How To Harp Podcast

Vikky had never played an instrument and had been told not to sing, so when someone suggested she try one, her answer was no way. Heather asks how that turned into a growing family of harps and a place among other harpists.

In this episode:

• How a friend's lap harp, some DVDs and the advice to just pluck got Vikky started

• Finding fellow harpists online and at retreats while living on a small island in the Pacific Northwest

• Her first harp circle as a beginner and the connection of joining in with others

• Vikky sharing a recording of Skye Boat Song, and why that piece means so much to her

• How she ended up with three harps, and why she believes the harp selects you

• Why music theory suits her technology background, and how technique that sounds like a tune keeps her going

• Giving back by hosting a practice session, and why Heather says nobody in the community is just a number on a spreadsheet

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Guest:

Vikky Dauciunas - Learner Harpist and How To Harp Member

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #BeginnerHarp #HarpCommunity

Christmas Collab 2026 Info HERE - https://www.howtoharp.com/courses/christmas-harp-collaboration-2026

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Special occasions have fixed dates, so a piece that isn't ready in time has to wait for them to come round again. Heather sits down with How To Harp tutor Angela to look at how to be prepared without starting from scratch.

Heather talks about arranging Carol of the Bells after always avoiding it, and Angela explains why Silent Night is the first thing she plays on every new harp.

In this episode:

- Building a bank of seasonal tunes gradually, even if you only start in January

- Writing a list in the back of your journal, and refreshing old favourites with a different arranger's version

- Choosing music that does double duty, like Greensleeves and What Child Is This

- Balancing difficulty, with one stretch, two at your level and one easier

- Teaming up with a harp buddy for friendly accountability

- Keeping up technique and the rest of your practice, so you don't hit a slump when the festivities end

- The free How To Harp Christmas Collab, with parts from complete beginner to advanced

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Guest:

Angela Boraston - Harp Tutor at How To Harp

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #SeasonalMusic #ChristmasMusic

A long break, a frustrating run of practice or a difficult stretch of life can leave a harp sitting untouched and the way back unclear. Heather gives this one listener question her full attention, because it keeps coming up in different forms. Thank you to everyone who writes in!

In this episode:

- Why every harpist's path, even a professional's, has ups and downs

- A creative approach, old pieces with fresh musicality or a technique focus as ways to start again

- Why exercises can help when the block is emotional, especially if you feel you should be further along by now

- Heather's own first step towards her harps, which was simply taking the covers off

- Familiar advice that still helps, from accountability buddies to harp events and live concerts

- The bigger idea underneath it all, that we're all really learning how to learn, and three things to ask yourself

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #HarpMotivation #HarpPractice

Heather welcomes Scottish harpist Rachel into the studio for an in-person conversation. It's clear how much fun it was having her there in the flesh, and that warmth carries through the whole chat.

They cover Rachel's teaching work on the Isle of Man and in the Netherlands, the performance anxiety she battled early on, and how she has learned to stop playing music just to please other people.

In this episode:

- The last-minute choice between bagpipes and harp that started it all

- What married life looks like when both partners live on the road, juggling separate diaries

- Her routines for coping with jet lag and packing for weeks away

- A first listen to a piece from her upcoming solo album, twenty years in the making

- The former student's BBC Young Folk Musician win that brought her to tears

- Her advice on which tunes are actually worth your time

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Guest:

Rachel Hair - Professional Harpist and How To Harp Guest Tutor

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #RachelHair #TouringMusician

The quick fix doesn't exist, and Heather thinks that's good news. If you've ever come out of a practice session feeling like you should be further on by now, this episode is for you.

She explains why you can take in knowledge quickly but can't rush the part where it actually beds in.

In this episode:

- Why working through an eight week course in four days is too fast

- The difference between knowing something and being able to use it in any situation

- Why harmony levels run once a year instead of one after another

- The questions worth asking yourself as you go, beyond checking you understood the material

- Playing a tune perfectly at home and then falling apart in front of your teacher

- Building sight reading and theory work into your harp time

- The one thing Heather says you genuinely can speed up, and where to find it

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #HarpPractice #HarpJourney

Her dad found a harp and a teacher in the early 1980s, and her mum said no. Rosie waited two decades, paid for her own lessons at 30, and sixteen years on she's still going, with a long gap in the middle when life got in the way and she had to stop completely for several years.

Heather asks what actually kept her coming back, and the answers are practical rather than motivational. There's a routine she calls her harp survival skills, and a way of thinking about progress that helps a lot if you've ever felt behind.

