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What Kay said. But let me emphasize, SLOW.
Practice as slow as you need to in order to play correctly each time. Then gradually increase speed, giving yourself time to get to a point after each increase where you can play without error.
Gradual increases with time to get used to them will get you there. Not fast, but you will get there and it isn’t a race.
Generally yes. Pianists, like harpists, run the gamut from graceful gestures to wild gyrations with their hands.
However from what I know, raising and gestures is fairly unique on the harp world to the Salzedo method. That Salzedo was an equally accomplished pianists probably has something to do with his incorporating it into his harp technique.
As a Salzedo player myself, who’s teacher was a student of Salzedo and Lawrence, I was never taught AWAY. On the contrary, I was taught to keep relatively close to the strings when doing a raise (just far away enough not to risk buzzing). Raises and gestures were controlled, graceful, and specially placed based on the phrasing of the music (written into the sheet music).
Regardless of how necessary or what the physics of it is, even if it is just mental, it is part of a particular technique and many of us feel we sound and perform better when we do it. Most likely simply because it was so ingrained in our playing that to not do it feels awkward.
But in the Salzedo method it shouldn’t be wild, distracting, or detrimental the tone or musicality of what you are playing. In fact more often than not people tell me I look as good as I sound when I play.
I’m not suggesting that you should or need to use raising or gestures. But I do think that you weren’t taught them properly from your description.
Yes Sylvia, I get that you are fine with people doing what they want. I am just pointing out that your characterization of raising isn’t accurate.
Someone not familiar with the technique who read your comments would get a completely inaccurate idea of what raising is. That there really are people out there who “throw their arms” up only adds to the problem and give people a negatively skewed and incorrect idea of what the correct technique actually is.
I am simply pointing out that what you described as raising isn’t a correct description and anyone reading your comments shouldn’t take your characterization of “throwing the arms up” as an accurate account of what the correct technique looks like.
Sorry but what composer, writer, painter or other artist isn’t trying to get people to think about deeper stuff or trying to get their views across? That’s the difference between craft and art. Art says something.
If you don’t have something you want to get others to think about you don’t become a serious composer. You just write ad jingles.
People only get upset at artists when they disagree with what the artist has to say, but they all are trying to say something. But it’s not about agreeing. It’s about how effectively the idea is conveyed and how effective it is at getting others to just consider the ideas.
” And why can you not call it harp therapy or music therapy?”
There is no reason I know of that you can’t call hit “harp therapy” as that is a free for all term, but you can’t call it “music therapy” because it is not Music Therapy.
Music Therapy is an accredited degree program with board certification. Without the degree and the board certification you aren’t a music therapist, and calling yourself one is fraud. Like someone without an MD calling themselves a medical doctor or someone without a MA in Social Work and who hasn’t met the criteria for CSW certification calling themselves a Certified Social Worker.
What these harp therapy programs teach is very different from what Music Therapy programs teach. If you want to be a Music Therapist you need to go to an accredited college with a music therapy degree offered where, as part of the degree, you will study not only topics specific to music therapy, but music, psychology, social science, and biology. After completing four year undergraduate degree program you do an internship, and then take the CBMT exam, and if you pass you get your MT-BC certification (Music Therapist – Board Certified). After that you can attain a graduate degree in Music Therapy for more in depth study of the subject.
A harp healing / therapy program is usually about 300 to 350 hours of work including both course work and hands on work combined, and some programs can be done mostly on-line. The certification is not part of any accredited academic program.
There are both electric acoustic and solid body electric harps. What you are describing is a solid body electric harp. No resonating chamber, and individual crystal pickups on each string.
There are several makers who make them. For the main makers they are all good. It’s a matter of which you prefer personally.
Lyon & Healy, Camac, and Kortier are the ones I am most familiar with. Mine is a Camac.
Distortion pedals work well with them, as do most electric guitar effects. However the harp can play more notes at once over a far greater range, and electric harps sustain a lot longer than guitars. It is easy to overdo effects. With electric harps a little can go a long way. They require a bit more restraint, and a very good dampening technique, than when playing electric guitar.
Derek didn’t learn to play until his late 20’s so it wasn’t something he learned as a child. He was originally, primarily, an oboist. To make extra money while a member of the Belfast Symphony Orchestra he took on responsibilities as stage manager. Part of the job required that he keep the harps in repair. He became intrigued by them and started taking lessons.
He went from being a principal oboist to being a principal harpist. Pretty impressive , no?
Derek was a prodigy and unique musician. Most of us have to make do with far more limitations.
The problem with contemporary music isn’t that it’s all bad. It’s that we are looking at it without the filters of time.
It’s easy to say that music of the past was much better, and the stuff today is crap. Just like it is easy to say how wonderful all the movies of the silver age of cinema were so great and how so much of what is made today is trash, or books, or painting, or sculpture…
The thing we forget is that the crap from the past gets forgotten. The music that was really bad wasn’t played again. The movies that were trash never got shown, and now never got transferred to digital formats so they are almost certainly never going to be seen. How many crappy paintings made in the Bohemian days of Paris got tossed in the dumpster for every masterpiece sitting in a museum?
So it’s easy to dismiss contemporary music as trash because a lot of it is. But a lot of it always has been. Only a certain percentage of any art created will survive to the next generation, and that percentage tends to be the cream of the crop.
