Career, Music, Performance videos

Feed The Birds Harp Cover // Mary Poppins

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feed the birds harp cover
Mary Poppins

In a recent twitch stream, a viewer asked if I could play a harp cover of Feed The Birds from Mary Poppins. I have always loved the film, so I immediately downloaded the music and started to learn it.

I am so pleased with the result!

If you enjoy these harp covers of mine, do consider heading over to my YouTube channel and subscribing.

Feed The Birds and other classics…

The wonderful thing about playing songs like Feed The Birds is that everyone knows and loves this music. Last week I had the opportunity to go and play a concert at the home where my father now lives. He is suffering with Alzheimer’s and needs a lot of care these days.

I played a mixture of light classical music that people generally have heard before, things like Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Pachelbel’s Canon in D. There were also some harp covers of Disney songs (including Feed The Birds). I also played some other songs from shows such as Carousel, Cats, Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera.

The very energetic piece Harpicide at Midnight by Pearl Chertok was the final piece in my programme. Even though it’s not well-known by non-harpists, everyone enjoys it because it is so jazzy. It really challenges people’s perception of what the harp is capable of.

I can’t believe it’s not Rutter…

In other recent events, I have played for two performances of John Rutter’s Requiem and have another performance lined up for this coming Saturday. It’s not often I’ll get a group of concerts like this, all with the same repertoire. Honestly though, I’m enjoying playing in front of a live audience again so much. The pandemic has taken so much from us, I have only performed a handful of times since March 2020, but hopefully the worst is behind us.

Announcement

I have been doing some work on my website recently, and I now have an online booking system for online harp lessons and online piano lessons.

You can now book in for a free 30-minute consultation if you are considering learning the harp or the piano. click here to find an available time to book in.

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Music, Performance videos

GAME OF THRONES Harp Cover

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The latest video on my YouTube channel is a Game of Thrones harp cover.

I recently read A Song of Ice and Fire and watched a few seasons of Game of Thrones for the first time.

game of thrones harp cover

The theme music is so epic I found an arrangement and recorded it for my YouTube channel. Alongside the Game of Thrones harp cover, you can find lots of other covers, as well as various harp pieces that I love.

I actually recorded this video while live-streaming on Twitch. As a musician, I’m so glad I found twitch. I usually live-stream there twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday evenings for a couple of hours. There’s a lovely community over there and it’s a great place to hang out, chat, practice, and of course, to play some of your requests too.

Due to the pandemic, I’ve been pretty much unable to perform since around February 2020. I find it so special to feel like I’m playing for an audience again. And, because it’s via the internet, I don’t even have to move my harp or drive anywhere. It’s every harpist’s dream!

Post-pandemic

Aside from streaming, I’m happy to say life is getting busy again. I’ve started playing the organ at a nearby village church. I’m definitely not a qualified organist and am learning as I go, but I’m really enjoying it and love spending time in the community this way.

I’ve also just accepted the post of Harp Tutor for Yorkshire Young Musicians. This is a really exciting teaching opportunity and I can’t wait to dive in.

I’ve got lots of ideas for future YouTube videos for my channel, so make sure you are subscribed. If you have any questions about the harp, or any requests for future covers, definitely let me know – I’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime, there’s a box on the right hand side of this page where you can sign up to receive these updates in your email inbox. It’s a great way to stay in touch.

p.s. if you enjoyed this video, you’ll enjoy this video of Baby Mine from Dumbo.

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Career, Music, Places

Diary of a Wedding Harpist

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There’s a new video up on my Youtube channel – a little vlog of a recent weekend where I had a couple of weddings to play for. Firstly I was playing in Liverpool’s gorgeous St. George’s Hall, then the following day I was playing for a church wedding ceremony up in Chorley.

Summer is a busy time for harpists and it feels so good to have a full diary for the rest of the season.

 

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Career, Music, Performance videos

Chasing Cars Harp Cover | Snow Patrol

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I hope you enjoy this video of my Chasing Cars harp cover, music by Snow Patrol. It is one of the most requested wedding songs of my career so far.

