[Update] Harp Progress Pt. II
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- čas přidán 10. 07. 2024
- Hello dear ones,
it's time for an update on my harp progress. The last year was very difficult due to various things, but somehow I managed to improve.
I hope you enjoy the video and use your arms more intelligently than I do when practising!
Background track (Intro+Outro): Nocturne by Alphonse Hasselmans - played by Lisa Tannebaum.
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0:00 Intro
02:01 How To: Tendinitis
08:15 After Break - Hudba
truly amazing progress you made in 2-3 years though! :) really inspiration. Thank you for sharing! :)
I just started to learn the harp last year. Thank you for making this inspirational video!
Thank you very much!
I also had a look at your account after seeing a wonderful Guzheng in your profile pic 😍
Wonderful covers and you really play the harp so good already!
Love your content! Seeing how you overcoming the frustration of getting stuck really encourages me to practice more ☺
Awesome video and progress Cara! Keep it up!! It's so inspiring. I really appreciate the sheet music on screen as well. What a nice touch 👏
Aaaaaaaaaaaaw thank you so much Dean :)
Yeah I thought that it is a good idea to put the sheet music in it, at least now you can see what I try to play :D - glad you think so aswell.
And of course I will keep it up!
Those bloopers at the end were defenetly worth it to stop studying chess for the day lol. Cant way for the next update c:
Hahaha, glad you enjoyed it! Thank you! ☺️
Oh man, it really made me sad to watch and listen to the introduction. You are certainly very ambitious and you should be proud of yourself, your talent and musicality. However, by all means, take care of yourself! I am also a very ambitious harp player, I started playing at age 39 (one year ago) and my progress is similar to yours after one year. I had the existential urge to become good really fast to make up for all my "lost years" - I have never accepted the notion that with certain age one should not be able to pursue certain goals. but what I realized very soon is that practicing efficiently is superior to practicing many many hours. Don't mean to say that I am smarter here - if it weren't for the neighbors who would freak out if I would practice more than 2 hours a day, I would definitely not know when to step away from the harp, because i enjoy it so much - practicing as well as playing freely without a certain goal. thank you very much for your honesty. it's really great not only to see someone else progress quickly but also to witness the price that may come with it. Anyway, I am very happy for you and would love it to see more of your videos, I've been enjoying them very much so far. keep up the great work and be gentle with yourself!
ps: I once learned from a professional harp player that you should avoid playing pieces that you aren't technically ready for. i totally ignored her advice since I believed myself to be ready .. after all, I could read all the notes and translate them into finger movement. after a year of practicing pieces way above my level I enjoy playing really easy pieces again - and every time making sure that my technique is good: am I really closing all the way into the hand and relaxing every time? Is my posture good or am I restricting my breath? It might feel like slowing down, but actually it is speeding up my progress. Playing fast may be possible but it's not worth it if in order to play fast you are compromising your technique. :)
@@kuttelei Thousand times: yes yes yes. 100% true! I usually tend to speed up too quickly, but I am working on it to just always take a step back - especially since my injury. Technique > tempo.
Towards your first comment: Thank you so much for taking your time and especially all the nice words you found for my situation. And indeed it was my purpose to show also the "negative side" of my progress - also as a warning for others, cause what I don't want to do is to create this illusion of a perfect harp progress without any obstacles and dangers in my way. And being way too amibitous and hastily , combined with not enough strength and just pure ignorance towards your own body, is definitley not a good way to go! ^^
As you also said: It's just a hobby and I am really not a musician nor do I want to be one professionally. So I should definitley also keep it in time and effort as a hobby and nothing more. :)
P.S.: Ups I forgot, I wish you ofc a lot of fun and HEALTHY progress with your harp too. ^^
@@cara-thebeginnerharpist6974 Are you absolutely sure that it's just a hobby for you? ;) Because everything about you screams "musician": your dedication, your passion, your average practice time, the pieces you choose, the fact that you not only take lessons but also play in an ensemble etc. Of course, you don't make a living with music, but you could easily give lessons for beginners in a few years or play gigs for money, here and then. :)
Back to the injury problem. I am interested: has your harp teacher ever taught you about the importance of warm-up? Because mine has not. She has never brought it up, I learned it from other resources online. Every day, I take the time to warm up my fingers before I start playing. I work with the Salzedo Conditioning exercises. Every day I do my 4-Finger-Arpeggios in different Inversions and I do them REALLY SLOW. It takes 10 Minutes or so and it's totally worth it because it prevents injuries and prepares the body and mind for playing with really good technique. I recommend doing such exercises in between, basically every time before sitting down at the harp for a longer period of time. :-)
@@kuttelei Haha, that's very nice of you: thank you. But the harp remains a hobby and shall never become more. I also have nowhere near as much time to practice since I graduated - my progress will probably slow down. And I also don't want to spend the little bit of free time I still have only on the harp. There are still many other things I want to do - if Corona would finally let me, haha.
Regarding warm-up: Before each practice session I do 20min warm-ups with different fingerings and inversions - depending on which piece is practiced afterwards. I've been doing that since my first lesson - luckily I've always had teachers who paid very close attention to me in terms of technique, posture, warm-up, etc. I really feel very well taken care of in this respect! I really never had any other problems of this nature, I was unfortunately very "stupid" and over-eager for a week and used my right hand for too long with too intense movements. I definitely learned my lesson haha.
