I've been buying my harp strings from Mark Norris for a while now https://www.harpstrings.biz/  and I recently have been chatting to him online about the possibly of adapting some strings to make them suitable for a blind harpist friend of mine.

One thing led to another and I told Mark about my own customised string set up and that the intonation of my levers left a little to be desired. I was a bit nervous about telling a harp maker how I had dived in and started customising and playing around with a harp set-up, but he was extremely generous and said that he would have a good look at my harp and fix my levers so that it would be properly in tune! I know Mark doesn't normally look at other makes of harps apart from his own, so it was an extremely generous offer from him.

So this meant a long drive to his studio in Scotland which was 8 hours of driving in total there and back from my home. But I took lots of breaks and what a splendid drive it was. I had to stop to take a picture of the view near to his studio.

I have to admit to being a complete harp nerd, and visiting a harp makers studio is heaven for me! Absolutely amazing to see a craftsman at work and to see harps in various stages of being built. 

Whilst I was there Mark showed me a new project of his called Nifty Harps, and they are absolutely fab. He's developing a professional model and I can't wait to order a 27 string one next year. They are affordable harps with a really good sound and have a wrap around detached soundboard. Think along the lines of cardboard harps, but made with rolled wood. An absolutely brilliant project https://niftyharps.scot/

Mark was fitting a string whilst we were chatting and I couldn't believe the speed he went at. So here he is demonstrating tying the perfect harp knot slowly for me, and it's still so quick! Amazing!

And to top it all off, Mark fixed the intonation on my harp.

Thank you Mark!


We are nearly there with a possible solution on the strings for blind harpists, and I'll post about that another time

My latest ensemble piece written for Harps North West is a multi-level 3 part ensemble called Carousel of Dreams. Inspired by Japanese Anime films from Studio Ghibli, the piece has a dreamy, fantasy like quality. 

HARP NORTH WEST MEMBERS

Below are slower practice versions of the 3 sections, each with a count in. Please contact Gill at Harps North West for the sheet music.

Finally, this is the whole piece at the slower tempo with click added

Originally written as a solo piece in Adventures for Lever Harp Book 2, and featuring on Lauren's debut album, Beyond the Horizon, Blue Moon Rising has been included in BBC Introducing and Apple Music playlists and has had nearly a million streams online to date! 

Blue Moon Rising for ensemble is now available as a 3 part harp ensemble piece and is approachable for late beginner to intermediate standard players. The solo version is advanced but approachable by intermediate players once you have worked out how to play the extended technique demonstrated below.

This piece is based on the same structure as a Haiku; a Japanese poem which consists of 3 lines. The 1st line is 5 syllables, 2nd line is 7 syllables and 3rd line is 5 syllables. The piece has a a recurring 3 bar/measure pattern which is in 5/4 7/4 5/4 .

It was written during a very (rare) hot period in the summer of 2018 in the UK, which coincided with a supermoon. You could almost see the heat rising off the hills in the stillness of the night.

Lauren has recently created a mega Beatles Medley in 4 parts which has been carefully crafted to be a multi-level harp ensemble piece full of easy extended techniques which is fun to play for players of all levels. 

If you run a harp quartet or ensemble please contact Lauren HERE if you are interested in using this arrangement.

On this page there will be various videos demonstrating the special effects used in Lauren's harp ensemble piece Harps Across the North.

​

Inspired by the poem by Emily Dickenson, Hope is the Thing with Feathers is a Round in four parts and incorporates preparation with cardboard in the middle octave to create the effect of pitched drums. Inspired by the sense of 'ritual' and 'power' behind the New Zealand Haka, the Maori word for "hope" - tumanako - is broken up into separate syllables and woven into the Round so that the word in it's entirety is chanted three times throughout the piece. 

Hope is the Thing with Feathers was written for the Old Malton Harp Group in North Yorkshire and funded by PRS Foundation Women Make Music.

