Harpo "Not Quite"Beginners Stephen Dunstone

A complete approach for beginner harpists Learn pieces by ear, Learn how to read music, Learn how to transpose pieces into different keys Downloadable audiotracks for many of the pieces Harpo Beginner’s Book 1, Harpo Beginner’s Book 2 & Harpo Not Quite Beginners “The three books of the Harpo Beginners series offer pupils a wonderfully rich learning experience, deftly and imaginatively weaving together the business of playing by ear, reading music, and using harmony in a way that’s simple, great fun, and accessible to both quick and slow learners. They’re the definitive books for young beginner harpists – not just good, but indispensable!” Ruth Faber   Buy this music now £16.50 +p&p

Artist Profile and catalogue of works - Stephen Dunstone

Harpo "Not Quite"Beginners
Stephen Dunstone

 

Contents

2 Two-fingered Workout 1

3 Cascades / Falling Leaves

4 The Leaves Keep Falling / Weaver / Fallen Leaves

5 Two-fingered Workout 2

6 Two-octave arpeggios / Weaver

7 Trebuchet / Ruined Castle / Crossing to Ireland

8 Ship In The Ice / The Keel Row

9 Cicely's Aardvark Frightened George

10 - 11 G major / Going With The Flow / Shepherd's Hey

12 Thumbelina / Thumbelina Goes to the Ball / Mairi's Wedding

13 Basket Ball / Coolish Dude

14 - 15 E minor / Wistful Waltz

16 - 17 Eb major / Free as a Bird / Cockles and Mussels

18 Flotsam / Wobbly Toddlers

19 The Cuckoo / Mary had a Cosy Flat / Bobby Shafto

20 C minor

21 Moody March

22 - 24 Valse Triste main theme / other motifs

25 Valse Not So Triste

26 - 27 3/4 versus 6/8

28 - 29 The Spinning Wheel / The Spinning Gooseberry

30 - 31 Modes

32 Galumphing

33 Dance of the Moths / Country Gardens

34 The Square and Funky Spinning Wheels

35 The Square and Funky Gooseberries / What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?

36 The Cool Gooseberry / Raining Gooseberries

37 Rumplestiltzkin / Rumplestiltzkin's Dance

38 The Funky Slug

39 Waking Early

40 Sobering Up / Feeling Cosy

41 Trying to Fly

42 - 43 D major / Chiff Chaff

44 Three-fingered Workout

45 Bagatelle / Brian Boru's March

46 B minor / Minor Bird

47 Summer Rain

48 Cooling Your Feet In A Mountain Stream On A Hot Day

49 Dance of the Deer / Arran Boat Song

50 Swing Boat

51 Apple Blossom / Amazing Grace

52 Jitters

53 Amy's Giraffe Frightened Eric / Snailercoaster

54 Swirling Leaves

55 Greensleeves harmony

56 Cute

57 Waltzing Gooseberries / Thistledown harmony

58 - 59 Pachelbellies

60 - 61 Mixed Feelings / All Through The Night

62 Four-fingered Gooseberry

63 Fingal's Patio

64 Four-fingered Blackberry

65 The Silken Veil / The Grenadier and his Lady

66 Synchronized Waltzing

67 Snakes and Ladders / The Oak and the Ash

68 - 69 Bb major / Back to the Gym / Plumbing the Shallows

70 Back to the Gym Again

71 Beef Latitude / The British Grenadiers

72 - 73 G minor / The Fallen Tree

74 - 75 Letting Go

76 - 77 Squirrels in Shades / The Lincolnshire Poacher

78 Letting Go (melody and chord names)

79 Relative majors and minors

80 Broken Chords and Inversions

81 Weavers

82 Triads within a scale

83 Cadences (Perfect and Modal)

84 "7th" arpeggios

85 Caterpillars

86 - 87 Ziggurats

Titles in bold are "Ear Pieces" (see Read Me below)

Harpo "Not Quite"Beginners
Stephen Dunstone

Read Me...

One of the things I’ve been trying to do with the Harpo Beginners books is expand pupils’ thinking processes, so that it becomes possible to hold “chunks of knowledge” in your head while you’re playing – for example, what the underlying harmony is in a passage of music, or what repeating patterns there are – so that learning and remembering a piece becomes easier, and transposing it into a different key feels straightforward and natural. In principle it’s a bit like trying to remember everything on your shopping list while walking down an unfamiliar street without bumping into a lamppost: both activities in their own way open up new neural pathways in the brain, and that is a good thing.

Most people find at first that trying to transpose a piece of music requires a fair degree of mental exertion – but it’s an exertion that can bring a kind of exhilaration with it, like making the effort to climb a hill and feeling great because you’ve done it. It’s liberating and empowering, which is why it’s so worthwhile making the effort. Some of the transposing I ask you to do in Harpo Not Quite Beginners will need a small amount of that effort, and some will require more. But approach it methodically and patiently and it will yield results.

In this book I expect you to play a lot of arpeggios, “Caterpillars” and the like. Scales and arpeggios are often viewed as “annoying-things-you-have-to-do-for-exams-but-it-doesn’t matter- if-you-get-bad-marks-as-long-as-your-pieces-are-good”, but this is SO wrong. Not only do they develop your technique, but when used thoughtfully they dramatically increase your understanding of harmony and help you get to know a piece from the inside. In fact they’re the map for the hill you’re going to climb, so whenever I introduce a major or minor key, it’s important that you devote time to playing the exercises relating to that key. I don’t specify exactly which ones every time, but the more you can do, the better.

Something else you should do to enhance your awareness of key (let’s take G major as an example) is remember that every time you pluck the F string, it’s actually an F#. Seriously, this does make a difference to your awareness of what you’re doing – like clearly seeing the view from that hilltop as opposed to standing there surrounded by fog.

As with the two previous books, there are lots of “Earpieces” here. Generally I’ve put them in whatever key you’re currently working in – though not always. Likewise, it’s possible to play each one with the combination of fingers you’re currently using, but as there are so many pieces in the book to help you develop your finger action appropriately, it’s not the end of the world if you use fewer fingers for the Earpieces, and concentrate more on the business of remembering the tunes – after all, that’s the main reason why the Earpieces are there in the first place...

Another of my main aims in Harpo Not Quite Beginners is to get you progressing smoothly from using two fingers in very simple pieces to using all of them in much more complex music, but I’ve carefully structured the way that progression is tackled, so if you approach everything carefully and methodically, you’ll be wowing your audiences in no time!

See you in the concert hall...

Title:	Harpo "Not Quite" Beginners
Composer:	Stephen Dunstone
Instrumentation:	Lever or Pedal Harp
Level:	Not Quite a Beginner anymore
Format:	A4 Ring Bound
Weight:	360gm
ISMN:	979-0-57046-332-9
Our Ref:	SD1061
Publisher:	Creighton's Collection
Printer/Distributor:	Creighton's Collection
Edition/Year:	2019
Origin:	UK

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