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During this Christmas vacation I’ve had the pleasure of having my 12 year old granddaughter stay with us. She saw my Celtic harp in the corner of my music room and asked if she could see it. She had never seen my harp before. Of course I said that she could.
She started touching the strings and playing on them a bit. Her eyes lit up and she asked me to teach her.
So, I sat with her for a bit and we talked about the parts of it and how everything worked. She said that she wanted to learn to play a piece of music for the family Christmas party the next day. This child has never played an instrument in her life! She knows nothing about music. I held my breath and thought, “Oh, boy…what am I going to do now?”My harp looks a bit different, but it’s probably in about the same quality range judging from the tone. This one is okay to play around with for now.
As I said before, if I see that I can learn on this and it answers my questions dealing with aging hands and playing the harp, then I will upgrade. This one will at least give me a springboard. The question of me playing music as I get older isn’t an option, I must be able to play and create music. I’m hopeful that the harp will be an instrument that I can play for the rest of my life.It could possibly be one of the Minstrel harps. It was given to me as a gift and didn’t have a label or have any information pamplets with it. I do know that the sound isn’t all that great, but if I learn well on this one then I will want to upgrade.
I really couldn’t see any reason to burn the tips other than to do what they did.
Kay
Thank you for all of your suggestions and experience.
I did finally get the strings on. I say strings because before I could get back to my project 2 more strings broke, so then I had to replace 3 strings. I got them on, but I can assure you that they aren’t a pretty sight. I had wasted all of the string for the #2 string, so I had to go ahead and use a .028 guitar string until the new strings that I ordered comes in. Then I’ll switch it out.
After I cut the strings at the last, I burned the tipsThank you for your ideas, folks. I really appreciate your responses to my questions.
I think that I’ll try to getMy primary instrument is the classical guitar and the harp is another new found love. I’m finding that it takes a lot of concentration to think of the lower strings being farther away from my face as opposed to the guitar’s lower strings being closer. Somehow it all seems opposite.
I think that as I learn and practice more, it will become more natural. I can’t wait for the day that I feel like the strings of the harp are simply an extension of my fingers and it is just automatic to know how far to stretch for that next string to make a chord or to play the melody.
I play the piano, accordion, organ, flute, recorders, guitar and now I’m learning the harp. I think that learning any musical instrument helps makes it easier to play another.I do see that playing 2 instruments does split that time on each.
My time is always an issue… but playing the harp is something that I
very much want to do, so I’ll make time for it. I just might not spend
as much time on the internet, or cooking supper, or washing clothes, or
vacuuming, or other mundane things.
KayAt age 65, I am just starting with the harp. Although I’m a music teacher and play classical guitar, this seems to an entirely different ball game.
I just received a 29 string Celtic harp for Christmas, so now I’m eager to get started. Can someone point me in the direction of any online sheet music that I can download?Also, do I really need to clip my nails to play the harp? I really hope not, because I need them when I play my classical guitar.
Kay
