Harpists, how strong are your fingers? How strong do they need to be?

It seems instrumentalists of all sorts try to develop stronger fingers and not just in recent times. In 1836, Henri Herz patented the Dactylion, a mechanical contraption designed specifically for pianists. Schumann was reputed to have ruined his fingers trying to strengthen them with a finger strengthening machine he made...

No harpist ever had floppier fingers than I did. 

I had been playing the harp for eight years, and still my fingers were all over the place. Every knuckle bent the wrong way. My double-jointed thumbs slid off the strings. I didn’t know how to fix them, but it was clear to me that unless I straightened my fingers out, my dreams of being a harpist were going to stay merely dreams....

It’s back to school time. You may not be headed into a classroom yourself this autumn, but you might find this is a great time to re-organize your harp studies. I’d like to suggest that you create an actual curriculum.

You might remember from your school days the first days of every semester when each teacher handed out a curriculum or syllabus, a detailed plan for the...

Is your fourth finger a good team player?

If you're like most of us harpists, your fourth finger might sometimes feel more like a liability than an asset. It can be weak when you're trying to play an even scale, or it might be too strong when you're trying to balance a chord. 

We also tend to undervalue the functions our fourth fingers fulfill. Although they may behave like bad boys, they...