Charlie the Kitten

I found this brilliant teaching book for beginners whilst browsing through the sheet music at that treasure trove of a harp shop in Paris, Le Magasin de la Harpe.

Play the Harp with Charlie the Kitten by Isabelle Frouvelle

I've been using it for the past year for teaching my (very young) students and it's perfectly paced, with a good balance of music theory, little tunes and cartoons.

Each chapter section introduces one technical idea at a time in a progressive way, with a couple of preparatory exercises and then a little tune with fun titles like Charlie goes to School, Charlie goes for a bike ride, A Flea in Charlie's coat etc.

For when little minds start to wander, you can talk about the cartoons on the page as Charlie has lots of different adventures as well little 'spot the difference' cartoons. You can very easily just work through the book in page order, but after about 30 pages in you can start to incorporate into the lessons the duets as well as the more in depth theory and exercises at the back of the book.

For teaching regular weekly half hour lessons, you can cover technique as well as music theory in an engaging way without "boring" the student, or indeed them even knowing that they are doing so. It's an excellent book for teaching young students. Also an added bonus is that you can work from just the one book for some considerable period of time, so students only need to remember to bring one book with them to lessons!

Interestingly enough I've used this book teaching young girls as well as boys, and it has worked well with both genders. Sometimes harp books for young players can be very "girly" with 'twinkly' titles, but this book appeals to both boys and girls.

It comes in various European languages, so make sure you buy the book in the English language version. I haven't found it in music shops in England yet, but it's very quick and easy to order online from the shop in Paris here.

Highly recommended!

the genius of Harpo

Harpo Marx from the 1946 film A Night in Casablanca.

He's such a brilliant harpist and he makes it all look so effortless. The sound quality is a bit hissy, but overall not too bad on this clip and doesn't detract from his amazing harp playing.

They used to show Marx brother films on TV a lot when I was a kid. I loved the way he always use to fashion a comedy harp out of whatever prop came to hand in the film.

scroll to 5:32 in clip below

 

I remember my very first (elderly!) harp teacher saying that she saw him play live at the London Palladium in the late 1940's and that he played 'straight' (no comedy) harp solos and was AMAZING.

He was completely bonkers in his films, but he had such a lovely gentle humour whenever he played the harp. The scene with the multiple harps in the mirrors always stuck in my memory banks from watching his movies as a child.

What's not to love about Harpo?

A lovely website all about Harpo set up by his son here

X marks the spot

Hidden treasure??

No - just a handy guide for teaching good articulation and finger position.

I ask my students to touch the two crosses when they play, so that they get a full finger articulation. One cross on the index finger for a full thumb articulation, and the cross on the palm is just a general reminder to pull their fingers right into their palm.

The lines on the fingers are an extra guide to act as a reminder for correct placement of finger on the string.... i.e. line up the harp string with the lines on the fingertips.

I also use an orange as a teaching aid.... I'll leave that as a teaser for another post!

Shrek Finger

Apologies if you have just eaten, in which case it's probably not a good idea to look at this photo...... which is how my left hand 4th finger looked 6 weeks ago!

As well as swelling to twice it's usual size, the heavy bruising eventually went down after about 4 weeks, but it still hurt like hell and my knuckle now is definitely not the shape it used to be. (I'll never be able to get a ring over my knuckle again!)

Although I had movement in it, there was no strength in it - I could just about pluck a string on my little clarsach but it couldn't cope with the tension of my Salvi.

Needless to say, I've had a pretty stressful time ever since it got busted going through all sorts of emotions whilst waiting to see if my finger would ever get better.

I've spent the last 6 weeks not playing on it all, despite having gigs in the diary which I couldn't cancel. This past week though I have finally started tentatively playing on it again, although it's still not yet back to full strength. But at least I know now that it works.

Luckily, it happened just after a big run of work whilst I had 5 days off, during which time my finger went through all the colours of the rainbow. It was a lovely vivid green when I had some children's concerts which I had to explain away to the kids as my Shrek finger. I managed to somehow get through 2 flute and harp recitals, and have just finished doing 4 performances of Berlioz Symphony Fantastique with the RLPO.

The big solo scale down in the Berlioz was the first time I've used my fourth finger since it happened, but I still had to do all the left hand octaves using my third finger and thumb. Not ideal.. But I have some time off now from playing, so a chance to rest it properly for a couple of days and then build up the strength doing some slow technical exercises.

Extreme harping

That's got to be one hell of a harp trolley she's got there to get the harp over those rocks.....

Great music from Quadro Nuevo, and brilliant harp playing from Evelyn Huber in this European tango quartet, which has (quite rightly), a seriously busy concert schedule.

