How young is too young?

[unknown-user]

How young? Babies enjoy listening to any sized harp. Toddlers can start strumming harp strings as long as they’re supervised. I highly recommend borrowing, buying or building a Waldorf-type pentatonic harp/lyre/psaltery for your very young future harp player. The harmonious DEGABd scale is ideal for children under 7. These instruments range from just 6 or 7 strings on up to 10 or 11. Original and familiar tunes and simple, heavenly glissing are incredibly simple and satisfying. No printed music is necessary. (If you have a pedal harp, this DEGABd gliss can be achieved with enharmonics. You eliminate the discordant Cs and Fs by setting C flat (= B natural) and F flat (= E natural). The child can play ANY strings while seated in your lap. If you have a lever harp, then you can turn it into a pentatonic harp with CDFGAc scale by sharping your E naturals (E sharp = F natural) and sharping your B naturals (B sharp = C natural). Christina Tourin calls this the “Angel Mode.”

Basically whatever you play on either pentatonic scale sounds harmonious and heavenly. Ideal for young, creative pre-readers. Using the big harp is fun, but kids really love having their own child-sized instrument. Most lyres have wire strings. If your child’s finger tips are sensitive, use a plectrum or mallet. My kids like using a big feather or wooden dowel or xylophone mallet or hammered dulcimer hammer for variation. Don’t hand out guitar picks till your child is old enough not to try to swallow it.

For domestic Kinderharp or Kinderlyre, see Song of the Sea, Harps of Lorien, or A Child’s Dream Come True

http://www.songsea.com/kharp.htm

http://www.waldorfshop.net/directory.html

For a huge selection of lyres (German “leier”) see the Gartner Children’s lyre and Wingkantele. The Wingkantele can be retuned to regular diatonic (CDEFGABcde) scale as the child gets older. Many of their lyres are nylon-strung (but with non-harp color codings).

http://www.leier.de/English/instru.htm

I recommend using just index fingers and thumbs on the lyre for melodies, harmonizing and glisses. When the child gets older and transfers to a harp, the 3-finger and 4-finger harp fingering can be taught without fighting “bad habits”.

I myself played plucked psaltery before starting harp at 11 and did not have “bad habbits” because the instruments are held and played similarly but differently. You could teach her up gliss (towards player) with index, down gliss (away) with thumb.

[unknown-user]

There is only three criteria for when to start a Harp student:

1) Does the child want to play the Harp, check to see how committed the child is, talk to him/her and ask them about what thay want.

[unknown-user]

I think that you should start the child, then see if anything happens that discourages/encourages you. If the child has pushy parents, then best thing you can do is helf the child go at his/her own pace, because if you try to tell a pushy parent to stop thier child on harp, the most ‘romantic’ instrument, then the parents will probably push the child on to something else he cant do. use your judgement…

[Renee Singlemann]

I teach a four year old currently.

[Calista Anne Koch]

My sister began the same day I did.

[Evangeline Williams]

I started violin and piano when I was 3…using Suzuki and not having to worry about reading music.

[unknown-user]

If the child really wants to do it, it is not too soon. The bigger problem is an instrument whose strings would be close enough together to suit his or her hand size. I met a child about that age who was afire to play the harp.

[unknown-user]

My teacher’s daughter started playing about age 4.

[elena-k-pohl]

Hi Mindy,

[kreig-kitts]

It’s probably my cynicism and general misanthropy, but this gave me a vibe of a stage mother preparing

[kreig-kitts]

OMG this thread is 11 years old??? She’s 15 now – go for it!

[barbara-brundage]

Not necessarily. I have a friend who is a phenomenal harpist who saw a clown playing a harp on a children’s tv show when he was 4, and gave his parents no peace till they got him started.

[kay-lister]

Interesting that it was Kim that was the original poster of this thread.

[kreig-kitts]

If I’d seen a clown playing a harp as a child, I’d probably be as terrified of harps as I am of clowns.

[barbara-brundage]

Likewise! It just shows that when you find your place, nothing can deter you. 🙂

[Author]

Posts