Customer Reviews

Mel Bay's Basic Harp for Beginners (Basic Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Laurie Riley is an accomplished folk harper. Her book is arranged logically, and you learn to play the tunes sequentially, starting with simple pieces and moving along to more difficult ones.

The pieces themselves are nicely arranged, and you'll (very) soon be playing with both hands - important to me, because when I learned piano many years ago, I never progressed beyond the left hand exercises! So my belief was, it's difficult to play any instrument that requires both hands. Not true.

The one and only thing I didn't like about the book was the pictures that depicted how to hold your hands. They look as if the harper's hands and arms are being held abnormally and are full of tension. Keeping your muscles relaxed is of utmost importance, or you'll never progress to difficult pieces where your fingers need to move quickly and surely. I wish Ms Riley would update these pictures next time the book is updated to show a more relaxed stance.

I'm well into my adulthood (late 40's) and have made excellent progress using this book (and the Sylvia Woods "Learn to Play the Harp" book, used in tandem). I highly recommend it!

This moves too quickly through the lessons. Accompanied by a teacher it may make more sense, but alone and with no prior experience it is, in my opinion, not a worth while investment. Many of the lessons include only a few lines of certain songs, which is frustrating if you want to play ALL of "Greensleeves". I would suggest "Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp by Sylvia Woods" book and DVD, especially if you do not have a teacher handy.
This book is good for a quick review if you haven't played in a long time.

I started out with the Nancy Calthorpe book but later bought this one because I was left with too many unanswered questions. I would choose this as a first purchase if you are interested in teaching yourself to play the harp. There are some good tunes in this book as well.

With so much information overload nowadays, this book gets to the point and makes learning the harp really easy. There's nothing worse than complicated lessons when you want to learn to play the harp easily. I highly recommend this book for beginners that want to enjoy playing their harp without slaving over the lessons.

I started with Betty Paret's first harp book which was excellent for a couple of weeks. I needed Etudes to practice hard fingering postitions which for a starter were very challenging, and couln't produce nice sounding music without being trained on them. Laurie's book was excellent for that purpose, provided exercises for practice without the frustration of "cannot do the fingering" ... I wouldn't give it 5 stars because I needed CD to demonstrate the music parts. Still need them.

I already can read music from playing piano, and I still find this book a bit more than "beginner". The very first piece has you playing both hands together, which is very difficult for a beginner to figure out how to balance the harp this way, and hold your hands properly etc. However, I will definitely use this book as an "advanced beginner" book!

the book was as described and is helpful in for a beginner who allready has some experience with other instruments.

Riley rates quite poorly in writing a "beginner's" harp book. She uses an archaic method dating from the days of caste systems, when harpists were often blind people, playing by ear and touch. Most beginner's would give it up after a few lessons from this type of method and teacher. I myself, learned a harp technique from a Russian method, and I can tap an Irish reel out, while Riley would probably be fumbling around in the dark.