Cathy Britell's Autoharp Mini-lessons
Gentle Maiden
Here's a pretty little traditional Scottish air that is easy to play on the autoharp and lends itself well to an intermediate lesson. First of all, here's PDF file to print out of an autoharp arrangement that I wrote out: Gentlemaiden.pdf (If you need to Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can get it for free at www.adobe.com.
Now, take a listen here, while looking at your printout. Note that I don't use my thumb on every note. I will often pinch with the thumb and long finger on the longer notes, but just pluck the shorter notes with my index finger. Listen again, and note where I'm doing a pinch, and where I'm just plucking one note with my thumb. Even when I'm pinching, note that I'm just making little pinches and trying to hit the melody note specifically with my long finger. And on some runs of notes, such as the first three notes in Measure 5, I don't use my thumb at all, but just use my index and long fingers alternately, and just pick one note. That takes some practice, but once you can pick individual notes, you'll find your playing becomes a lot prettier.
Another thing that I'm doing is "bouncing" off the keys here. That is, I only hold down the key when I'm hitting the string, and don't hold it down until the next key is pushed. I don't do any open chording on this particular rendition, but the notes are smoothly connected and run into one another. This recording is just "straight" with a good microphone...no reverb...so the notes sound just the same as they're played.
Rhythm fills are pretty sparse. A good rule of thumb is to add rhythm only about half as often as your are tempted to, and you'll have a pretty good arrangement. Also, not that I don't use D7 at all in this piece. I could use it to play the notes, but it would make the sound muddier, so I avoid the V7 chord altogether.
Now, play it through with me a number of times, until you've got the basic melody under your fingers. Try to get it clean and even. Don't slow down for the hard parts and speed up on the easy parts. Until you've learned the tune, you should push a chord bar down for every note, and get the rhythm steady and even, and the melody clean.
OK, NOW, let's get musical! Now, there are some things that you can do to make the autoharp "sing". That is, to make the song seem to come alive beyond just the notes played on the instrument. Think about what the guy (or gal) who composed it might have been thinking of. A sweet young woman; pretty perhaps...simple, straightforward...gentle. Listen here, to one way I might play it if I were playing it all by myself, and see if you can hear some different things about this version. What did I do differently here?
Well, first, I lightened up a bit on my touch. I played with more dynamic range...variation between loud and soft. Also, I used LESS rhythm fills, used my thumb LESS, and made my playing even smoother by doing some "open picking" with the "G" lock down on my diatonic autoharp. In making music with the autoharp, less is definitely more, and the more sparsely you can play, often the better your music sounds.
The other thing that you will hear (maybe a bit exaggerated here) is RUBATO.
What's that? Well, rubato means "robbed"
Rubato is a
term
applied
to
a
style
of
performance
in
which
some
tones
are
held
longer
than
their
legitimate
time,
while
others
are
proportionally
curtailed. In other words,
(oversimplified) you speed up or slow down a little at certain
times, and it all evens out in the end. You might slow down at the end of
a phrase a little, then pick up at the beginning of the next one...or with
certain "motions" you might do something that seems to go with that motion.
For example, in Measures 12 and 13, I'm coming down the scale, and I speed up a
bit as I "fall" down to the lower notes...then slow down when "climbing" that
little "hump" in Measure 14. This same thing is done to a lesser
extent ("falling and climbing") in 1 vs.2, 3 vs. 4, 5 vs. 6, etc.
Listen again, and pay attention to the changes in tempo...RUBATO. Now, I wouldn't do this (or at least very much) when playing with another person, unless it were someone I played with often and communicated with well. When playing with others, it's generally very important to keep the tempo VERY steady.
Well, there are many ways to play a piece of music well and beautifully. These are just a few suggestions. When you work up your own arrangement of this tune, put an MP3 up on the Web somewhere, and let me know where it is. I always like to hear others' versions of tunes.
Write me at: cathy@larkpoint.com and let me know how you liked this mini-lesson.
Happy plucking,
Cathy