))
Small Steps to Break Through and Grow - PHH 200
Manage episode 471820178 series 2924936
Content provided by Anne Sullivan harpist and Harp Mastery founder and Anne Sulllivan. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Anne Sullivan harpist and Harp Mastery founder and Anne Sulllivan or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.
How do you measure something that is unmeasurable? How do you quantify something that can’t be contained or counted? How do you assess something that is completely subjective? You might think you can’t, but yet, that’s what we attempt to do every day in our practice.
We try to gauge our progress. We try to determine exactly when a piece is “finished.” Exact measurements aren’t possible in music. We can’t time our progress. “This piece will take exactly 37 days to learn to the degree of polish that I personally want.” If only we could have that degree of certainty, the whole practice thing would be so much easier.
I realize I am guilty of perpetuating this unreality. I often use notional percentages to represent stages of “finish” for a piece. For instance, I’ll call a piece 80% done if I can play most of the notes correctly most of the time at a tempo that’s at least 80% of my goal tempo. It’s hardly scientific, but it gives me and my students a way to judge where we are on our journey with a piece.
So what about you? Do you know where you are with that piece you’re trying to finish? Are you at that 80% mark? If so, that’s great, because you’re almost there. By the way, I don’t believe in 100%; perfection is not a practical goal. Instead, 90-95% is what I would call finished. If you’re playing at Carnegie Hall, that’s not good enough, but it should do for just about everywhere else.
Or maybe this is what you’ve experienced: you get your piece to 80% without much trouble, but then it gets stuck there. It just won’t get over that last hump to the 90% mark. That hump - and how to get over it - is what I’d like to talk about with you today. I want to talk about the factors that contribute to progress and to growth, as well as how to find the way to close that gap between where your piece is now and where you want it to be. We can’t exactly create “progress by the numbers,” but we can find the steps that will pull you out of the place you’re stuck and move you forward.
Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:
Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected]
Looking for a transcript for this episode? Did you know that if you subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts you will have access to their transcripts of each episode?
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-200
100 episodes
Share
