This blog is one of a series. Each includes one of the students’ final projects from my online course “Hip Harp Toolkit,” along with  their answers to five questions I asked them to answer. You can goals and “Aha’s” from creating this project?

It actually took a lot of emotional effort for me to submit this, because my playing is at such a beginner level.

However, my original goal was to accompany myself singing. So I decided that I would do at LEAST that much.

I fell in love with the “Skye Boat Song” which has a contrasting style in the verse, and then one of my favorite mini-melodies.

My unexpected challenge was in singing along. I almost never perform sitting. With the sitting posture and my arms reaching forward, I had to concentrate harder on breath support, etc. – even in a voice range that is normally effortless for me! I’m really looking forward to revisiting all of the cool things I learned in this course, and putting them to work as my skill level grows. Thanks DHC!!!

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DHC says: This is such a great example of taking a huge strength you already have: your beautiful voice – and using simple harping skills to give it a platform.  It works wonderfully! And one can only imagine what will develop as you keep combining voice and harp — I can’t wait to hear!

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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.”

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