Do you think of yourself as creative?

From time to time, a harpist will tell me that she doesn’t feel she is very creative, at least not in a musical way. I instinctively challenge this, because I believe that anyone who persists in studying the harp for more than a few months is nurturing a gift and a desire that is, at its essence, creative. I also believe, though, that much of our practice and pedagogy shifts us away from the creative spirit. This is unfortunate, to say the least. We risk drowning our enthusiasm for the joy of creating music in the hard work that is part of studying it and learning to do it well.

There are endless ways to add more creativity into your harp playing. Certainly, musical expression is creative, but that’s just scratching the surface. I’ve linked in the show notes to a blog post in the Harp Mastery® archives that outlines just a couple ways to add creativity to your practice. But there are so many ways that the harp can not only be an outlet for our creativity, but can actually help our creativity develop. One of those ways is arranging music.

Today we are going to explore arranging music as a creative exercise. Maybe you’ve never tried arranging music, at least not beyond adapting a piano piece for the harp. Maybe you’ve arranged lots of pieces and even published your arrangements. Whichever group you fall into, the approach we are going to take today will help you stretch your creative powers in a logical step-by-step, but still creative, way. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it is, but that’s where the artistic process of music lies, at the intersection of intuition and intention. 

If arranging sounds like something you’d like to do but haven’t tried because you’re not sure how to go about it, you’re going to love this simple step-by-step approach which will work with classical pieces, folk tunes, hymns, pop songs, any kind of music. If you’ve done arrangements before, you’ll find this approach may really simplify your creative process and give you some new ideas to try as well. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

• Mindset and Method workshops at the Harp Mastery® Fall Retreat! Register today!
• Related resource Practicing Outside the Box: 2 Ideas for Creative Practice blog post
• Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected] 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-171