Re: [Harp-L] re: minor thread

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Potts wrote:
...
> The problem is that all the published instructional material teaches
> POSITIONS (not scales) and teaches the positions one at time
> (usually stopping at third).

Not my book "Jazz Harp," which includes a number of scales written in both standard (G clef) and arrow notation.

...
> This is NOT hard--we think it's hard because all the instructional
> books make it hard by teaching in a manner that make s it seem a
> whole lot more difficult and complicated than it actually is.

Well, I dunno about that.  The fact is that music can get complicated, and an author always has to make choices about how much of the complexity to reveal to the reader, especially a novice.  The novice also has to make choices about what he or she wants to play.  Some styles demand a bigger base of formal knowledge than others--jazz or classical, for example, generally demand more knowledge than blues or folk.  You don't need a whole lot of knowledge to start playing the instrument, but you might need it to keep going in one of those musical directions.

There are lots of different ways to get knowledge, of course, and that's a subject for another time.

Regards, Richard Hunter

author, "Jazz Harp" 
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