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Hi Gayle, thank you for your words of encouragement. It has been an amazing journey for me on the harp. I have all sizes of harps now, they are my refuge and my life. As for my pedal harp, I immediately realized I had made the wrong decision because of the pedal and neck spacing, but I also realized that the music I wanted to play required more strings. There was a physical soundboard problem with the petite so we traded it in on warranty and upgraded to a full size 85. Within a year the 85 also had to go back to the factory on warranty and the problem was severe enough they gave me the option of building me a whole new harp or trading up to another harp. By that time I was doing well enough on the harp, better than I ever dreamed, so we took that opportunity to upgrade to a 23. My teacher went back to Chicago and played all the walnut 23s they had there and picked one out for me as financially that was a huge leap and commitment for us and this harp was going to be with me the rest of my life. So I now have a walnut Lyon & Healy Style 23 with a gold crown. She is the most beautiful harp I have ever seen or ever heard. I am so very grateful.
Mel, you have hit the nail right on the head for me. I keep waiting for learning the harp to get easier and have been somewhat depressed that it seems to get harder and harder, and then I read your post and I realized the truth in what you say. Staying at the top level of what you have achieved, and then going a bit higher, that is where one experiences the difficulty. Wow, wow, wow. That is so true. And then you used the example of what you are learning now and how it was difficult just like when you did Fun From the First when you did that. Wow, wow. wow. I honestly have never taken the time to look at it this way and what you say is so true. Thanks for helping me see all of this in perspective. I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted off me.
Gayle, I’m not a pro, but I know from having bought a pedal harp in my later years that one thing to make sure of is that you’re comfortable with the pedal spacing. I originally bought a petite harp but the pedals were too close together for my feet.
Also, I found out some of the petite models are too small in the neck for me and I couldn’t get my fingers inside to play the upper strings very well. If you are a petite person then none of this would be a problem, but I was and am recovering from a stroke and these details ended up being a big deal for me and as a result I now have a larger harp which solved these concerns. It was a long process, but I do wish I had known about the pedal and neck spacing issues before I took the plunge, or wish that someone would have mentioned them to me. It’s hard to really test these things when you are a newbie and don’t know what questions to ask, which I was. Hope this helps a bit on your harp hunt. A pedal harp is wondrous instrument, very much to be cherished.
Thank you, Liam, for your heartfelt and thoughtful words, I am very touched, and I think you express the experience a lot of us are going through. I am so very honored to be on this journey with you!
Just noticed the Harp Center is out of stock of Kathryn Cater’s bug book (“Singing Wings”), but it is put out by Afghan Press so can be found there. Enjoyed reading the Harp Center reviews. My teacher even mentioned “Monarch Wings.” I think all his students learn that one now! All her pieces are charming though. Here’s my teacher’s review…
“This is a wonderul book for teaching beginning harpers! The pieces have
basic shapes and patterns that will be of great value to the student in
many other pieces as well. They are well written, interesting short
pieces that are not all that hard to conquer and learn. “Monarch Wings”
is a favorite with its root position arpeggiated triads and a right
thumb melody. Kids love these pieces. Adult students love them, too!”For beginning skills my favorites were the horse book, the cat & dog book, the bug book, and the bird book by Kathryn Cater (a number of us late bloomers all started with her books — she is amazing, lots of skills nestled inside sweet harp pieces — after you’ve learned each piece you have a new harp skill and a lovely piece for your repertoire). Can’t remember the exact titles as I am so used to calling them by our pet names for them, but they can be found at Sylvia Wood’s Harp Center online…
First piece I played in public was “Monarch Wings” from her bug book. Great little study in blocked chords and downward arpeggios. Very harpy.
From there I went to the Sam Milligan Medieval to Modern Vol II. Also, Mary Lloyds books (Open Door, Unknown Paths) at Afghan Press. I play a number of her pieces now at City of Hope.
Liam, I would be very touched and honored for a poem. Curious, too, of what these words have sparkled inside you. Thanks for making me smile.
Hi Gayle, this year I’ll be in my 60’s and I started playing the harp a couple years ago as therapy after a debilitating stroke. I play both the pedal harp and the lever harp. I love my pedal harp as I can hug it and feel its vibration along the whole length of my body. Because of the pedals it has given me good physical therapy, retraining both my feet and hands. I had absolutely no idea when I started to learn to play the harp where it would lead me. My teacher doesn’t let me get too ‘busy’ on the harp. Whenever I get too caught up in the notes he leans over and plays ONE note, and that gets my attention. When he plays that one note it is the most beautiful sounding and most graceful movement in the world. He never lets me forget that the harp is a journey of the soul. Each note counts. Each note by itself is lovely and should be cherished. Just last week I was depressed that I didn’t think I could play very many things and he stopped me and made me look at what I’ve accomplished in the last couple of years. I’ve been very focused on things that I love on the harp. I haven’t done much, but I have done things that I love. There is a lot of good advice people have written here already. All I can add is to cherish the journey one note at a time. If there is any music that speaks to you that you want to someday play ask your teacher to help get you there. Sometimes for me it is just snippets of pieces I want to learn (I think this is how I have gotten so involved in arranging for harp now). So it is a process and the more you follow what you love about playing the harp, the more clear your path will become, and the more in love you will be with your instrument every day.
