Happy harping

[jenett]

I think I'm going to see how many days in a row this month I can manage harp playing and practicing. I did about 25 minutes tonight, which is about as much as my shoulder would take, given various aches from last night.

I did various finger exercises (One of the things about harp is that the same structure changes slightly depending on where it is on the harp: for example, a C-E-G-C-G-E-C arpeggio feels slightly different than G-B-D-G-D-B-G does, just because the distance from your body to the strings changes.)

But I started very slowly, with my metronome on 60, and did various exercises, a little sight reading, and then a bit of improving around on the chant "Ancient Mother" on the theory that of all the musical stuff I do, being able to improv on Pagan chants is probably the most useful in practical terms, and besides, that's fun.

Comments

[evaelisabeth.livejournal.com]

You know we really want Kate to learn to play an instrument, does she want to learn piano? drums? bagpipes? no my little girl wants to learn to play a harp. I guess we are in the right country to find a teacher, sigh.

[jenett]

You are! And the nice thing about harps is that there's a lot of variety out there. (Mine is a 29 string with levers, which gives me a bunch of options, without being too huge or too expensive.)

(Also, would you really prefer bagpipes?)

Harp's technically my... 5th instrument? (Recorder briefly, flute, piano, and bassoon before that.) And outside of voice, it's the one I like most because it's the most flexible and adaptable.