Notes from the Harp
Issue #10 September 2008

Welcome to Notes from the Harp!

I can hardly believe it's already time to go back to school. What better time to report on the results of the My Harp's Delight Harpist Survey? Over a hundred of you took the time to fill out the survey, and you are one active group of learners. I'll tell you all about it in this issue's first article.

I'm changing the usual format of the newsletter in this issue so I can include a special feature article where I talk to you about the magical approach to learning music that will transform your ability to play. Read on!

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to any friends or family members who will enjoy it.

View this and other issues of this newsletter on the web with complete color and graphics.

If someone forwarded this issue of Notes from the Harp to you, please subscribe here.

In This Issue:

Article
Results of the Harpist Survey

Special Feature Article
A Magical Approach to Learning Music

Improvisation Starter
White-String Runs

Resources
More Free Sheet Music for Harp

It was great fun to read your surveys, and I love having a much clearer idea of just who I'm writing Notes from the Harp and the My Harp's Delight website for. You're a fascinating bunch, and I thought you'd also enjoy finding out how much you have in common with one another. Here, then, is a snapshot of you, based on the harpist survey.

~ A total of 111 people responded to the survey.

~ Almost 41% of you have been playing less than one year; 26% have played 1 to 3 years; 18% have played 4-8 years; and 15 % have been playing for 9 or more years.

~ 51% of the respondents were 51-75; 28% were 36-50; almost 14% were 21-35; more than 4% were “old enough to know better” (which could, of course, mean you’re just not sayin’); and about 3% were under 20.

~ More than 37% fell in love with the harp when you heard it played by someone else.; about 5% heard a harp CD; 5% stumbled into a harp store; more than 52% say you’ve always wanted to play the harp. (And I know, some of you had other answers, such as I fell in love with it after I built a harp!)

~When asked what kind of music you play or want to play, 69% of the survey respondents chose, “Do I have to choose just one?”; 5% love to play Celtic music; 5% prefer healing/New Age music; fewer than 3% chose Classical and fewer than 2% chose jazz and pop.

~ Almost 52% of the respondents are without a harp teacher; 41% have a teacher; and 6% are looking for one.

~ When asked about your favorite harpists, you gave me an incredible list of names. The most popular choices include Kim Robertson (the favorite by far), Grainne Hambly, Laurie Riley, William Jackson, Deborah Henson-Conant, Frank Voltz, Alfredo Rolando Ortiz, Andreas Vollenweider, and Loreena McKennit. If you are not familiar with any harpists, you will now have a great place to start. (If you would like the complete list of names, reply to this newsletter email with “harpist names request” in the subject line).

~ Not surprisingly, what you love most about playing the harp is its beautiful sound. “It soothes the soul” was the most common response. Others of you loved the joy and peace playing the harp brings to others, the tactile quality of the harp, how it sounds “nice even if I play poorly”, the fact that it’s an unusual instrument, the portability of the harp, the sense of accomplishment at getting the hands to work together, being able to so easily change the key or mode with levers or pedals, and creating your own music.

This comment says it all: “The very act of playing the harp is beautiful. . . . It just feels good to have my arms around that lovely instrument creating pretty sounds, it blesses my family and my friends, I can take it with me, it is just nice to have in my living room, I get to play if just for a few minutes and accomplish something.”

~ There were many things that survey respondents found hard about learning to play the harp. By far the most common issues were hand coordination and learning to read music, especially the bass clef.

Musical frustrations include: learning music theory, learning to play by ear, memorizing music, practicing effectively, learning to improvise, counting and keeping rhythm clean.

Technical frustrations include: keeping the harp in tune, figuring out how to finger the music, learning hand technique, crossing over/under, getting up to speed, feeling stuck on a technical plateau, mastering chords and arpeggios, making lever changes, staying relaxed while playing, playing smoothly, avoiding buzzing, learning tremolo technique, and changing strings.

Practical issues include: finding time (or money), actually seeing what’s on the music (vision), playing in front of other people, lugging the harp around, silencing the inner critic, accepting compliments, self-discipline, finding enough energy (health issues), finding work as a professional musician, learning without a teacher and/or finding a teacher.

