An English Harper

More mouth music...

2011-08-19T21:08:00.004+01:00

Folk Tradition : Cainntearachd, Diddling & Chin Music - voices imitating pipe music and some lilting from Boys of the Lough as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFJ42v_apyY

Article titled "Learn how to lilt the Irish way with Sean Keane from Galway"
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2005/04/27/1354873.htm

One of youtubes natives giving a fine example of Irish reel "Splendid Isolation"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltErDTkHK6Y

Lilting/Jigging (Kilrush Fleadh 1967)- Jimmy Ward from Miltown Malbay, County Clare lilting finely
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkChjAW0E0E

Lilting from Séamus Brogan in West London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX18CMR1I9Y

Bodhran to Voice (Lilting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yucVF8IMqi8

It's tough whichever way...

2011-04-19T05:57:00.003+01:00

If you want to be a musician with any degree of freedom you need to learn to do one of two very hard things: read music or play by ear.

You've got to find a way to take it in somehow, confidently and at speed. That's the bastard bit. Once you can do that it's a start, but that's the door that has to be unlocked.

When does a revival become a living tradition?

2011-02-13T03:00:00.006Z

Supposing a tradition has completely died out. Someone finds a dusty book on the topic, reads it and thinks "hey! this looks like fun". The share it with their friends and their friends and soon it's pretty popular. Our first person starts some classes, and eventually the people they taught go on to teach other people to do this thing too, and eventually their pupils do the same. There's now a social network around this activity, competitions, festivals, events.

So when does it stop being a revival and start to be a living tradition? Perhaps two or three teaching generations? Enough people doing it to disagree how it should be done? When folk are so used to it they take it for granted and stop thinking about it?

This is an important question for me as a folk harpist and one that is pretty fascinating full stop. Within the harp world there are many broken traditions currently being reconstructed and many traditions which *almost* passed into the unknown but didn't quite and are now being given well deserved love. In Europe we see a really strong resurgence of many folk traditions but the mystique of a folk "tradition" really worries me, it seems so false. I'm always curious to see how people respond to the notion that we're just making it up for fun for ourselves as we go. I think that is the tradition I'd really like to pass on - diy artistic fun.

Introduce a harp...

2010-12-24T00:01:00.002Z

http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/thesoundexchange/the_orchestra/instruments/harp/

The Philharmonia orchestra has a great little sight introducing various instruments. The link for harp is above.

Time to upgrade the tech... and the technique

2010-12-22T02:53:00.002Z

I'm looking at amplifying my harp better. Next stop is playing with a guitar preamp, see if I can boost the upper register and not have so much bass while keeping a good warm sound.

Regarding technique, I've got two things in mind - making an albums' worth of material to finished polished standard and solving the next weird RH problem. Something odd with the bend and straighten in Mr Stump. Hoom.

One very busy month and a huge wodge of change...

2010-11-10T00:31:00.002Z

Between now and the 8th Oct, I have moved twice house, done a years tax accounts, fixed my car, started a new job and been bridesmaid to my best mate. It's been epic. Very little time for imagination. Still, at least I know I can graft like a bastard. Like all really horrid times it's been useful in a clarifying kind of way.

**NB. Wedding was not horrid but lovely & excellent**

Somehow I'm almost out the other side - I got properly bored tonight and had a bit of time to reflect. Tired and bored and grumpy go hand in hand for me but thankfully often bear useful fruit. In this case I learnt how to use twitter a bit more (requirement for new job), skimmed fRoots and realised I should listen to Martyn Bennett. I also realised that my whinge on this blog about working on my own back in the summer has now been fulfilled.

The new job brings me work colleagues: hurray! We're not exactly in the same office (remotely working: first skype conference call on Monday) but we are working together. I'm enjoying having colleagues to go heeeeelllpppp!! to or just giggle about our work. It's so much more fun to work with other people.

It's also a completely different kind of work to get my head around. I wasn't ready to get on with album-y stuff and was a bit bored with what I did have to work on. It's funny how the right amount of busy-ness can bring you extra focus. Perhaps it's the right amount of excitedness.

In other chunks of change, the new house is quiet, clean, warm, tidy, with nice friendly house mates and basic working facilities like cookers and washing machines (lacking in my previous establishment). There's a garden and I can park easily. My lungs don't hate me and housemates are out in the day so there's plenty of noise making time. I think long term housemates will probably be fun. I can teach. There are a lot of upsides.

The downside is I miss my noisy, dirty, smelly, barely see anyone room above a pub that was right in the centre of town and full of people and music. I might never have got a good nights sleep but I was never bored. I miss cooking dinner with people playing jazz underneath me, or watching the world go by out of my front window. I miss the sound of college bells in the evening and the "terrace" - sitting half in half out of my window ledge and leaning into the courtyard. I miss all my neighbours and the sense of being connected up with a city. I miss the park out the back with the river.

Where I lived was pretty damn close to an artsy commune. We ran a ceilidh in the courtyard out the back in summer and had to stop every now and then to let cars go past. I knew my housemates before I moved in so the fact I am a loud disorganised enthusiastic curious messy happy changeable person was obvious and had space to exist and didn't impinge on anyone or need to be quashed.

Right now I live in silence and neatness and that careful careful exploration of space shared with other adults. I hope I discover I live in a space where it's ok to be pretty silly: invent a song about your dinner being a fish and make someone else laugh rather than wince. I briefly lived in a housesit this month and found that I could indeed make up fish songs and make the owner laugh. That was a good day.

As my musical life is not going to happen beneath my feet I want to invest more time going out to play with other musicians. This used to just happen but now I'm going to have to do the far scarier thing of going out and finding new spaces and introducing myself. To be fair though I wanted to do this before but had no incentive and no energy. Hopefully a quiet sleeping space means more fun time long term. I need to re-jig my working week though - I have too many nights taken up away from home. I'm not sure how that is going to happen. Time to look at priorities anew...

... and on with the next adventure.

Brendan Breathnach

2010-09-24T22:41:00.005+01:00

Brendán Breathnach was an Irish piper and a music collector. I first got interested in him after hearing another harper had found nice, simple tunes in his collections. I like the older sounding, slightly more stark Irish tunes and his collections sounded like a possible source. His collections are called Ceol Rince na hÉireann vols 1-5.

Wikipedia has a nice article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breand%C3%A1n_Breathnach

Also by TG4 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9AG2AC7LdE

Someone doing some indexing work using Brendán's collections and interfacing it with an ABC search:
http://msikio.online.fr/Breathnach/bbcode.htm
A nice detail from the video link below is that Brendán included name and location of each tune in his index allowing him to build up a "map" of where each tune was played. I don't know if he ever publishing this as a map - I'd love to see it. Might work incredibly well as an online thing - you type in a tune name and the bits of the map flash green where that tune was known.

Long interesting biogrpahic article from the Journal of Music:
http://journalofmusic.com/article/301

JStor has links to another article:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/20522525

Lilting on the Comhaltas site

2010-09-02T15:22:00.003+01:00

http://comhaltas.ie/music/tag/Lilting

Comhaltas tag system makes stuff really easy to pull out. Hooray.

Irish lilting of tunes: video and audio.

Musical identity can be a hard thing to find

2010-08-20T13:11:00.003+01:00

It's taken me a long time to learn what I like like playing.

It's taken the inclings of a stylistic position on all this folk stuff - or rather deciding that such a position is pretty pointless as what I find valuble is making my music fun and engaging. Instead of thinking "I like English and Irish tunes" I'm prefering "I like this kind of phrasing by this player in this tune here". It would be nice if it coalesced into some kind recognisable style, it's a lot easier to find an audience!

But as this stuff has to be memorised and evolved and if I'm doing it for myself then I have to really like the stuff, really like all the qualities of the stuff I'm creating. Otherwise why I do want to live it, to burn it into me?

I decided that I'm happy with my music as long as it is well developed, distinct, possesses a certain clarity and it has a little bit of magic. That's how I like the music I choose to listen to, and the people I interact with too. More importantly, that is the music that I see audiences react best to. It doesn't matter what it is - it has to have a very clear "ness".

If you fall outside of a tradition then you have to realise you're playing a popularity game of some degree. It's been pretty obvious that the desire to make stuff my own way is a bit too strong for me to exist only as a "Classical Harpist" or "Irish Harper" or perhaps any stylistic tradition. I still value them hugely both for their aesthetic appeal and the extreme skill involved in each. I will still play music from those traditions, but if I tried to place my identity inside them I would feel false.

2010-08-18T11:36:00.002+01:00

I hate working on my own. I'm going to have to design a working life where I'm not.

Right now I can't quite see how that's going to happen. So on with the research...

Hunting nessie....

2010-08-16T23:20:00.003+01:00

immersion - incubation - illumination - verification

http://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/doing-research/

In 1945, Jacques Hadamard published a book called The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. The above four words are his theory: that there are four phases of thought involved in solving a mathematical puzzle. I think this is a pretty good description for solving any problem. Doesn't mean that you know when to stop or start each one, more that you might find the landscape more familiar and less annoying.

Woods and trees

2010-08-08T15:14:00.003+01:00

I'm grateful for all the non-musicians I get to play for. So often musicians can't see the woods for the trees - all that detail is too close. Those who don't spend their lives obsessing over sounds give you a much better impression of the world you are actually crating with your music, which is after all the point.

Something Triona Marshall said to classical harpists learning to play Irish music - you have to go for the energy. The vibe, the feel, the energy does not come out of the details. Go for the the woods first, you can focus on the trees later.

Love the internet...

2010-08-08T14:43:00.001+01:00

Thank you phydeaux3 for your very handy tag cloud and the very clear instructions. Here's the link.

Handy sites to have...

2010-08-07T00:22:00.001+01:00

http://www.creativeboom.co.uk/

Must look this up again...

They are currently hosting a link to Grayson Perry's article on creativity. Discussion anyone?

http://www.creativeboom.co.uk/london/blog/grayson-perry-on-creativity-imagination/

Shooting Roots

2010-08-05T23:38:00.001+01:00

So pleased to be part of this...

http://shootingroots.org/

Shooting Roots is an organisation run by and for young people, offering creative and participatory folk workshops at festivals and other events. In a nutshell it’s all about generating opportunities for young people to perform, develop friendships and access the folk arts.

New settings for classical music

2010-07-28T15:04:00.004+01:00

I live somewhere amazing, above a pub that does things like get classical musicians playing Messian's Quartet for the end of time on a Tuesday. That was courtesey of a bunch of musicians known as Pindrop. I particularly spoke to Lisa & Kate I think. I can't find a suitable online thing about them - grr.

Instead I found this: www.pindropclub.co.uk
These guys look pretty cool too, I partiuclarly love the acoustic only aesthetic and the chance that they will be playong instruments they built themselves...!

Making something.... a cycle of inspire - explore - create - inspire...?

2010-07-28T14:51:00.003+01:00

I was fed with this stuck on my wall. Better in pictures than words. Go figure for yourself. Not sure about Plato. That suggests something fixed.

Injury, soft tissue changes, fuzz

2010-07-28T14:46:00.004+01:00

As part of ongoing hand rehab, I've been seeing a chiropractor who specialises in a physical therapy called Active Release Technique. Very very handy stuff, all soft tissue based, really amazing results. I didn't know you could do that with muscles.

As a result I'm really interested in soft tissue injuries. I think a lot of musicians overuse injuries are soft tissue or connective tissue based. Maybe there is a pattern of varied movement that keeps everything in good working order and when that is disturbed, stuff starts to go wrong.

