Re: [Harp-L] practicing



At 04:28 AM 9/1/2008, Jim wrote:
Had an interesting chat with a Berkley grad--he was talking about practice
being the place to push yourself, to play stuff you don't already know. I
think of practice as the place to cement what I already know--the goal being
to have the music be transcendent, have it just pour out without thinking
about it.

Neither side of the argument is wrong.

I'm not clear on why you've turned this into an either/or. (Frankly, my guess is that I'm just reading you incorrectly.) Both types of practice are vital.


At the beginning of my practice session I warm up by practicing playing what I already know. Pefecting everything from licks to my overall approach to constructing solos, to dynamics. I play blues, fiddle tunes and rhythm licks. Metronome blasting away, fast then slow then fast.

This leads me quite naturally into new stuff, stuff I don't already know.

I hit a place, somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes in where all I hear coming out of the harp is stuff I don't already know, much of which I will never hear again, though sometimes I turn on the Zoom H2. Most of the time I do not care if I ever hear a melody again, because the minute new melodies start flowing out I am reassured that there are infinite melodies and I can tap into the place where they flow out on demand, as long as I keep practicing every day.

I find the 'practicing what I already know' part the most challenging, because I try to keep a lid on 'new' ideas as long as I can. That way they finally burst out.

It's also challenging to practice a rhythm lick at high speed for five minutes, but that seems to improve my accuracy, endurance and concentration every day, so it's worth it.

A word on concentration. I sense that the moment most of us put a harp in our mouth it becomes the main focus. I don't have to try to concentrate on harp, do you? In fact, I like getting input from an audience or the people in a control booth while I'm also focused on the harp. But there are moments when I must exclude everything but the harp. For instance when I'm asked to repeat a passage I just improvised. That's when I need to put my concentration into fifth gear, and am glad that one can develop the facility to do so.

One last bit: I sense that I am not the only one to experience something I call "Harp Face." That is a moment in my practice session when the muscles I use to play harp 'set' into a position that is apparently optimal for harp playing, because everything really flows after that moment.

Does anyone know what I mean about Harp Face?




This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.