~ There were many suggestions for what you’d like to see in the newsletter or on the website. These will keep me busy for at least the next decade . . . though you will find information about many of these topics in back issues of this newsletter or on the site. Don’t forget to check the Tips & Techniques page, the launch-pad for many topics.

General topics requested: finding inspiration, reviews of teaching materials and sheet music, overcoming negative thoughts, performance anxiety, learning without a teacher, tips for teachers, repertoire for hospitals repertoire for hospitals, harp therapy, comparing harp string tension, harp tone changing, harp care, finding the right harp, music career issues, strengthening exercises, and arm, shoulder and other body issues.

Musical topics requested: ornamentation, memorizing, ear training, working from lead sheets, rhythm, the circle of fifths, hand coordination, finding chords & patterns to go with melodies, arranging & composing, dressing up simple music, improvisation, music theory, exercises disguised as tunes, playing with expression, simple tunes, transposing and simple arranging, and changing keys with levers.

Technical topics requested: different fingering styles, exercises for speed/agility, learning difficult passages, replacing the fingers, special effects, avoiding buzzing, correcting timing, crossing hands, where to start, online video lessons.

~ And finally, there were your comments. It was a treat to find out more about you, your goals, and what you find most helpful. Many of you wrote very encouraging words about Notes from the Harp and the My Harp’s Delight website. I am deeply grateful that you find my efforts so helpful. Thank you to each and every one of you!

While I can’t reach through this computer and teach you how to play the harp, I can talk to you about one strategy that applies to absolutely everything you do to learn music. That strategy can be summed up in one word: PATTERN.

If you’ve read anything at all about how our marvelous brains work, then you know there is a concept called “chunking”. Wikipedia gives several definitions of chunking, the first two of which are highly relevant here:

Chunking (psychology), a short-term memory mechanism and techniques to exploit it

Chunking (writing), a method of splitting content into short, easily scannable elements, especially for web audiences.

Before I presented the survey results, above, I did a lot of chunking with the data. Fortunately, my lovely website service includes a form builder that not only lets me construct a survey, but analyzes the multiple choice questions for me (I did not calculate all those percentages. I’d rather play the harp!). Unfortunately, I had to “crunch” my own data on all the write-in questions.

What I did was take a stream of sentences and group them into like subjects that made sense to me, such as “practical frustrations”, “musical frustrations”, and “technical frustrations.”

I’d like to say that I did that just for you, but in reality it was the only way that I could make sense of such a stream of ideas and thus hope to address your concerns.

Then, I followed the “splitting content” into short elements (paragraph) rule to make it easier to read.

So what does that have to do with playing the harp and learning music? Plenty.

If you were an alien suddenly trying to read English, you’d have to learn the alphabet. Many of you are “suddenly” trying to read and understand a new language, so of course it’s absolutely unavoidable that you need to know those notes, inside and out. That’s what drills are for.

On the other hand, if you have to stop and read each letter . . . D O G . . . .oh, yeah, “dog” . . . that will take much longer than it does for most of us to recognize the word “dog”. Our eyes have seen those little words so many times that we automatically chunk them.

Take a moment now to go see a wonderful graphic demonstration of the difference that chunking makes here. It really will make the concept so obvious to you. I'll wait.

(And by the way, if you'd like to know more about chunking as a memory aid, here's a great site).

If you can’t play with hands together in your current piece, I’m willing to bet that you also can’t tell me a lot about the patterns in one or both hands. How many of these questions can you answer:

How far is it from the left hand pattern in measure one to the left hand pattern in measure 2? Can you place from one to the next without playing? Which chord shapes or inversions are your hands playing? Even if you don’t know them by name, can you tell me how many strings you’re skipping over between fingers?

When both hands are on the harp, how close together are your hands at any given point? Where do the hands play at the same time and where do they take turns?

How many sections does the piece have? Which of them repeat? Which measures repeat entirely or in part?

Do you remember that matching game you played on worksheets in elementary school: find the pictures that are alike? Play that game with phrases or measures or groups of notes. I ask my students to color code so that the identical passages are obvious at a glance.