There's a youtube video about the "fuzz" that can build up - I need to go hunt this.

Library trip 1: mouth music & spiro

2010-07-28T14:11:00.003+01:00

This week's library cds (from Oxfordshire County Library):

Spiro - Lightbox (just because I saw it)

THERE IS A MAN UPON THE FARM - Working Men & Women In Song
RANTING & REELING - Dance Music of the North of England
YOU LAZY LOT OF BONE SHAKERS - Songs & Dance Tunes of Seasonal Events
TROUBLES THEY ARE BUT FEW - Dance Tunes & Ditties
- all from the Voice of the People Series out on Topic records

I was hunting mouth music, dancing songs and diddling. I lightly checked through each and the closest I found to what I wanted was Phil Tanner on Troubles they are but few, diddling very finely his four-hand reel.

I am going to have to look at these again and read the liner notes very carefully. I think I need to set aside a couple of hours to do this, maybe in the library. Must find out if they have listening facilities there or if I can take a CD player in. Troubles also referenced another couple of CDs in the series: Rig-a-jig-jig, which I've heard and Irish Dance Music, which I've not.

Spiro sounds like folkie Phillip Glass to me, but more melodically driven. Really didn't think I would get into it and then bang, I did. Hurray.

Other things on my mouth music hunt - I want to find out more from Jigjaw, and I want to go to C#s. I need to know what I'm looking for first...

Irish harp gets going in London...

2010-07-23T10:48:00.003+01:00

This article at the Irish World tells you what I've been working on all year. Lots of effort but really good results. Hooray.

Common place books

2010-07-23T10:44:00.003+01:00

Milton had a common place book, i.e. a notebook with headings that he could jot things down as they occured to him and easily find them again. With the tag function instead of headings, this is my common place book.

Study into how the brain adapts post-amputation

2010-07-23T10:22:00.004+01:00

The Nuffield Trust's Oxford Centre for Enablement (OCE) and Researchers at the University of Oxford are involved in a major study which it is hoped will shed new light on how the brain adapts following hand amputation. Key people - Dr Tamar Makin and Dr David Henderson Slater.

I'm fascinated by this as I've had to relearn how to function many times. I've gradually acquired the perception that unless you can easily tangibly do something, at least for a while, you don't really develop an intuitive way of thinking about the thing you could do with it. This really changed my view point of musicianship - did funny things to it. I think I've got round it by playing all sorts of instruments with right and left hand - built up a picture of the lands beyond my limitations by shifting where the limitations are placed.

The study:
http://www.noc.nhs.uk/aboutus/news/article.aspx?id=190

cultures are structures

2010-06-08T12:51:00.003+01:00

I'm sitting on my doorstep using my computer watching the rain. if I everyone did this more often we'd all know our neighbours.

You might even describe it as a doorstep culture.

Classical music is an aural tradition too

2010-06-08T12:47:00.003+01:00

I met an excellent harpist who pointed out that even classical music is an aural tradition: you cannot notate phrasing completely, there is always something lacking. Phrasing and what you can do with it must be passed down ear to ear. Suddenly that music feels interesting to me again.

2010-05-28T14:25:00.005+01:00

I think about the intellectual work of the world, and I wonder if it doesn't just distance us from what it means to be alive rather than connects us to it. I feel that trad music has something very special to offer: a demonstration of the viserceral, the physical, the engagement over the intellectual.

I feel a magic infinity in the connection with the body, as if there is as much here to be learnt about what it means to be alive as there is within scholarship. This does not mean I disapprove of study, thorough research and passionate argument, quite the opposite. It's just I feel they cannot capture all of life.

I feel that life itself is not necesarrily that intellectually interesting as a commidity but it is engaged, lived, experienced, connected, magical. It is the unbounded unknown, even if it does not carry satisfaction in the way that the vast glaciers of intellect do. But what is anything if it does not serve to connect to the further reaches of the world? What is beyond us is the only interesting thing.

That doesn't mean that I don't get pissed off that I can't absorb and manage information as well as I want. Oh no. that pisses me off totally.

Keys, operations, intersections, bendy notes in tunes

2010-05-04T11:36:00.002+01:00

This is also what I vaguely remember from Ros.

Something about...
Take a scale. do something to it. compare it with your first scale. what's interesting?

Also something like:
Take a 10 note cycle of fifths. take 2 out. Then there's something interesting left over.

Also something observed:
the above somehow relate to where keys are most bendy chromatic runs in baselines under predominantly diatonic or modal music - backing trad.

Most bendy places are:
3rds, 6ths, 7ths, 9ths or 2nds,

e.g. in G:
Bb, B, Eb, E, F, F#, Ab, A

Organised by fifths: A, E, B, F or 9ths/2nds, 6ths, 3rds, 7ths

Steph note: within the four common modes that get used in trad, these are the points in the key that give it it's emotional colour. The notes that do not bend include 1, 4, 5 and create the structure.

** Compare this with where a blues scale gets bent ??

Meta structures

2010-05-04T11:32:00.003+01:00

One of my favourite things...
Something Ros said in the car about...

a structure turning up in quantum physics, in linguistics, in music - the organisation of tones within a key, in maths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantale

Other idea to look up - look at Euler's theory relating vertices to sides of a shape.

Hurdy finger patterns

2010-04-06T03:14:00.004+01:00

Steph geeks out:

Let's start diatonically.

Easy things:

two notes
2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, (any wider is stretch)

3 notes: any pattern up within a sixth
noteable shapes include
3 note scale
triads (sandwich shapes)
squashed sandwiches (1-2-4, 1-3-4)
inversions
squashed inversions (probably fingered something like little-ring-index or little-middle-index)

4 notes: any pattern within a sixth

Notable exceptions - arpeggios! scales longer than 4 notes

Articulation aids:
ornamentation above
the clack of the keys
allowing the note to drop back to a bass note - think pipes
vibrato (time to change fingers?

Fingering patterns on all keyboard-ish instruments

2010-04-06T03:00:00.003+01:00

So fingering patterns - I've just been thinking about this, prompted by the hurdy and by playing the piano in the pub a little more, also the prospect of playing (and ornamenting) piano accordions. I've also realised I probably want to play concertina.

I never really understood piano finger patterns intuitively as a classical pianist, they seemed just arbitrary and far too rule-like. However as with all music as soon as I try to understand something away from score it begins to click into place.

Fingering patterns for each keyboard like instrument are about getting the most efficient and relaxed hand movements and the using the natural flows or stops of the instrument to articulate the music really well.

It took me 3 years to properly grok how to communicate how it worked on harp. Hopefully the next instruments will take less time. I want patterns for piano and hurdy gurdy (and probably concertina). To be fair, I want meta-patterns.

So I'm going to start by looking for:

naturally fitting patterns under the hands
shapes in the music I'm playing that I need to acheive time and time again
solutions to the awkward things

Like all aural traditions the craft, the art is the composition of something complex from relatively few small chunks. If you go in with that expectation then it makes it a lot easier to analyse. Trouble is the frequency of thoe chunks changes for each group of repertoire, like syllables in a language. For the hurdy music I'll pick English tunes and the few French and Breton tunes I know, for piano it's got to be Irish and English, with the added excitement that I'm adapting for different right and left hands.

Fingering patterns part 2

2010-04-05T20:07:00.002+01:00

Other fingering treatises:

Couperin: L'Art de toucher le Clavecin (The Art of Touching the Harpsichord) pub. 1716 and revised in 1717
Online at IMSLP

Maria Boxall wrote treatises within the past 40 years, as did Tom Nevell.

There are lots of useful articles at http://www.harpsichord.org.uk/EH/ehm.htm, interesting beyond just fingering.

Robert Kelley also includes a list of clavichord treatises - http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/clavichd.htm#ClavTechnique

There will be still more....

Hurdy-gurdys and renaissance fingering

2010-04-05T19:45:00.002+01:00

I've been lent a hurdy-gurdy, this is exciting. It's a noisy instrument of French origin (also called vielle à roue) thought to date from 11th C in western Europe or the Middle East.

I've got a very few days access to get as far into hurdy-ness as I can before I have to hand it back so it's hunting for fingering patterns time.

You can't easily use your thumb in fingering, this means that for more than 4 notes in any direction you have to either do a long finger crossing, jump or slide. This is similar-ish to renaissance keyboard music, for which there are fingering treatises based around 4 fingers and no thumb.

So on a brief first scan I have found...

The work of Girolam Diruta, organist (c. 1554 – after 1610)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Diruta / http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Girolamo_Diruta

Claudio Di Veroli (alive now)
http://finger.braybaroque.ie/

Claudio brought a book out in 2008 called Baroque Keyboard Fingering: A Method. In his online introduction there are a couple of clues - that the four finger method makes for better articulation (certainly of Baroque music), that the left hand and right are not symmetrical.#

A brief search for hurdy gurdy fingering has turned up relatively little, the only guide that I've found thus far is that smaller jumps take less time (shock!) so the aim is to plan your fingering around that.

I'm sure there's got to be more stuff than this is to go on, I just haven't found it.

My own experiments lead me to think that the angle at which you hold your hand to the keyboard changes things, that accidentals make a big difference to how easily you can cross fingers, that I'm not interested if I can't find something fairly elegant, which I can't yet. Grr.

Learning about arrangement

2010-03-19T12:37:00.008Z

I've twigged I want to know more about arrangement, specifically with harps, but also any music where it's devised by ear. I could pick a few tracks and analyse them exactly, but I don't think that's going to very helpful. The stuff that would ping out first is the stuff I already know, and that's not the stuff I want. Also a lot of what is played on harps is very simple but somehow something in the way it is played makes it magic - to analyse the notes misses the point.

Instead I'm going to listen and try and pick out the kinds of things that change - ideas, features, as and when they turn up, giving my attention to anything that catches my ear. It's going to get collated and updated here. My plan is to allow what I really like experiencing within music to ping out to me and let that feed back into what I create.

Emilie and Voltaire

2010-03-19T10:37:00.004Z

I've just picked up a book and it's the most exciting thing ever. It's about Emilie and Voltaire and what they achieve together. It's a lovely read and really exciting to see ideas coalesce and form, the slow patient revealing of how the world might work. It's academic work and it's much more exciting than any music I've listened to recently. I wonder if I'm in the wrong job.

To seek to understand, to be more at ease with their world, to have a deeper connection. To find new things, to feel like me. Surely I can find a way to do this through musical work too.

Confidence

2010-03-02T15:20:00.002Z

I feel confident with a certain skill or body of information when I can feel the edges of that information - I know there is nothing missing and it makes a clear and coherent whole. That sense of completeness is essential.

I also feel confident with skills that you cannot do that with through peer review - I can tell I'm on a level with my peers and I have their good opinion.

I suppose both these approaches are about the pressures of competition - if you know you're going to win and can defend yourself, then it's all ok.

Harp played by ear was the first instrument I felt I could "get a handle on" - the first instrument I felt I could feel all the edges of. Such a relief.

Preparation

2010-02-07T23:25:00.004Z

The point of prep is so if you are so ill / tired / hungover you can't think straight, you have something to fall back on, a script. This makes prep make sense to me in the context of music making and teaching - something that is so very dependant on how the people in front of you are today.

Noise - the social structures of music

2010-02-07T13:30:00.002Z

One of my favourite books is Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Attali published in the 1970s. It was mentioned in one of my university lectures, I loved the ideas and chased a copy down two years later.