Inspired by the Rain Stone poem by Simon Armitage,
​Freshwater Tears is written in four parts and uses various extended techniques to create the effect of raindrops including xylophonics, percussive tapping on the harps and a special tremelo xylophonic glissando technique which Lauren has developed. This piece is inspired by the joy of rain which is so beautiful demonstrated in the poem,
​
Freshwater Tears was written for Harps North West in Cumbria ​and funded by PRS Foundation Women Make Music.

Inspired by a short poem by Rupi Kaur, the sun and her flowers is written in four parts and uses various preparations including paper woven between the strings to make the sound of a Kalimba, paperclips & coils placed on the base of strings to make the sound of buzzing bees, and clips placed on a bass note to sound like a joyous and raucous rattle in the final part of this piece. After a calm introduction of short cadenzas the sun wakes up and the sound of the kalimba creates a groove over which the flowers dance.
​
the sun and her flowers was written for Harps of the North directed by Anita Aslin and funded by PRS Foundation Women Make Music.​

In Autumn 2020, during a brief hiatus in between UK lockdowns, I was involved in a project to video a solo piece by my husband, Andy Scott with five incredible harpists.

Commissioned by Sioned Williams and premiered by her at the Purcell Room at the Southbank, London, Jukebox by Andy Scott was originally a five movement work based around the concept of a 1950's jukebox playing a series of vinyl singles of differing styles.

In 2020, Andy decided to write a new movement to complete the work, and this video is the media premier of this new and final version. Sioned plays the first (and newest) movement RPM, followed by Keziah Thomas JUMP, I play VINYL, Alex Rider GROOVE, Elizabeth Bass STYLUS and Eleanor Turner TURNTABLE.

It wasn't at all stressful recording our movements in the studio with all the other harpists watching!! It was such a joy to work on this project with such great harpists, and you can really tell from the concentration on our faces how much work we all put in to this project. The music needs to have a really strong internal pulse to be able to groove, and like Andy's other pieces for harp, it is challenging to play but very also very rewarding. 

It's a fantastic new suite for solo harp (just under 15 minutes duration) and I really hope it will become a piece other harpists will want to learn and perform.  PDF of sheet music available HERE

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much of my creative output is influence by words and images. Most of my recent compositions have been in direct response to poems that have hit home to me. Poetry by Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickenson, Simon Armitage and Rupi Kaur have all inspired music in me this past year. 

I've always been interested in art since my school days when I studied it at A level. At the time I was in sixth form in London and by luck my school was in Pimlico and I would regularly go with a friend to the cafe at the Tate Gallery on The Embankment. Every time we went we would do a quick tour of our favourite paintings before descending down to the cafe for a cup of Earl Grey tea. It all seemed the height of sophistication as a teenager in the 1980s!

And here I am over 30 years later, starting a compositional journey as a middle aged woman in my 50s with all the poetry and imagery I've greedily consumed over the years swirling around my head, inspiring me to make music and it makes my heart sing. 

Here is a free teaching resource which I have done and you are very welcome to use with your students if it's helpful to you. Practice charts for all the scales and arpeggios in the Trinity exams harp syllabus for Grade 8 for both LEVER and PEDAL harps. Every single permutation of scale and arpeggio is listed which makes it much easier for students to get through absolutely every scale and arpeggio they need to practice for their exam. 

​If they aim to do at least 5 different scales/arpeggios each practice session and tick them off as they do them it won't take them for them to get through them all.  I encourage my students to select across different keys and types of scales/arpeggios to complete the cycle rather then going through it in sequential order, but whatever works best for everyone; they are all there.

​Hope these are helpful!

This is a free resource for the harp community, but if you'd like to buy me a virtual coffee that would be very welcome!
​

Introduction to note bending techniques used in my compositions, Beyond the Horizon & Celestial Spirals

A run through of all the different effects in Beyond the Horizon.

I hope you enjoy learning the music and if you post any performances online of my music please tag me in as I would love to see them! 