Chasing cars harp

If you haven’t already, please do subscribe to my Youtube channel, where I upload new videos… from time to time. If you have any requests for future videos (playing or just chatting) do let me know in the comments below. I want to create content that we both love, so leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Brides often ask me what music they should choose for their wedding ceremony. My answer is usually the same, whatever you want! The more personal a wedding ceremony can be, the more memorable it will be in the years to come. Some couples want to keep things traditional, and that is beautiful too.

This Chasing Cars harp cover works so well because not only is it a beautiful and romantic song, it sounds really lovely on the harp and adds that extra touch to the day. Personally I think it works especially well for the Bride’s entrance music. For your exit music, it is wise to choose something upbeat and loud, as your guests will be applauding as you walk back down the aisle.

I am now taking bookings for 2023 and still have a few slots available for the rest of 2022 – although it is looking like a busy year! It’s so wonderful to see couples finally tying the knot after months and months of cancellations and uncertainty. Let’s hope that’s all in the past now and we can move on. Contact me here if you’d like to enquire about having harp music at your wedding.

What music are you going to have at your wedding? Leave a comment below, you might just inspire other brides too.

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Career, Lifestyle, Music

Alderley Edge, Prestwich, and the 10k that didn’t happen.

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I’m writing this week’s post in a Caffe Nero in Alderley Edge. I’m here to play with Alderley Edge Orchestra for a concert tonight, we are performing Holst’s The Planets and Elinor Nicholson and I are the harp section. 

We arrived early to get good parking spots (harp life), warmed up, and are now both catching up on some admin over cups of tea/coffee.

How’s everyone coping with the Beast from the East? Where I am in south Manchester it hasn’t been too bad, and I’m thrilled that I haven’t lost out on any work due to snow. It can be super frustrating when snow means cancelled gigs, which means no payment, not ideal.

The 10k race that I’ve been training for however, that has had to be cancelled. I can totally see why the organisers took the decision as lots of people were no doubt travelling from a good distance away. It’s a bit gutting to have trained in snow, wind, hail and freezing cold to end up not doing the race, but training is never wasted is it? I’m still fitter and stronger than before and that was the whole idea of competing. I’d decided to treat myself to some new gear after the race, so when I heard that it was cancelled I went ahead and ordered them anyway, maybe I’ll chat about them in the next post. Totally off-brand but exciting anyway…

On the house front, I do have exciting news, a house that we viewed back in January has finally accepted our offer! Hurray! The house is in Prestwich – north Manchester – and I’m keeping everything crossed that this time everything goes smoothly. This is the third house we’ve had an offer accepted on so hopefully it’ll be a case of third time lucky… I’m simply far too excited about actually having a music room/office, and I know Tim is looking forward to having his own gym in the garage.

Could this be the new music room??

I wasn’t expecting buying a house to take this long and we’ve certainly learned a lot along the way. But maybe, just maybe, we’ve finally found our home.

I think that’s all from me this week. Thanks for reading as ever, and if you’d like these posts to go straight to your inbox, just pop your email address in the box at the top of the page. I’d love to connect with you that way. These posts sometimes get sent out a day or two early to my email list – so if you fancy that then do sign up.

As always, you can follow me on Patreon, Instagram, Twitter & Facebook to keep up with harpy and other shenanigans.

Ax

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Career, Music

How we can all support The Arts

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We are living through an age of austerity. Spending cuts threaten the funding that major orchestras rely on. Cuts to school budgets mean that music and other arts subjects get side-lined in order to prioritise subjects like maths, science, and english. Yet it has been shown that actually increasing the amount of music in the timetable is hugely beneficial for students and increases their performance in all subjects. Check out what happened at this school in Bradford.

As the cost of living feels like it’s getting higher all the time and wages don’t keep up with inflation, people are feeling the pinch, and possibly not going to concerts or hiring live musicians for their events in an attempt to save money.