But enquiring minds want to know, how did they get the harp there? Even off-loading it from a boat it makes the mind boggle. This has to be a record for the most extreme place to get a harp.

Any takers for a more whacky place to play a harp?

bad gliss notation 2

Following on from an earlier post about bad glisses, here is another gem I found on my music stand a while back that I had to sightread.

(double click on image for a closer view.....)

@$#&!

Gliss Fest

A day off for me today, and a chance for my fingers to recover!

I've just spent the last two days rehearsing and playing in a concert with the RLPO consisting solely of music by legendary film composer, John Williams.

Great music, and great harp writing. Fun to play, but - a very hard slog to play a whole programme of his music, and with some very tricky passages of harp writing thrown in too.... Close Encounters symphonic suite, Schindlers List, ET and then of course there are loads of glisses, and loads of different types of glisses.

Who knew there were so many?

Scary glisses - low circular gliss on the bass wires at the beginning of Jaws.

Spooky glisses - Harry Potter

Irregular big solo glisses - my least favourite, as you need to keep counting like mad to stay in the right place in the score but still play a gliss that is not in tempo - ET

And then you have everything in between. Slushy romantic glisses - Superman, to big strident glisses - Raiders of the Lost Ark. Making sure that they don't all sound the same, but are in the right character, right key and the right place.

Hats off to the Hollywood harpists who do this sort of thing all the time!

I'm pooped and having a day off from playing before doing it all again on a repeat concert in Liverpool on Saturday.

trio42

I should be doing my accounts right now, but instead just found this great YouTube video of dutch harpist Remy van Kesteren's trio42 playing César Franck - Trio op 1, no 1, Andante con Moto

Brilliantly arranged and played music for harp, saxophone & violin.

Can't wait to get the CD!

I think the easiest way to get hold of it is to download it from CDBaby here

Practice timetables for young students

A new year, a new start. This week it's all been about practice timetables with my students.

I'm a big fan of less and more often, rather than a big splurge of practice a day before a lesson.

I find with many of the young people I teach, harp is just one of many instruments and extra-curricular things that they learn. It's genuinely a bit of a nightmare trying to fit practice in with everything else they do.

Once someone has "the bug" then you'll never be able to get them off of whatever they are doing. My son has the music bug, and can be playing his bass all day if he didn't have to go to school.

But how many people ever really get "the bug?"

So, until then - practice timetables.

I recommend 3 practice sessions a week, plus a harp lesson, and 4 practice sessions a week if there is no harp lesson that week.

A practice session is 20 minutes and consists of

• 5 minutes warm up exercises / scales / arpeggios
• 10 minutes work set by teacher
• 5 minutes FUN! This can be anything: improvising, trying out different sound effects, playing through some pop songs, or just playing through some solo pieces previous learnt. Whatever is found to be fun by the student, and is not set by the teacher.

This can be scaled up into longer practicing sessions but it should remain near enough in the same time proportions and order.

Exercises, scales and work set by the teacher are easy to do when practicing but it's the "fun" stuff that can sometimes can be left out of daily practice.

Why do people want to learn an instrument? Because they want to have fun.

Fun = Enjoyment = wanting to play / self motivation, and it's that self-motivation that will lead to improvement.

20 minutes may not seem a lot of time to recommend, but it's do-able to fit into a young person's schedule and won't frighten them off from practicing more regularly. Personally I think it's better than that quick burst of practice the day before the next lesson!

And you never know, they might get the bug.......

summing up

Well, how was 2011 for you?

I've found it a pretty interesting year harp work wise, not quite as doom and gloom as I thought it would be at the beginning of 2011..... Lots of very last minute work came in, and I continue to do as many different different harp projects as possible in a bid to continue making an income from being a musician. Fingers crossed it doesn't all go pear shaped in 2012!!!

After my rant about the price of petrol in a previous post, my brother-in-law did some calculations for me and worked out I would be saving a massive £250 a month if I bought a diesel estate car. So I'm going to do something creative with my finances and try and raise some money to get a new car asap.

I've got a tour coming up starting mid January with Katherine Jenkins and I must get a new car sorted before then, otherwise I won't be able to afford to pay the petrol bills for all the travelling.

So far the most economical MPG estate car that I have found is a Skoda Octavia, but I don't think I'll find a cheap enough one second hand. My Volvo does only 24.9 MPG so quite frankly anything diesel with 4 wheels is probably going to be cheaper to run.

At least I don't have to find a car to transport this harp (-;

Double chromatic harp, ca. 1890

Here's to good health and cheaper petrol in 2012!