First lesson tonight!

[A. Riley]

I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve had my little Sharpsicle and Sylvia Woods’ book for a while, but you know, I can only get so far on my own.

The first learning goal I will discuss with her will be how to get two hands working together — I can pick out a right-hand melody fine, and I can pick through a simple left-hand accompaniment fine, but I get hopelessly tangled when I try to do them together. (Like when you ask a centipede which foot goes first. Hopelessly tangled.)

What was your first learning goal when you started lessons?

[kreig-kitts]

Finding her house without missing that tricky turn onto her road and turning around. It took a few weeks.

[kay-lister]

My first goal was to have everything that she taught me THAT evening, completely soaked up and ready to present back to her the next week.

[Tony G]

Good luck and enjoy!!!

I can almost promise you her advice will be to slow down!!! That’s really the only way to put the two hands together. 🙂

I remember when I began piano, at first I literally had to stop every time I needed to play two notes at the same time with different hands!!!! I had to stop, find the notes, play it completely wrong, spend another minute figuring out which hand was wrong, and then start all over on the next combined hands section…. but over time it got much easier. 😉 Start slow! It’ll pay off. 😀 These days my hands just work “together” easily… so it’s definitely a practiced skill!!!

[shannon-schumann]

I second Tony’s comments. If you think of it as “Tai Chi Harping,” it helps a lot – or at least, it helps me!

[Sharon O]

My first goal was to fix my technique – I was lucky enough to have a mom that started playing the harp as an adult, so when I got interested in playing, I borrowed her travel harp (about the size of the Sharpsicle) and started playing on my own, because I already knew how to play piano and it translates pretty easily. 6 months later, I loved it enough to get my own harp, and I went to Sylvia’s store to try some out. She saw me play and said “get some lessons right NOW!” because your technique is wrong and you’ll never learn to play anything more than beginning pieces if you don’t fix it”.

She was totally right – I found a teacher, fixed my technique and my playing just took off! I didn’t even need to take very many lessons – I think I only took about 10 or 15 lessons – but it made all the difference in the world.

(now the big difference here is that I already knew how to play piano and could read music and play right and left hands together already, so you’ll probably need more lessons, but be sure to move slowly until your technique is right. You’ll never regret it!)

[A. Riley]

Thank you!

Thanks to everyone. Tai Chi harping — that’s a good metaphor. Thank you!

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