I want to share some Final Beginning Projects from students in my Hip Harp Toolkit course that just ended.

It’s a 10-week course that covers the basics of arrangement and the “Final Beginning Project” is a 3-Part medley of contrasting tunes. The goal was to complete the medley by Christmas to share as a Holiday gift for friends and family.

We call the projects “Final Beginning Projects” because one of the most important tenets of the course is to embrace imperfect completion: to share ‘completed’ imperfect work as a commitment to the flow of endings and beginnings — rather than have an endless open of loop of ‘not ready’ or ‘not good enough’ or ‘still working on it.’

The Project Guidelines

The project guidelines were to pick 3 contrasting tunes, arrange them and videotape them using skills they learned in the course. I recommended picking tunes in 3 different keys and to modulate from tune to tune without stopping the music – since modulation was one of the techniques we worked on in the course. They were to create the arrangements themselves, starting from simple melodies, to work at their own technical level of ability and to make the arrangements no longer than 3.5 minutes.

I also asked each person to share answers to five questions about the project. Click on the name links below to see each person’s project and their answers to my questions!

Enjoy!  And Happy Holidays!

• Sally Walstrum
• Claudia Nussbaumer
• Teddy Jones
• Charlotte Smith-Jones
• Margi Miller
• Pat Cloud
• Meredith Hadaway