A nice "jam along" for all new Pooh Bears

[hearpe]

This is now, quickly, the greatest age for learning music!
With youtube we have access to endless numbers of instructional videos in all kinds of music instrument and style, as well as countless performance videos to watch and maybe take a grain or two of knowledge from.
I’m pretty much a beginner, although I have some basic knowledge of music structure- the keys and notation and three chord theory, etc, I’ve gotten on other instruments through the years.
So with a newer harp in hand I’ve been on youtube just feeling things out. It CAN be a humbling and even discouraging experience if you let it- there’s tons of performance I could never hope to reasonably replicate in the little time I have remaining in this current tent of flesh.
I was perusing mostly performance and some performance vids and avoiding this “relaxing harp” category of music, thinking I’d be making the best use of my time other wise, until one of them started playing automatically after another video:

I picked up my harp on the bed- I can still play a 29 there, but I’m fairly large, and thought I’d pluck along. So here’s this very tonal piece on playing I find it’s based on D and move the levers there, sharpening C and F.
And it’s suddenly very nice and very easy- I’m plucking along and even adding beats and tones into it, because it’s almost like a backing track really and I’m making it Celtic music by filling in other notes. IT’s very satisfying I think, and while I’ve played along to a lot of other music, I think this may help fast forward my harp playing without a lot of formal and organized study- coming harder by the year- although I do expect to pluck out some sight reading pieces, and probably add what chords I want when I want to them sometime soon.
Anyway, it’s helping me right now, and I need it!
I am a heavenly angelic force of nature and mostly- You need to quit!

[wil-weten]

Is this the post that dissappeared according to your thread ‘What happened to my post?’?

If so, I vagely remember I saw a post like this yesterday.

Edit: I googled and I saw it already indexed 23 hours ago. So, yes, something strange did happen. Maybe it was automatically classified as spam because of its unexpected subject description. Anyway, it has nothing to do with bullying or other mean actions.

So, I do hope you feel better now.

[Biagio]

There will be some, I know, who will say that the harp us a very difficult instrument. I suppose this depends on one’s aspirations and expectations – certainly it is difficult if one aspires to perform on a pedal harp in an orchestra.

On the other hand, as if one simply wishes to enjoy making music for personal pleasure, I’ve found it to be the only instrument that sounds beautiful from the first note. It is after all the oldest known stringed instrument, far predating notation of any kind, so it is a foregone conclusion that it was played that way for eons.

As Hearpe says, there are many wonderful things on Youtube nor are all of them intimidating. Some wonderful people to watch, playing simple things beautifully: Marta Cook, Deborah Henson-Conant, Chris Caswell, Harper Tasche.

Harper in particular is just great – in addition to the cross strung he has been a moving force in getting small harps back into the mainstream. Check out “Just You”! It’s on Youtube but the address is too long to add here:-)

Biagio

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