Happy Mothers Day!

With Mothers Day coming up on Sunday, I want to thank all of the mothers in my life – my own mother in particular (who left this life in 2015), my sister, my cousins, nieces, and all my friends who have sacrificed so much in order to care for and raise their children to become responsible, kind, productive adults!

I performed a concert yesterday at one of the assisted living facilities on my regular rotation, and they had the room set up as a Mother’s Day tea with lovely eats, pink balloons, and a festive, celebratory atmosphere. I had prepared to sing a few songs in honor of the occasion and thought it would be fun to share them with you.

The first is a song that my own mother taught me when I was 4. She had me sing it as she accompanied me on piano at a mother/daughter luncheon at the church. My oh my, was that stage high! I later realized after visiting that room as an adult that the stage was no more than 6 inches! But relatively…

When my mother turned 60, (that would have been in 1990) my sister and I did a little concert for her birthday party. I rewrote the second verse of the song to make it relevant to our mother. So, this little video is from the party, with me singing and playing guitar, and my sister playing flute and singing harmony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLHwz-CiQUM

I worked up an accompaniment of this on lever harp (lots of leaving out the third of the chord in order to not have to constantly flip levers) and sang it at yesterday’s tea.

I also did a few more that were “mother-honoring” songs, like Wind Beneath My Wings, Turn Around, and Que Sera, Sera. And toward the end of the concert, I performed a song that I had written to honor my mother’s life. I was able to play it for her just days before she passed away. I put together a video with photos and have posted it on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/YQNC1L0oZfs

Wishing you all a happy and meaningful Mother’s Day!

"By Ear" or "By Paper"

As a mentor for the Harp for Healing Certification Program, I am given most of the guitar students (most who sign up are harp students) to mentor. I have noticed more and more that guitar students are less likely to be able to read music notation and more likely to play by ear. The reverse seems to be the case for harpists, depending on their background. This isn’t universal of course – some guitarists have a classical guitar background, so can read treble clef just fine, and others are fairly fluent in guitar tablature. And with harpists, there are a number who learn tunes by ear instead of by written notation.

It got me musing about my own experiences with the various instruments I play. I started as a 4-year-old copying my brother’s piano lessons by ear until my mom (his piano teacher) put a stop to it by giving me my very own set of books and lessons and making my brother’s pieces off-limits to me. She never told me I wasn’t allowed to play by ear. It wasn’t even a thing. It was probably treated like “she’s only pretending.” But I would treat reading music as more of a reminder of how things should or will sound.

Later I chose violin for my orchestra instrument and started lessons with a private teacher. It was all about reading the notes. Or was it? Violin is an instrument you can’t play without using your ear. In order to play in tune, your finger needs to adjust – there is no fret to keep you honest… My mother used to tell people that my violin teacher said that I was never a true beginner and that I was able to get a good tone and good intonation from the start. I don’t believe I was always a hundred percent in tune, but now that I’ve had a variety of violin students, I do realize that there is a long period of time before they can really make a difference between a C and a C#...

Onward to picking up guitar: at first it was just placing my fingers in a pattern and strumming a chord. Next learning to fingerpick -- again just patterns, not music notation. But when I started guitar lessons, having already learned to read music with piano and violin, I zoomed through the Alfred’s Guitar book in two months (most of my beginning students take closer to a year) and was playing some cool classical pieces (including an arrangement of Classical Gas by Mason Williams) within a year. So, yes, I was reading music, but also figuring out the chords and picking patterns by ear from recordings of songs I wanted to play and sing.

People often tell me that I’m talented to be able to play all these things, but what it comes down to is making use of the ear, whether reading music notation or not. It’s not an either/or for me, it’s an integrated “both.” So, with each new instrument I learn, there’s a period of “Where are the notes?” followed by a “How to I make it sound like it should?” followed by the enjoyment of playing music on the new instrument. Reading music made for the instrument? just to remind me of how the tune goes. Both skills are worth developing!

I like to encourage my students to not simply follow directions or “connect the dots” of music notation, but to listen for quality, and to express their feelings about the music. Hmmm… I have more to say about expressing feelings, but will save that for another blog…

I’d be interested to know how many people find they can learn a new tune best if they hear it first, or if they see the written notation first. If you’d like to respond, please do! This is not an official survey but I think it will be interesting to know these things:

1. What was your first instrument?
2. When did you learn to read music? (or did you?)
3. What instruments have you learned to play?
4. How do you best learn to play a tune?
• Hear it over and over
• Hear it first then read the music
• Read the music first, then hear a version of it
• Read the music and count out the rhythm

This is not a competition between the “by ear” and the “paper trained” – just a look at what has worked well for you!

By the way, if you'd like to know more about the Harp for Healing Certification program, here is the website: https://www.harpforhealing.com/