater with the difficult pieces.”

The rewards of learning a piece of repertoire that you may not have initially liked are many. I thoroughly learned and eventually enjoyed my performances of Circles, and even though the process wasn’t entirely fun, it felt terrific to stretch and grow through its technical, musical, and theoretical components.

Be proud of yourself for sticking through tough projects to the end. As Aristotle reminds us, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”