Blues with Harp

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This topic has 10 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 8 months ago by carl-swanson.

Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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October 28, 2013 at 3:48 pm #89836

daniele-di
Participant

Hi all,

I’ve been more and more interested in learning some blues on harp, and the only thing I found out in the web is the blues harp course that Deborah Henson Conant was offering via internet, it looked really interesting but not she don’t do it anymore.
I’m a beginner to intermediate harpist that doesn’t know much about music, I can read sheets and play by memory, but nothing more…
Can anyone raccomend me some books/courses/anything that could help me playing blues?
I’m gonna order soon a dhc bluelight from Camac and I’m planning to play with that

Thank you very much

Daniele

October 28, 2013 at 4:26 pm #89837

barbara-brundage
Participant

I have never seen this, but it has a good reputation:

http://www.afghanpress.com/?p=2714

October 28, 2013 at 11:54 pm #89838

Elizabeth Volpé Bligh
Participant

Brenda Dor-Groot and Sabine Meijers founded International Jazz harp Foundation and run blues courses every year. I attended one they gave at the International Harp Workshop in Italy, where I was also teaching.

http://www.jazzharp.org/pagina.php?id=133
Here is their catalogue of music:
http://www.jazzharp.org/shop.php

November 1, 2013 at 12:40 pm #89839

daniele-di
Participant

Thank you!
I ordered a book (“The Very Basics of Jazz & Blues “) from that jazzharp website, I had to wait a bit since I found out it’s all managed by a volunteer organization, but it has been shipped and I’m looking forward on starting studying it!

November 2, 2013 at 12:36 am #89840

Elizabeth Volpé Bligh
Participant

The Mac Perry book is excellent! I got it from Brenda and Sabine.

November 2, 2013 at 11:08 pm #89841

brenda-dor-groot
Participant

Dear Daniele,
We are running the Jazz Harp Foundation on a volunteer basis, with mostly just the 2 of us for the day to day business. We are currently recuperating from the organization of a truly great but very intensive and time consuming Jazz Harp Festival. In the extensive administrative aftermath of this event, we are unfortunately not able to deal with 100% of all other requests straight away.
That being said, we are glad that you did take your chances anyway and ordered the Very Basics of Jazz & Blues, which is indeed a good start.
We are in a transition from a partly manual payment process into a fully automated payment process, which will get you a proof of payment and shipping notification right away and independent of the limited availability of jazz harp volunteers.
We hope for your understanding, and please email us at info@jazzharp.org or orders@jazzharp.org with any further concerns or requests.

With best wishes,
Brenda Dor-Groot

ps. we do advise you to
– subscribe to our email newsletter so we can keep you up to date about new releases and upcoming courses and workshops http://www.jazzharp.org/newsletter-signup, and
– send an email to info@hipharp.com to inform Deborah Henson-Conant about your interest in an upcoming blues harp course, so you’ll be the first to know when details on the next course become available.

November 2, 2013 at 11:35 pm #89842

daniele-di
Participant

Dear Brenda, thank you very much for your message, it’s very appreciated.
I also ordered the Mac Perry book 🙂
I received the Proof of Payment after 3 days, yes you should definitely move to a fully automated payment process, I guess nowadays it’s the standard.

Of course I understand and I hope to use the website again in the future 🙂
I wrote to hipharp about a week ago via the contact form on the website asking for the new courses but I haven’t received any reply, I will try also via e-mail, thank you

December 6, 2013 at 5:56 pm #89843

shannon-schumann
Participant

Martha Gallagher includes blues in some of her workshops, and she is very good with beginners and intermediate harpers.
http://www.adkharper.com/

December 7, 2013 at 2:09 pm #89844

carl-swanson
Participant

Daniele- This may seem to be off topic, but it’s not. You said you’re a beginner to intermediate player. Focus on technique along with the blues and jazz you want to learn. Technique is technique, no matter what type of music you want to play. The same technique works for classical, pop, jazz, blues, etc.

Your ability to play blues or jazz and what kind of things you do with the music will be directly correlated to the level of your technique, i.e., your ability to get around the instrument easily. So make sure you are working with a good classical teacher who can teach you solid technique, preferably with etudes. I would also suggest you take a course in music theory, since so much jazz in particular is very theory oriented.

Deborah and Park Stickney are the best jazz players on harp that I know, and they both have very solid classical training. Park has a Master’s degree from Juilliard, and Deborah has at least an undergraduate degree in classical harp. Also, at the Berklee School in Boston, which is entirely geared to learning all aspects of popular music, jazz, movie score writing, etc. the students there learn classical repertoire in their private lessons, because, as one of the students said to me, “That’s how you learn to play your instrument.”

December 11, 2013 at 7:37 pm #89845

kreig-kitts
Member

At Indiana where I studied the humanities and dabbled in music, jazz studies majors all had to major in their primary instrument as well and give both a classical and jazz recital. I’m not sure if they had to give a classical senior recital, or just the junior recital and pass the upper divisional performance requirement. But at any rate they had to be able to play the instrument inside and out. When I heard their university jazz bands compared with those of programs that didn’t have such rigorous requirements, you could really hear the difference in terms of the players’ overall fluency on the instrument as well as the complexity of what they could improvise.

Not that difficulty is the end-all of jazz — in fact I think the trend to show off by cramming as many notes together as possible is a bad thing for the genre and especially for the audience — but if your ears and your imagination want to take you to Point X, and your chops can only get you to Point C, then that’s a problem.

I’m glad that I took lessons fairly early on my adult amateur path and had a lot of exposure to classical technique. I originally intended to play mostly for fun at home, but I’ve ended up playing some in a large ensemble that performs fairly difficult (grade 5-6 by the most common scale for the US) music and it has served me quite well. We all have our own limitations as far as time and resources, and I’ve had to work with my own as well at times, but some general training in technique will go a very long way if you can obtain it.

December 11, 2013 at 10:27 pm #89846

carl-swanson
Participant

Kreig- Very nice post, and right on the money. I’m not suggesting for a second that the purpose of learning a lot of technique is to cram as many notes as possible into a piece. But if you simply want to make a 2 octave jump in your improvisation, you need to be able to get around the instrument easily. I would think that having an abundance of technique would free you to play as fast or as slow, as simple or as complicated as you wanted. Inadequate technique will sound inadequate and will severely limit the player’s imagination, since he can only think within the confines of his (limited) technique.
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