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I’m not sure if one can order through Amazon alone or if one has to go to this site first. Haven’t been told the exact details.
You can play all kinds of medieval music, with a simple bass line, a drone, or single notes or fifths on the lower strings. They don’t have so much range and are often diatonic. You can also play jigs, reels, and the like, which come by the yard.
It seems clear to me that your expectations and approach to study are what are causing you frustration. Your teachers have been trying to instill a disciplined approach, and to get you to refine your work. You want to play and have fun, and progress through playing. I started out that way. However, it won’t take you very far. It depends how far you want to go, but you might try being more open-minded, and to ask for very detailed instructions on how the teacher wants you to practice and for what goals. What you learn from classical training will totally support and enhance anything you do with folk music. Much of classical music is based on folk music. Ask your teacher to give you such music and show you the connections. Folk music is often based on patterns. Classical will teach you how to play patterns and ones that suit the harp. I think you should give your first teacher another try, or else the second. The harp is not at all easy, it takes a long time. Try committing to five years of study and practicing for an hour a day. You’ll be surprised at where it can get you. I think you are just expecting too much, too soon, with too little effort.
Expression happens naturally when one has control of one’s fingers and of the music. If you teach what the tools of expression are and how to use them, the student will find their way, if you don’t show them.
Tools of expression include: dynamic control, tempo control, evenness of execution thereby allowing for accents, rhythmic control, sense of style, sense of the composer’s intent, music reading and analysis skills. Self-expression is a myth in music. People who express themselves do not express the music, just themselves. Real expression comes from deep within, from the heart, the soul, the spirit. It is released by knowledge. It is inhibited by dwelling too long or being too proud of technical accomplishment. The more the student can relax when playing, be rid of anxiety or self-consciousness, the more the inner music can reveal itself. It is a long process of stripping away the self and ego, over and over and over again until the bare music is exposed. It is a truth-seeking process.
With young harpists, establish evenness, then dynamics, and an awareness of how to achieve dynamics based on actual sound and not intention. In other words, when you play a string, it immediately begins a diminuendo, so you must always crescendo slightly just to maintain a dynamic, and more so to create a crescendo. To control a diminuendo is therefore rather difficult as what you really have to do is a diminishing amount of crescendo on each successive note. You have to learn to listen to all the overtones, all that is happening in the harp and manage that. It comes with time and listening carefully.
This is a very difficult thing to do, that took me years to learn. The first thing to do is to copy the melody out and either the chord symbols or the harmony. If there’s a bass line, include that. You need to use harpistic figures instead of standard piano writing. The Salzedo-Lawrence Art of Modulating is a good guide to that and to improvising. It explains the difference in harp writing. You also have to be prepared to transpose, and sometimes create alternate harmonies. There is also a book by Verlye Mills on pop-music patterns for harp.
Carlos Salzedo’s LP and Jennifer Hoult’s new recording of the same, and John LaMontaine’s Wonder Tidings and Service of Lessons and Carols (featuring Florence Wightman, and Carol Baum).
Schott Ed. 7369
Concierto de Aranjuez
Transcripcion para arpa
fingering by Nicanor Zabaleta
ismn m-001-0763-8
Harp.com number 708210-100
I would also prefer to make my own transcription, as I don’t think NZ or the composer made the best possible choices.
Trills also create excitement, add dissonance, and help emphasize the main note. Thus, a two-handed trill is more exciting, and allows for changes of dynamic. In this case, as I recall, the left hand is already being played by the orchestra, so it can be omitted without consequence.