Attali relates the development of music and the social structures around the function, consumption and creation of music to the social history. He thinks that the social and economic structures regarding music foretell the coming social structures and the form that society will take. Importantly he feels that changes in the way we make music precede changes in the way society works.

He thinks there are four different sections to the role music takes within our society -

ritual - music as part of the Church and state, musicians are servants
spectacle - the "star" rises - both the composers and performers feted in their own right (think Beethoven and opera singers compared to the servitude of Baroque church composers)
repetition - the music industry, music as a commodity, the ability to stockpile so much music it really doesn't matter anymore (how many hours of music do you have on your ipod?)
composition - a swing back towards doing things just because you want to, just because of the experience

I feel he is onto something, and more and more I see music as a social phenomenon as much as anything else. Also, I feel we are beginning to see a sea-change with regard to fairly passive consumption - more opportunities to keep learning new things rather than just go shopping, the green movement clearly part of this. Within music there is now such a diy emphasis - myspace, open mic nights, easy access to recording equiptment are all part of this. Roll on the new era....

Teaching harp in an Irish music school

2010-02-06T23:44:00.003Z

I started teaching harp within an established Irish music school in 2008 and have really enjoyed it. It's great to work alongside another trad music teacher and to see the kids take to this instrument and try and play their music on it. It's put the harp in a context - so important. The harp was a second instrument for each child so they already had a mental stock of tunes from which we could draw. This is definitely a bonus - there's so much going on if the harp is your first instrument - perhaps too much.

I also found it so lovely to be amongst such a nice group of folk - there's a real sense of a community and a relaxedness that is going along with it. It's also been great to hear the tunes on other instruments that kids have been learning and I've really enjoyed hearing the way Colette plays and teaches, firm but with a real sense of fun. You're often stuck inside your own little box as a music teacher, especially as a harpist, opportunities to share and learn are few and far between.

This project has continued, and thanks to the hard work of the folk at that school we have funding for weekly lessons this year and are able to take in a new year of pupils. Hurray! With our new intake we've been doing a diet of tiny pieces and small songs to start, nice and slow. The second years have all been learning a song with a left hand to go with it, some are going onto dances tunes - lots of fun. From my point of view a tried and tested syllabus is gradually coming into focus, so now I have to keep adding to it.

This is one adventure I really want to continue.

Folk versus classical - top down versus bottom up

2010-02-05T01:19:00.002Z

With classical music my experience has been that you learn a new piece from the bottom up - ensuring each tiny section is very secure before moving on. With trad I've often found the tune enters your ear first, and then you attempt to make it happen. Each time you try to make it happen is slightly imperfect in a different way - the imperfections become an important part of the music.

Now I do also work make my way through each tiny movement slowly but given the improvisatory nature (the ornaments should always be improvised) then you're always reaching for something that's not quite secure.

I had an excellent conversation with a conductor recently. I asked if he improvised, he said "of coruse". Not improvisation as I know it (change of pitch and duration content) but improvisation with guiding a group - maybe this time that section will shine, or this soloist needs a little support ...etc. Each time he performs a piece it comes out differently. I never expected that of classical music... good to have my assumptions shattered.

Musical problems...

2010-01-22T14:00:00.003Z

"There are no musical problems, only social ones."

This quote about the delights of working in a band came to me via Pete Oxley (jazzer and bow maker). Someone gave it to him... I've lost the name!

Play the music not the instrument...

2010-01-22T12:39:00.002Z

Harps are such funny little instruments and often they live within a repertoire all of their own. This is kinda cool in a way and part of what "being a harpist" is all about - you're own private magic music, only to be made by other harpists. The problem is that it leaves you isolated and without links to other musicians (except other harpists). So you have to take the harp to other musics and in doing so you can take the harp into other scenes and settings.

The harp doesn't work like any other instruments and you and your fellow music makers have to be very careful to leave space for each other. There are somethings it naturally does brilliantly and some that it does very badly indeed! The challenge is to figure out what you can do with what you've got.

My favourite people who are the playing the music, not the harp, are...

Mary McMaster & Donald Hay with their recent cd
Uschi Laar - amazing jazz compositions
Michael Rooney - Irish traditional music excellence
CatrionaMcKay - in anyone of her ensembles but mostly Starfish

All tbese people transcend their harpiness and step into a bigger realm. Often the harps aren't so clear to hear because of the other instruments present and so harpists per se are not necessarily so enamoured. But all of these folk exist in a bigger setting beyond the harp world, get to share their music more, get to be beyond themselves just a little more. That sounds like an excellent place to be.

I want...

2010-01-14T12:54:00.003Z

...amazingly healthy arm and hand muscles.

I want my muscles to...
relax easily
do sustained bouts of playing
repair itself easily
move fluidly
ideally not to hurt!

Things that can help with this:
good food
rest
good posture
exercise that counters the oddness of doing one thing so much
good exercise (fluid) *** think this is really important and needs to be explored more

There are more or more subtle / specific distinctions to be made here... this is to be added too.

Happy thumbs...

2010-01-13T21:51:00.003Z

All the effort in a thumb goes into mantaining it's weird shape and that is what exerts pressure on the string. Thunbs have to be upright and I think easiest if kept slightly curved - think how bridges work and what an excellent weight bearing shape that is.

Thumbs nearly always have a drier sound as well. They are higher on the string, the digit pad is aimed at a different angle and the different positioning compared to the string all make a difference. You can put more thumb pad on to counteract this.

The most important bit about thumbs is keeping that useful little c shape between thumb and hand - gives your thumb space to move, stops it cramping, keeps it within normal joint range so it doesn't lock, prevents you from bringing it too far back (can do weird tension things in lower palm of hand).

Oh yeah - cut your nails...!

Proof

2010-01-07T20:43:00.002Z

Sometimes you need to have that piece of paper - not to know how good you are, but to know what other people think is good enough.

...much flow and little stop...

2010-01-04T21:42:00.002Z

I trust... through sleep and dreams that a new direction will show itself to me.

I have to but listen carefully and quietly - allow the shapes of the world to form around me so I can see the new steps forward...

... onwards to a place with much flow and little stop.

...much flow and little stop....
...much flow and little stop....
...much flow and little stop....
...much flow and little stop....

Steampunk - adventures of the New Years Eve kind

2009-12-28T23:32:00.006Z

I'm going to play for a steam punk event on New Years Eve. I've been doing my research and discovering that there is definitely a steampunk music scene. Apart from plenty of sound effects, it seems that part of the steampunk vibe is Regency dances: waltzes, polkas. Handy. Apparently there is even a band called Ghostfire who have a waltz called ‘Calibernus’ - it would be lovely to have something recognisably "steampunk" in my repertoire.

I will be playing while people enter the club for the first time and I've been thinking about how best I can add to the atmosphere. The main thing I need to do is to help create that sense of otherness and welcome and that costume may be as important as the music I make.

From my web-ventures, steampunk seems to be this mixture of victoriana, adventurers and exquisite brass gadgets with some grubbiness thrown in for good measure. The current costume plan is to look like a harp toting grubby adventurer but somehow also elegant? Now I own something corsetty, can find some blousey thing, and have glove and boot like items. I need to find an appropriate kind of skirt and then as many accessories in brass or leather as possible.

Not too far away from this image on the left (courtesy of Monika Gorka)

I should probably imagine what I would have if I was an adventuring harpist and think along those lines. Mmm. Practicality with a necessary contingent to remain looking elegant. Costume shops in Oxford here I come....!

Actually it's always been a bit of a dream to go adventuring, especially with my harp (though I think a small version may be in order). I met someone when I was at the fleadh in Ireland - he was amazing, he made his whole living from clowning and playing harp. He was awesome. I want my music to take me on a new adventure too!

Biographies

2009-12-28T15:10:00.003Z

One of my least favourite things ever is writing biographies. They seem to be like ... dark magic.
I think the only thing to do is collect together your necessary points and attack the piece with vigour - I am never going to be happy with it but at least I can actually put something together. Also - you have to remember that each one has to be tailored for its unique purpose - rubbish!!

At the moment I have three to write:

Something very short for the Clarsach society website
Something longer for admittance into a harp teachers directory
Redoing my web page about teaching.

This last one is particularly doing my nut in, so it can wait!

Christmas messing about

2009-12-27T18:06:00.004Z

I'm messing about with a laptop, free recording software, rubbish mic and my old harp, recording stuff trying out ideas, listening back. Very handy. This helps me to review - feel how what I arrange feels to a listener. Very useful.

I think when you're playing a melodic tradition on the harp and intending to stick within that, your main arrangement options involve ow thick you make your melody - where you place accent notes, do you add harmony lines. What makes the melody suddenly engaging, what makes it suddenly float?

Definitely fun for post-Christmas work. I might even stick some up if I like them.

Music, magic and transformation

2009-12-18T11:14:00.003Z

For me, performing music is making a little bit of magic. You go up on stage, take your excitement and inspiration with you and let your skills and preparation do the work. Whether it is a huge amazing experience or something sweet and intimate, music has the capacity to take you away from your present world into another state. I feel that transformative power is real magic.

Discussing teaching with a friend last night, it was brought home to me how different teaching is to performing. Totally, completely different focus. You might need the same knowledge but you have to understand that information in a completely different way and give your attention to different levels of it. Additionally, you need your teaching skills: the relatively selfless discipline of working with someone else, in their mind, for them. Whilst on stage you are also working for your audience, but you don't have to keep a calm and controlled state in the same way - in fact it's better that you don't.

Essentially I have trained to do two things - my daytime weekday job of teaching and my evenings and weekend preoccupation of performing, of creating those magic spaces.

However distinct I've just made those two occupations sound, I feel at their heart they have a crucial similarity: that magic of transformation, the slow revealing of how the world can be a different place. Some of my favourite times are quiet morning lessons, with many small discoveries and moments of magic.

Sting even uses melodeons

2009-12-15T17:54:00.003Z

Now I wouldn't normally write about Sting... but the cd was on where I was working today. I spotted Mary Macmaster's vocals on one track and so read through the cd booklet. Sting has picked a musicians list of really excellent trad players - including most of the lineup of the Kathryn Tickell band! Sweet. On earlier tracks I was thinking that's a nice groove. Now I know why!

Holidays = thinking time

2009-12-02T02:27:00.003Z

Gosh. I love music, I live it, I really do and am very glad to do so. I also love teaching it but right now I am totally looking forward to the end of term. There is a huge and fascinating world clamouring for my attention. Once I've allowed it to distract me for a while then the thoughts and sounds inside me will flow easily again. I even know what I musically where I want to go next... I just need the energy and space to do so.

This term has been a huge accumulation of experiences and thoughts and planning and lessons and playing - it's been great. It's been the most fun for ages. I haven't been bored (novel). I'm just really looking forward to letting it all sift through - time to reflect on everything that's happened. I have at least half a dozen drafts of blog posts waiting to be finished. Then the important bits will sift out and I be able to see my next steps clearly.

Knowledge... like folk tune repertoire... isn't inherently perfect

2009-12-02T02:01:00.006Z

I feel that knowledge is not fixed or static but flowing, evolving, changing, new parts and old parts drifting into focus or becoming fuzzy again. Forgetting, moving on, becomes just as important and absorbing new material. In fact you cannot absorb new material without having a relatively clear head - so there is a need to leave the old behind whether tunes, ideas, music or phrases. You can go through phases of things though: I obsess over a problem, solve it, move on. That's one of the points of this blog. In recording the information, the problems, I can review them then move forward.

