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So creative! I have nothing on that but once I played a wedding where there were all these peacocks, quite beautiful until they started making this horrid cawing sound that is apparently how they sound. The ringbearer was a really little boy who was also really shy so he got halfway down the long grass area toward the aisle and turned around and ran crying and screaming back to where I was playing. Have no idea how the rings actually got down to the bride and groom but it wasn’t with the ringbearer.
Great question. All the major schools have many successful female students and are good. Always it seems to me Renie’s method book and technique are good for smaller hands and bodies but Grandjany was her student.
If you’re really worried about this, best thing to do is not worry about the school and instead find a teacher with a similar physical size to you and make sure the teacher plays the way you want to play. If you like hearing her play and want to play like her and she has a body like yours then you will get a lot out of that.
All the same many harpists study with people larger or smaller than themselves and turn out fine.
Mr. S,
You need to contact Dominique Piana. She specializes in great editions of classical pieces, some European and some American. She also has some terrific recordings she has made with really nice tone.
These postings are right we do have lingo about music and instruments. But there’s also lingo about being a musician and having gigs and regulations and jazz playing being smokin’ or microphones being hot or about passages being “noodle-y” and things swinging, etc.
And if you are having trouble finding the pop repertoire you need see if the student has someone else who likes a special song. My mom always loved some older pop songs that I didn’t know but I learned them because she liked them and it was good for me because I got reinforcement by being able to play something someone else really wanted to hear.
If it helps any natural finish doesn’t show nicks and scratches as much as the darker finish does, not that you’d ever scratch it or nick it.
Since you transcribed those Brahms pieces you probably have no problem adapting piano music for harp but if you want arrangements for harp then the ones above are good and they are by Paul Baker. He has others too some are older and some are more contemporary and you can just search his name at http://www.harp.com so they all come up. I’ve had a couple students with this kind of issue so I try all kinds of things that are interesting for them. Sometimes contemporary pop music works well if it’s not too hard for them and also sometimes music from commercials too. Remember the airline commercial with Rhapsody in Blue? That is a great one if the student recognizes it or the Ravel Pavane for a Dead Spanish Princess. One student really liked contemporary Christian music and got excited about arranging her own solos for church from piano music and she kinda got more interested in standard harp literature after that because she had a better understanding of the choices the composer made. Students are all different but a lot of the time they lose interest because it becomes work and not fun because they aren’t sure they can really do it. Anything that shows them they can will peak their interest. You could take a pop song and get them playing a left hand or right hand alberti bass figure. Then get them to put the melody in there. Maybe you write it all out, so they don’t have to find it on their own, but the key is they get excited at trying and accomplishing this thing that seems hard but is easy enough to do
Yumiko Endo-Schalffer is very good. I heard her in Chicago once. She is also very nice. You can see by her performances on her website that she is very qualified by what she does and not just what she claims she can do.
Yumiko Endo-Schalffer is very good. I heard her in Chicago once. She is also very nice. You can see by her performances on her website that she is very qualified by what she does and not just what she claims she can do.
David that’s the funniest post yet. Can’t believe you screamed out loud too. Can you put that in one of your harpywood clips?
I met Laura Porter a couple times and she seems to be on the ball about things so I would think you should take her suggestions. The most important thing is to have a lesson with the teachers and to talk to students who have worked with the teachers for a long time. Most teachers are great but some aren’t and it’s not easy to tell from a first meeting. Students who studied with the teacher at different times can tell you if the teacher was truly helpful or not and be sure to look at what the teacher’s students are doing now compared to what your daughter wants to be doing so you can be sure the teacher is trying to help the students accomplish their goals.
