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Elizabeth- That sounds like a great way to learn a two handed trill.
I have my own theory about one handed trills, which some people can do incredibly well and some can’t. And it has nothing to do with how advanced a harpist you are. Xavier is testement to that. Here’s my theory.
There was a program on Nova(Public Television) years ago that was about Olympic athletes, and it asked the question of why some athletes are great sprinters and others are great marathon runners. They removed a tiny amount of muscle tissue from numerous runners, some sprinters and some marathon, and tested the tissue. They already knew that all of us have two types of muscle tissue or cells in our bodies which are referred to as “fast twitch” and “slow twitch”. The fast twitch fiber gives you speed but not endurance. The slow twitch fiber gives you endurance but not great speed, or sustainable speed. What they found was that the sprinters had a very high percentage of fast twitch fibers in their bodies, and the marathon runners a high percentage of slow twitch.
As I watched this I thought, if that is true in the leg muscles, then it must be true elsewhere in the body as well. That to me explains why some musicians are capable of dizzying speed with little effort, and why these people can play things like one handed trills so well. For the same reason, other musicians, while capable of playing quite fast, with a lot of work, nevertheless have an upper limit speed-wise beyond which things just start to break down, no matter how hard or long they practice. I’m squarely in the second group. And apparently I’m in pretty good company. I used to envy those harpists that can play so fast but I don’t any more. I realized that when speed is so easy and so fast, these people tend to play everything too fast. Way too fast. I could name names! The hardest thing for them to do is hold a piece at the correct tempo.
But back to one handed trills. Renie says in her wonderful Methode that she was asked very often how one should practice to learn a one handed trill. And Renie admitted herself that not everyone is capable of doing one. But her suggestion is to start by practicing a 3 note turn, starting both on the bottom and on the top. When that gets comfortable, add one more note, then another, until you have 8 or 10 notes or more flying by.
Alexandros- I haven’t looked at your score yet. I will soon. But I wanted to warn you against composing for the harp on a keyboard, which I think is what a lot of composers and arrangers are doing now. What’s worse, they push the ‘harp’ button so that what they play makes harp-like sounds. But that does not produce something that can be played on the harp, or that resonates that well on the harp. The only way to write accurately for the harp-and I mean something that is not only playable but sounds good on the harp-is to work with a professional or very advanced harpist. Sketch out some ideas and then have the harpist look at it and play it. Does it sound the way you thought it would? Is what you wrote in the wrong register? Does it sound dry and brittle when you were expecting something resonant? Does it sound thin, or thick and muddy? All of these things can happen when you don’t work closely with a good harpist.
It depends on the situation. There are times when you can trill using two hands, and others where a one handed trill is called for. In that case, I know of 4 ways to do a one handed trill that are used by various virtuoso harpists.
The queen of the one handed trill is Jana Boscova, and I’ve seen her use 3 different types of one handed trills. The most common one handed trill is just 21212121 etc. But that’s tiring, and not everybody can learn to do that. A variation on that is 213121312131 etc. That is much less tiring and I think is the way most people play a one handed trill when they have to. The third way is 432143214321 etc. In this case 2 and 1 repeat the notes that 4 and 3 just played. Stated another way, 4 and 2 play the lower note, and 3 and 1 play the upper note.
The 4th way, and this is used by Xavier de Maistre when he plays the Boildieu concerto, is to brace the thumb on the string next to the upper note of the trill and then strum the two notes of the trill with 3 and 2. So the trill is played 332233223322 etc. He swears that he can’t do a one handed trill and had to invent this method when he won the USA competition playing the Boildieu.
All of these take practice and a lot of work to learn. When done right, they all sound absolutely even, clear, and fast. I have sat 3 feet from Catherine Michel when she demonstrated a one handed trill using the 212121 method, and it was as fast as any two handed trill I have ever heard. I have sat next to Xavier in my living room when he demonstrated his strumming technique, and it was fast, clear and gorgeous.
Interesting story Rosalind. I’m sure, as in traditional teaching, there are good Suzuki teachers and bad ones. But I’ve heard several stories from reputable people that suggest that the Suzuki method of learning the harp presents some real problems: The “brick walls” as you call them.
