Welcome to Notes from the Harp!

Not too long ago, I discovered a wonderful technique for musicians, pioneered by Carola Grindea in the United Kingdom. After I listened to a BBC program about her and read what I could find, I was inspired to write an article for harpists based on what I learned. I hope you find this deceptively simple technique to be one you can regularly use to keep yourself in perfect harmony with your instrument. Let me know how it goes!

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In This Issue:

Article
Playing Without Tension

Technique Tip of the Month
Tips to Improve Your Sight Reading

Improvisation Starter of the Month
Lush Seventh Chords, Part Two

Resources
Playing without Tension & Practicing Chords

As musicians, most of us understand that as our tension increases, our ability to play well decreases, sometimes exponentially. Sometimes musicians end up with conditions that are literally paralyzing, from fingers that no longer move to problems like TMJ. My daughter, a horn player, recently suffered a bout of TMJ that could not be traced to anything about her horn technique. Instead, the medical consensus was that her condition was caused by “stress.” New research shows the literal connections between the hands, the brain, and the jaw, as well as shedding light on the tense habits that stop musicians from functioning.

“Musician Carola Grindea explains that pianists playing a technically difficult passage will sometimes stop breathing and sigh heavily when the section has passed!” writes Sarah Silvermyn in The Performer's Equilibrium: The Key to Controlling Performance Anxiety.

“This only increases the amount of tension in the body. If the pianist learned how to slowly exhale before the passage, the inner tightening of the body would decrease” (La Scena Musicale, September 2001).

So how can a musician learn to exhale and avoid the tension? Very simply, as it turns out. Here is Carola Grindea’s one-minute exercise, as she describes it herself in a recent BBC radio broadcast of Music Matters.

This sequence is a simple way to prepare the body and brain for practice or performance. Start by standing up straight with feet firmly beneath shoulders, and imagining your feet being deeply rooted to the ground. Now follow these three steps:

1. Without trying to move, order your spine to lengthen. Wait for the brain to automatically make the adjustment you asked it to make, instead of trying to impose it yourself.

2. Exhale deeply, saying “ah” in a whisper, but as loudly as possible. Notice that your shoulders drop.

3. Make your knees and ankles spongy, like foam. Notice that your body becomes light and floaty.

“Now you are worthy of your instrument,” says Grindea. She notes that we are connected to your instruments, and to music itself, by our breath. Stopping the breath chokes off this connection.

There is scientific data to explain why clearing your brain with the breath and aligning your body prepare you to play in a way that avoids injury. According to the same program, hand transplant studies have shown that the hands, with all their complex movements, require the single largest chunk of brain areas to function. By trying to force the hands to play and accumulating great stress around their performance, as many musicians do, stressful messages flood the brain’s circuitry, eventually creating conditions which curtail the functioning of the hands. Of note is the fact that tension in the hands stresses the acupuncture point between finger and thumb, which corresponds to the lower jaw. The result is an “anesthetized” jaw. Remember the TMJ?

In addition to Grindea’s technique, there are other essential self-care exercises all musicians can incorporate into their practices. I believe that warming up your hands before playing is crucial to preventing problems throughout your body. Here is a sequence of hand movements from Qi Gong, taught by Judith Hitt in the International Harp Therapy Program. This sequence warms and relaxes the hands, including the space between thumb the forefinger.

There are three different ways you gently tap your hands together. First, tap inner wrist to inner wrist, perhaps ten times. Next, tap outer edge to outer edge. Finally, tap the spot between thumb and forefinger to the same spot on the other hand and alternate which thumb is up. I also like to do this tapping between other fingers, which seems to efficiently stretch them for hand forms on the harp. When you have finished, your hands should feel tingly and totally relaxed.

The Alexander technique also stresses alignment and relaxation. According to Silvermyn:

Teachers of [the Alexander] technique focus on how to release the neck and lengthen the torso, which reduces unnecessary tensions. Students also learn how to let things "happen" rather than focus on "doing" them. This idea of "doing" something, such as, "I am going to get out of the chair," causes instant tension with a locking of the head and neck and tensing of the back.