In this episode:

- How she met Heather at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival, by booking individual time with every workshop leader

- Why a long struggle on the trombone made her insist on rock-solid harp technique

- How brass bands and theatre pits turned a shy child into a bolder player

- Losing Pilgrim Harps, and the instrument they built for her that her sisters gilded

- Adding a Camac Ulysse, and what it brings that her Pilgrim clarsach doesn't

- Why sight reading is the hardest part for her, and the block-chord work that's helping

- Running the Harpy Musicianship Club, and why the subject puts so many people off

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Guest:

Rosie Wilcock - Learner Harpist and How To Harp Community Leader & Member

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #AdultHarpLearner #LeverHarp

Working through grades can be exactly what your playing needs, or the very thing holding it back, and which one it is has nothing to do with the sort of harpist you are. Heather and Angela help you tell the difference.

They go over what's on offer, from ABRSM and Trinity to university routes and How To Harp's own certification, and they're honest about both sides of it rather than landing neatly on one.

In this episode:

- Why "exam hopping" can leave real gaps in what you're able to do

- Angela's example of a player at grade five who had never played a harmonic

- What sitting in your level for a while gives you that racing ahead doesn't

- Why a syllabus is worth a look even if you don't enter

- What aural and sight reading tests build in you beyond the tunes themselves

- The value of a real deadline, and of a second set of ears

- How exams shaped Heather and Angela's own learning and teaching

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Guest:

Angela Boraston - Harp Tutor at How To Harp

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #HarpExams #ABRSM

A library book about choosing an instrument for your child, left lying around the house, is where this whole story starts. Heather's guest is Rachel, who read it at 11, came downstairs the next morning asking for a harp, and has since been named BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2026.

Heather asks her about the years in between, from a first rented harp in Aberdeenshire to a masters at the Berklee campus in Valencia, and about how quickly everything changed once the result was announced for the Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year.

In this episode:

- How the Clàrsach Society rental scheme made that first harp possible

- Why she wrote a conservatoire application and never sent it

- Two years on pedal harp, and what pulled her back to the lever harp

- Where her tune Number 43 came from, and why it's really about Glasgow

- Applying for the competition on a whim, and the boxes we put ourselves in

- Letting go of feeling she had something to prove, and what that did for her nerves

- The concert and workshop she's bringing to the How To Harp membership

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Guest:

Rachel Groves - Professional Harpist, Composer, BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2026, and How To Harp Guest Tutor

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #RachelGroves #ScottishHarp

Heather's learning and teaching philosophy has never been spoken about properly before, and she lays the whole thing out here. It came out of a live session during our Celebrating Harmony Weekend, when she heard herself explaining it and realised that's genuinely how everything at How To Harp has been built.

It centres on three ideas she's taken from the jazz musician Clark Terry, imitation, assimilation and innovation, but she doesn't think they happen in that order. She makes the case that they're a Venn diagram rather than a staircase, with every one of them at work from your very first lesson.

In this episode:

- Why Heather refuses to say the word "should" to a learner

- The Suzuki idea that we pick up an instrument the same way we learn to talk

- Her brother Alistair, the name she couldn't pronounce as a baby, and why nobody corrected her

- What's really going on when adult learners feel stuck and impatient

- Why our beginner and post beginner pathways are designed to take at least a year

- Asking what you like about a single bar of music, and where that question takes you

- How waiting until you know enough can end up holding your playing back

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #AdultHarpLearners #TeachingPhilosophy

Niccie heard a harp at the ballet when she was little, then waited more than four decades before she started playing one. Heather sits down with her to find out how she finally got going, and why doing it her way has mattered so much.

She's nearly three years in now, and she knows exactly how she learns, what she wants from an instrument, and what she'd rather take her time over. Heather gets into both harps, the teaching that suits her, and the mindset that holds it all together.

In this episode:

- Why weekly lessons weren't right for her, and how monthly ones with Angela work instead

- Choosing a Pilgrim Clarsach, and the harp she never expected to fall for

- Building and painting a Harp-E from a bare kit, levers and all

- Being on the autistic spectrum, and how the harp settles a busy brain

- Picking music that's far too hard on purpose, and preferring exercises to pieces

- Harmonics on the lower metal strings, and getting two hands to agree with each other

- Practice Togethers, the technique bank, and a community where nobody feels behind

Host:

Heather Downie - Harpist, Principal Lever Harp Tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Founder of How To Harp

Guest:

Niccie Hughes - Learner Harpist and How To Harp Member

Learn with us:

https://www.HowToHarp.com (membership, courses, retreats)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, subscribe, and share it with a harp friend. It really helps the podcast grow and helps us connect with more harpists around the world!

#HowToHarpPodcast #HowToHarp #HeatherDownieHarpist #LearnerHarpist #HarpJourney