Just like folk tunes are popularised or forgotten or changed in the fallible process of aural learning and transmission, so ideas recur or vanish or change. Some become more permanent through changes adopted in our institutions, our structures. For instance: we need lots of 2 part jigs and reels for dances that are currently popular so there are more of those tunes well known. Or we've decided that a certain kinds of intelligence are important so our higher level learning institutions only support people with those kinds of ability. The ideas may still change and flow the but the human organised traditions lock us into certain kinds of paths.

While I was growing up our modern world felt so fixed, so completed, there was nothing more to add. It seemed as if those who had gone before had some almost God-like quality - their work (musical or academic) seemed so perfect and complete in conception. I feel the world is presented to us this way as well: it should always be safe, always be complete, if it's not safe then it's the fault of someone else and you can sue them, a Nanny state.

I'm realising: a, there's no real sense of life or in life without the acknowledgement of risk; b, no information is ever complete or fixed so don't worry about it, just get a good enough method for examining and review (your own and peer review as well).

Most of my thoughts are not directly about music, but about wanting to understand the world, for myself now. I want to read much more about he great thinkers who have directly shaped the world before us: the older I get the more I see the world as shaped by people. Once upon a time I saw it all as almost divinely mathematical: you should be able to calculate almost everything, all knowledge was at our fingertips, there was nothing we couldn't know.

Bizarrely, this made me feel like there was no reason to chance anything - nothing new to learn, if you know all the information and the world is still shit why bother? Gradually I have come to realise that it's just a succession of theories - I'm not even sure we could say that the ones we have now are better than the ones that went before. With respect to our lifestyles in the West yes we can say that we live longer, we have a more comfortable existence, we can devote more of our energies to non-essential activities. Maybe this is progress but I feel something has been lost.

What is there in our viewpoint of the world that renders it so hard to live with? Now should be easy, easy yet we have more and more people especially in the Western world succumbing to mental illness, we have obesity and violence and boredom and disengagement on a massive scale. That can't be right.

What makes music attractive?

2009-11-01T17:51:00.004Z

One of the defining features of folk is that everyone is a soloist. Your own stamp, your own touch is one of the most important parts of this music. It's inherent in a music where phrasing, rhythm and gesture are the defining feature - your personal touch and connection through that is of prime importance.

Of course new rhythm and gesture and phrasing types can be learnt - but still the emphasis is hugely on personal interpretation. Just like a potter, you hands help shape your music and each persons' hands are individual. Everybody can bring their own touch. When well developed it's the most beautiful thing in the world and you don't need more than that. If you do, there's generally a very specific reason.

I feel there is a parallel with this in general life - we find someone just being themselves is attractive, that being well-coordinated, being 'in' your body is attractive. Often we also find that relaxed people are attractive - that sense of ease and flow. I think music is just the same.

Attitudes to composition...

2009-11-01T16:01:00.014Z

I love composition. I don't do very much of it but I am always exploring a little bit more here and a little bit more there. I have a little voice recorder to catch ideas on. It's like... there is this whole world of music to explore, some that exists already and some that you can find and make for yourself.

I was such a music nerd when I was at school, I completely absorbed the idea of the classical canon. The canon is the "approved" pieces of classical music - those which are deemed memorable by the great and good of whatever musical society you live in at the time. I dreamt of adding something to this but gradually disabused myself of the notion. What I could make didn't seem to fit with those sounds, I felt I was not a good enough musician.

Then I got to university and met the modern approach to classical composition - all experimental and strange - and that didn't seem to fit either. I didn't get the point - this didn't seem fun or creating something I felt was worthwhile. It felt like all the fire I had was put into a box and shut off.

There is such a disconnect between the act of making a piece of music and the event of it being added to any "canon" - one is all about exploration and the creative process, the other about it being "approved" by the right people.

That said, the love of "composition", of creating music never died. The desire to do it my own way has also never dwindled, but the motivation, the thought that it was worth exploring did. I still find the prospect of getting responses from other people to my music fairly terrifying, but the importance of getting such feedback is not going away but getting stronger.

I used to think composition was almost some divine process - that it was only worth doing if you created something truely extraordinary, something worthy of being part of "the canon". Now I don't. What I do think is that you reach the extraordinary through a series of small tiny steps, that to do so you need time and energy. Maybe you'll reach something you think is extraordinary - maybe you won't. Maybe someone else will think it's amazing while you're still bored and maybe exactly the opposite. Only time and a bizarre kind of popularity test will determine what happens to your music.

I am really cross with my composition teachers - especially at university - especially when it comes to judging me - mostly about not being given feedback. Why?! What do you see in one that you don't see in another? Peer review is perhaps the most important feedback you get - while it might show you up it also gives you routes to see where you might want to be. But blind peer review where someone sits in judgement and you get nothing except a number back - rubbish.

At the same time I can see how deeply difficult it is to teach composition. It's so intensely personal that any criticism is incredibly difficult to give. You have to acknowledge that you are being judged subjectively, to someone else's rules. The question is maybe why would you want to be? Certainly within the community music movement, you're taught that the only person who can truely judge how well a creation has been executed is the creator.

More and more I feel that the act of creating anything is about gathering some tools together and knowing where to go for more if you need it, then letting your instinct about the thing you are making take over. As a teacher, you can present new material and methods, suggest people devise and research their own as well, but you cannot teach the instinct. I do feel I was presented with some material but I don't feel like that the connection about the process was made at all. The bit I feel gets particularly missed is how to connect with your instinct, that your instinct is important, and that all the tools are there just to help you explore that.

I read a quote recently -

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

Scott Adams - author of the Dilbert cartoons

I like this - it includes both the idea of researching / exploration (finding your tool kit) and then exerting some kind of judgement / instinct over what to use.

Dictionary.com definition of creativity:
–noun

1.	the state or quality of being creative.

2.	the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts.

3.	the process by which one utilizes creative ability: Extensive reading stimulated his creativity.

I feel that "creativity" is one of those woolly terms. People can "create" something and you can think it very dull, not interesting at all. But they *have* been creative.

I also feel like something created has to have a point - it has to be written for something, for someone. It has to be fun. For me, music is like pure will - there is no reason to make other that you want to. Also, if you don't get something from it, whether interest or understanding or depth or enjoyment or whatever, there seems no reason to choose to experience it.

It can be so frustrating wanting to get to a particular place with something and not being able to find the tools to get you there. Right now I'm looking for how to get myself to a new place. I suspect I always will.

Creative process...?

2009-10-23T12:31:00.004+01:00

My guts say this is the creative process:

inspiration - method - review

Something inspires you.

You start to figure out how to make what you want, get a bit of a method.

You review it - experience it - to see if it is as you want it to be. You are always working to the limits of your perceptions. It's hard to tell when to move on, so it's good if there is a point to this creation - so you can say - yeah, that's good enough. That will do what I want it to.

Instrument obscenities

2009-10-04T13:41:00.003+01:00

I've just been to see Stevie Wishart at the Barbican. She does unspeakable things to a hurdy gurdy - putting her fingers inside the instrument, making slides glisses scrapes rattles - amazing sounds totally appropriate to her piece ("Transients"). A friend called her the "Hendrix of the hurdy world". Somehow though it just seems rude to put your fingers inside an instrument - far too intimate to watch!

Motivation within a group, improvisation and social music

2009-10-04T13:39:00.011+01:00

I went on a community music "Group dynamics" course run by Music Leader a couple of years ago. One of the main things that stuck were ideas on what motivates people within a group, i.e.

belonging - competence - autonomy

So feeling motivated within a group is easiest when:

you feel like you belong, there is a place for you
you feel that you have something to give, that your skills are valued
you feel that you have some choice over what to give, you're in charge of you

I feel that folk sessions fit this exactly. At a session, where you met voluntarily in the pub, if you turn up with an instrument you can become part of the session - belonging. Part of the way folk music works is you can subtly alter the music with ornamentation. This means that many people can play the same tune while all playing at different skill levels and all having responsibility over their own part - competence and autonomy.

I feel that all improvised music allows this balance - that you are playing with what you have, not what you don't. For me, this is a defining feature of social music - that it welcomes all without constraining any.

Planning a musical career

2009-10-01T13:55:00.003+01:00

The most exciting but also most scary bit about being a musician is the immense freedom of how your career can work (or not!!). Most people I know have a portfolio of work, that is a mixture: a balance of performance, function work, teaching, workshops, funded projects... also merchandising sales: publications, cds, digital sales, merchandising itself (if they have a brand), licensing of music for film and tv.... Just figuring out how to make an income from music is extremely difficult and requires you to think creatively itself!

Anyway right now I'm just beginning to think about this. A friend sent me this link which I shall read with interest.

http://www.zoekeating.com/blog/2009/09/deep-thoughts-on-my-music-career.html

More mouth music

2009-09-17T00:24:00.003+01:00

One of the great finds of Towersey for me was see JigJaw (http://jigjaw.co.uk/) -

"JigJaw combines the percussion and passion of dance traditions with vocal harmonies in a tight, scintillating quartet of singing and dancing talents!"

They were fab to watch. Also to their credit was the calm with which they experience drunken enthusiasts at a midnight spot in the ceilidh in the dance tent...

Anyhow these guys are probably going to be my next stop in looking for mouth music in English. Marvellous

The harp session and this September's concert

2009-09-16T23:29:00.006+01:00

I run a harp session. In summer 2007 I suddenly got it in my head that I wanted to start a harp session. The sessions in Edinburgh were so much fun - that mix of playful music making, meeting other folk who loved harps and playing lovely tunes suited for harps is really a winner. I started the harp session in July 2007 and just over 2 years on we have more support than ever. The pattern we've settled into is I teach two news tunes in the first hour, thereafter it's an open forum for tunes. Initially working by ear was very foreign to some folk, the two years haven't always been as easy ride and I think I've learnt as much as they have! I'm very grateful that the sessioners have stuck with it, everyone is a much stronger ear player than they were and it's getting easier and easier to have fun with the tunes now.

Out of this session has come an ensemble. One of the most fun but difficult things I do is to facilitate / create a performance out of the ensemble. I'm trying to open it up to as many people's input as possible while keeping the final performance fairly good - a tricky balance to strike! The concert we're doing is about 50 mins long, so long enough but not too much. Each concert we're allied with a different charity, good for us and good for the charity. This time it's the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (www.torturecare.org.uk).

The first concert we did was pretty terrifying, certainly for me and I think pretty daunting for all of us. We got an enormous amount of support from the audience, as well from each other, it was lovely. This time round we are coming to the concert from a completely different place: there's an expectation to live up to. We've got more members and a different mix of repertoire. I expect next time will be very different again. I'm looking forward to it.

So: if you're free on the 27th Sept and can space £6, get yourself to the Quaker Meeting House, 43 St Giles, Oxford (opposite the Lamb and Flag pub) for 3pm. Hope to see you there.

New term ... new projects...

2009-09-15T20:13:00.004+01:00

All very exciting but very busy!

New performance - harp duo with Tori Handsley - Harps Restrung...

Steph West is joined by Tori Handsley: two harpists with a shared love of dancing rhythms, vivid chords and a free flowing melody.

Each brings influences from her respective traditions: Steph - early music, English & Irish folk; Tori: Jazz, Latin and Classical. Together they explore a funky and percussive sound world of tunes, songs and groove.

