How to Make Your Harp Practice Stick

Do you ever feel like the notes just won’t “stick”?

There’s nothing more frustrating than practicing and practicing, and feeling like your progress resets to zero every time you come back to the harp.

If you feel like your playing is in a rut you’ll never get out of, don’t give up yet, because the problem isn’t you, it’s the way you practice.

Today I’m going to show you 6 practice hacks you can use to break out of that rut and make your learning stick around.

How To Make Learning Stick

Before we get to those practice hacks, you need to understand what makes learning stick, or not.

Imagine that you’re trying to chop down a tree with an axe.

The axe you use is really important, right? If you start chopping with a dull, rusty axe, you could chop for hours and barely leave a scratch on the tree.

But if you make sure your axe is good and sharp, that same tree will fall much faster and with less effort.

So if you feel like you’re not making any progress with your practicing, it could be because the way you practice is actively working against the way your brain learns, and you’re just hacking away with a rusty axe.

So, how can you keep your axe sharp and get the most progress out of your practice time?

Well, it all comes down to keeping things engaging and interesting for your brain.

Your brain focuses best when there’s just the right amount of challenge.

Too hard, and you get overwhelmed.

Too easy, and you get bored.

And a bored brain is not a learning brain.

This is why repeating the same thing over and over again can start out well, but over time loses its effectiveness.

It’s like an axe blade that slowly gets duller over time.

So, if we can shake things up a little and make things more interesting and just a little more challenging, your brain can focus better, and remember what you practiced for next time.

Practice Hack #1: Trade Hands

Normally, your right hand plays the top staff, and your left hand plays the bottom staff.

Try switching which hand plays each staff - left hand plays the top, right hand plays the bottom. You can play an octave higher or lower than written if it makes it more comfortable.

This forces you to think about the music in a new way that can’t rely on muscle memory.

I recommend taking each hand separately, but if you’re up for a challenge you can try them together!

Practice Hack #2: Jump Between Sections

This one’s really easy.

Pick 3-4 small sections of the piece you’re working on, we’ll call them A B C and D.

Rather than spending a long time on each of the sections individually, play a section through a couple times, then jump to the next one.

Cycle through them in a random order several times.

So I might play A, then D, then C, B, D again, A, B, etcetera.

This simulates playing the section for the first time, and as we all know the first time is the hardest!

So it forces your brain to really focus rather than coasting along and getting bored.

Practice Hack #3: Speaking While Playing

Just like it sounds, speak aloud while you play.

There are plenty of options for what to say:

• the note names that either hand is playing

• the first left hand note in each bar

• counting out loud

• talking yourself through what you need to think about as you move through the passage

Or any other variation you can think of. You could even make up lyrics to the song if you want.

You may find that when you do this you’re unable to play at your normal speed without stopping.

And that’s actually okay. The main goal here is stretching your brain and involving different parts of it.

If it feels hard, that’s actually the feeling of new neural connections forming in your brain.

It’s the feeling of learning!

If it feels unmanageable, scale it back a little - play a shorter segment, play slower, just one hand, or reduce how much you’re trying to say out loud.

Practice Hack #4: Practice Placing

Finger placements are very important on the harp. Something I always say to my students is that getting to the string is the hardest part of playing the harp and once you’re there, playing isn’t so bad.

So, if you’re unable to play the notes you’re aiming for, there’s a good chance it’s because your fingers aren’t getting to the right strings in time.

What to do about that?

Actually practice the motion of getting your fingers to the strings!

Play the notes immediately before a new placement starts, then pause and place your fingers in their next spot. FREEZE and don’t continue playing!

If you play, you’re no longer paying attention to what happens in between the notes, and it probably won’t improve.

Test yourself and see how fast you can get your fingers placed in their spot.

Practice Hack #5: Practice in Rhythms

This is a practice hack I use all the time and it is the absolute best for getting notes into your fingers.

It tends to work best when you have a lot of notes with the same rhythmic value. For example a lot of 8th notes or 16th notes.

So in this practice strategy, instead of playing the rhythm as written, we’re going to play it wrong on purpose.

Yes, you heard me right. Stick with me.

Instead of playing all the notes evenly, I’m going to divide up the notes into groups of two and change the length of the notes in a pattern.

First I’m going to play the first note in each group long and the second note short.

Then, I’ll flip it and go short-long, short-long, short long.

You can also come up with your own “wrong rhythms”!

And don’t worry about playing the practice rhythms exactly right, since it’s all wrong anyway.

After trying the rhythms, play it normally again and see if it feels easier.

The reason this hack works is it forces some fingers to move quickly and know where they’re going, while other fingers get a little break and let you think about what comes next.

Practice Hack #6: Use The Metronome

This one won’t be for everyone, but the last practice strategy I’m going to mention is using the metronome. I use it every time I’m learning something challenging, and there’s just nothing else that can clean up every little mistake and hesitation.

But I don’t think you should just turn your metronome on and never turn it off again.

Start with it at a slow speed, and only play short sections at a time with the metronome.

DO NOT try to play the whole song with it until you’re able to use it confidently in small sections throughout the song.

You can change the metronome speed too - push it a few clicks faster when you can, make it slower when you need to.

Or if you get stuck, turn it off and go back to another practice strategy.

But like I said, this one might not be for everyone.

If you’ve never learned how to use a metronome before and you don’t know how to play along with it, it might not be the right time for this strategy.

Remember for the best focus and the sharpest axe, we want a challenge that’s not too easy, but not too hard either, so feel free to pass on this one if it feels overwhelming.

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