Confessions of a lever harp player

I am a late-starter harp player!

At 55 years of age I spontaneously bought a small harp with a huge sound from a craft shop. I just could not resist, even though I never had any desire for a harp before I saw that one. For a year I tried to teach myself from Sylvia Wood’s book for beginners but when I came to the chapter that introduces the bass clef I just gave up. I could not get my head around a second row of notes, different from the one above. OMG.

I had the harp sitting there for five years, not touching it and feeling rather silly about it all.

Then COVID came upon us and all of a sudden loads of online courses appeared. I searched ‘harp’ and found a excellent teacher in America. Doing her beginners courses turned the whole Gestalt around for me. I was having fun, improved my playing and got my mind to accept two rows of notes.

That’s now three and half years ago and I can tell you, progress is at SNAIL PACE, very very slow and hard to come by. But i enjoy it more than ever. I got myself a bigger harp with a more gorgeous sound and more strings and I am at it every day, pretty much. It does my brain a-world-a-good. I feel I might not ever get to the stage where I can easily perform some longer, harder pieces, but hey, who cares, my mind and my heart both benefit greatly.

It was around that time that I came across Josh Layne at the online Somerset Celtic Harp Festival. I checked out his harp Tuesday series and I realised what a treasure these episodes are. He is so generous with his time and energy and has been doing them now for fourteen years. Wow - that’s impressive in my book.

I still teach myself apart from the odd lesson and it seems to be working. The pieces that I play are mostly at a slower pace, no fancy and racing Irish reels for me, but melodious and sedate tunes work well.

Its never too late to have a brilliant harp playing career…