Tori and I are going to play in Brick Lane as part of a 3 day festival:
"15 minute factory brings together new and cutting-edge acts from across all art forms, blurring the boundaries between performance, art and music."
http://15minutefactory.blogspot.com/
We're on early Saturday evening.

New teaching challenges too... more Irish harp classes, a new adult class and other exciting bits and pieces. Also: more time to reflect and plan. Hurrah.

Favourite compliment ever

2009-09-01T21:00:00.002+01:00

I spent bank holiday weekend at Towersey festival. I bumped in a melodeon player who I'd done a ceilidh gig with a few months ago. We were chatted about operations etc and I mentioned my hand.

"Oh - I never noticed" he said. "You play like it doesn't matter."

Free improvisation

2009-08-11T11:32:00.007+01:00

I met the Oxford Improvisers last night, went along to their Monday night session. It was great fun - like going swimming, an hour of being completely immersed in something so completely alien to the rest of your life.

Within the world of harp and folk all the sounds are fairly nice, not very aggressive, certainly not very discordant (even if you consider Irish fiddlers liking of flat C sharps). With this is was aggressive sounds, crashes, scrapes, extreme chromaticism (barely tonal centres), gestures and barren silences. There was a guy with an amazing bag of percussion *stuff* - pots, pans, anything. One particularly fine bit of bent metal. Not very lyrical at all - I brought some lyricism I think.

I was also singing and what a joy it was for it to not only be allowable but completely appropriate to make utterly horrible deranged noises. I found singing allowed me to follow the chromatic movement much more easily - on harp I'm still not mapped chromatically as much as I want to be.

So any - my new hobby - free improvisation. The players were all really lovely too, fun, happy people. In common with playing folk or trad (or maybe any aural music?) you had that sense of knowing them unexpectedly well afterwards. I think I have probably seen their faces in the street a few times but after such a session where attention flows so clearly I feel I will recognise them instantly now.

What can I do to improve my musicianship?

2009-07-20T23:11:00.004+01:00

These are my notes for what I want to focus on working on now in each situation.

...in sessions....
playing fewer tunes
tackling specific challenges each tune
try to get the whole tune in mind before playing any of it
accompaniment improvisation.
following tunes players rhythm as closely as possible.

... in rehearsals...
lots of prep beforehand
close close ensemble work.
being brave with performance.
ask for feedback.
keeping an eye on time keeping

... in practise....
small chunks to good standards
perfect posture, hand shape.

... in background gigs....
stamina.
posture.
improvisation.
allowing the music to breathe in awkard spaces.

... in proper gigs....
audience focus.
allowing the music to breathe and really aiming for a great visceral connect with the audience.
story teling.

... in teaching....
have a very clear idea of what you are teaching & directing each time

Teaching music? Or being a guide?

2009-07-08T01:11:00.001+01:00

I have a real trouble with the concept of "teaching" music. Much like art, it's so much about your own self and reference to yourself it's impossible for someone else to set out exactly for you. From everything from how your hands work to your taste and direction in music, it is something best found for yourself and there are many many ways to approach it. I can only hope to communicate a few good examples and the enthusiasm to continue learning.

What can I pass on?

A received technique that has been tried and tested by many musicians
Ways of developing your body awareness to manage and develop your own technique
Ways of getting into listening, reading and processing music
Ways of practising and improving coordination
Give you signposts to what music already exists, point to what music can be but I have no intention of telling you what music should be.
A positive attitude and an enjoyment for challenging yourself - how to make a game out of difficult things

Good learning states

2009-07-08T00:25:00.002+01:00

Current ideas:

Figure the task out by yourself for yourself! It's your information, order it in a way that makes sense to you.

Take time, have patience and be calm. Learn in a way you enjoy.

Play games, explore, go on a whim.

Let the movement connect itself up naturally for you.

Little practice and often eases frustration.

Set up a good environment - easy access (instrument out) - not too much at once - timer (maximum detailed concentration is about 20 mins)

The hardcore part of music is often building the physical side, it's like a tree. Plant a seed then water in lots of little stages, return to see how it's growing frequently!

Life cycle of learning a tune...

2009-07-08T00:17:00.003+01:00

1, Figure out notes and rhythm
2, Explore physical side - hand shapes , bowing patterns...
3, Make physical bits easy (play games with it - see below)
4, Re imagine music - add something new (left hand?)

Section 3 is the bit we really think of as "practice". All the normal rules apply - learn what you repeatedly do so you want to sort out small bits and get them right first time. However if you're really exploring the movement then little games are helpful to prevent the boredom:

Treacle practice - like you're moving through treacle - how slow can you play?
Taking a specific movement or pattern and playing with it - rhythm, accent, different expressions...
Re: harps you have block practice, practice finding where your fingers need to go in clumps

The main thing is play with it, improvise, explore through games. When you can mess about with and return to a data set you can understand it in a much more intuitive way, whether a movement or a pattern of notes. It's a great state to learn in and fun too.

Anatomy of harp technique...

2009-07-08T00:06:00.001+01:00

The best technique is the set of movements that allow you to play what you want to play remaining comfortable, relaxed and free of injury.

I'm still adding to and researching this... basically harp technique is a very natural movement, it's all about getting the right posture. Playing the harp can feel great, a goo dhand shape feels really relaxed.

My ergonomic thoughts thus far...

Your general body posture - upright, relaxed, balanced, the harp leans to you.
Openess across shoulders supported by back muscles pulling shoulder girdles back into place
Arms are held up by upper arm muscles and pectroal muscles - must be balanced by back muscles!
Hands held somewhere around or just below heart level - it's better to play around with your harp height to find the sweet spot
Positioning hands - you can change the angle of your arms and two planes and then the amount of rotation on your forearm
Your fingers should work in parallel with forearms (no bend from side to side)
Wrist should be held so there is as much space available for everything going through the carpal tunnel. This also affects the balance of strength in your hands (difference in ulna and radial muscle strength). Sweet spot is when closed thumb is in line with forearm
Fingers work much more efficiently and relaxed when pulling under the hand into a flat (baby) fist, not clawing back. A hand shape where fingers are straighter but more bent at the knuckle enourages this more. Also bringing fingers that aren't being used in to the hand in flat fist position encourages the other fingers to follow.
The wrist angle allows a backwards bounce in hand after each movement to release tension in wrist.
Thumb needs to start open with space at all joints and close fully to curl over your index finger - gives it a hug!

Photos to follow!

In many ways it doesn't matter what movements or shapes you use, but the quality of movement is very important. You are looking for shapes that allow you to get a great contact on the string, fully articulate to follow through your movement, and then release any tension. It's all about all about the contact with the string and sharp ping away from the string - relying on finger weight, no effort needed.

Efficient practice

2009-06-22T02:36:00.003+01:00

I'm collating any ideas about how to practice - guidelines for how long, what kind of stuff, techniques to tackle difficult corners, mental practise. Any more ideas please pass back...

How long....
little and often
regular - tied into routine
leave your instrument out - just dip in for 10 mins - timer
20min "learning spots" may be most efficient

General ability....
focus on individual hand patterns
interacting patterns (.e.g. scales in left, moving chords in right)
improvisation, playing games with shapes - pushing general coordination

Techniques for difficult corners....
block playing odd shapes (harp specific)
rhythm and accent practise

General rules....
slowly sorts it out!
play it right first time - then play it right 3 times
hands separately to start
small sections - target, achieve, move on
need method / diary to see what you are achieving

Mental practise....
imagining how you want the music to sound, in small detailed sections, in overall sweeps
imaging the movement in fine detail - see hand from 3 different angles

What is traditional harp music?

2009-06-08T23:18:00.001+01:00

I'm going to do a couple of gigs towards the end of June. I'm thinking about all the different places the harp goes and I go with the harps - I feel like it's a complete meeting place / melting pot for music and musical traditions. Also I feel myself as a musician is also a huge melting pot... classical, early harp, Irish, Scots, English, Breton... composed, improvised, ensemble, solo...

The remit of trad harp within Britain and Ireland:

The harp has its own historical repertoire dating from 1000 - 1600 roughly, location specific:

Ireland
Scotland
Wales
Britanny (claims an early traditional though I know of no historical sources as yet)

New compositions for solo harp (ones here listed are all Scottish) e.g.

Savourna Stevenson
Corrina Hewat
Phamie Gow

The harp as song accompaniment for traditional or "Nu folk" songs:

accompanying trad song and folk song in general
specifically associated with the Scots gaelic waulking songs (partially responsible for the revival of the clarsach in Scotland)

The harp as part of the dance tradition (a fairly recent invention)

accompanying (rather like a continuo player but sometimes more involved / composed)
as a leading melody instrument - first person to do this in Ireland was Maire Ni Chathasaigh in late 1970s / early 80s

The harp also accompanies spoken word - poetry and storytelling. The earliest documentation of the music for this is the Ap Huw Manuscript.

Historically the harp has always been more aligned with songs, storytelling, ceol mor - literally "big music" meaning music to be still and listen too. Despite it being a listening instrument, the aural nature of transmission means it's still traditional instrument, related very closely to the rhythms of the body and a pesronal touch.

Performance practises associated:

Fixed compositions and arrangements whether solo or ensemble (like classical music learnt aurally with whatever sense of rhythm)
Improvised accompaniments
Ornamental improvisation on melodies (specifically Irish trad)
Bigger improvisations on melodies (more of an English thing)
Theme and variation (early harpers used this particularly)

It's valid to have a classical sense of rhythm (fits with "pop-y Nu folk") or a trad sense of rhythm. To me I only want to use a trad sense of rhythm - all ties back to this sense of traditional music "feeling right". That's what trad means to me - very human dance music. Even my songs have to feel like they are dancing.

Being able to play - what a relief

2009-05-27T01:20:00.000+01:00

Gradually as time goes on I can play more as I want to - it's like the overwhelming drive is to be able to express myself within music through music, to be able to hear something in my mind and produce it through my hands. It's bizarre - I am not me if I cannot make music happen. What a bizarre need - why should shaping sound matter so much? Anyway it does. After just over two years of relearning to play harp from scratch to accomodate my right hand music is really becoming fun again.

I can improvise and think with the harp again. It's magic, like mercury flowing, all connected up. I can sense my links when I watch other players - now I can perform those movements at a similar speed I can feel them when I watch others players. That's very beautiful.

My sense of rhythm while playing has also improved massively. That really is a relief. This time last year I could not play a dance tune to speed to my satisfaction. Now there are some that I can and it doesn't take forever to get new ones to that point. Recently I even got my first freebie - when you suddenly can play a tune that you've never consciously practised, your fingers just know what to do. Magic.

Steph's crazy hand history and how it relates to her learning the harp

2009-05-27T00:51:00.004+01:00

I started to play harp in Oct 2000. For about a year I tried playing from both sides and then decided that right hand top made much more sense (I'd played piano before and they have the same melody / accompaniment function). I really fixed that in my mind and got on with it from summer 2002. I started investigating harp teachers and got a very negative, cautious view point - faced with my right hand I had a harp teacher tell me to only play with two fingers (very limited!).

In March 2003 I first went to the Edinburgh Harp Festival. I met and heard loads of fantastic harpers, finally got some lessons from people who didn't write me off and who could see how much I wanted to play. I loved every minute of it and it completely set me up to carry on playing.

