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Danilo- There are many great composers who could not play the music they wrote for piano. Schubert and Ravel were both horrible pianists, but they understood how the hands worked on the piano and wrote gorgeous, and playable music for that instrument. I think that if you took some harp lessons, it would give you a concept of how the hands work on the instrument and also how the instrument resonates. You would then have to force yourself to forget(consciously) the physical aspects of playing the harp and just write what you hear in your head. The difference now is that you would be much more likely to hear in your head how the harp really resonates, and not just write piano music.
I always heard Swan Lake referred to as Duck Pond. And Sleeping Beauty as Schlepping Beauty. In non-harp literature there’s the ‘corset hymn,’How Firm A Foundation, or the Beastiality Aria from Messiah, All We Like Sheep. Then there’s the X rated folk song Auora Lee, Auora Lee(Orally, Orally). I’m sure we’ve all heard foreign students refer to the Concerto for Fruit and Harp by Mozart. I need a vacation…
Diane- If you’re burned out on this student(who wouldn’t be) then you can always set her up with another teacher. maybe a fresh start with someone else would actually be good for her. Many times I’ve heard teachers say that they have told such-and-such a student the same thing for the past six months. Then the student goes to a masterclass and the teacher there says the same thing and suddenly the student listens and does it.
Talk to one or more teachers near by who would be willing to take her on. Then tell her parents you cannot teacher her any more but you’ve found several other teachers who she could go to. Then let them, and the girl make the move.
Saul- I didn’t say to learn the whole piece in two weeks. What I said was two weeks per page of music. 5 pages- 10 weeks. 3 pages- 6 weeks. That will vary according to the difficulty of the piece and the ability of the student, but if it takes substantially longer than that, then the piece is not appropriate at that time for that student.
I’ll tell you just one of many horror stories I have witnessed over the years. I rented a harp to a student of another teacher years ago, a teenager, who worked on the Harmonious Blacksmith for 8 months! That’s 5 pages of music for 32 weeks. And at that she still couldn’t play it because she could barely read music and she had virtually no technical foundation. And her teacher kept telling me how beautifully she was doing.
The two week goal is as much a standard for the teacher as the student, and is meant to avoid situations like the one mentioned above.
Diane- If all of your good ideas have not rubbed off on her by now, then they are not going to. It’s time for this girl to sink or swim on her own effort. You can’t blame yourself if she’s not making progress.
I think you should tell her and her parents together, either face to face or in a letter, that there is a serious problem here and you’ve done as much as you can do. If they and the girl cannot whip things into shape at this point, then you have to drop her as a student. Maybe THAT will light a fire under her. Personally, I would never have stayed with her as long as you have.
Diane- I’m a big fan of memorizing a piece right away. I do that all the time for myself and I like my students to do it too. It’s the traditional way French students learn music.
Once you have the music laid out,(pedals written in, fingerings, etc.), you start memorizing. You play the first measure or two and concern yourself only with memorizing it, at whatever tempo is very comfortable for you. When you can play the first measure or two without looking at the music, you work on the next measure or two and then connect that to what you’ve already learned. Once you get the first line memorized, then work on that, entirely from memory, until it starts to feel a little comfortable. Then you start the same process on the second line. Each time you add a measure or two, you work only on those two new measures until you can wobble through them from memory. You don’t keep starting from the begining.
Depending on the difficulty and complexity of the piece, the first 3 or 4 days are pure hell. Each time you sit down it’s like you’ve never seen the piece. But each time what you’ve memorized comes back a little faster. Once you have the first page memorized at what I call the wobbly stage you should stay there and not go further until that first page is pretty secure. That means you can sit down at random moments, or the following day, and play that material, slowly and probably wobbly, without ever looking at the music.
My own feeling, for myself and my students, is that you don’t really ‘own’ a piece until it it memorized. If you memorize it at the begining of the learning process, then you can practice it pretty much from memory. Having it memorized right off the bat gives you encouragement to play and perfect the piece. Only you would know if this approach would work for this girl.
I would agree that ruling out a learning disability or ADD would be the first step. If those are not the problem, then it’s time for either a different approach or a different teacher. I’ve had similar situations in the past and I won’t do that any more. If the student is not making tangible progress, then I don’t want to teach him/her.
Lydia- I think that most people, when starting an instrument, begin by playing mostly by ear, even without realizing it, or without the teacher realizing it. That’s because, at the beginer level, the music is very simple and melodic. It’s later on, as the student tries to move into harder, and therefore more complex music that the you-know-what hits the fan. Suddenly they have a very hard time and get discouraged because their ability to play the instrument is way ahead of their ability to read music. So the consciencious teacher has to make an effort to keep the theory and reading ability developing along with the technical ability. Watch the student very carefully as he/she plays and make sure that he/she is looking at the music. Quiz the student about the notes, rhythm, key, meter, etc. on each piece to make sure that the student is absorbing what is on the page. The ability to play by ear is wonderful, and frankly, I wish I could do it. But I don’t think it has to be an either/or situation. A good musician ought to be able to do both.
Barbara- There are some instances where the neck can have an effect on the sound. If the neck is very thick(wide) or made of that heavy material Salvi uses, thus adding 10 pounds to the top of the instrument, yes, that can very definitely have an effect on the sound. If the replacement neck significantly changes the string lengths in the first and second octaves, that could have an impact on the sound too I guess.
Any time I replace a neck, I can use the old neck only as a rough pattern for the new one. Frequently i have to change tuning pin locations if there is not enough bearing on the adjustable post, or if there is too much, or if the tuning pins in the first two octaves are too far from the action. I almost always have to raise the neck at the treble end to get more room there for the right hand. The necks I make are usually more elegant looking too than the original if it was too wide. The end result is a stronger neck with a first and second octave that you can actually use.
One of the well known traveling regulators wanted to get into repair work and asked me if he could send me an old neck and have me make a new one. I was dumbfounded that he thought it could be done like that. I diplomatically told him that I needed the whole instrument to make a new neck. I’m sure he thought I was just trying to steal the job from him, but that wasn’t the case at all.
There are many good regulators around now, and that’s good for the harpists all around the country. A couple of them, like me, also do major repair work. In fact that’s the main thing we do. I have the highest regard for the major work done by Tom Bell and David Williams. But there is a big difference between regulating and doing major repair work on an instrument. If a traveling regulator tells you your harp needs work and that he can do it, i suggest you get a second opinionor at the very least ask to talk to other people who have had major work done by the regulator. I’ve seen too many ‘repair jobs’ done by unqualified people that I’ve had to redo.
It’s one of the things you should chek on ANY used instrument, cheap or expensive. Look for a shadow line at the bottome of the soundboard showing if and how much the baseboard has slipped down. Look at the seam between the top of the pedestal and the bottom end of the body right where it meets the baseboard to see if there is an opening there. Look into the opening right there with a flashlight to see if there is any torn wood, indicating that the base frame is coming out.
There are other examples of good materials poorly used. The pinblock material that is used to make necks for example(which is made up of layers of maple veneer) is very strong in that application because the layers of wood are vertical and the pressure(more than a ton) is straight down. But using that same material for baseframes of pedal harps is a disaster, because the layers are now horizontal and the pressure is still straight down. The wood layers in this application warp and delaminate. But I’m not complaining. I’ve made a great deal of money repairing this problem! I’m the one who invented the baseframe repair and not one of my baseframe repairs has ever come apart. Careerwise, I hope the other companies continue to do it the same way.
