My Winter 2016 online course for harpists, “Blues HarpStyle” recently ended.

In this session of Blues HarpStyle, 11 of the students in the course created Blues videos to complete the course.  There is a link each of these student videos at the bottom of THIS page. 

Here’s a collage of all the people in the videos. (Note – while it looks like you can click on these images and get to their videos, you can’t – but if you scroll down below, you’ll see a list of everyone’s project with a link to each one)

Each video in the blog series represents the beginning of a player’s Blues Journey after 6 weeks of learning the rudiments of Blues on the harp.

We call these Final BEGINNING Projects because I tell the students to focus on imperfect completion as a way to end one phase of learning and begin the next, rather than sliding into an endless pattern of trying to perfect something.

Each Final BEGINNING Project is based on the 12-bar Blues. If they don’t all sound like what you think of as ‘Blues’ that’s because they’re not meant to conform to tradition – but to take a traditional form and use to it explore an idea or a story- or just have fun.

Each video is under 2.5 minutes long – many as short as 90 seconds, and I encouraged students, when creating their Final-Beginning Projects, to make the songs about something. 

So you’ll see a “Never Wanna Be There Again” by Veronica Kent, a “Stop & Start Blues” by Melissa Gallant, Meredith Hadaway in “My Cat Knocks Over the Perfume, “A Tribute” from Margi Miller, “Living Alone, Surrounded by Angels” by Jan Hirsch, the “I Don’t Know Yet Blues” by Paulette Miller, the “Journey of Life” by Jane Hawley, and several untitled pieces.

And each player answered 5 questions about their process.  I hope these insights will help readers to experiment and embrace the bravery of sharing something new and imperfect yourself.

I hope you’ll enjoy the chance to see the beginning of someone’s journey.

Then go out and do something silly or beautiful or experimental or brave … and perfectly imperfect … and experience what it’s like to create a beginning for yourself.

Here are the project video links!

We’ll be adding these links over the next few days – so if they aren’t all here yet, please check back later!

1.  HADAWAY, MEREDITH – My Cat Knocks Over the Perfume
   
2.  MILLER, MARGI – A Tribute
3.  HIRSCH, JAN – Living Alone, Surrounded by Angels
4.  MILLER, PAULETTE – I Don’t Know Yet Blues
5. GALLANT, MELISSA – Stop & Start Blues
6.  HAWLEY, JANE – Journey of Life
   
7. KENT, VERONICA – Never Wanna Be There Again
8.  LEVIN, CAROL – No Blues Video Here
9.  LATO, MAYA – Final Beginning Project
10.  Verhülsdonk, BETTINA – Final Beginning Project
11.  COURSEN, ALEXANDRA – Final Beginning Project