About two months later I really started chasing a hospital referral that had been hanging over me for two years - by the end of my first year at uni (summer 2001) it was clear that I had movement problems with my right hand, that the corrective procedures hadn't worked as the doctors had predicted. When I finally got the appointment that I'd been waiting so long for I was told fairly bluntly that corrective surgery on growth deformities (macro dactyly) didn't work, fingers were too complicated.

I was deeply unimpressed by the surgeon I'd been referred to, so started looking for other ways to get treated. I got referred to Royal Orthopaedic in Birmingham via my uni physio therapist - an appointment booked by my then boyfriend's mum for which I am very grateful. I was finally seen by my consultant in March 2004, in June 2004 I had an amputation of my extra large finger. The aim was to improve my overall hand function and specifically remove the mechanical problems I faced with harping.

In 2005 I went back up to Edinburgh, found a harp teacher to go to back south and got on with the job of building up speed and technique. I also started going out gigging where I could. By harp fest 06 I'd realised I'd maxed out my speed in my right hand for tunes and it wasn't enough. I dabbled in swapping hands but didn't fully until harp fest 07 - three x 1.5 hours a day for 5 days was enough to get past the initial pain barrier. I came home and realised that all the gigs that were lined up I was going to have to play left hand top - it was too confusing, seriously hurt my head to swap constantly.

So I stuck it and continued with the hard grind of technical work. Around this point I started sessioning massively and it paid off. However I also started getting soreness in my hands in general - a stiffness in the stump that was left from my middle finger made me almost use my hand in two.

Harp fest 08 saw me pretty depressed. In the months preceeding I'd been starting to build my right hand technique and getting pain and weird feelings. It was during this fest that I realised I needed yet another op - that I just couldn't sustain a wide enough range without being able to bend the middle stump, the hand has to work as a whole in order for the forearm to be relaxed.

So MayDay 08 saw me back at the consultants, after a month of absolute fear that there would be nothing they could do. I finally had a hand op Oct 08. During the summer I'd massively over played, and so banned myself from touching my harp for October. That's pretty much when I started this blog, out of sheer desperation to keep moving forward.

It was really really hard not playing, but going out to sessions kept me going and I started to perceive music in a different way - I'm a much stronger player now because of that enforced break.

It was a very difficult time because very close friends with whom I played a lot were suddenly cut off from me. A lot of our sense of closeness actually came from our playing - it's very intimate - and suddenly I'd completely backed off from it.

Oct - Dec was full of physio. During this time I also started sorting out my technique problems. I knew I had been setting myself up for a fall but the previous summer had been so mad - just head down, blinkers on. Now I started assessing and changing habits - sessioning less for a start. That's a bit of a sadness but not too bad - there is a balance in everything and if you aren't having fun doing something there's no point doing it to excess.

Dec 08 saw me meet a harper called Dominique Dodge. She's great - quick, accurate, loads of Scots repertoire and tunes, beautiful voice and sense for the Gaelic song. She pointed out one technical thing - where your carpal tunnel is most open - and just liked what I did. She gave me my confidence back. She also passed on the contacts for a chiropractor specialising in soft tissue overuse injuries. That has also been a major turning point.

So, for the past six months, I've been playing less, playing more slowly, but my overall speed ability has been going up. Wicked. It's finally finally coming together. I still have hand problems, I suspect I always will, but they feel managed and I'm calmer, not panicking. It's such a relief to be able to play how I want and there is still more to come. So the motto: be patient, be kind to yourself, be confident and keep looking for solutions: you'll get there in the end.

More music / movement links to follow...

2009-04-26T21:03:00.002+01:00

Matthew Roger at Belfast University:
http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~mrodger/Academic/
"I am interested in exploring the role(s) of ancillary body movement in music performance and how this develops over the course of skill acquisition.

Ancillary body movements made by musicians during performance (such as swaying, nodding, hand gestures, foot-tapping, etc.) do not seem necessary to create sounds, yet can communicate expressive or emotional intentions, relate to musical structure or facilitate co-ordination with other musicians. My research is into the origin and development of these movements during musical skill acquisition. This research project consists of three aims:

> Exploration of the development of ancillary body movement in musical skill acquisition
> Development of a theoretical framework of embodied music cognition
> Development of an appropriate human-computer interface to exploit characteristics of musicians' ancillary movements as augmented feedback in skill acquisition"

Frustration / inspiration

2009-04-26T20:14:00.009+01:00

I've been writing this post and it basically comes down to me wanting to go back to study full-time somewhere, also that I think frustration and inspiration are different sides of the same coin. There you go - you can skip the rest now. If you're daft or bored enough... read on.

***********************
I've hit a huge unhappy block of frustration. Not sure why exactly - I can feel this wall, can't see how high it is or how wide, or how I'm going to get over it - yet. Mostly it's to do with desperately wanting to get on with making some expressive/varied/intense/interesting music and taking it out somewhere and feeling like I don't have the people / finger skills / inspiration - whatever.

Does everyone involved in a creative process have points where they go mad from their own internal pressures? Where what they want to achieve seems so far away from their current point that they can't even begin to think where to go next? I expect so. Somehow though I've noted that it's often in extremis that I come up with something new - that difficulties push me into a corner and so I visit unexplored areas because I can't explore the normal ones.

Whenever I hit a wodge like this it's often because of something to do with my hand, though I'm realising that probably isn't accurate anymore other than needing to take time to build up my playing to a level I am happy with. Bizarrely I think this really will happen - not that my playing is in anyway perfect (or ever will be) but I'll get a set of songs and tunes together and be able to feel like they're hitting neough of the mark that I should take them out here. I think my benchmark is that I have to really enjoy them. Actually my plan is find the right kind of people who can judge that for me and push me off in the right direction!

Even though it has taken me several years just to get this far I feel so strongly that this is my instrument - I can't quite imagine gelling with another instrument so completely - even down to the fact that it's fantastically inspiring and wonderfully tactile but also ridiculously awkward to play on almost every level. And to play it properly is incredibly geeky.

I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to go down this path of trying to make a living from playing a few years ago - I wish I'd had the common sense to pick something else that I could do part-time and carry on studying along side it (hang on... I did... but oh yes it was another financially insecure but interesting job. Whoops). I'm feeling like I'd really like time off from this financial pressure, time just to play and learn and play and learn. Also that I'd really like musical input for me, inspiration for me. Time to listen and watch.

I feel like life is a series of crises and that you don't get prompted to sort things out in a way that will take you to the next stage until you hit that wall of frustration. I guess it's a good thing, even if right now I feel like breaking things. I just have to focus on the next goal more or less within target. Keep on finding the next solution and look for people who can help you along the way.

Movements / mirroring / social glue

2009-04-16T12:13:00.004+01:00

I've been developing my ideas about how our bodies relate to music, how it is passed on. Central to this is the fact that when we see a movement performed, the part of our brain that controls movement copies it - as far as our brain is concerned we might as well be doing the movement. This is one way that we absorb new physical movements, also how we read emotions. We see someone else's expression, copy it, and then that posture tells us how they feel.

Also, our brains synchronise with any rhythm that they hear. I wonder if this is a separate device or an extension of our ability to mirror movement. As I've mentioned before this doing things in unison within a group promotes a sense of loyalty to that group. Music is social glue.

Drawing on the right hand side of the brain

2009-03-03T16:45:00.002Z

In art we are told

"draw things, not nouns"

We have to look at the shape and see it as it is, not analyse it using words. It is this turning off of words that is key. Words are on the left side of your brain, and you need your right side for art.

I can't claim this link - my mum just came out with it - playing trad music, paying complete attention to the shaping of the phrase in a very sensory way is playing music with the right hand side of the brain. It produces completely different results in music making. We were talking about learning by ear and she just came out with this link.

I rather feel that playing from dots is like drawing nouns. It's not even painting by numbers.
So...

"play music, not dots"

Tool kits

2009-02-23T15:02:00.011Z

When we make music there are many different mechanisms all going on at once, many different skills we need. Since I've been teaching I've been thinking about these as "tool kits", I want to give my pupils the tools to make music for themselves as well as see what I am missing. This is as far as I've got with identifying the different elements and what you can use to develop those skills. This is unashamedly biased towards learning traditional music.

Musical toolkit
immersing yourself and becoming incredibly familiar with the music you wish to make

Learn how the music you want to play works by immersing yourself:

Sources:

Recordings
Score
Live music (gigs, sessions, playing with friends)

Passive learning / absorption

Listen listen listen - on in the background
Mp3 player for convenience
Carefully managed set lists

Active Involvement

Active listening - observe details
Diddle along with it
Clapping rhythm of it
Dance to it (ceilidhs, your living room, the session)
Practise

Mental toolkit
attitudes, hearing and reading clearly, recall,

Hearing music in detail and clarity:

Practising listening and identifying elements by ear
Listening to slowed down audio files to hear more detail, then listening at full speed again
Recalling the music in great detail
Transcription - make yourself notate all the detail
Imagining how you want pieces to sound
Being able to tell where the home note is and what note in a scale is being played at any given time

Retaining music and being able to recall it at will:

memorising
practise starting sets
learn it more than one way - by ear, then in hands
categorise what you know - mental filing

For any improvised art form:

Pre-set ideas

Rhythms
Harmonic sequences
Melodic fragments
Hand shapes

Knowing where the notes map on your instrument - i.e. scales, arpeggios

Performance:

sense of drama
presence
communication with audience

Understand the mechanics of playing your instrument intimately - as much a mental skill as a physical one

Fingering patterns
How your hands work
Ergonomic postures!!!
Know the potential injury trouble spots and what to do

Attitudes:

Focus

Being able to play under pressure
Paying attention to other people
Focusing on the music, blocking anxieties

Expectations

Find out and set realistic expectations

If it's not fun then have a rethink - music has no other purpose than for us to enjoy it.

Physical toolkit

Condition

Warm ups
Relaxation exercises (so you recover from all the playing!)
Stretches
General exercise, rest, food - be generally well

Coordination

Practise
Mental practise
Always look for unknown / unexplored shapes
Improvisation
Rhythm and accent practise

Mental interface - ears to fingers

Improvisation

Hand shapes

practising hand shapes, learning feel of each
chunked practise - practising within placement groups

Touch

Physical feedback
Contact with harp
Slow still practise
Improvising with dynamics

Speed

Clarity of movements (mental practice, aiming for beautiful movements at a slow pace first)
Gradually building up speed 2bpm at a time
Remember: the fastest safe speed is determined by how relaxed you can remain whilst playing

Anymore ideas are very welcome! This is just a start.

Hand update

2009-02-21T02:17:00.005Z

Well it's four months on from the operation I had on my hand. My finger joint is way better, I have active movement to 90 degrees and passive to a little more. This has exceeded the aim of the operation. I have a stronger grip and I can get into playing the way I want too.

I still have to manage the workload on both my hands. While one hand was mildly disabled, the other hand had to compensate. Both were closer to their maximum workload. Even now I'm still building up stamina and rest and recovery time is very important. That said it's really positive and I can see loads of routes through any problems. I'm using mental practise a lot more and the best thing is... you can practise warm and cosy in bed!

Recreation

2009-02-21T00:48:00.005Z

What is the point of an artistic activity? It doesn't feed us, clothe us or keep us warm. It might make us more healthy. It might provide us other useful skills.

I think the most important point is the arts give us a way of enjoying ourselves. It's fun, it's recreational. Through the arts we create a safe social space, we do activities that take us outside ourselves and give us a chance to forget the worries. It's important to forget yourself a little bit.

