I would really love to play the harp, but I’m 24. Is that too late?

[HBrock25]

Hi,

I am 58, and just started playing 1 1/2 years ago.

[HBrock25]

ha! I’m a 52 y/o convert from piano. It has been a month since I decided to play and three harps have come into my house…my pedal harp hasn’t found me, yet. He moves slow because he has those extra concert strings behind him : ) I’m waiting patiently for him. I’ll be practicing while I wait : )

[bella-bella]

Thank you for your encouragement everyone! It was interesting reading about your experiences.

I finally had a lesson! I’m so excited about getting a harp to practise with. My teacher is going to help me find one next week. Yaaaaay! I’ll get a lever harp that is gut strung- probably second hand. I’ll probably spend around £1000-1400. I’ll keep saving money though incase I decide I want a pedal harp in a few years time.

So excited! Can you reccommend anything to practise in the mean time? I could look at string diagrams and learn the notes. Plus I need to improve my music reading, but is there anything else?

Can’t wait! I can’t believe I’m finally going to learn!

[tony-morosco]

In addition to reading music you may want to familiarize yourself with basic music theory beyond that.

Specifically harp related is Sylvia Woods’ ‘Music Theory and Arranging Techniques for the Folk Harp’. This book requires only a basic music reading ability.

If your music reading skills are still at the very early stages you can try Edly’s Music Theory For Practical People, which is specifically written as an introduction to music theory that doesn’t require you to be able to read music already in order to understand what it is talking about.

[bella-bella]

Thank you. I did buy the ABRSM music theory book, so I’ll just continue reading that. That book by Sylvia Woods does look good. I’ll have to buy it when I know how much my budget will be after buying the harp lol.

[Kathleen Martin]

I started at 64! Now 6 years later I am halfway thru Suzuki Book 3which seems slow to me but seems Ok to others. As an older adult I travel a lot so miss playing for weeks at a time. My fingers now do things I never thought possible, and I am enjoying playing more now. I have a Salvi Egan lever harp which I love but need to move up to a small pedal harp for the music I will be playing in Book4 but my teacher doesn’t think the transition will be hard. I am assuming you want to be playing folk music from your description of your harp. It will take practice but you should be playing nicely in a couple of years, Good luck!

[sari-bari]

I’m also 24, still a student and have two cute girls. I started playing a 26 string harp this year. I know the fundamentals of reading music, but I find it much more intuitive to pick the melody out by ear and just memorize it, and then throw in the chords with the left hand. If you play mainly by ear, you can play an endless variety of tunes on a harp without levers, which would be more budget-friendly. However, you won’t be able to play a lot of eastern or klezmer sounding tunes, you won’t be able to modulate (switch scales in your music) or play with someone whose instrument is tuned in any key other than A minor or C major (unless you retune all the strings on your harp to that key).

I live in Israel, so I bought a harp from the only luthier who lives here since shipping would have been to expensive, but I checked out a lot of American harp makers with harps in my budget range. The harps I checked were Caswell’s Sweetharp (though I’ve heard his customer service is not very good), Harps of Praise (they build harps based on Musicmakers designs), Dusty Strings, Harpsicle and Blevin’s harps.

I did read about music theory before playing, and I would really recommend that. It helps so much to understanding how music works AND improves your ear. I think the harp is an especially good instrument for applying music theory to since it is a diatonic instrument. I also fiddled around with the keyboard while waiting to buy a harp. I think that could help test whether you really love music.
I agree with one of the other posters, the problem is finding time to practice. however, the harp is such a beautiful intrument that even if you intend to sit down only for 20 minutes to practice, you could easily get carried away and find that an hour has gone by without you noticing.

I have not had time or money to take lessons with a teacher. I mainly watch A LOT of videos on youtube, and look really closely at the shapes of the hands, how often they use certain fingers, etc. I also bought Cindy Blevins “Harp in Hand” book to learn the basic fingerings. I don’t remember who the harpist is, but there is also a very good series of harp lessons on youtube called “Harp Tuesday”.

I have also found that just sitting in your spare time and trying to analyze the rhythm of certain songs you know well is very helpful (for example, tapping out the basic rhythm with your left hand and the melody with your right hand on your knees, before even trying to play the parts on the instrument). That’s something you can do almost anywhere, and it helps build up coordination between hands. I do it while taking my girls to the playground, but you can also do it while commuting, walking, doing dishes. I started doing it with the “Game of Thrones” theme (it has a very distinct rhythm in the left hand : 1-and 2 3, 1-and 2 3…) and “Brian Boru’s March” (the basic rhythm is 1-2-3, 1-2-3).

Also, if you want celtic sounding tunes, you can just start playing around on the C major scale or the A minor scale (you don’t need levers for this) and leave out the F notes.

If you love music, try finding as many ways as you can to bring it into your life. Sing whenever you can, listen to lots of music, hum and make up tunes as you go about your daily life, drum out rhythms on whatever comes to hand, look for repetetive things in daily activities (a dripping faucet? chopping vegetables? walking?) and see if you can

[josh-layne]

Hi Sari,

I do the ‘Harp Tuesday’ series – glad you’ve found them useful 🙂

[bella-bella]

Thank you again for your replies! And thank you Sari Bari for all the information. I finally got a harp though and I did go for lever. I got the Salvi Livia last week. So glad to finally get one!

Josh, I have seen your videos before and they are really helpful. I’ve been practicing the C scale, following the fingering on one of your videos. Thank you for uploading all of them. I will watch all of them when my work dies down!

[tony-morosco]

Good choice. The Livia is a very underapreciated harp. You don’t see all that many people playing them, but I’ve tried a couple out and they are very comfortable to play and have a very pleasing tone in general, and at a reasonable price.

Well done, and enjoy.

[bella-bella]

Thank you Tony!

I’m so happy to finally have a harp! I wish I had more time to practice though!

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