This revised book combines three of Ms. Trotter’s popular books: Getting Started in Pop Harp, The Creative Folk Harpist, and Let’s Play Country Harp.
Included are compilations from workshop presentations into this book which contains repertoire suggestions, ways to tune your harp, scales and chords, intervals, seventh chords and minor scales, diminished chords, voicing, inversions, bass patterns, chord progressions, steps in making an arrangement , introductions, endings, and how to play variations on the melody.
To be a creative and versatile pop harpist, classic training is valuable and necessary. However, the habit of playing every note as written is sometimes hard to break when learning to improvise. The act of playing notes spontaneously may be overwhelming to the classically trained harpist. There are more and more written arrangements for popular music available to buy, but is satisfying to have the skills to arrange one’s own pieces. It is possible to play popular music from a fake book or by ear, with training. The suggestions in this book should help bridge the gap from classical to pop, and hopefully provide some tools for the improvisation necessary for playing popular music. These ideas come from Louise’s own experience, and from workshops with nationally knows pop and jazz harpists. It is hoped that the material presented will open up new avenues for the harpist to arrange and improvise in order to widen opportunities to perform.
With simple melodies and uncomplicated harmonies, this book also instructs the harpist on the basics of achieving that country-western sound, as well as techniques on imitating such traditional country western instruments as guitar, banjo, fiddle, string bass, and piano. A good book for any harpist wishing to enlarge their repertoire to include this style of music. INTERMEDIATE, ALL HARPS.
To see all the ingredients in this book, see the visual sample of the table of contents.