So what can we as ordinary citizens do to help support the arts? Here are a few ideas:

 

Attend more concerts

Perhaps this is the most obvious and immediate way we can help. If you live in a big city like London or Manchester, chances are there are free concerts all over the place. Here in Manchester there is a huge choice of free concerts, from organ recitals at St. Ann’s Church in the city centre to lunchtime concerts at Chetham’s and the Royal Northern College of Music. If jazz is more your thing, find your local jazz club, look on the website and find something you fancy.

Have a think about where you live, is there a local orchestra that perhaps does a few concerts each season? Could you perhaps consider attending one?

Of course, there’s more to the arts than just music. Many art galleries now allow you to look around for free, and theatres will probably have cheap matinee tickets on offer.

You could even set yourself a challenge of seeing something creative once or twice a month. Try to go for things outside what you would normally go to. Avid Handel fan? Go to a Gospel Choir concert. More of a jazzer? Go and see a Mahler symphony. Only ever seen Andrew Lloyd-Webber shows in the theatre? Try some Gilbert & Sullivan. You might find a new passion. At the very least, you’ll have more to talk about the following day than who got kicked off X-factor or what time your cat stayed out until. Going to see new things broadens the mind and you know that you are doing your bit to support hard-working, creative people.

 

Hire live musicians for your event

This may seem obvious, but having a live musician playing during your wedding/social function is far, far superior than having someone press ‘play’ on a cd player. It adds so much to the atmosphere that someone is there, playing just for you. Plus, you are supporting that person in a very real way. So please, hire musicians, pay them a decent fee, and perhaps give them snacks at your event? Maybe even talk to them at your event and thank them for playing for you? These things make such a difference – trust me.

While we’re on this topic, please, never, EVER, ask a professional musician to play for free (or worse, purely for the ‘exposure’). It’s insulting and completely undermines the fact that we have trained for years to play to a professional standard, and we deserve to be remunerated as such. For more details see the MU page http://www.worknotplay.co.uk/

 

Get invovled in the creative process

The internet really is an amazing place. Most of us are familiar with crowdfunding, where anyone can donate towards a creative project to help it get off the ground, and in turn they receive a reward and a glimpse into behind the scenes of the project itself.

As well as crowdfunding, there is a website called Patreon where you can support creatives on an ongoing basis – rather than for one big project as you do with crowdfunding. You can either donate monthly or per piece of content released (with a monthly cap so you don’t donate any more than you want to). Donations are generally much smaller (say $1-5 dollars) and patrons have access to a ‘patron-only feed’ of news and behind-the-scenes updates of the creative process.

My Patreon page is geared around making videos of harp pieces, both on and off the exam syllabus. Rewards include having your request played, recorded and uploaded, early access to videos and blog posts, and credits at the end of my videos.

 

Encourage your kids to get creative

Whether it’s playing a musical instrument, taking them to a dance class, or encouraging them to perform in the school play, encouraging kids to get involved with the arts will do wonders for their confidence and academic achievement (assuming of course that they don’t actively hate it – don’t force anyone here – keyword is encourage). Many musical organisations now place a lot of focus on outreach work, bringing music into the community and enabling people to get involved who normally wouldn’t be able to. See what’s going on in your local area, and if you are a musician and have the opportunity to get involved, do it.

Encouraging kids to learn an instrument may lead to them finding their passion in life, or at the very least, might improve their grades and give them an interest in music that they otherwise would not have had. Regular practise also encourages self-discipline and gives them time away from their phones, which we could probably all do with.

If there is not much music going on in your area, it might be time to…

 

Get vocal!

If you think your child’s school needs more music provision, tell them. If your local music service is desperately in need of investment, how about writing to your local MP to let them know how important this is to you? Would you love to go to more orchestral concerts but find that you can’t afford the ticket price? Write to them.

Musicians: see if you can join some sort of trade union (I’m in the MU but have heard lots of good things about ISM too). Get involved in the decision-making process and have your voice heard.

People aren’t psychic, and if they don’t realise there’s a problem, nothing will change.

