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This is great feedback, thank you. I guess I should do the opposite. Use my 34 for school/travel and ‘upgrade’ to a larger harp for home. I’m going to need a second job to support my harp habit 😉
Lever changes… ugh. I’m working on Bach’s Minuet in G and Damselfly. I’ve played piano for 40 years, oboe, flute, trombone, recorders, sung high-Es in crazy coloratura passages, but harp hurts my brain and causes panic like nothing else I’ve ever played. But I love it.
I’ve been playing for 1 year on a Ravenna 34, which I love. I have BMus/MMus opera and music Ed, and years of piano, I teach elementary school music. This is by far the hardest instrument I have ever learned. I’ve also played flute, recorders, oboe, trombone, Gamelan ensemble. I noodled a bit on my own with YouTube and some books, but without a live teacher I wouldn’t have learned the ‘thinking ahead and placing ahead’ techniques that are so necessary or proper playing techniques. Even Skype lessons to check in would be better than trying to unlearn bad self-taught habits later on. I started with a Betty Paret book called First Harp Book. My teacher didn’t know it, but found the sequencing mostly logical. Some Sylvia Woods folk music books are good because they usually offer 2 levels of each song. Suzuki method books seem ok too, you can buy them as digital copies online too. After 1 year I’m now working on songs from the Royal Conservatory (Toronto) Grade 4 list. I’m not a very diligent practicer though, something I’m working on. I find harp extremely mentally taxing, and some days I just can’t. Memorizing my music is something new to me, and the sense of panic just trying to map my fingers even though I know C is red and F is blue. I have to do lots of glacially-slow practice to choreograph what each finger is doing and when, and where my eyes should be looking. It really is nothing like piano except that they both have strings. I think I would have outgrown a 26 string harp in the first 3 months, better to go 34 or bigger, you’ll need it.
