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Dear Susan
If I have learned one thing, it is that what ever feels healing to you, IS healing. It is different for everybody.
My eldest son died by suicide (aged 19), 18mths ago. I cannot tell you what a horror suicide bereavement is…..an extemely complicated grief…a mother-son cellular loss. During the period of ‘madness’ (for their really is such a thing as the madness of grief)….I lost my brain. A perfectly normal person for 48 years….I developed a stutter, I couldn’t follow a thought, finish a sentence – such was the assault on my nervous system. I took no drugs but sunk a few cases of wine in that first year.
A little part of me knew that there was a huge task ahead of me to gather all the pieces of my heart and brain off the floor and out of the air, and somehow glue them back together. A little educated part of me knew something about the loss of habituation and the opportunity to cash in and learn while I was relearning to be me. Here was my big chance to learn music theory and an instrument and with a teacher, instead of mucking around with instruments as I have done for many years. I was quite clinical about it in one sense…..but as soon as I wondered what to learn, the harp leapt to mind – it literally flashed into my mind. I had no long held ambition. A 3 second decision. Done.
When I told my harp teacher this, she said to me ‘The harp chose you’….by the way, her fist name is my sister’s name and her last name is my mother’s name. So it all slotted into place. Thank you cosmos.
I started playing 5 mths after my son died…the ‘healing’ takes place in a space that is not of this world – the rushing, busy, illusionary world that early suicide bereaved do not reside in. It is painful and it is sacred.
Yes, I am forging ahead now, and am very happy with what and how I am learning (love my teacher), but I also like sitting at the harp and doing as you have described….just playing single notes slowly….engaging no ‘thought’ as such. My teacher is especially supportive of this. If I am away from home for a few days, I always get teary when I play those first few notes. I don’t know why exactly…I suspect it may be a kind of bat-phone to my heart.
Whatever works for you, is yours to pursue. I wish you the very best and am pleased for you that you recognise this healing experience. Take care.
Just a quick catch up to say thank you again…I am back on track with my reading. If you have any further suggestions, please share. I am also interested in harp therapy (now there’s a long journey – God grant me the time) but many harp therapy books I see on the web are not available in any library services in OZ…I like to flip through before I buy. I shall look at buying one or two promising titles each year…any favourites to suggest?
Yes, they are the same – I don’t know of any recordings of Grandjany himself playing, but there are several versions with strings posted on youtube –If playing while recording seems to be causing a problem similar to playing in front of people, then practice for several hours (or longer!) while recording yourself to get used to it. That may help with the people.
When we perform or record, we often become very aware of our playing. It’s hard to say whether or not we’re actually making more mistakes, or if we’re just annoyed by mistakes that we make constantly but usually permit.
This may seem counter to what you’ve described, but your focus might be split just as much while you practice. Your first instinct will probably be to disagree with me, but try to really listen to yourself. Play something and record it – only once your recording sounds pretty much exactly as you heard it while playing can you say that you listen to yourself. That’s not to say that your recording should be perfect. It’s just that what you hear in your head while you’re playing (and what you remember of your playing after the fact) should be more or less in line (it will probably never be perfect) with what the recording sounds like. If you discover that you sound different on a recording, then your mind is tuning those mistakes or differences out when it really shouldn’t be.
The bottom line is, consider that your performing and recording might just cause you to become acutely aware of your mistakes and such (which will lead to larger, more serious mistakes), so if you become aware of those mistakes while you practice and fix them, your performance/recording session should go more smoothly.
Did that all make sense? It’s very late here on the east coast and I’m off to bed!
~Sam
Hello Basel – a very Merry Christmas to you – my wish for you is that your New Year will see some solutions to the problems and danger that you are facing every day in your country – in the meantime, please know that we are thinking about you often and trusting that you will stay safe.
Best to you, my friend,
JohnOr….you could make plans, pursue them, allowing for practicalities, and let life happen along the way. Life will get in the way (for good reasons) and surprise you with the unexpected, no matter what you think that ‘achievement’ on the horizon will be. Honour your passion, sweetie. What to ‘be’ or ‘do’ in a career sense, will take care of itself. I wish you the very best and encourage you to do what your heart tells you to do….and your mettle allows you to do.
I had my harp in my bedroom as a friend was staying in the spare room. Nothing quite like the sound of a string breaking in the middle of the night, to wake you up.