It’s perfectly legitimate to look at a particular piece of music and say you think it is garbage. But there really isn’t justification to dismiss an entire genre of music just because “most” of it seems like garbage. Most of all art seems like garbage before time has had a chance to refine the selection for us.
Also there is a matter of personal taste. I adore the music of HK Gruber. I had the privilege to see him perform his Frankenstein Suite with the San Francisco Symphony. It was the first time I ever saw anyone walk out of a performance there (just a few, all of the silver haired set). But I found the performance one of the best I had ever seen from the SFS, and I have seen a lot of their performances. And what was apparent was that the symphony was having a blast with the challenge of the piece. I never saw so many members of an orchestra grinning like the Cheshire Cat while performing before. It’s a challenging piece, to listen to as well as to play, but worth the effort.
Once upon a time Debussy was considered by many to be modern trash. Remember, his music was banned from the Paris Conservatory for many years. Stravinsky started a riot with the debut of Rites Of Spring. The simple fact is that those in the midst of something new are in the worst position to evaluate it’s worth or value. Only time and history will do that. One day only the cream of the crop of what is now contemporary music will survive, and a few generations down the line when some new approach to music comes along people will be looking at that subset of surviving pieces from this era and say, “why can’t we make contemporary music that’s as good as they made in the late 20th and early 21st century?”.
Interesting question Tacye. I never really thought about it before. I think I assumed I was always either looking at the music or the strings, but after checking I realize I sometimes look at the column. Not really paying attention to it, but when I am not deliberately looking at something my eyes seem to just rest straight ahead at the column.
As the others said, Derek could get away with it, but most can’t. If it works for someone that is great. I can play fine on a low harp, but it eventually starts to strain my back and I don’t like the feel of it when playing the upper octaves.
I either prop my lever harp on a stool or lower my bench. For the lever harp I am fine with the kneeblock going just slightly above my shoulder, but not to my ear. Having it higher than the shoulder means having the middle octaves higher and closer to me than it would be on my pedal harp, and that throws me off. Having middle C in the same relative position regardless of what harp I am playing has more of an impact on my playing than the height of the kneeblock.
I don’t think you need to start from scratch. Just proceed from here learning intervals and chord shapes.
You may need to adjust how you play from music you already know. Looking at the music and to the strings is just like any other aspect of playing. Just like deciding where to do a lever or pedal change, or where you can pass under or over while playing and where to lift off the strings and replace, you also decide when is the best time to look at the strings (the default should be looking at the music, and looking at the strings should, eventually, be the exception and not the rule).
You plan it. I sometimes even mark it in the music not just so I know when I should be looking at the strings, but also where. Sometimes when you look to the strings you really need to look at the right hand and sometimes the left. Knowing where you want to look before you actually look is more efficient.
But you don’t need to start over. This is part of the learning process for almost everyone. Most people have to learn to not look. The sooner the better, but most of us at one time or another realize we are looking at the strings too much and we just have to put in a little work to correct that.
Good choice. The Livia is a very underapreciated harp. You don’t see all that many people playing them, but I’ve tried a couple out and they are very comfortable to play and have a very pleasing tone in general, and at a reasonable price.
Well done, and enjoy.
When I first started I looked at the strings way too much. But having a teacher to sit by you and say “look at the music” every five seconds is a real help to breaking those bad habits.
Carl’s advice is excellent, and basically what I did to improve. Learn how the intervals feel, and learn how the different kinds of chords feel. Once I realized that any particular kind of chord will have pretty much the same spacing no matter what the root is that helped put it all in perspective. A quick glance to find the root suddenly became all that was necessary to play most chords. Intervals helped greatly in learning to play melody lines without having to look (at least without having to look often).
No, this is not an impossible task.
You are far from too old to learn. Age is only a problem if it has resulted in some physical disability that makes it impossible to pluck the strings. Short of that, any age person can learn. I have known of people in their 70’s, and heard about people in their 80’s, learning to play the harp.
Your lack of prior music experience is not an issue. Everyone starts somewhere. The only way starting later might be a problem is if you had aspiration of becoming a professional concert harp soloist, and even that isn’t impossible, only less likely as you get older. But if you just want to play for your own enjoyment then the only thing that matters is your desire to play, and what ever progress you make is good enough.
The harp is a very hard instrument to play at the higher levels. However one of the nice things about it is that when you start you can pretty much make even the simplest and basic music arrangements sound pretty. Unlike some instruments like the violin or the oboe, with the harp you can make something that sounds pleasant on your very first day. It won’t be Clair De Lune, but still something that won’t drive people out of the room.
Here is the thing. You want to play the harp. You haven’t been interested in playing anything before because you never considered the harp. You have no desire to play any other instrument even if you have one laying around.
That tells me one thing. You need to play the harp. It’s that simple and it is something that perhaps your partner doesn’t understand but that I can assure you everyone on this board does understand. No one plays the harp because they were handed it in elementary school band and told that is what they were going to play. People don’t just fall into playing the harp. Starting out on the harp takes a lot of effort, money, and drive. The majority of people who play the harp play it because they feel they have to. It’s something in side that pushes us to do it.
If you feel that push don’t ignore it and don’t try to sideline it into something else that won’t fill that need in you. It may take a while to save up for a harp.