If we value the arts in our society, we must look after them and invest in them. It makes all of our lives richer.

 

 

I really hope this has given you some ideas of ways we can support the arts and have our lives enriched in the process. I’m aware that this has been a bit of a long post! Thank you for reading and well done if you’re still here. A big thank you as well to those of you who contributed ideas via facebook and twitter. If I’ve missed anything, please do speak up in the comments. Let’s start a conversation.

Chat soon,

Ax

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Music

How to Practice: Schedule it in

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If you’re anything like me, sometimes it’s hard to practice. Some days, the motivation just isn’t there, it just seems like too much. So we end up procrastinating and putting it off until eventually the day is over and it’s too late (who else does this?)

I think that the reason for this is the fact that practice – good quality practice – is mentally tiring. You’re always thinking, always trying to improve, actively looking for imperfections and then trying to iron them out. It’s not easy! It takes effort. That’s why I think it’s hard to get started sometimes.

So I’d like to use this post to make a list of things that seem to help me to practice (even when I don’t want to). If you have any of your own tips please leave them in the comments – let’s help each other with this.

Find what time works best for YOU

For me, it’s first thing in the morning, before I’ve had chance to get distracted by emails and other commitments. Straight after breakfast, sit down and play. I find that I focus much better in the morning and practice is much more productive (in fact, I’d go as far as saying it’s probably twice as effective as afternoon or evening practice).

I realise that with family and work commitments, morning practice isn’t always possible, but even if it’s a couple of days a week, morning practice could make a massive difference to your overall progress. Give it a try.

Set a weekly practice target

We all have busy, crazy days where practice just ain’t gonna happen. Let’s not beat ourselves up about it. Instead, set a weekly target of how much practice would be ideal and try and stick to it. Start small, how about four hours a week? If you get to the end of the week and find you want to do more, increase it. If you find your target was way too high and you’re feeling guilty for missing your target, relax a little and find an amount that works for you. If your practice is good quality, you may not need to do as much as you think.

Schedule your practice in for the week

So you’ve decided how much practice you need to do this week, now let’s schedule it in. Ahh I love a good schedule and I’ve written about this subject before. But trust me on this. Schedule your practice in and you remove the guilt of always feeling like you ‘should be practising’. Turn it into a commitment – you wouldn’t be late for a coffee date with your bestie or a flight to go somewhere exciting, so don’t be late for practice. Show up, get it done, and then reward yourself…

Reward yourself for staying on track

I’m still not very good at this, but there are lots of ways to reward yourself if you are really struggling to get your practice done. Obviously improving your playing is a reward in itself but thinking more short-term – when you hit your practice goal for the week reward yourself with a treat. Fancy hot chocolate with mashmallows and whipped cream? Watching your favourite tv show? Buying some new music? Having a super-long bath with fancy oils and a glass of bubbly? Whatever you fancy, if it’ll make you do your practice, it’ll be worth it.

Set specific targets for each session

Look at what’s coming up in your diary. Any gigs in the next six weeks should be your priority. If you’re just playing for a hobby, why not set yourself a deadline of when you want a piece to be ready for? Your next lesson is an excellent goal to work towards and gosh I miss that weekly lesson to kick my behind into gear and focus my mind on what I need to improve.

Have a goal for each hour of practice. Even if it’s just ‘I want to play the first line of my piece from memory’ or ‘I want to be able to play fluently at x speed with the metronome’ or ‘I want the left hand to be smooth in this section’, set a target so you’re not just playing a piece through and hoping it’ll get better. Focus on the bits you can’t yet play and practice them until you can’t get them wrong (practising until it’s correct is not enough – practice starts when it’s correct). Whatever you’re working on, see if you can play it ten times correctly before moving on – if you make a mistake on the ninth time, it’s back to the start for you (sorry).

So there we have just a few tips on how to improve your practice – if you have any thoughts or anything to add please do comment and let me know what you think. Or at least let me know that I’m not the only musician out there who sometimes doesn’t want to practice!

As ever, thanks very much for reading.

x

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