Being nervous is a terrible feeling. It can be physically debilitating, with symptoms from cold, clammy hands to nausea and beyond. But by far, the worst damage that nervousness causes is the psychological. We worry about how our nervousness will sabotage our well-prepared and carefully practiced performance. And in the extreme, it can prevent us from performing at all.

When I was a...

It is easy to know when we don’t have a piece memorized. It is more difficult to know when a piece is “ready” to be performed from memory.Memorization is a process, and one that requires time and effort. It is not simply practicing a piece until                                     ...

     © 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...

           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...

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...

© 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...

As I am writing this, I am beginning another year’s Harp In The Mountains Festival. This is the seventh year that I have hosted a small group of dedicated harp students, mostly high school and middle school age, for a week of ensemble playing and learning about the harp.

This year the students range in age from 11 to 17, and as you might guess, their skill levels are very different. But I...

Have you ever been stumped trying to figure out how to organize your practice? Sometimes it’s because we have too much to do; other times it’s because we don’t have enough to do and our practice is aimless. Here’s my solution for those times I need a little structure: I use my “40/40/20” recipe.

The “40/40/20” method is easy to explain. Every day,...

Saturday, June 22 I will be giving workshops at “Lark Music Presents Anne Sullivan’s Harp Mastery.” I am very excited about this first-time ever event. I will be able to share some of the valuable things I learned from my teachers and from my own years of teaching privately and at the Curtis Institute of Music. And I am especially looking forward to meeting many of you and...

We all have them from time to time, an epic fail in a performance. Whether it’s a memory slip you can’t recover from or a glaring error that cuts to the core, you wish that the floor would open up and swallow you whole. The first installment of this two-part blog post showed you how to move forward and get your groove back if this should happen to you. This second part will show you...