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Hi Angela, Before I read your last post I was going to say – take a break, already! There’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe with some time away you’ll discover what you really love about the harp (or not). Distance can make the heart grow fonder and all that. You aren’t your harp, you’re much more than that.
Anyway if/when you do come back to it, here is something that has helped me.
Have you thought about turning from performing to recording? I mess up a lot too in front of other people from stage fright, much more so on the harp than on other instruments and voice.
One day I used my brother’s old iPhone to record myself playing the harp. I was really surprised a) how good it sounded b) how little mistakes weren’t even really audible due to resonance c) how my friends and family enjoyed getting files of the recordings via dropbox etc. – and most of all d) how much I enjoyed being able to edit – that is, redo takes over and over again as much as I needed.
Recently I bought a higher-end but easy to use recording device – the H2 Zoom. I’m recording sacred Renaissance duets (singing not harping) with a friend of mine from choir who also suffers from stage fright. We love being able to erase ourselves and try again!
A famous and prodigiously talented musician here in Canada, Glenn Gould, HATED performing. He turned almost exclusively to recording later in his life. Some might say music is meant to be live and I can see that point. But I’m also person who likes an end product, something I can say I made. I’m no Glenn Gould, but with recordings you can give them away as presents to friends and family and share your music that way.
Lastly, Tacye’s post above really hit home for me. It’s true – mistakes on the harp can turn into a domino effect of stumbling because of placement etc. It’s like an intricately choreographed dance with your fingers. I think her observation will help me to be less hard on myself. Also, I’m wondering if experimenting with improvisation might help us to recover more quickly.
Anyway, I’ll shut up now! Enjoy spending time on other parts of yourself!
Interesting point about the breathing – I’m a classically trained singer so theoretically I know how to do that properly. But I hadn’t thought to observe what happens to my breathing when I’m playing the harp! Must do so. Thanks!
Sorry about the delay in response – I’m glad the emails alerts are back.
Hi everyone,
Sorry I haven’t checked back on this thread for a while. Last time I was on the forum there was no way of subscribing to a thread so I didn’t know there had been more responses.Thanks Andee for your insights from your extensive experience in trad. music.
Mae, I’ve often wondered about fingering ornamentation myself. Laurie Riley addresses ways to finger some of the celtic ornaments (though not all) in her video (DVD now) “Secrets of Celtic Style”. The thing I find tricky about ornamentation is that you use it to change things up a bit, so it ends up throwing off your carefully worked out fingerings. So you can’t be wedded too strongly to fingering a particular melody a particular way.
As for the speed in session playing, what about for now just using chords or even just notes from the chords to punctuate the rhythm/downbeats/offbeats of the tune instead of trying to keep up with the tune itself?
More interesting suggestions – I must write them all down and so some codifying!
Seems like this isn’t an uncommon problem. Thanks everyone!Thanks all. Andee, did you learn to play by reading music, or through an oral/aural method? How do you learn new tunes – do you play them by ear and if so, how do you work out the fingerings?
Kathy, I’ve seen that book on the Sylvia Woods site. It looks useful but as it’s sheet music, it’s sort of geared to people who learn that way. I was wondering what kind of exercises people do who have learned by ear (a process which is alien to me).
I wonder how harpers like O’Carolan learned to play, for example – did they drill themselves with exercises like a modern pedal player would?
Very interesting Carl and Patricia – my hands are absurdly cold much of the time, sometimes to the point of stiffness. The winter is especially bad (and this winter is a real stinker). It feels like there’s a cold wind blowing on them! May be worth investigating medically. And certainly the adrenaline rush – and beta blockers used to counter it – would then exacerbate such problems. I’ll look into all your suggestions – many thanks.
Wow, thanks everyone for all the concern, support and suggestions. Nerves have always been a plague for me on several instruments and voice – takes a lot of the joy out of performing. I get nervous even performing for friends. It’s not a rational thing, and it’s why I quit studying music at university years ago.
Always had cold hands too and the combo is pretty unpleasant. I’ve tried betablockers and found they made the hand problem worse – I was most interested to read about the counter-measure in Carl’s article. But as you all point out, there may be deeper roots to all my problems which I need to address!
