Today, Irish harp players have the choice of becoming traditional players that interpret, arrange and accompany, spontaneously and creatively as traditional harpers have done for over a millennium - or to play already arranged ('finished') pieces of traditional Irish harp music. From ancient times, our tradition has been ‘oral’ meaning ‘given by mouth’ - or ‘aural’ meaning ‘learned by ear’ (both descriptives are correct!) and it is an improvisatory art that is ultimately flexible, constantly changing, masterfully technical and expressive by the addition of ornamentation and variation.
This is distinctive from the ‘classical’ style of learning and performance - but, like jazz and other improvisatory styles, can also exist in the classical repertoire in ‘fixed’ arrangement. The Harbison Harp Method is designed to teach traditional players, and is the method that has trained many of Ireland's most celebrated traditional harp players currently.
In the Traditional Irish Harp Tutor, Level 3, you will learn:
- more about chording and the Harmonic Clock
- finished arrangements of some Carolan tunes, and about how the arrangements and harmony works
- study hornpipes, jigs and reels to develop ornamentation skills
- BTMT basses and easy arrangement strategies for session tune playing
- about the ‘Session’ and how it works
- about Dance Music, its history and rhythms
- about synchopation - first exercises in 'pushing and pulling' doubles
- how to arrange folk tunes and the repertoire for Background Entertainers
- first Slow Airs and Lamentations and about the 'free style' of playing them
- to improvise on 4 - chord sequences
- about modes and the chords that go with them
Tunes featured in this coursework are:
The Connellan's Molly Mac Alpin and Caitlin Triail; Carolan's Princess Royal, Carolan’s Draught, Blind Mary and Captain Sudley; The Sligo Fancy, The Fairy Hornpipe, Saddle the Pony, The SwallowTail Reel, The Glenallen / Killavil Reel, Ms McLeod’s Reel, O’Keefe’s Slide, Rolling in the Rye Grass, The Harvest Home, The Wailing Banshee, The Hag at the Churn, The Kesh, The Mug of Brown Ale, The Battering Ram, The Old Leitrim, The Humours of Whiskey, St.Anne’s Reel, The Morning Star, Molly Mac Alpin, Caitlin Triail, Ar Eire Ní Neosfainn Ce Hí, Airdí Cuain, The Bard of Armagh, The Spinning Wheel, Eileen Oge, The Meeting of the Waters