The English Regency period is listed as 1811 – 1820 (extended to include 1795-1837), so composers during and before that time would be played. I’m guessing Bochsa, Spohr, Dussek for a start (all were involved with/married to harpists), plus other composers like Mozart who died a decade before then. Naderman’s Harp Company was big then, so Naderman for sure plus his single action harps, like the one from 1797 that keeps popping up in historic references, i.e. Spohr’s wife who had trouble moving from it to Erard’s double action harp (which appeared in 1811 from his English patent of 1810).
I am glad someone has mentioned Hasselmans “La
Source” as it is one of my favorite pieces of harp music and was the
first “big” piece I memorized. I think I shall spend the rest
of my harp life trying to play each note perfectly, which means I don’t
play it very fast.The foregoing reminds me of something that happened when I
was warming up with it before my lesson at the harp center one day. A
well-known professional harpist who was in the store commented to me
after I was done that she had had to learn “La Source” in university and just
couldn’t get into it and like it because (and this is a direct quote)Ooops, I thought I’d looked for an Etude thread but somehow missed it. So I have copied my experience into this thread. My questions are a lot like Carl’s except I am approaching it from the student’s point of view, so I’ve left them in. I want to thank Trayce for the info that four of the Labarre etudes were at one time on a UK exam syllabus.
The only thing I want to add at the moment is that my teacher has me play them deliberately and slow, concentrating on tone. He is such a perfectionist. If just one finger is off volume or tone-wise he has me work on it until it is brought into line with all the others. Picky, picky, picky, but that’s why I pay him the big bucks.
My earlier post on another thread…
***********
In response to Carl’s wonderful article about
etudes in the current issue of Harp Column magazineThis is a very timely thread for me personally. First, my favorite pop, classical, and healing harp player is Paul Baker. He does it all: classically trained by Lynne Palmer, numerous published pedal harp pop pieces, yet his recordings are healing harp improvisations on the lever harp, blending all styles into something magical. Now if we can just get him to record his pop pieces!!
This thread is timely in that the week before Thanksgiving I attended a free, open to the public, Rhythm workshop put on by our local AHS chapter at Sylvia’s harp center. The workshop was presided over by Paul (our chapter president) and given by Ellie Choate. There were ten attendees. I was one of them. Two of the other attendees were Carol Robbins and Stella Castellucci.
The workshop was wonderful and covered rhythm in all aspects of the harp from classical to folk to pop and jazz. It was all about finding the ‘beat’ with your body instead of having to always count and use a metronome. I had a personal breakthrough in that workshop as I realized that one thing that draws me to certain harpists (folk, classical, jazz, pop, or otherwise) is the inherent beauty in how they play live and it all has to do with the whole rhythm of their body, exactly what the workshop was about. All genres were covered with all kinds of examples. Very exciting and educational for a beginning-in-the-middler like me.
What ties that workshop to this thread is the amazing harpists that were there, all wanting to learn something. Ancora Imparo (I am still learning) has sort of become my mantra and my hubby bought me a pendant that says that. Being in that workshop with those amazing harpists just underscored that a hundredfold. No matter how good we get we are always still learning. It was an exciting day for me as afterward Stella chatted with me for awhile and I was able to tell her how much I learned from her music and especially her sifting process. Paul Baker’s a master ‘sifter.’ I have so much to learn. I remember hearing him play his arrangement of “The Way You Look Tonight” in concert once and marveling at how lush and full it sounded, but then watching him, and having just memorized the music myself, I realized that he was playing the arrangement ‘as is’ not adding any notes. Wow. In pop you take out notes to make the harp sound more lush. Of course, the mastery is in knowing which notes to take out! There’s the rub!
And having taken lessons from Paul, he is a real stickler for classical technique. Pop and folk have more sliding thumb movement in them, but we always start with Salzedo and Grandjany for fingering and then move on from there depending what the genre of the current project is.
As for the difference between jazz and pop, I think they cross over a lot. Jazz harp seems to have a lot more ‘scatting’ notes to me so that has become a personal difference I use.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to jump into this thread, not knowing what to say or how to say it, so at least now I’ve tried.
Stella’s “sifting” article is still on-line, so here it is…
Stella Castellucci – “Lights and Shadows”
http://www.harpspectrum.org/pedal/castellucci.shtmlCarl, just noticed that you can click on the thumbnails in Photobucket if you need to resize the photos. That’s handy. Haven’t tried it yet, but it’s handy. They have an option to link to message boards, but that format won’t work here. The image box here requires the Direct Link option.
Carl, you have to upload a .jpg photo from your computer into an internet account you have somewhere. There are a couple free sites you can use. I use Tripod. Most folks I know though use Photobucket. They make it pretty easy to upload.
Okay, I just now went and joined Photobucket. They make it REAL easy. After you sign in a box automatically comes up on your album page for you to upload photos and it has a browse button next to it. Click that and you are in your computer. Pick a photo and “open” it and it uploads into Photobucket. A thumbnail of it then shows on your album page with a number of options under it. You want to select the “Direct Link” option which automatically copies the link for pasting into the image box (second icon from the right) on the Harp Column message edit page.
Photobucket’s Help page has a ton of different tutorials you can browse with step by step instructions, so you always have that to fall back on at any time.
Recap:
1. Upload photo to Photobucket
2. Select “Direct Link” under the thumbnail for that photo (that’s the url).
3. Paste that url into the image box on
