Tis the traditional time of the year to make resolutions. The whole year ahead of us with lots of possibilities, distractions, discoveries, and break-throughs. So now is a good time to think "where am I steering towards this year?" Because knowing that increases my chances of getting there.
Last year my main goal was to continue to improve my ability to read sheet music. I am not exactly where I would like to be, but I am so happy with my progress. I will keep working on it. But now I have another goal: I would like to learn to arrange music for the harp. Someone might point out that there is already so much music arranged for harp I could never hope to learn it in a lifetime! So why arrange? Because I would like to learn certain specific songs that have not been arranged yet, and because I would like to arrange and/or rearrange songs to take advantage of my harp's capabilities (a double strung). A third reason is that learning to arrange could help me better understand the music that other people have arranged. A fourth is that arranging music could make it easier to memorize.
So, to any harpists reading this- is there a song or a genre that you really love, that you haven't seen arranged for harp? For me, I would love to learn some French Cafe music, and beyond that there are a number of specific songs that I have seen arranged for piano but not for harp. For example Walking on the Moon by Sting and Rainbow Connection. One cool thing about playing an instrument is being able to select the music you most love and play that. And arranging can make that happen.
My second important goal is to make friends with my metronome. Aside from that I hope to keep better records of what I am learning, maintain a playlist of songs (that I am not constantly forgetting and relearning), and blog regularly. One last thing: I have a subscription to Harp-school.com and I want to really take advantage of that and learn as much as I can. This is a very cool site, and they recently put up a course on the modes of music that I am excited to go through.
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