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Holy Christmas! Did this ever stir the pot! There have been some excellent contributions here- in particular from the always excellent Tony Morosco-so I’m going to ruminate a bit about fingering in general and not go over territory already covered.
When I begin a new piece, I start by laying out the piece: putting in pedal markings, writing in fingerings where needed, rewriting enharmonics as needed, etc. But when I get down to actually learning the piece and working it up to tempo, I find very often that what I wrote down initially doesn’t work at a faster tempo, or presents problems(buzzing for one) so I have to make changes as I get to know the piece better. Sometimes a pedal has to be in a slightly different place to avoid a pedal slide, a fingering has to be changed for comfort, speed, cleaner playing, whatever. The point here is that even for myself, it is sometimes to change fingerings as work on a piece progresses.
When I’m teaching a student a piece, I will usually give them a choice of 2 or 3 fingerings for an awkward or difficult place and let them see which one works best for their hand. If the fingering that they are using is not working, then I’ll insist on a change and explain why. An obvious example is the broken thirds at the bottom of the first page of the Mozart flute and harp concerto. Students will typically try to play that 2121212121212. But I’ll explain the reason why they need to play it 2131213, etc. It simply won’t work without alternating 2 and 3.
There are times where you have to insist on a fingering(like that passage in the Mozart) because nothing else will work at full tempo. There are other times where you might give the student several possibilities and then see what happens. If, as the piece gets closer to completion, a fingering isn’t working, explain that what works at one tempo doesn’t always work at another, so it has to be changed.
One thing that I would add here is to make sure the student documents what he/she is doing. For years I would go through the initial layout stage and then, as I learned the piece, make changes without writing them down. When I go back to the piece years later i have to try to remember what I did in one place or the other. I’m very careful now to erase and rewrite so my copy of the piece accurately reflects how I actually play it.
I agree with Tayce on this one. If it is some sort of stage fright thing, it’s not for you to say it is or it isn’t. It’s entirely the student’s opinion. Talk to her. If she says you make her nervous or intimidate her, then THAT is the truth and you have to change the lesson dynamic to eliminate the tension.
But I’m not saying that that is the case here and your post leaves open a variety of possible scenarios. Let me just throw them out here and you can see if any of them fit.
Maybe your student, as hard as she works, has some gaps in her practice technique that is causing her to not really fix problems. I had a student who did this. As diligent as she was, when she made a mistake, she’d stop, kind of regroup, and then continue on without working on that little trip. I’m not a stickler for right notes in lessons, and if a student drops a note here and there, I assume they will fix this on their own time. That wasn’t the case with this girl, and I realized that if I had her play the same line 2 or 3 times in a row, the exact same mistake happened each time in exactly the same place. When your student makes a mistake, let her play a little further on, then stop her and ask her to play the same line again. Does the same mistake happen each time? Also, when she makes a mistake, ask her to stop and go back no more than a measure before the mistake and do it again. If she can’t start literally any place in the music, but has to start way back at the beginning of the phrase or page, then you know that she is not stopping and working out mistakes as they happen.
Another possibility is that your student has some degree of Attention Deficit Disorder. What this means in this situation is that however much she may practice, she quickly gets bored with the music and doesn’t really focus on it until her back is to the wall and there is intense pressure, like a performance or exam, in 2 or 3 days. Suddenly everything comes together and the performance goes better than any lesson did. This is a classic text book symptom of ADD.
I would not trust secondhand testimony concerning her performances. You should hear them yourself and then decide if what she did was much better than the lesson. Maybe in performance she still makes the mistakes but doesn’t stop and covers them quite well. you won’t know unless you hear a couple of her performances yourself.
Patricia- Interesting idea. My first reaction to this is that it would necessarily limit the amount of information you, the teacher, could get if you used this for a masterclass or lesson. After all, you have one camera from one perspective showing the student and that image is being turned from 3 to 2 dimensions. So if you were trying to teach a student via this technology, you’d be very limited in what you were seeing and could even misinterpret the visual information you were receiving. In addition, the sound coming through couldn’t possibly be as accurate as listening live right next to the student. So how could you judge the student’s tone production, volume, etc. This happens with recordings all the time. All singers are heard at the same volume on recordings. But in live performance, some of them are almost inaudible and others blast out the back wall of the hall. I think the same problem would occur here too. This kind of technology should only be used for teaching when there simply is no other option, and its limitations should be understood by both the teacher and student.
My understanding is that foreign students are generally not eligible for any kind of financial aid from American schools. They have to get their aid from their own country.
This is really true Elizabeth. And when you are learning a really difficult piece, it’s a good idea to learn it, put it aside for several months minimum, and then come back to it. It will come much easier the second time around. Frances Miller told me once that she always told her students that you have to study a piece and let it rest three times before you can really play it.
I had another thought as I was writing the above post and I’d like to hear what others have to say about this.
For 2 of the 3 years that I lived in Paris, I taught English as a foreign language to French businessmen. I noticed that when I was working with them on a particular point of grammar, making an affirmative sentence negative as an example, they would grasp the concept and make steady improvement on the exercises(verbal exercises in a class setting) to a point. Then, if I continued too long, their improvement would start to unravel and they would start making mistake after mistake. So I had to listen very carefully for the point of maximum benefit and then stop and go on to something else. A few other teachers in the school never grasped this and would drive the students even harder when things began to break down. Several times I saw middle aged men running from someone’s classroom in tears.
