Record Yourself

The best practice advice I know is to record yourself regularly and listen to how you sound. Listen to pick out what licks, techniques, and tone sounds good to you, and try to duplicate those things. Listen to hear what mistakes really cause you to wince, and try hard to eliminate those.

Mistakes come in lots of different forms, from musical mistakes where you play the note you wanted the way you wanted, but it doesn’t fit the music, to technique mistakes, to simply missing the note you intended to play. There are mistakes of omission—where you didn’t do something you had intended, as well as commission—where you actually play something wrong.

There is a tendency to "not count" certain mistakes while we play, knowing that we can do better. When you listen to recordings of yourself you can more properly judge the effect of these mistakes on the overall music. As you try to eliminate these little problems you may find a couple of things: 1) it’s not as easy as you thought to eliminate all the little flaws, and 2) you may discover that certain "moves" consistently give you trouble, which you hadn’t realized before.

If you’re practicing a particular song, recording and listening to evaluate your play, at the beginning concentrate more on what sounds good, what you like, and try to keep those things whenever you play the song. Be positive, and be happy about the elements that sound good. Leverage those elements to try to improve the overall quality of the song. After a while, as time goes on, as you practice the song more and more, there will be more and more good things, and less and less things that make you wince. At some point it will be easier to take note of the "bad" things than the good things. That’s a lot of progress! Work on getting rid of those poorer elements in your play, while keeping the better things. Sometimes as you work to get rid of something you don’t like you’ll introduce problems in areas you liked. Don’t get discouraged. If it was easy, anyone could play good music in no time. Don’t let the process of removing problems hurt your confidence.

You might want to keep an early recorded version of a song you’re practicing, and as you get better at the song, compare a newer recording to one of the older ones. You’ll probably be amazed at how much progress you’ve made! Remember, you are practicing with the goal of getting better. If you are improving, you are reaching your goal. No matter how good someone gets, I doubt that they’ll ever achieve a goal that is to play something perfectly.. or that sounds perfect to their critical ears. The better you are, the more you are aware of subtleties, and the more room there is for mistakes. Don’t be concerned about playing perfectly when you practice. Be concerned about improving your musical vision, your ear, and accomplishing the small tasks you set for yourself, like "do this part well again" or "try not to make this particular mistake".

The key to getting the most out of your practice is to regularly and consistently record yourself, and listen carefully to what you have played.

Don’t forget that if you have a computer with a sound card you can use it as a recording device. Depending on your expertise with computers and your computer system, it may be easier to use digital recording than to worry about tapes. It is easy to organize your computer files, and it’s nice not to have lots of recording media to deal with.

Another convenient way to record and keep track of your sessions is with the mini-disk recorders. These can access individual tracks without the need to rewind or fast forward to find your place, and the sound quality is better than tape in most instances.

Coping Licks

One tried and true practice technique is to listen to recorded music and try to learn parts that you like, or even the whole song, note for note, nuance for nuance. Many musicians spend many many hours sitting by a tape deck, playing and replaying phrases over and over to figure out how they go. There are players available that are designed for this specific activity, and can slow down the music without changing the pitch to make it easier to hear the part. There are also software programs that can do the same thing to digital audio music that you have on your computer. One such program with a shareware version available is CoolEdit96 from http://www.syntrillium.com/. If you use it, be sure to register.

You can either rely on your memory, or use some notation scheme like tab, or standard musical notation, to write down what you hear to help you remember how it goes later. If you keep notes of your licks you’ll have an easier time remembering them all later.

Practice to Recorded Music

To practice playing by ear and improvising, it is very helpful to have the other parts there to listen to so you can try to fit in with the music. Use your ears, and listen to the music you aren’t playing, as well as that you are playing.

You can play with the radio or CDs, jam with other musicians, or use karaoke, "jam tracks", or MIDI as the recorded music. An option I really like is the Band in a Box product from http://www.pgmusic.com/. Recent versions of this program are truly powerful "bands in a box" that are superb for practicing almost anything related to music.

Don’t jam along in the audience when a band is playing up front! Even if you’re good, the audience is there to hear the band, not you.

Be aware than when you play with other musicians, you should NOT play as much as when you are jamming to recorded music! Don’t practice soloing all the time, and don’t solo all the time when you play! Don’t interfere with the singer or other players’ solos! To do so is rude, inconsiderate, thoughtless, and the easiest way to irritate other musicians and make yourself unpopular. Practice fitting in with the music, making it better with you than without you. The musicians are a team that need to work together and cooperate to make the best music, and have the most fun.

Have A Plan

To optimize your practice--to get the most out of the time you put in--it never hurts to have a plan. Know ahead of time what you want to work on, and focus your mind and play on those things, whether they’re tone, technique, or music related. Your serious practice sessions don’t have to be that long, if they’re efficient and you’re focussed on what you’re doing.

Leave time to just have fun. You probably play harp because it’s fun.. make sure you have time away from serious practice to just play for your own enjoyment. These times of play can be refreshing, and can be great times of discovery.

The best situation I can think of is to have fun practicing, so you look forward to it and put your whole energy into it. I think the most effective practice is fun practice. You just need to have enough discipline to balance periods of serious concentration with periods of "just for fun"!

