A Massive Breakdown!

You want to hear about massive breakdown?  That’s my specialty!

When I teach harp, I focus on teaching adults – and I don’t really teach ‘harp.’ I coach adults who are out to express themselves thru this instrument – the harp.

Some are ‘recovering’ classical players who started as children and burned out on the fire of perfectionism. Some only started playing harp after retirement. They’re not out to win contests, or auditions – their focus is self-expression and connection. They want to break away from the notes on the page, break out of a creative rut, break thru their inhibitions, fulfill a creative dream and truly touch people with their music one person at a time.

Here’s why they work with me: I’m the Queen of the Break Down.

I break down the music into its fundamental building blocks – its simplest structures and patterns. MASSIVE Breakdown!  So people of any technical level can ground themselves in how the piece ‘works’ and then expand it to their level. That means that everyone will play a piece I teach differently..

That means that you learn in a very different way. You don’t start at the beginning of a piece and learn to play each and every note. You start with a Blueprint, a framework – and then fill it in.

It’s more like building a house. First the foundation, then the framework. You can start walking through the whole house before the walls are even up. That how I like to learn music. And how I teach it.

You want to see what that’s like? Join my “Baroque Flamenco” in the 5-Day Baroque Flamenco “Make it Easy” Challenge. It’s a harp challenge – but we’ve had bassoonists, guitarists and other join – so please come join me and hundreds of harpists around the world!

The way I teach, you often start by playing a fundamental version of the whole piece – that’s the framework. That means you know how the piece fits together. You can walk through the whole thing – it’s a complete piece and you could play it that way forever.

You ‘ground’ in that and then expand and embellish it as you get more comfortable playing it. You don’t perfect it before you play it. You start playing it right from the beginning- instead of working on some specific version of it painstakingly until it’s perfect and only then sharing it.

One benefit of learning this way is that you are immediately PLAYING it.

Pieces can be ‘complete’ at different levels. So in the Baroque Flamenco “Make it Easy” Challenge, you learn to COMPLETE a simple Blueprint version of this piece very quickly – in 5 days, with a 15-minute training each day. You learn the fundamentals, and then start playing it and playing WITH it.

By the end of the Challenge you’re playing this framework version. As you play it, it expands over time, ever expanding.  That’s why I call this quarter of “Hip Harp Academy” the Grounded Expansion Quarter.  And that’s how I teach everything.

One benefit of that is that you can start developing your performance skills immediately. You play what you can play with beauty. You don’t have to wait to “learn” or “perfect” every note of the piece to be PLAYING it.

It’s not about PERFECTING or ’GETTING BETTER”, it’s about knowing how it works and playing it at your level – and I teach you how to do that. The motto of the Academy – and everything I do – is CONNECTION not perfection.

Do I personally struggle with perfectionism? Absolutely – every day. And that leads to a completely different kind of breakdown. That’s why I am committed to MASSIVE Breakdown in my teaching.

If you play the harp, I hope you’ll join me for the Challenge … and for Grounded Expansion in Hip Harp Academy.