Thanks Alison – It doesn’t seem to matter what I’m wearing, really. It happens even in a hot room. It’s an internally generated problem, it seems- my pounding heart keeps all my blood to itself.
Thanks Tacye, interesting. I just looked at the Dusty Strings ones. I have some thin wool ones quite like that, but didn’t like the feel of the padding between my thumb and the rest of my hand while playing. However, I didn’t think about covering the blood flow in the wrist in general – maybe if I could find some that didn’t separate the thumb and fingers that would work just as well. Or maybe I should just cut up some socks!
Wish I could address the root problem though – reduced flow to the hands due to silly flight-or-fight reaction!
Hello to a fellow Ontarian!
I haven’t busked for money but I have played outside for informal gatherings a few times in the summer. I did find the sound of the harp got “lost” outside – it just didn’t go anywhere and you could barely hear it more than a few feet away no matter how loudly I tried to play. I found the same thing happened with other peoples’ guitar playing.BUT – keep in mind the humidity was horrendously high those days (as it tends to be here in the summer). Don’t know if that can affect how the sound carries. Also traffic noise tends to swallow anything musical.
As to worrying about simple music, I find the average listener just likes the sound of the harp (or at least that’s what people have said to me)! Keep in mind too that people successfully busk on single-line instruments like woodwinds etc.
Anyway, hope you enjoy yourself! What have you got to lose? However this winter just won’t let go for the time being.
Hi everyone, and thanks so much for your responses. Sorry for the late reply on my part, I used to get email alerts when someone replied to my posts and now that isn’t happening. I didn’t know you had all written in!
Anyway, Sherri, I’ll try to keep the humidity levels constant, though oddly the summer before this the harp didn’t have any problems and the weather was just as bad.
Sylvia, I agree, it does seem like the tension is too high but I did make sure that the harp is at 440 which is what it’s made for. Sometimes I do play with other people so lowering the pitch might be problematic. Still, it might be worth experimenting with that idea. I suggested it to the harp maker but he wasn’t thrilled.
Jennifer, I’m tuned to E flat. The strings are plain old nylon. The pins where the strings broke don’t seem much different to the others. This is all the more mysterious because it’s happening all of a sudden after an almost trouble free year. You’d think if it was burrs or too-high tension it would have been happening all year. *Sigh*
At least I’m getting lots of practice tying knots. I just dread it happening in performance. Thanks everyone.
Hey Andee, no worries, I know you weren’t implying that. Actually I’m surprised Bell has his harp *that* low. Maybe he learned to play that way from a young age in sessions or something and adapted well to it.
Thanks for asking this question because I was wondering the same thing.
Grainne Hambly’s harp is “low” by classical standards too. And I’ve
noticed the same thing with other Irish players.I’d hesitate to
characterize anything Derek Bell did as incorrect but excusable due to
his “folk” orientation, as I believe he was an accomplished classical
harpist as well.I was wondering whether the extra number of high
voiced strings on a pedal harp could make it necessary to have the knee
block up around your ear (try imagining playing a pedal harp at Bell’s height — he’d have to be sitting on a ladder and he’d never reach the bottom strings). Since there aren’t so many high strings on a
folk harp, perhaps mid-C ends up in roughly the same place even if you
have the kneeblock lower. I’ve never played a pedal harp however so
this notion of mine could be mistaken.I myself have become very
comfortable with the top of my kneeblock a touch above my shoulder than
in a more classical stance (which I used to use). My harp is a shorter
34 string model and needs an absurd amount of hiking up if I use a chair of normal
height. Still, I use a short stool to sit on. I find I need to make sure I’m
not flexing my left wrist inwards to accommodate the lower height. It
helps to float your elbows up a bit rather than having them pointing to
the floor. I would think the main thing is not to be causing any
tension/contortions that could lead to injury.Thanks for the reassurances. The thing that I really don’t get is how you operate with octaves that aren’t the same on the same harp. Think about if you’re doing a scale done in octaves, with 4 on the lower note and the thumb on the same note but an octave higher. If the string spacing is even, you keep 4 and 1 the same width apart and just move your hand up and down. If that span changes, you’d HAVE to keep looking at the strings, wouldn’t you?
