Anne Sullivan harpist and Harp Mastery founder
Practicing Harp HappinessEpisodes
Episodes of Practicing Harp Happiness
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Are you a free spirit, a rebel? Or maybe you just hate being told what to do? I have to admit that sometimes one or more of those labels fits me. Most of the time I toe the line but there are moments when I just don’t want to do the thing I kno
Have you ever had one of those moments when you wonder if you’ve been doing it all wrong? It might be something you have taken for granted, a habit maybe, or a process, something you thought was the perfect system. You always have done it that
Johann Sebastian Bach is a name every musician knows. He is revered as a composer whose music defined musical practices in the Baroque era and whose compositions still influence music and musicians today. Learning about his music and learning t
Today’s podcast is all about tempo, and I have to start by saying that tempo is a funny thing. We define it with numbers or with the familiar Italian words, or less familiar French or German ones, and it still seems elusive. Much of the time we
When I was preparing for this week’s show, I couldn’t help being reminded of a couple of tired old jokes. Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Doctor: Then don’t do that. And, Patient: Doctor, it hurts and I don’t know what’s wrong.Doctor:
It’s high time I got up on my soapbox. It’s not often I do a rant on the podcast, but there’s an issue that has me so fired up that I had to talk about it with you. I believe it’s the result of how we are learning now. There are so many opportu
This podcast episode goes live on April Fool’s Day, and I probably couldn’t have picked a more appropriate day to release it. I didn’t do it on purpose, but today’s topic lines up very nicely with April Fool's. It’s about the fool’s game of sel
We harpists take our finger placement seriously. Getting the right fingers on the right strings at the right time is paramount. One misplaced finger and a whole passage can go wobbly. One of the quotes of Johann Sebastian Bach that comes to my
Call me crazy if you want. I know your ideal day might be a day at the spa, or sitting on the beach with a good book, or going for a hike in the mountains. Although those all sound good to me, my ideal day - or at least one of my ideal days - w
My husband’s family is German, and even before we were married I discovered that one of the things I had long heard about German housewives was true, at least in my mother-in-law’s house: Germans take a clean house seriously. By American stand
See if you can guess the answer to this. What can sometimes feel gently rocking like a boat on a lake on a calm summer’s day, and other times puts a lively spring into your step? It isn’t hard, but it’s never simple. You’ve almost certainly enc
I am always interested to hear what first attracted harpists to the harp. It’s fascinating to learn the many ways that the harp can draw a potential student. My own story is that I heard the harp on the radio and told my parents that was what I
Let’s take this as a given: our technique is at the heart of everything we do at the harp. Intellectually, we know this to be true, but that doesn’t prevent us from being surprised when we run into a passage in a piece we’re learning that our f
Today I’m going to tell you how to improve anything. I know that sounds like a tall order, but we harpists are all about improvement. Every day in every way we want to get better and better. Many of us like this idea too: slow and steady wins t
Every restaurant chain, every chef has their “secret sauce.” It’s that unique ingredient that makes their food taste special every time. It's part of their culinary signature. There is a secret - or maybe not so secret - sauce in musical expres
I might as well get this out of the way. This is going to be one of those podcasts that sounds like it’s telling you you’re doing it all wrong and you’ve been doing it wrong for years. I say it’s going to sound like that, but I want to be clear
If I had to choose one finger pattern that I could count on to almost always show up in a piece, it would be an arpeggio. Arpeggios and the harp go together like peanut butter and jelly. In fact, the Italian word for harp is arpa, which has the
At its most fundamental, music is sound over time. When you take away the rich harmonies, soaring melodies, complex structures and intricate rhythms, that’s all you have left: sound over time. It doesn’t sound very creative or artistic, but tho
The Little Engine That Could was just plain lucky. If you remember that children’s book, when the little engine had to take over for the bigger engines to pull the train loaded with toys over the mountain, he kept telling himself, “I think I ca
Happy New Year! It’s the first morning of a new year and I am feeling, as I do every new year, that sense of excitement and possibility that inhabits those empty calendar pages. I can hardly wait to see what 2024 will bring. Since this podcas
A special holiday music mix just for podcast listeners! The program: Two from MessiahPastoral Symphony/He shall feed his flock Arranged by Anne Sullivan Greensleeves, from Anne’s Break Forth CD,Arranged by Anne Sullivan Coventry CarolArranged
The year-end wrap has become a hot trend. The worthy practice of reflecting on the year that is nearly over and the new one about to start is no longer simply a quiet moment with a cup of tea and a journal. It’s an opportunity for businesses to
As I look back over 11 years of blogging and podcasting, there are some trends I notice, topics I talk about with regularity and even predictability according to the seasons. Of course, it’s not a surprise that in December one of the topics tha
Be prepared, the famous Boy Scout motto. I’m thinking that Boy Scouts have nothing on harpists when it comes to being prepared. We harpists have preparation down, whether it is preparing our music, or stocking spare strings or packing our harp
Long, long ago in what seems like a galaxy far away, there was no Cyber Monday. There was barely even a Black Friday. We shopped in stores, not on the yet-to-be-imagined internet. And for the children who were dreaming of holiday presents, the
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