© Chad McDermott – Fotolia.com

Here we are at the last official week of summer. The schedule is once again the ruler of our lives. with school, work, meetings, and performances.

I have always enjoyed this time of year. The beginning of everything holds such promise. I remember looking forward to the new clothes I would have for school, the new classes, the new...

I love cool gadgets, but when it comes to teaching music students, the best teachers go old school. They realize that having a successful and profitable teaching studio requires a few basic ingredients to run smoothly and create opportunities for their students to grow.

If you teach, you probably have all these systems in place already. But if you’re like me, there are always refinements...

           One page of my practice log

I want to report back to you on my experience using the 40/40/20 plan as the structure for my emergency practice.

First, the results. I did get enough practice, despite two days of travel time when I could only manage one hour instead of two. Everything that needed to be prepared...

© berc – Fotolia.com

We all have dreams and goals, but achieving those dreams and goals is not easy. There are endless traps and distractions. Often the hardest part is just getting started.

Maybe you’re the type that can’t sit down to practice until all your other daily chores are...

   © William Ceron – Fotolia.com

It’s all in the wrist. Maybe not ALL, but certainly, a harpist’s use of the wrist is an important feature of technique.

Normally, I believe the wrist should be steady. When you play a scale, for instance, your wrist shouldn’t flex in and out to accommodate your fingers. Instead, it should be part of the support system for...

That hippest harpist Deborah Henson-Conant wrote a great blog post recently about mastery. She pointed out that the heralded “10,000 hours to mastery” isn’t what most adult learners are interested in. (By the way, you can read about the 10,000 hours in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success .) What they want, DHC writes, is fluency. And I totally agree.

I...

We all know the importance of protecting your harp from the weather and from bumps and scratches. And if you move your harp often, as I do, you must have protective covers.

I am definitely a fan of those wonderful transport covers that Lyon Healy has. But they are expensive and very bulky. (I know – bulky is the point.) And I have three concert grand harps to cover.

So when I needed a new...

© Photo-K – Fotolia.com

“Please memorize this for next lesson.” These are words that send chills through many musicians. Do you dread playing from memory? Do you feel ill-equipped for this task?

So many times I hear students of all ages say, “I could never play from memory. I...

Somehow I lost the last month. I had great intentions and a well-crafted practice plan, but it just didn’t work. We had a family reunion, plus I held harp camp and my website has been having issues. I had minor surgery. My son moved out of his apartment into another apartment and then went to on Italy for the summer. It’s been busy here, not really unusual, just busy.   ...

It wasn’t the bride’s fault that she picked the steamiest day imaginable for her lovely garden wedding. But there I was, under a tent, playing a wedding ceremony in the middle of a heat wave. To top it off, I was playing the Pachelbel Canon. I know people either love the piece or hate it, but I don’t usually mind playing it.

This time, however, I found myself playing the...