Should I lay out a plan for you? I think that would make it a plan for me, not you, since I don’t know where you are, what you need, your goals, or how you have fun. Let me just suggest some practice elements that you might think about including in your practice plan—not every element every time you practice, but a list of things from which to pick and choose. Listen to yourself to see what you need more familiarity with.

Practice Elements

There are many different elements to harp playing distinct from any particular music. Instead of just practicing songs and licks, be sure to practice these other elements as well. There’s a lot more to music than just the pitch, time, and order of the notes. There’s a lot more to a sound than just the note.

Try to make each sound you make on the harmonica sound as good as you can. Listen to each sound, by itself, and make it beautiful in its own right. Each note should contribute to the whole. The music should be better with it, worse without it.

Practice elements include:

• Breathing. It all starts with breathing. Practice being open and "big inside" and having control over your playing pressure at all volume levels. 
  
  
• Chords. Work on your breathing while playing chords so you’re less likely to be distracted by the notes, and just listen to the sounds. Try to make the chords sound as pure and smooth as you can. (Note: harps with equal temperament tunings, like the Hohner Golden Melody and Lee Oskar models, will have chords that sound rougher and less smooth than tunings that use just intonation, like other Hohner models and Hering harps.)
  
  
• Vibrato, on both draw and blow notes, bends, and even overbends, high and low. Work on controlling the rate of your vibrato, and its depth. Work the vibrato to emphasize the rhythm of the music and the groove. Work on consistency of vibrato between draws, blows, bends, and overblows. Work on vibrato hand in hand with your breathing.
  
  
• Rhythm. Playing in time with the music. Staying in the groove. Pulsing the beat with your dynamics to compel folks to tap their feet! Being secure enough with the beat to play ahead of it or behind it or right on top of it, depending on what you want to express.
  
  
• Tone. Work on consistency of tone among natural notes, bends, and overblows. Use a variety of different tones to best express the music. Your tone is largely a result of your breathing.
  
  
• Note Shaping. How the sound starts, swells, changes in pitch, timbre and/or volume, and how it stops: suddenly or trailing off, with or without vibrato, bending up or down, with or without the use of hand or other effects.
  
  
• Dynamics. Playing loud and soft, and getting louder and softer. Use dynamics to add another dimension to your sound. Think of all the different ways to play and shape a note, all the effects and expression you can add. The use of dynamics multiplies all those qualities by as many different volumes as which you play, and more since you can change the loudness as you play to add even more possibilities. Work on dynamics in conjunction with your breathing.
  
  
• The High End. The high end of the harp and blow bends get neglected because of the predominance of harp music played mostly on the bottom 6 holes. You have to pay particular attention to playing the high end to get it anywhere near as strong there as on the rest of the harp. Try moving the musical phrases from your licks on the low end up to the high end. Work on smooth blow bends as well as holding blow bend notes and making them sound good.
  
  
• Playing Slow, paying attention to nuance and details. Don’t be afraid to not play. Keep the rhythm and groove going in your mind.
  
  
• New Techniques. The more you have, the bigger your musical palette. Add new techniques slowly, and merge them with your existing techniques so they all flow together seamlessly.
  
  
• Existing Techniques. The more effortless your technique, the less it interferes with your ability to express music naturally. The more control you have over your techniques, the more nuance and subtlety you can put in each note. Bring your techniques together with your music to express your own style.
  
  
• Musical Vision of the sounds and notes and where they lie on the harp. The more natural it is for you to find and play a particular note or sound, the more effortless it will be to play any music. Practice playing all the like notes everywhere on the harp. Play all the C’s, all the F’s, all the G’s, all the Eb’s and Bb’s and D’s, etc. Improvise within an octave of like notes, using the octaves to "carve up" the harp into separate pieces. Say the note names to yourself as you play them, and focus on where they are. The goal is to know the harp like you know your house, so you can get from anywhere to anywhere, see where you’re going, and know ahead of time how you’re going to get there, and know where you are when you arrive—all without thinking about it. You don’t have to think about it, because you can see it. It’s like looking at an analog clock vs. a digital one. You can see how long it is between 11:12 and 11:30 by looking at an analog clock, without having to subtract to calculate the number of minutes.
  
  
• Theory, how it relates to the sounds and places on the harp, the form of the musical style, and how it impacts the motivation of your note selection.

• Scales and arpeggios, and the Basic Blues Walk in Cross Harp and other positions, all over the harp. These will enhance your understanding of theory and your musical vision.

• Playing by ear, and learning the sounds and where they are on the harp. Listening to what you’ve played, remembering the patterns you’ve established, and selecting more sounds to follow naturally from what you’ve already put out there.
  
  
• Improvisation, which includes more "mind" and more of a plan than purely playing by ear. Using your knowledge of theory and your musical vision to explore new paths, lines, and musical relationships.
  
  
• Speed, and playing fast in a musical context. Establishing patterns upon patterns, melodies within melodies, or different voices on the harp.
  
  
• Critical listening. Don’t forget to record and listen to your practice. But more than this, listen to what you have played, and let it motivate what you play next. To do that, you have to remember to what you have heard. Listen and remember. Build the music from the context of what has come before, anticipating what will come later (if you know).
  
  
• Have Fun! Take joy in making music to express yourself. If it’s not fun, what are you doing? Don’t be too self critical. There’s no hurry. Take your time and slowly but surely walk the path toward ever greater mastery of your instrument. There’s great pleasure and fun at making music no matter what your level of expertise, especially on the harp!