Day 13 - New material

Saturday tends to be my day off and after a long lie in and relaxed breakfast I feel ready to tackle anything. The first harp session of 25 minutes was towards the end of the morning and after moving scales, Rondo and Azaleas up to 62bpm I felt like I wanted something new. I do have some other books so had a look through the book that Rondo comes from, First Harp Book by Betty Paret. There are plenty of exercises and pieces related to the various finger techniques so I went through some three finger and four finger tunes before settling on Lavenders Blue to work on. A few people have commented on how quickly I have picked up the exam pieces but I think having played the piano has helped, at least being able to read treble and bass clef and see at a glance which notes are in a chord. The technique may be different but the processing of the notes to brain is quite quick, it's just brain to fingers that needs the work. While my piano sight-reading was appalling in the early days it did improve, especially when I started to accompany pupils. At college there were a couple of particularly good sight-readers who could read anything and were in demand around exam time. One did explain why he was such so proficient. Growing up he had played for several adult groups which involved a lot of repertoire being rehearsed quickly in any rehearsal. The only way he could cope was to aim for roughly the right area on the keyboard and put up with any wrong notes. Over time his fingers were finding the right notes and this guesswork gradually became more accurate. When we play a wrong note our first reaction is to stop, usually with a gasp (or “Sorry!”) but what we should do is carry on, making a mental note of what we did and what we ought to do next time. Quite often it is because just one finger is in the wrong place and awareness needs to be on that finger next time around. A brilliant book that explains this further is The Perfect Wrong Note – How to trust your musical self by William Westney. I tried this on the harp and was quite surprised at how accurate I was most of the time. There were some jumps that were too far to guess but it was an amusing experiment. The other reason I thought of this is that there are some well known blind harpists both past and present. To play the piano without being able to see is one thing as you can touch the keys without making a sound to find where you are, but the harp is another and this I find quite astonishing.

I managed another 15 minutes this evening on Lavenders Blue, exercises and the three exam pieces, again trying to keep my eyes on the music and see where my fingers ended up. Thinking about mistakes I also remembered a piece of advice I give to players in ensembles, usually as a joke, but that may come in handy in the grade 1 orchestra. If you go wrong in a rehearsal, don't own up. Instead carry on playing but look to your neighbour and frown as if it was them. A shake of the head and sharp tut helps seal the blame on your unsuspecting colleague!