Portrait of Sidney Butler
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Harp Lessons
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Harpist

Preface to Harp Lessons

Course Learning Objectives

After completing this course, students will be able to
  1. confidently move a harp
  2. tune a harp
  3. replace harp strings
  4. develop harp playing technique
  5. improve music reading and aural skills
  6. begin to explore harp playing as a means of artistic communication.

Required Materials

  1. Suzuki Harp Volume 1 Website
  2. Suzuki Harp Volume 1 CD or mp3s
  3. Electronic tuner
  4. Binder for writing notes and holding sheet music
  5. Pencil
  6. Music Stand
  7. Harp Bench (Example 1 or Example 2)

Article Essay (MTU Students Only)

An essay regarding an article from one of the following publications is required: American Harp Journal, Harp Column, Harp Today. The essay must include a brief summary of the article and a personal reflection of why the article is relevant to your study of the harp. Word count shall be a minimum of 500, up to a maximum of 800. Students must use the periodicals provided by the instructor. That is, they may not use another publication and if they do so, no credit will be awarded.

Practice Videos

You are required to record weekly a short video demonstrating the progress from your personal practice. Videos are to be uploaded to your Google Drive folder by 9:00pm on the day before your lesson. Only submit a single (one) file for each assignment. Practice enough prior to the video, so that no video editing is required. However, if one chooses to take the video in separate files, then one must use software to paste the files together so that a single contiguous file is submitted per assignment. Videos are to be titled in the following format "mmddyy_assignment.mp4." If your file is large (above 150MB), compress the file to facilitate uploading and downloading. An example of a website that compresses video files is Video Compressor.

Short Responses

Using complete sentences, respond to the following after watching this video:

  1. Describe the two systems of thinking (Gun and Drew).
  2. Describe an activity (not mentioned in the video) that you do using the "Gun" system of thinking.
  3. Describe an activity (not mentioned in the video) that you do using the "Drew" system of thinking.
  4. Describe an activity (not mentioned in the video) that you have transferred from first a "Drew" system of thinking to a "Gun" system of thinking.
  5. What did you have to do to transfer that task from one system of thinking to the other?
  6. Comment on the effort it takes for a ______ to transfer a task and how that effort can be accomplished.
    1. child
    2. teenager
    3. adult

Using complete sentences, respond to the following after watching this video:

  1. Describe three types of harp.
  2. Which kind of harp did you find most interesting and why?
  3. Is the harp a reflection of the culture in which it developed? If so, describe how and if not, explain why not.