A brief interview with Kathleen about this project:

QUESTION: What were your goals in taking this course and what were the “Aha’s” you came away with for yourself?

My two big accomplishments in the last several weeks were achieving a measure of independence from always reading the music and the freedom to feel okay about performing at my level.

The big “Aha!” was to internalize the concepts of the shape of the melody, to add a sense of stability with a simple repetitive base, and to know that even if I get lost, I can get back to familiar ground.

My medley is cut off at the end in the effort to meet the 3.5 minute limitation. With all of the room and opportunity for improvement, it will be fun to redo the video in another few weeks for my own comparison.

DHC says:  

It’s been so fun and inspiring to see you just jump right in to this course – I think you have the tiniest harp anyone’s using in the course, it has a lovely sound, and it’s wonderful to see you creating real music and real medleys with it.  It’s been so fun to see you grow and develop and take chances in this course!

What was this project all about?  What were the Guidelines?  The project description was to take 3 contrasting tunes and create a medley no more than 3.5 minutes using techniques from the course, like introductions, melodic improvising, embellishing, turnaround endings and modulating from key to key. (If you’re not a musician, you’ll know when they’re modulating when you see them reach up to shift the levers, which change the harp into a new key).

One of the core principles of the course is “Imperfect Completion” so each of the “Final Projects” is really a “Beginning Project.”