Practice
time can be hard to find during the busy times in our lives. But remember that
you don’t need large blocks of time to play your harp. I actually find that several
shorter chunks of 15-45 minutes each are far superior to trying to play for an
hour or more at once. When I tire, my elbows fall, my wrists droop, and my
concentration wavers.
- Play outside while others are sleeping, weather
permitting. If your weather is
temperate, you may give this a try any time of the year. However, if the
temperature difference between the inside (where your harp lives) and outside
is great, you might want to skip this idea. One time, it seemed that the
extreme humidity of Florida in the summer was just too much for my harp. Several
of the strings seemed to stretch and slip a bit.
- Plan in advance.
If you know that you will not have much practice time tomorrow, then
play longer today. I feel badly when I
miss practice, but if I know I have a busy day coming up, I’d prefer to play
extra in advance.
- Make practice a reward – or reward yourself for
practice. Practicing can be a reward in
itself for me, especially if I love the pieces I’m working on. But, it can also become more of a chore. If that’s where you’re at, give yourself a
nice little treat (non-caloric preferably!) for an intense practice session.
- Involve others.
While not everybody is excited to hear me practice, I do have a friend
who (says) she really loves hearing me practice. Maybe prepare a special piece for a friend or
family member to hear. That might be the
motivation you need to practice with more intent.
- Which brings me to motivation! Do you have a goal in mind? If you do, practice is the path to
achieving your goal. For me, it is to be able to begin harp
therapy training. Part of the
application is an audition recording of 3-5 minutes playing relaxing
music. I know my goal and often listen
to music that I think would be appropriate for this recording.
- Even longer term goals are important too. Maybe it’s looking too far ahead, but in the
long term, which to you want to accomplish?
Some of my longer term goals are having a wide repertory so that I can
play music to suit many patients or the elderly. So this would include old standards as well
as calming sounds. I would need to be at
the intermediate level to have the tools I need. I also need to be able to memorize many
compositions. How can I achieve those goals?
How can you achieve yours?f9j
- And there are more immediate, short term goals.
My goal lately has been to learn the fundamentals of a piece each week, and
then refine that piece over the next several weeks. So far I’ve been pretty
successful with this strategy, but I can see that eventually it will leave me
with many pieces to practice daily!
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