I’m wondering if this is a problem in practicing. The only time it is a problem for me is when I’m trying to memorize. I’ll pick a line and start memorizing. Once I get that line to the ‘wobbly stage’ I have to stop and leave it alone. If I don’t, what I just memorized turns into alphabet soup, with everything jumbled together. I can’t think of any other part of practicing where this happens.
Let’s see…Thoughts on practicing…
There are 3 things that you have to consider BEFORE you sit down to practice.
1) What is your goal with the piece you are working on? Are you a professional learning this piece for a gig? Are you a student learning this to improve your technique? Is this piece for an exam, audition, competition, or diploma recital? Are you an amateur who just wants to be able to play the piece through for your own amusement? Each of these goal has very different requirements. According to the goal, you may have to memorize this piece, or work on 2 measures for hours trying to get the notes, texture, or musical expression right, or just figure out the notes without too much concern for anything else.
2) Where are you in the process of learning this piece? Just starting? Almost done? Stuck somewhere in the middle? What DON’T you know yet in your journey with this piece?
3) What is your goal for THIS practice session? It could be any one of 100 things. But you need to figure out what you are trying to accomplish(learn) in THIS session. It may be to memorize another line or two of music. Or get that left hand hard spot flowing better, etc. Pick a goal that is doable for the time you have available. When I’m trying to learn a piece, practice can be as short as 3 to 5 minutes(a commercial break in a show I’m watching) where I’ll go test my ability to play a line from memory, to several hours when I’m working on anything from technical problems to musical continuity. The goal you pick for THIS practice session may not be accomplished during this particular session. But you should have the sense at the end of it that you accomplished something.
Renate- There are lots of good suggestions here. I would summarize them by saying that reading music is a separate skill from playing an instrument, and you need to work on that skill of reading music without the harp. Start by studying your music at the kitchen table, not at the harp. Read the notes aloud, count the rhythms, etc. You could actually take any piece of music to the kitchen table and just practice reading the notes. It will get easier the more you do it. If you can, take a course in music theory, or better yet, in solfege.
Mel- I tend to be like you. Before starting to really learn a piece I go through a layout process where I put in all of the pedals where I want to see them, possible fingerings, etc. Only then do I start learning to play the piece.
But frankly, that is a luxury that some harpists cannot afford. The Hollywood studio harpists spent their whole career sight-reading hand written manuscript in which nothing but the notes were written, glisses were just squiggly lines without even indicating what the harmony was supposed to be, and sometimes there was just a melody line with no harmony indicated. These harpists, the most famous being Dorothy Remsen, Catherine Gotthoffer, and Ann Stockton, could read anything. Many pop and jazz harpists are the same way. I wish I had that skill but I don’t.
I would encourage any harp student to learn to play:
1) music that has no fingerings or pedals written in.
2) music where the fingerings and pedals were written in by someone else.
3) music that the student has laid out him/herself.
It’s very important for students and professionals to be able to read music all three ways.
Michael- Thanks for the thoughtful response. As i pointed out in the article I wrote for the Harp Column, I never had a fear of performing. My fear was of the Adreneline and the problems it causes. So blocking the Adreneline took care of the problem.
Michael- I just read that Mayo Clinic article. They are talking about people who take beta blockers every day for various health issues, not about people who take one beta blocker dose once in a while for performance anxiety. So virtually all of the side effects they mention do not apply to the performer taking a pill only when he/she has a performance.
Having said that, one of my symptoms of performance anxiety(when I don’t take medication) is cold hands. Cold to the point of being stiff and virtually unusable. If I take only a beta blocker for a performance, I still have cold stiff hands, because that is the most common side effect of beta blockers. So I also take an alpha blocker(as do almost all people who take beta blockers for health related issues), and the alpha blocker dilates my blood vessels just enough so that I have toasty warm hands when I perform. My doctor explained to me that when someone with normal blood pressure(as I have) takes a beta blocker or an alpha blocker, it won’t change their blood pressure. I have never had any side effects from taking these two drugs for performance.
For the umpteenth time, I do not make recommendations to anyone about taking beta blockers, and I couldn’t care less how anyone else deals with performance anxiety. When I mention beta blockers, it is simply to say that they are there for those who need them.
For years before discovering beta blockers, I tried everything I could think of to control nerves. I was ultra prepared and knew the material backwards and forwards. The second the adreneline kicked in, all preparation flew out the window. I tried endless warmup to get the blood flowing to my hands. I tried holding a heating pad, and soaking my hands in hot water. Nothing worked.
I tried hypnosis. Waste of time and money. To this day, I can’t play unmedicated for two people at a backyard barbecue without the adreneline rushing through my system like electrical voltage, destroying any semblance of technique or musical expression. With the medication, I can play a solo recital for 1000 people with no hint of nerves. I know from talking to many many people that I am not the only person who reacts to performance nerves like this. Beta blockers are there for those who need themI may be wrong on this, but I believe the Harp Connection no longer rents harps. I don’t know when they stopped. But that’s probably the reason I have been getting so many calls for rentals this year.
