Harp, Harpist, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Harps, Reuben Correa, Twin Cities, Minnesota, Weddings, Worship, Party, Background Music, Harp Lessons, Receptions, Composer, Harp Recordings, harp teacher: Blog

   Do you want to know what is exciting me these days? My students!  It is so much fun to watch them discover that they can make beautiful music on the harp. Right now I have 6 students from age 9 to adults. 

   The difference between what I do and other teachers is that I travel to their homes so they can be less stressed out when they begin their lesson.   I used to have them come to my home which is kind of like walking into the lion's den.  The nerves start long before the ring the doorbell.

   They never really seemed to get a full lesson then because of all the time it took to unpack the harp from its case,  retune it and calm down from the traffic they had to fight coming to my home.  Now I just walk in, we get preliminary greetings out of the way, do a little diversionary stress relief and then we plunge into the lesson.

   The harp has very specific basic technique so I like to start slowly.   But along the way we have a lot of fun and laugh alot.

  I almost always tell the story of when I first started playing the harp.  My first teacher showed me how to do a glissando with a five tone scale.  I was learning on a pedal harp and the string tension is very strong.

  It was such an exotic beautiful sound that I wanted to keep doing it but she warned me that I'd get blisters and told me to only play a glissando once a day until my skin toughened up enough.

  I played piano and tuba and had no knowledge of how damaging strings could be to one's fingers, so as soon as she was out the door and off school grounds I began to make beautiful glissandos ring through the halls of the practice level at my college.

   In the next few hours it became apparent that my teacher was right and I was terribly wrong.  My fingers were swelling at an alarming rate and the next day it looked like I had little fish bowls developing on the tips of my fingers.  I almost expected to see little tiny fish swimming by.

  Needless to say I had a lot of lessons to catch up on as it took over a week for my fingers to return to normal.  I had to have classmates take notes for me it was painful.   Lesson Learned!