What time signature are you in? Can you count out at least a full measure before beginning? What are the common rhythmic patterns? (Remember those issues with rhythm? Most of them are about knowing the patterns and being able to clap or tap them).

If you can look at (or listen to or even feel) your music with pattern and chunking in mind, you can solve nearly any issue with your ability to play the harp, from reading to playing smoothly to memorizing. Why "nearly any issue"? Well, there is that little sticky wicket called hand position.

That's where a good harp teacher comes in. As a newsletter writer, I can cheer you on, but I can’t reach through this page and see your hands, let alone adjust them physically (which is what I do in studio lessons). Nor can I mirror what you’re doing back to you, or demonstrate the little changes that will dramatically improve your form, agility and ease (which is what I do in studio and web-based lessons).

Of course you can work on hand position yourself, but as one who did it that way for awhile, I know first hand the frustration of knowing there was a much more effective way to “get around” on the harp and not knowing how to "get it". Or of just not being able to consistently translate that harpist "look and feel" into my own hands. I learned more in my first three months of lessons than in the prior 3 years and really kicked myself, but that's another story . . .

Does this caveat mean that our magic word ~ pattern ~ can't help you with hand position at all? Nope.

Now that I’m a harp teacher myself, I try to give my students images to help them remember what their hands should look and feel like on the harp in between lessons. Whether you have a teacher or not, that’s another way to use pattern to help yourself learn.

For example, with one student I hit on the image of climbing rope. Think about it: you cannot possibly climb a rope with droopy thumbs, and you have to keep opening and closing your fingers around the rope or you will fall. The different is, of course, that you are “climbing” in front of you instead of towards the ceiling. Turns out, this student was an ex gym-teacher, so she immediately “got it”.

So there you have it: the magic key to learning. Whatever your level or experience, your job as a learner and lover of music is to find a way to map what you need to know so that it makes sense to you.

Before you even start a new piece, see how much you can learn about it with just your eyes and a pencil. If you have a piece you already love and you want to memorize it, see how much you can describe or draw or sing or even dance of it without looking at it. (The more learning modes you can use, the better).

Make patterns your friends, and your playing will rocket off of that dreary plateau onto the next level. Try it, and please let me know how it goes!

Are you stuck with improvisation? This is a really fun thing to try. First, make sure your harp is tuned in C. Now, find the lowest group of 3 white strings on your harp; using fingers 3, 2, and 1, place your left hand on those strings. Now place your right hand, using fingers 2 and 1, on the group of two white strings right above your left hand. Got that? Good.

Here's what you're going to do first. Play your left hand. Now play your right hand, but as you play you must replace your left hand on the next group of 3 strings above where your right hand is playing. By the time you play your left hand, your right hand should be replacing on the next 2 strings.

Keep doing this all the way up the harp. Play the last complete group of strings with whichever hand you're on, and immediately replace those fingers.

Now play the same groupings from the top down. Go up; go down. Really enjoy the wave of going "up and down the staircase" using just the white strings.

Okay, when you have gone up and down until you're completely satisfied with how fun and easy it's become, try this:

Switch hands. In other words, use your right hand to play the groups of 3 and your left hand to play the groups of 2. Easy? Good.

Now break out, girl(boy)friend! Play the same sets of notes, with alternating hands, all over the harp, in any order, sometimes together as chords, sometimes not. Do whatever you want, but enjoy the sound of every note and always land those "cookie cutters" of 2 or 3 fingers.

Hey, this (pentatonic) improv is also an exercise . . . aren't I the tricky one? Aim for fluidity, replacing your fingers as a unit, and closing all your fingers. It should feel good!

Here's a nice little collection of free Celtic sheet music from Corinna Hewat, a harper some of you listed as your favorite. Find her goodies here:
Music by Corinna Hewat

Mary Radspinner, owner of Melody's Music and wonderful arranger of Celtic tunes, offers some freebies on the Melody's website, including a fun arrangement of a popular hymn tune.
Mary Radpinner's Free Music

All content by Susan Zevenbergen, Copyright 2008.

If you'd like to forward this e-zine to a friend, please feel free to do so, provided you send it in its entirety.