Artistic endeavour also gives us a safe space to re-engage, to try something new, to prove to ourselves that we can be more than we are now.

I can't think of a more useful social tool than voluntary for fun activites. So many of my friends come through music now, but if they didn't then they would come through some other hobby or activity. There's something in the mix of structure and freedom of expression that collaborative artistic efforts offer that is really good for people, that gives them a breathing space.

Recreation
Re-creation
Regrow, start afresh

Neuroscience of music

2009-02-10T20:09:00.010Z

I went to university to study music because I wanted to know how it worked. In a fairly standard BMus degree this was never tackled or even hinted at (though I did manage to sneak the topic very briefly into an essay).

I'm delighted to find there is now a field of study of music from a scientific view point and even popular science books on the topic. I've also occasionally met researchers in this field and I'm really looking forward to hearing more as the study unfolds.

I find music as a phenomena fascinating - there are so many layers of processing to make it all work, none of which even necessarily tell us why it grips us massively. From a political / education (and financial) point of view, I hope proof gets found for why learning music is so important, what it can bring cognitively of benefit.

Time to introduce one concept - your mind synchronises with every rhythm it hears. Therefore in a room of people listening (or playing) the same music, everyones mind is synchronised. I intrigued as to what this does to us, particularly the fairly fanciful idea that those in the room might briefly be part of the same neural network. Triggering this synchronisation is certainly a powerful tool. This week New Scientist ran an article reporting that performing activities in unison within a group can increase your loyalty to that group (full article here How to control a herd of humans by David Robson).

Tunes...

2008-12-10T19:12:00.007Z

I've been starting to think about what tunes I like. This is part of my plan to get my repertoire together and ordered. I have a little notebook in which I am collecting the name, key and notes about any tune I play (or at least want to retain). It'll get edited I'm sure, but for now it's just a catch all. I find if I don't know the tune name, I don't have a concsious tag by which to recall the tune.

I find I don't just like specific tunes, I enjoy tunes at a particular pace invoking a particular mood. This changes over time. Now I'm really drawn to slow-mid tempo slinky tunes, so a lot of Breton, some early English and early Scots. Hopefully I'll get on to wanting lots of elaborate intricate Irish tunes in a while too.

I also find that I'm drawn to different types of tunes to listen to, to diddle, and to play. Playing is definitely the slower variety at the moment, tunes to diddle often work best mid-tempo but listening and dancing tunes can be ferocious.

I'm keeping tabs on my learning resource material as well - I have scores, online score (like thesession.org), CDs, other recordings and online audio and video (like youtube). I'm finding my little book a useful prompt for what I need to revisit to memorise again. Normally I'd explore music by playing it but recently that's not been possible. I'm still finding that I can exceed the maximum comfortable work load of my hands very easily, so for now my little book is helping me explore music with my ears and voice instead.

Notes on accompanying Irish tunes

2008-11-17T22:44:00.001Z

1, play the rhythm of the melody, like a good bodhran player.

2, The emphasis falls on the back beat. To me as a classical muso, that means beats 2+4 in common time (4 4) or the quaver off-beat. To my Irish fiddler mate, emphasising the back beat means the emphasis falls part way through the note he is playing, towards the back of the beat. I'm trying to think of words I can use to remind myself - a very relaxed, lagging behind, almost falling over feel. It sounds like an exercise in letting rhythm flow.

Sabbatical

2008-11-17T00:59:00.004Z

This period of enforced time off has been much easier to deal with if I consider it a sabbatical.

Wikipedia says....
"In the modern sense, one takes a sabbatical typically to merely take a break from work or to fulfill some goal, e.g., writing a book or traveling."

My goal was to gain the movement back in my hand. Initially it felt like I had no choice, I had to do this operation. I dislike the experience of an op intensely so I was pretty unhappy about this. However if I look on it as a choice then it becomes much less onerous.

This time off also provided a break, a stop. This gave me thinking time - this blog came out - and a chance to re-evaluate. It's made me change my musical practises, my musical practise. I have much more music in my head not just my hands now. It's the first time I've really felt positive about an operation recovery experience.

Folk music research - new routes

2008-11-09T01:02:00.005Z

What did I say? That I was looking for new routes to explore music. And look what has turned up: randomly following links I came across Lori Watson (www.loriwatson.co.uk) and the phd she is currently working on - Contemporary Innovation and Scottish Traditional Music (working title) (introduction online here).

This is a really interesting read for any performer wanting to tread the lines between supporting and conserving the tradition, meanwhile making their own headway with new material and approaches.

Lori also referenced other folk music researchers...

Nigel Gatherer (www.nigelgatherer.com) and his brief but very informative article on session etiquette (online here). I can vouch from personal experience that very similar things happen in the south of England as well.

Philip Bohlman and his article Continually Reshaping The Present: New Traditional Tunes In Scotland, published 1988. If you know where I can get a copy please leave me a comment.

Fintan Vallely, 1999: 345 http://homepage.eircom.net/~imusic/

Other people I may look up:
Folk music studies (Professor Allan Moore) at University of Surrey

Other sources I will probably use:

The Journal of Music in Ireland www.thejmi.com
Links from the National Folk Music Fund www.nfmfund.org
Welsh folk music folk research at Bangor University www.bangor.ac.uk/music/research/groups_welshmusic.php.en
Martin Nail's website with lots of onlien resources for English folk music including an education section: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/martin.nail/Folkmus.htm
The National Centre for English Cultural Tradition www.shef.ac.uk/natcect/index.html
Of course the Newcastle University Folk and Traditional Music Course www.ncl.ac.uk/undergraduate/course/W340

I just came across another trad music blog for future research:
http://myblogs.sunderland.ac.uk/blogs/newenglishfolk/

Harp technique - striking versus plucking

2008-11-08T00:35:00.002Z

There are two main harp techniques: striking versus plucking. They loosely correlate: striking / folk / unprepared and plucked / classical / prepared. Here is a bit more on each technique.

Plucking:

All fingers are placed on the strings before they are needed
The strings are put under tension and the sound happens when the strings are released (think archery)
Sound comes from a negative action (though you could argue that 'releasing the string' is a positive action)
Your fingers are always completely prepared, this works best for complete, fixed arrangements (classical performance practice)
This is a very consistent systematic method of playing - great for learning from score and for sight-reading
Very close attention is paid to hand shapes
Process for each note takes longer - place => pressure => release => relax
It's important to have a good contact on each string before you play for security and...
You have lots of sensory feedback from the string for tone and volume

This is particularly important for heavier strung instruments - you need this technique to get the sound out. For pedal harps, the tension in strings is equal to the weight of double Decker bus. Extra strength is needed to make the string vibrate well - hand shape and overall preparation is more critical. The hand shape is squarer (thumbs up fingers down), fingers work in parallel to your forearm, thumb works at right angles. Every digit always fully articulates.

The modern lever harp was initially a pedal harp primer with pedal harp tension. Gradually lighter strung lever harps with more in common with the traditional clarsach have evolved. In Scotland there is lots of crossover between classical and traditional players. Many harpists play both. The received Scottish technique reflects this. I learnt my harp technique from Scottish harpers so I have a technique that basically classical.

Striking:

Hover fingers near strings you need or lightly place finger tips, when ready strike
Placing not so important - placing shapes less important
The sound happens when you strike (no pre-release pressure required)
Sound from a positive action (like every other instrument in the world!!)
Hands are more relaxed, looser
Thumb may pull into the palm not above index finger
Ornaments (especially triplets) encourage a twistier hand shape - less square
Lighter tension means less strictness re: hand shape - more fluidity
Often played with nails - gentle placing is with finger tips, nails create the 'strike'

This is technique is used for wire strung and other harps with very light stringing. This includes Paraguayan harps and triple harps / arpa doppias. The narrower the string spacing, the more you have to hold your hands sideways and classical squareness is of no use. Triple harps in particular force you to turn your hands sideways, otherwise you cannot get into the inner row of strings for chromatic notes. I think improvised music may be easier with this technique as you don't have to prepare so much - you get an extra split second to think and of course when the sound comes when you do something, not when you don't. I also wonder if this is more suited to ear learning.

You definitely get a different sound quality from each technique. Playing plucked harp uses the pads of your fingers and gives you a rich, rounded sound with lots of control over volume and tone. The downside is the attack noise as you leave the string and the damping sound when you place your fingers for the next set of notes.

Playing struck harp or with nails gives you a much brighter sound with a really crisp attack. I find the attack a much more attractive sound, especially for recording. I think the crispness also makes for better ornaments.

One of the things that drew me to the harp is I love the feel of strings under my pads. I've discovered that I love the sound of harps played with nails too. Can I do both? You can partially file finger nails to allow you to use pad or nail at the same time but apparently real nails tend to catch on gut strings. Mmm time for a new harp...!

personality - your mind in sound

2008-11-07T23:56:00.002Z

Your movements are your mind in action. Your sounds are your mind in action.

personality

persona

per sona

per = you or your
sona = sound

Your sound is you.

Framework

2008-11-07T23:20:00.003Z

Sound is our perception of motion, energy. All anyone can say for sure is that when we die we will become the silence that frames the sound.

Music and maths links to follow up

2008-11-07T23:07:00.006Z

Maths patterns that occur in music:
the golden ratio
fibonnacci sequence

Maths patterns behind sound:
Pythagoras' theorem
Physics analysis of sound waves

Writers on music:
Boethius - De Musica
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter

Other maths/music links:
Tuning systems
Musical set theory (as developed by Milton Babbitt, Allen Forte
Transformational theory is a branch of music theory developed by David Lewin

The continuous in motion...

2008-11-07T22:22:00.002Z

A little more info about medieval degrees and the Quadrivium.

In his book In primum Euclidis elementorum librum commentarii, Proclus Diadochus described the elements of the Quadrivium as:

Arithmetic is the Discrete At Rest
Astronomy is the Discrete In Motion
Geometry is the Continuous At Rest
Music is the Continuous In Motion

How good is that?

Learning by ear versus score

2008-11-07T22:07:00.006Z

By ear:
It takes longer to be able to play a tune by ear
It feels more difficult
Once you have it it stays for longer
You get a great sense of feel, of the vibe of the tune

By score:
It's much quicker
You can do a much greater quantity
It's instant music - just add time
Sadly though: in one ear out the other

A friend reckons that learning tunes by score puts them in a different place in your brain. I reckon that if you memorise a tune then it ends up in the same place, whatever you started with. That said, I can only memorise a tune through listening, through earwork.

As I got faster at learning tunes, I found I didn't need to work as hard to "catch" a tune by ear and play it back. The problem was it went in short term memory only (in one ear out the other...) I still need to make an effort to learn tune in your inner ear, I don't expect that to change.

I'm finding I have many many more tunes that I can join in with than I can start. Time to start thinking about how to up the number of tunes I can start...

The study of music as a human phenomenon

2008-11-07T20:59:00.005Z

There is music in every culture in the world. Whether we use it to change our state, for ritual / spiritual / religious purposes or to have a good time it is clearly pretty important to us as species. (Any anthropologists out there: is music as universal as I think it is? Is visual art also universal?)

One of the reasons I'm a musician is that is it possible to explore an inner world that is otherwise hard to reach. For me, music carries the most emotion of all the art forms. I think most people experience some form of emotional response and could describe an experience where music really touched them. As well as being moved emotionally, I sometimes have the sensation of invisible blocks moving inside me or around me - music allows me to interact with an intangible, invisible world. I can step beyond this body.