One of my massage therapists taught me that we constantly jut our heavy heads forward on our spines, and that if I softened or lengthened the back of my neck, the rest of my body would automatically and perfectly align itself. This is similar to the Grindea exercise but can be performed anywhere, anytime you remember to do it. Try it, for example, when you find yourself tense as you drive.

With the new scientific data in mind, relaxation techniques are simply the best tool in the musician’s toolkit. We already understand that we don’t play well when overwhelmed with anxiety and high expectations. Now we know that by overriding the pesky little messages our bodies keep sending us, we do put the music quite literally beyond our grasp! Don’t let this become a permanent condition; incorporate breathing, alignment and relaxation into every practice session beginning today.

One of my readers recently asked me for advice on how to improve her sight reading. Eventually, I plan to have a page on My Harp's Delight that tackles that subject in detail. In the meantime, I thought that I'd share the tips that I gave her.

I find that the key to sight reading is what you do BEFORE you try to play through the piece. So, of course you look at the key and time signatures. But that is only the beginning. I have my students look for all sorts of patterns. Where are the phrases? What hand form do you start with? What hand form is next? How far from the first to the second? Once you see a whole phrase, does it repeat (next or later)? If they're particularly visual, I ask them to color code, marking identical patterns with the same color, and using slight variations in color when the pattern also varies slightly.

Patterns are even easier to spot in the left hand. In the left hand, are there recognizable intervals or chords? What are they? Studying the basic chords will do wonders for your sight reading (not just your improvising).

Harp music is built on LH patterns, a few of which show up again and again. For example, you have the 4 2 1 pattern of an open chord (the C chord would include C, G, and the next C, thus leaving out the third or E). Knowing this pattern and how to play it for any chord will really speed up your sight reading. Besides that, it will allow you to fake it and create your own LH accompaniment, because you'll know exactly which notes will always sound good. Check out the music theory resources from the site and past newsletters if you need help with chords.

Last month we improvised with some cool seventh chords, voiced "cluster" style. For an even more lush, modern sound, let's play with open seventh chords. We'll use the same four chords: Cmaj7, Am7, Fmaj7, G7. Instead of playing the chord with four fingers in your left hand, we're going to open them up and use three fingers of each hand.

In your left hand, play c, g and b (like the open voicing on a simple C chord, but with a b instead of the second c). In the right hand, play e b and e (the third, the seventh again, and another octave of the third). Between your hands, you’re now playing all the notes of a Cmaj7 chord, in an open (spread-out) voicing. You build the other chords the same way. Here they are spelled out for you:

Notice that there are always two empty strings between your two hands, and you'll find the positions more easily. Once you understand the pattern, you can of course play any chords in the key with the voicing. But for now, try to play through the sequence above, rolling the chords in each hand as one unit or playing arpeggios, until you get very comfortable with the progression.

Once you know the progression inside and out, you’re ready to embellish it with improvisation. To start, try adding “filler” notes in the right hand, e.g. the notes between the upper tones of one chord and the next. For example, between Cmaj7 and Am7, you might walk between and around the notes e and c. Just relax, experiment and have fun!

You will find links to help you further explore Carola Grindea's technique in the article above. I hope you enjoy listening to the BBC program, especially, so you can experience the technique as Grindea takes the reporter through it. Listen to the difference in his piano playing before and after this experience; it is very telling.

On another note, playing with open 7th chords will be easier if you understand how they are built. Not only that, if you really want to improve your sight reading, as I explained in the technique tips above, you need to understand chords and the ways they can be voiced (inverted and spread) on the harp.

The following site does a wonderful job of walking you through chords, from the basics to more advanced topics. Use this resource to review the diatonic chords for any key signature available on your harp. But don't stop there! Follow through by finding the chords on your harp and playing them in inversions up and down your instrument. This will greatly improve your sight reading, as well as your ability to improvise. I send my students to this music theory site again and again because it is so comprehensive and full of many useful lessons and drills. For today, start here:
Introduction to Chords

All content by Susan Zevenbergen, Copyright 2007.

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