You're great and talented😍😍😍
Good work! ❤ im also sharing my progress and journey too
I love that pedal harp it sounds so beautiful it looks so beautiful
Lovely videos I hope you feel much better your doing very well and we all love you 😍 and I hope your having a lovely week stay positive as your very very talented and interesting stay safe and blessed 🙂
Beautiful playing and stunning progress! What type of L&H harp is that?
Keep up the great work 👏👏👏
Thank you very much!
It is a Salvi (!) Daphne 47 Ex in mahagony. 😉
Very good play respect from Albania
You are very talented. Please take good care of your body. Did you play another instrument before learning the harp?
I will try to do so!
I started the harp with absolute 0 musical knowledge, never played an instrument, never had music lessons in school. 😅 Definitley was an adventure to start with 22.
@@cara-thebeginnerharpist6974 amazing!!
Yes
I'm so sorry that you got an injury, in a way it's a warning sign for us harpists, but it's such a shame you had to go through it... 😭I hope your wrist will heal completely and you can practice without it affecting you at all! Just know that you are doing great and keep going little by little 😇 by the way - do you ever plan to study harp professionally or just want to keep it as a hobby?
Thank you 💙
I don't plan to study music in my life, I already hold a Master degree in something completely different. (And even if not, I think 25 is a bit too old for starting a career as a musician 😂). It really is just a hobby - but a very ambitious one haha.
Oooh btw how is your harp playing going?? I think it must be a bit over half a year that you started the harp? 😍
@@cara-thebeginnerharpist6974 ok I see, I think we have very similar approaches to the harp, I also don't plan studying it but I want to become really good at it 😅 and yes you are completely right, I'm at my 7 month right now and maybe I'll post a video when I film a decent one, or maybe I'll wait a lil longer to put out my 1 year progress, I don't know yet 😂 we'll see how it goes 😅
@@emilijabistrovaite2871 We are indeed really similar in our approaches to the harp. And about the video: Aaaaah what a beautiful idea, I'm definitely very excited about that! 🎉
Great progress!! So did you learn to read sheet music too. I'm a beginner harp player (about 3 years and nowhere near as advanced as you-yet) I learnt to read sheet music from scratch but now I can only play with the score. For the life of me I can't remember a tune without having a piece of paper in front of me. How did you learn to play so fast?
Hey, thx for the comment! ☺️ Actually I am incredibly bad at reading sheet music, up until this day. Upper notes okaaaaayish in the middle section with the lines, but esp. bass range is a mystery to me and I have to count which note each is. 😂
I just have a very good muscle memory, so that is how I somehow manage to play pieces. I also tend to be able to mesmerize fingerings very well, so that helps in overall with my lack in reading sheet music.
I also need to say that I am now at a point where reading sheet music is a must have, cause I am stagnating in my progress. The level of difficulty in the pieces I would like to play nowadays require me to be able to navigate through the sheet music and I can no longer make up with mesmorizing. 😅
How much time do you spend on technique or are you concentrating on learning pieces? I don't know if you have a teacher but your posture can be improved by strengthening your core
Depends on the practice session, but generally I spend nearly 50% of my practice time just to concentrate on technique also while learning new pieces. And funny that you mention the core-strength, that is exactly what my teacher told me this week too! 😅
I’m very new at the harp and have not even received mine yet 😁...but why the injury? What did you do? I don’t exactly know the technique you are doing wrong?. Thank you 😊
The strings of a pedal harp have a high tension, which means that I need a lot of finger strength to be able to play technically clean and, above all, loud and fast (as in this piece). Such a finger musculature is built up over months and years and must be maintained through constant training. Since I hadn't played the harp at all for almost 2 months, I approached the piece much too hastily and overloaded my right hand in particular with all the fast passages, which I played for far too long at a stretch. Tendonitis always occurs when the tendons are overloaded, for example, when the hand has to perform the same movements for hours. I was just very ignorant towards my body. So don't practice for too long!! :D
Thank you for the tip 😊 I’m getting a lever harp first - Ogden. I’m so sorry about your wrists. I was a gymnast for 14 years, I know the pain of the wrist and breaking it as well. I pray I will have the strength to play as well as you do someday 😊 Give yourself a break - you play beautifully! And as an architect, I LOVE the backdrop of where you play your harp!! 😍
@@jenborn5358 Oh, you have chosen a really wonderful leverharp! I was allowed to play one myself for a short time, such a beautiful sound! And thank you for the kind words, I am sure that you will also have a lot of fun with the harp! 😊
Do you perform anywhere? Or will harpist be your profession?
I am a beginner as well and have a beautiful lever harp. My ambition is to progress in a few years to the pedal harp and save enough money to afford one :) and play classical piece on it
Which harp do you own? It sounds lovely!
Playing the harp is really just an (ambitious) hobby for me :) I am already working in a completely different field.
My harp is a Salvi Daphne Ex in mahagony ☺️ Thank you!
And I wish you a lot of fun on your harp journey 💙
@@cara-thebeginnerharpist6974 oh wow! Thank you!
And I feel the same about playing harp as it is my ambitious to “conquer” this beautiful instrument!
The Daphne sounds lovely. It is also within my aim to save for too! 😆
@@HarpPianoCello We can do it! 💪🏻
Are you German? Because Christoph Pampuchs pieces are quite popular there...
Thank you for your video :)
Jepp, bin ich! Meiner Erfahrung nach stolpert jeder Harfenanfänger in den ersten 3 Monaten über irgendeinen Pampuch-Band, meist ist es ja der Band "Jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne"... (ja, auch ich habe damit angefangen 😂)
You progress fast, but professional harpist won't like this video.
why?
Nah. We’ll love this video. She’s doing great!