I mentioned before the distinction between a practical musician and a scholar of music. I studied music at university because I was seeking to understand this amazing stuff, not just wanting to play it. I got there and discovered that how and why it affected us was not covered at all...

Historically the academic study of music means the study of mathematical and harmonic relationships and the study of composers and composition from a very literary point of view. I didn't find either approach very satisfying in explaining why music is so important to us, nor what music does to us.

I'm still fascinated by this and I'm looking for any new leads. I've started to hear about people studying the phenomena of music through a modern scientific approach, mostly to do with how music affects the human brain or our behaviours. Of particular recent interest has been the book Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks (musicophilia.com) I'm on the look out for any other studies so if you know of one please leave me a comment!

Studying music: practical musicians & musical scholars

2008-11-07T14:33:00.004Z

In Medieval times there was a distinction between studying music as a theoretical subject (mostly the mathematical relationships of harmony) and studying music for performance. As you might expect the scholars had a relatively high status, the players were lowly servants.

Music was studied as part of the Quadrivium (the second part of the Liberal Arts degree taught within a medieval university, the first is called the Trivium. Every scholar studied this theoretical music as part of their degree.

Boethius is one of the most well known medieval music scholars. In his work "De Musica" he classified three areas of music:
1. Musica mundana - music of the spheres/world
2. Musica humana - harmony of human body and spiritual harmony
3. Musica instrumentalis - instrumental music (including human voice)

His work illustrates the medieval view that maths and pattern could be used to understand the entire world. The Quadrivium itself is almost entirely maths: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music (theory). Initially my degree was Joint Honours Music and Maths; my favourite module was the "Number and Proportion" music module looking at maths within music and maths associated with music. Sometimes I feel like a medieval scholar who was born a few hundred years too late.

Evolution of tune styles

2008-11-07T14:28:00.004Z

Most of our traditional dance tunes are anonymous - whenever tunes are labelled "trad" this means that a, they are recognised as part of our aural tradition; b, no one has claimed them as their own, c, they are free to use, part of our shared tradition. However someone must have written them at some point and somewhere. What are the inspirations for these tunes, and why is there such a strong sense that a tune is "English" or "Irish"?

An idea that I've come across is that tunes reflect the landscape and the language / accent of the local population. While I like this idea a lot, I think only a little but likely that tunes do reflect the pace and common rhythms in our spoken language. Perhaps in some distant way tunes might reflect the way we experience the landscape, but it has to come back to the human experience.

I think that performance practise has a lot to do with where tunes feel like they come from. It's very possible to take an Irish jig, play it half to 2/3rds speed with a bit more swing and make it feel like a morris tune. If there are different dances used in each country then different ways of playing the tune will evolve with them.

I think the biggest factor is that isolated musics will evolve in their own direction and tiny intial differences will grow to much bigger ones. Musical performance practises are iterative - I hear what you do and make a tiny adjustment, so does the fiddler next door, so does the flute player etc...etc... We play together and come back towards a more unified style and then the tiny incremental changes start again, layers upon layers of revisiting blowing tiny changes into huge ones. Physicists would say: sensitive dependancy on initial conditions.

Maybe there really wasn't much of a difference between the styles initially but over years different sounds have evolved? You can certainly find early tunes, often slip jigs or single jigs, that are present in both English and Irish traditions and are old tunes in both. The next question that presents itself is what in our social history fostered the development of tunes in each area and why did those players not meet?

Also, now as more and more traditional players travel to learn from each other and hear recordings from all over, is our style becoming more unified?

Organising tune learning

2008-11-05T00:41:00.003Z

I want to find a better way to organise what tunes I already know, what tunes I'm learning, and what tunes I want to learn. I don't have any system at present other than pieces of paper in folders, cds and sound files and the occasional list. I also want to organise my tunes such that they are easy to put into sets and so then play out (great practise - perhaps the best practise).

My score is already split into country and then vague tune type - the Irish tunes most of all. That has: old harp tunes, dance tunes that I've been taught by harpers, airs, dance tunes in general, songs. I'm collecting more and more dance tunes so I think I need a new way to separate these out. The obvious thing to do is to split them into rhythms - jigs, reels, hornpipes, etc... That's certainly ok for archival purposes, but doesn't solve the ongoing tune management.

Mmm back to the drawing board... maybe a list stuck on the wall? Can you tell organisation isn't my strong point...!

Learning tunes by ear

2008-11-04T23:17:00.004Z

I love playing within the aural tradition because after a while it becomes very easy to take on new music, new tunes. Once you've got an established technique, if you can hear a tune accurately, then you can reproduce it. That said you have to be able to retain and reimagine the tune to be able to play it - until you can play with it, it's not yet your music. The nicest bit is that you can just absorb tunes passively, have the music on in the background and gradually the tune just becomes a landscape you know intimately. Bizarrely this can be just as helpful in helping you to learn tunes as really focused attention, so right now I get to learn tunes and write... wooo!

I've been up to the Edinburgh harp festival a few times now and the tune teaching method for trad stuff is as follows...

hear tune about 4 times through
teacher plays first phrase a few times, you have a go getting it
few minutes practice while teacher comes and checks everyone has it
go through rest of phrases in the same way, often taught by hand shape and certainly broken down into small easy chunks
all the time consolidate what you know, through group playing or listening to teacher play again
once melody is stitched together, add bass hand

Throughout the learning process you hear a bit, try it, hear it again, refine it. The teacher may slow it down for you if you've not caught a bit, or show you a tiny fragment at a time.

I don't like learning tunes from dots anymore because the dots don't give me the groove. This is my tune learning method from a recording...

get familiar with tune, hearing it lots in whatever setting
use an audio program to work phrase by phrase, listening and trying and listening and refining and listening again
possibly use audio programs to slow it to hear where the ornaments are / any really tricky bits
possibly transcribe it - very useful for setting fingering (I often transcribe tunes I've been taught by ear for this reason)
if I have slowed it down at any point, listen to track at full speed again and get the groove at that pace (rhythmic emphasis changes at different tempo)

They're pretty similar methods really, just with different sources. I always prefer learning from a real person because they will spot problems with your technique, you'll get a better sense of the style (all those tiny variations...) and they'll pick up anything that you've misinterpreted. It's just nicer too!

English vs Irish styles part 1

2008-11-04T13:10:00.003Z

There's so much to think about for this... there will be differences at various layers of the music. I'm going to analyse what I hear and try to take it apart. I hope that through making conscious observations I can target my attention more closely on different features. At the same time I just have to listen and listen and listen again - I will not get an instinctive ability with the different through conscious listening. It is an unconscious skill I am building.

Things that I know are different between Irish & English:

numbers of notes within a tune
length of phrases
phrases even or irregular?
jerky or flowing
common modes and chords used
rhythmic patterns - more on this below
ornamentation
mood evoked or energy summoned up

Things that are different just within the rhythm aspect:

speed
different rhythmic patterns (best thought of grouped in dances)
"swing"
placement of emphasis within beat - to the back or the front?
does the rhythm sit back or push forward?
how a tune grooves

Even now I am sure that I will remember and summon up a particular set of rhythmic patterns most easily through recalling emotive ideas - that particular rhythmic pattern will evoke this emotional response best remembered via this image. Oh the complexity of finding language tags for memories that have no words...

Mixed traditions: different accents

2008-11-04T11:01:00.002Z

As a singer and harper (associated repertoires: Irish, Scottish, Welsh) but one who is also English I find there are many musical directions I could take. For now, I'm going to listen to everything that comes my way, and mainly focus on English and Irish style. I can't see myself stopping playing either tradition and I want to do them both well.

I find I know how I want to arrange, I know what chords I'd like to use, I can explore that for myself. What I'm looking for are just the right phrasing shapes and rhythmic gestures that make each tradition dance and make each really distinctive. I've always responded to harmony first so I'm finding it quite strange to listen to music just for the phrasing. I really like rhythm though so I'm looking forward to a new challenge.

I aim to develop two different styles (one English, one Irish) and be able to switch between them at will. I'm comparing this to cultivating a foreign accent - you start by copying, maybe analyse or note certain features, then through layers of listening and feedback trying to get a sense of the shapes behind the language. Gradually the phrasing becomes familiar, accent becomes less foreign and your voice comes through again.

I feel like I have three accents - my natural accent that is just what comes out if I don't think about it (informed by classical training and my personal sense of drama and movement), the very beginnings of an Irish accent and the very beginnings of an English accent. I'm expecting I will get a little bit of phrasing "bleed" between my styles but hope over time that can either be eliminated or made to be somehow complimentary. I will always be an English harper playing Irish music and I think that can be a positive thing. I have always felt that different traditions summon up different "energies" - each take the music to a set of different places. Why would you not want a wider palette to choose from?

Operation recovery

2008-11-02T17:26:00.002Z

Part of why I started this blog is to distract myself while I get well after a recent hand op. One of my finger joints had ceased up so the docs did what they could to release it and the rest is down to me.

Recovery goes:
wound heals (done)
start working passive movement
active movement
control
strength
passive movt - I can move the stump with my left hand
active movt - my right hand can pull the stump in
control - fine movt achieved
strength - weights, lifting, carrying at odd angles

All while being as relaxed and getting as much sensory feed back as poss

There's still a fair way to go,b ut it gets easier to live with at each stage. I can't say that overall it's less painful yet but the feeling is still changing and as long as it does that's ok.

While music is stopped via my hands it's coming out all the place elsewhere... like a river at a dam. It's fascinating.

A folk sound world

2008-11-02T01:12:00.004Z

I love the mix of a folkie or trad sound world. It's like organic food - not as instant hit sweet as over-processed pop or as totally smooth as Classical; way more satisfying than both. Real instruments making real sounds.

There is a place for loads of timbre differences - roughness, raspy sounds, nasal, reedy. There's also a lot of sweetness, resonance, warmth.

I also like the feel you get from such personal interpretations of melodies, both the momentum of a good tune and the floating space, the touching gesture of a slow air. Yum yum.

Being a musician... with a deformed hand

2008-11-01T21:46:00.001Z

I hadn't planned to mention this on my blog, but I realised that I couldn't write anymore without mentioning my hand.

I was born with a deformed right hand (giant middle finger and deformed ring finger) and have had several operations for corrective surgery. I rarely draw attention to it, certainly never when I'm performing. I want any audience to listen to me and judge me on how I play and sing, not what my hands are like.

In general I just get on with life and don't pay much attention to having different hands. In terms of musicianship I don't think it matters: I just have a different tool kit. As long as I can get what I want from that toolkit, then it's ok. Music is pretty forgiving of disability - it's all about what you can bring to the sound and what you do with what you've got.

I am more conscious of my hand more when I'm teaching because I am demonstrating. That said once I know a pupil it doesn't matter, we just get on with communicating. As I have one hand that functions normally that is my model for others. I've learnt to play twice, once RH melody, once LH melody (I play LH melody, in trad harp that has 60-80% of the work).

Sometimes doing a job which is so dependant on my (deformed) hands still strikes me low. I don't know any other disabled musicians personally, though they clearly exist. I feel it odd that my vocation is at such odds with my body but then I remember that there are also disabled athletes and dancers and I feel much better.

Future Link - musicians with disabilities
CandoCo Dance Company - is a contemporary dance company of disabled and non-disabled dancers.