My harp is less than a year old…and I have had, um, 5 strings break so far – big wet season too, so lots of tuning. I was very nervous of breakages at first, but I sort of factored in about $100 a year for strings and I seem to be well inside that allowance. At first, it was agony to order and WAIT for a string….each time I order a string, I look for wear and tear on others and order them as well (er, they often hang in there and a perfectly healthy string breaks instead). Broken down into small outlays (that also justify the postage), the expense isn’t so bad. I’m just kind of working it out as I go. My harp teacher recommended that I make a ‘table’ of strings on hand and cross them off when used…it has made it easy to grasp ‘stock’ at a glance. I’m just a newbie and I understand your concerns – I was positively paranoid about the harp I’d hired….much more relaxed about my own. Good luck!CC,
Can you elaborate on your problem? How are you getting an arpeggio like sound? Does it have to do with your transition from your thumb slides to your other fingers? I can’t picture or hear what’s going on, but I’d like to help.
~Sam
Glisses could be reduced to a bunch of slides in a row, right? There’s obviously some overlap of the terms, and it gets a little tricky when you’re only hitting a few strings, but for one string they’re definitely referred to as slides.
I half agree with Tony. Yes, your thumb needs to “pluck” the upper string and then land on the lower string instead of folding into your hand, but your hand will need to move ever so slightly so that your thumb is in the correct position to play the second note. You definitely don’t drag your finger like you would in a gliss.
Anchors are very good, but not necessary – but practice with an anchor on or else you won’t learn how to pluck the string instead of drag your thumb.
You can do a slide with any finger. I can do a three downward scales at once with my right hand alone, but it requires the player to slide all four fingers in a particular pattern. I’ve never seen music calling for 2 or 3 slides.
~Sam
I can’t really weigh in here on the real question you’re asking, but you do know that most schools offer some sort of financial aid, right? It astonishes me the number of high school students who don’t. Any school that is expensive enough to send you into hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt will have an endowment (small or large) for financial aid, so make sure to look into that. Of course, depending on the school it’s not always guaranteed, but do keep it in mind.
~Sam
It’s essential to have your finger placed REALLY well on the upper string and to slide so that you preserve that good hand position. Once you’re on the lower string, your thumb (or fourth finger, or whatever finger you’re sliding with) should have the same position as if you had placed it there without sliding. Only then will both notes sound great!
Also, I’m assuming you’re talking about finger slides and not glissandos.
~Sam
Worked wonderfully! Couldn’t help but notice that the ad on the second to last page is different on the pdf when compared with my physical copy. Didn’t bother to check with other ads – what’s up with that? More advertising space?
~Sam
Saul,
Oh oops I guess you meant something a little different than what I thought! Yes, I agree with you that posting about someone’s progress would change the whole dynamic (maybe for the best, maybe for the worst), but I’m *not* going to find out the answer and so the blog isn’t about my personal projects. Competition preparation for any discipline is always private to a certain degree.I only post once a week, and each entry takes only about a half an hour – it definitely doesn’t drain my time. I think that if someone really maps out their plan and starts very early, they don’t have to put in an insane amount of time, though hours of practice every day would of course still be necessary for a big international competition like Israel or the USA.
Andy,
Thanks a bunch! I’m glad you enjoyed reading! I’m trying to keep the level of writing high (something I personally value) but since the blog is directed at a wide audience, I don’t want it to sound overly academic. I suppose I’m still finding my voice in that respect. Let me know if there’s a particular topic you’d like me to write about!~Sam
Saul,
I am not documenting my progress on my own personal projects. Besides, many people blog about their progress on a project in order to motivate them. Having a group of people following you is reason enough not to give up. That is a well documented effect, if you’d like to read up on it. However, I’m not doing that, and never meant to imply that.I think that anyone who is interested in knowing about how competitions work – be that someone who who would like to know the inner workings or the work required to prepare or someone who is considering competing and would like to know what they are getting into before entering – would enjoy reading what I have to say. My posts may be framed as advice articles, but one could certainly extract much other information if that’s what they choose. I may be wrong, but view counts will paint the true story there.
As a student who is experiencing the things I discuss in “realtime,” so to speak, I think that I provide a unique and useful perspective. Good advice can come from anywhere, and assuming that those with established credentials will unarguably have good advice and that those without credentials will have none seems closed minded to me. Once I took a class with a well known harpist. Their advice made no sense to me and I decided to ignore it. However, I also checked with some other well known individuals, and they agreed with me. On the other hand, I was able to develop a unique technique for playing harmonics (for a passage in a Grandjany piece) at a suggestion of a nine year old girl, and I’ve gotten many compliments for this particular passage. You never know where the best advice will come from until you let yourself consider all sources.
Please, Saul, make sure you understand what this blog is about before you start criticizing it. If after understanding what it is about, you don’t see the point or don’t like it, then you don’t need read it. Those that enjoy it and find it helpful or informative will.
~Sam
