• Victoria Johnson

    Member
    3 March, 2021 at 3:21 am

    Hi Pam! I am from Vancouver, Canada. I played the piano for 7 or so years when I was young, quitted piano at the earliest available opportunity for a bundle of reasons, and then started playing the harp 2 and some years ago casually. I agree with your observations on the advantage of knowing how to read music and understanding key signatures and counting rhythm; I think those really gave me a head start when came to harp playing. I did find myself wanting to run before I could walk through because of that! I took two lessons with a teacher soon after I got the harp to work on my postures and some simple techniques (so I could properly help daughter who was the first in the family to learn the harp with her harp practice). I was able to move onto more difficult pieces on my own after the two lessons, but I plateaued after a year or so. I have been taking lessons since April 2020 and that really helped me progress with harp playing. My big gap between learning the piano and learning the harp probably worked in my advantage because I forgot so much about the physicality of playing the piano that I did not carry a piano baggage with me into harp playing. I was quite reluctant to learn classical music on the harp because I did not have a good experience with my classical piano training, although my teacher had successfully convinced me that playing classical music on the harp could be a lot of fun so I am playing classic pieces as well as other music on the harp. I have a more diverse repertoire of harp music than piano music which is very exciting!