One very famous harpist in the U.S. told me of a Suzuki teacher who has around 60 students. She starts these kids around 8 or 9 or younger. But 4 or 5 years later many of them give up the instrument because, now in high school, they can’t read music and therefore can’t do any ensemble playing. It sounds like at some point the teacher has to break with Suzuki method and start teaching them the traditional way.
Another harpist, a professional and a very good friend of mine, has a grand daughter who wanted to study harp. The area of the country where she lived did not offer a lot of options teacher-wise, and she ended up studying with a Suzuki teacher. This was a girl who already had good piano background and was a brilliant student at school. The (Suzuki) teacher spent almost 2 years teaching this girl and not once did she assign anything that involved both hands! The girl and her grandmother were furious. The girl’s family finally moved to another part of the country and she had to start over with an excellent teacher(and one of the regular posters on this forum!). The girl is now doing great and playing in the orchestra at her college.
It’s because of these stories that I asked my original question.
Rosalind- have you had any experience with a Suzuki trained student switching over to you? If so, how did they play?
Nancy- One thing about shoulder injuries is that the higher you have to hold your arm, the more it stresses the shoulder. Getting your arm above shoulder level requires a major shift in everything in the shoulder joint. I know, because I had rotator cuff surgery years ago. What I would suggest is that for the period of time that the shoulder is healing, you play pieces that are quite low on the instrument. No Prokofief Prelude in C for example. No Contemplation of Renie. I hope this course of treatment takes care of the problem. Good luck.
Try to find out exactly what is drawing him to the harp and what he thinks he would like to play. Then adjust your approach to his goal. One way you can keep him interested is to play duets with him, with you playing either piano or harp. You can take some piece that he likes, let him play the melody while you play the harmony and rhythm. it will make him sound much more advanced than he is and make him want to advance more. Good luck.
I do hope that if any of the posters here are passing through Boston they will contact me so we can (finally) meet.
OK, so here’s my take, from the technician’s as well as the player’s point of view, on changing strings.
Most pedal harpists use 3 different types of strings: wire wound on wire, gut, and nylon. The gut strings are going to break or go terribly fuzzy after a year of use, so you don’t have to give special consideration to changing them. When one breaks or feels like yarn, change it.
Wire strings rarely(but occasionally) break. They do however go dull in sound. So changing them is kind of a personal choice. When you want a clearer or brighter sound in your wire strings, change them.
Nylons are the biggest problem. They almost never break. But they get pitted where the disc engages, they go false and tinny, and they get dirty. But they will last like that for 15 years or more. I would automatically change all nylon strings on the harp once a year. Pick a holiday to do it so you remember. Your birthday, Labor day, whatever. That way, when that holiday rolls around again, you’ll remember that IT’S TIME TO CHANGE THE NYLON STRINGS.
This may sound incredibly dumb, but occasionally I’m not quite sure of the gender of the writer. I’ve more or less figured out(I think correctly) that Brook is a guy. But is Mel a woman or a man? I think I finally figured out that she is a woman, but I’m not 100% sure. If any of you have names that are not gender specific, please set us straight here. Thanks.
For some reason I never got them. I’m really sorry. Are you overseas? Sometimes emails don’t come through. Another problem I’ve had -and I can’t remember if this happened with your emails- I have received emails from overseas and answered them immediately. They then come back as undeliverable. I have a former client in Tasmania. She wrote asking me to send her a spare part. I answered immediately and my email kept bouncing back to me. A computer geek friend of mine told me that sometimes the person’s mailbox is full and they have to empty it to receive any more mail. Maybe something like that happened to your emails.
You might try opening a hotmail account and contacting me through that. That might go through.
Saul is the only one of the regular posters that I have met already, and also Jan Jennings. I’d love to meet all the rest.
One other thought just occurred to me. Does your student, as part of her practice routine, include a run through where she goes through the piece without stopping, no matter how bad it gets? She may be very good at practicing in short increments, but doesn’t take the time to connect the whole thing together, except at her lesson. I call this type of run through a come-hell-or-high-water run through. My teacher, Pierre Jamet, laughed when I told him this. He called it a run through “avec les blesse et le morts”(with the wounded and the dead). It’s a very important part of preparing a piece and is very different from the micro-practicing that we spend most of our time on. Just a thought…
