I had my first harp harp (not harmonica harp) lesson in many many years this week. The coolest thing of all was seeing my teacher again after so long and realising - you know, in many ways, who I am is who she is.
Pause and let the coolness of that sink in.
So we talked about what I do now and being able to travel and play for fun. I played a little therapy harp (which sounds lovely and is so wee!). She lent me an ear-training book that teaches you to play music non-classically. It's strange to think of myself as a classical musician cause I know so little about theory and composition, but that really is the way I learned - I know how to reproduce notes on a page, but not how to play from nothing. And then I drove home up 460 watching cotton grow and trying to pick out little simple harmonies on my not-harp harp.
So I'm learning from nothing on two different instruments. I'm playing "Hot Cross Buns" five thousand times in different keys teaching myself what a full step sounds like in a major key. And then I'm remembering chords and thirds and major sevenths and keys and realising how little music I knew in the first place. I want to get music now in a way I didn't even really imagine before.
In short, I am geeking out, people. It's a good time. It's hard work. It's yet another way I am reprogramming my whole damned brain.
In the meantime, people keep asking me to play for them, and I think they mean they want notes on a page. I want to show them this whole universe instead.
