I love playing my harp and I wanted to share just a little more about my harp journey. I’ve been playing since March of this year. When I made the decision to play I didn’t realize how much I would really love playing. That doesn’t mean that my journey thus far has been effortless. I did come into it with the advantage of being able to read music and having experience playing and performing on other instruments. I’ve never really been aware that this was a gift and privilege to have learned music at such an early age and continued it throughout my adult life. I’ve come across many new harpists that didn’t have that background and are struggling.
The other advantage I’ve had is that I’m not particularly avoidant or fearful about playing in public. I’m more nervous playing the harp than I am the piano, or singing. It requires a lot more focus when playing harp just because it is new. Therefore, distractions during a performance have a bigger impact on me.
This Christmas season I have a lot of opportunities to play publicly, at church and at Eastern Star meetings. Whenever I play people are just thrilled to get to hear a harp, even if I’m not playing anything particularly stunning. I’m still working on beginner to advanced beginner music so hopefully by next year I’ll be able to play something more elaborate. But even these beginner pieces are fun to play and people seem to like them.
Here is a piece, not Christmas, that I recorded recently. Is it perfect? No. Did I love doing it? Yes.
If you have ever wanted to play the harp – Go For It. I’ve been using both a local teacher for hands-on corrections and online instruction at www.learningtheharp.com. The instructors there are wonderful and I very much enjoy the harp community they have created. I really value all of the encouragement they have given and the constructive feedback.