​@laurenscottharp

I am very humbled that several of my compositions have been selected onto the new AMEB harp syllabus. My thanks go to Alice Giles who oversaw the selection of the new harp syllabus for the Australian Music Examinations Board and to the harpists I have met in West Australia who have been so supportive. 

The pieces that have been selected are:

Gypsy Dance  - (Certificate of Performance Lever Harp) AMEB 2021

Lapkon's Spinning Wheel - (Grade 7) on AMEB Harp Syllabus 2021

Caribbean Daydreams - (Grade 5) on AMEB Harp Syllabus 2021

Habanera Caprichosa - (Grade 8) on AMEB Harp Syllabus 2021

I was hoping to travel to my birth country last year but covid had other ideas, and it seems that a return to Australia will of course be some way off now. So to celebrate Habanera Caprichosa being selected as a Grade 8 AMEB piece I have created an on demand video tutorial.

International travel seems a long distance memory now post covid, but I continue to hope that I will get a chance to return to Australia soon!

I am extremely grateful to be a recipient of the 'Developing Your Creative Practice' award from Arts Council England. I will be spending 2021 undertaking a year long period improving my compositional skills, and will also be Composer in Residence with Harps North West during this time. ​I'll be writing harps North West three new works for harp ensemble and I've also mapped out a years worth of compositional self-study which I'm really looking forward to diving into.

Again, I cannot begin to express enough my gratitude to Arts Council England for this support when I am acutely aware of how much of a struggle it is right now for everyone in the Arts. There is another round of grant applications about to open, so I would encourage all creatives to go online and apply. This grant will not only be allowing me to further my compositional skills, but also gives 2021 a much needed overall structure, which in the absence of freelance gigs is extremely welcome.

I'll also be in the studio soon finishing off recording my second album which will be released by Avie Records in Autumn 2021. It will include six of my compositions, including 3 harp quartets that I wrote at the beginning of 2020 commissioned by PRS Foundation 'Women Make Music' and my harp duo, 'Sea of Stars' for lever harp & pedal harp. I'm very grateful to the wonderful harpists Eleanor Turner, Alexander Rider and Elizabeth Bass for joining me and recording my music.

I've only recently embarked on a creative compositional journey having started writing music in 2018, so this all seems a bit of a whirlwind! But I am very grateful for everyones support and I hope to be scribbling lots more dots throughout 2021.

LINK for more about Lauren's music HERE
​​

​I'm absolutely thrilled that my composition Elegy has been selected as one of Harp Columns 30 day practice challenges as a DREAM BIG Original solo for lever harp.

In this blog post I have created a series of mini tutorials which I hope will be a useful aid for anyone taking on the challenge of learning Elegy as part of the Harp Column practice challenge.

If you have any questions throughout the month about the piece please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you.

​Here is the audio of Elegy and the PDF of the sheet music can be downloaded from Harp Column HERE ​

Elegy breaks down into 7 sections and I have created a mini tutorial covering each section of the piece.

​This first video is an over view on creating the VIBRATO effect which occurs throughout the piece

I hope these are helpful, and thank you so much for learning my music. If you post any videos on social media please tag me in as I would love to see them! x
​
@laurenscottharp

I was recently asked by my friends at the Macclesfield Music Centre to provide a short video introduction to the harp suitable for school age children. So here is my offering which is by way of a bit of Nutcracker, Dr Who, Havana and my best BBC posh speaking voice. 

I recorded it in one take, and I was very conscious at the time to speak clearly and slowly. The resulting posh teaching / announcing voice I use throughout it is hilarious and not how I normally speak. It's less than 5 minutes long and I demonstrate on pedal harp as well as lever harp.

Delighted to be kick starting this years Online Advent Calendar for Scala Radio playing Silent Night arranged by Marcel Grandjany

In this very short video I demonstrate how to play an effect which I've developed and use in my piece Celestial Spirals. I've called them xylo-harmonics, but essentially they are false harmonics, and it's a handy technique to have 'up your sleeve' if you ever have a problematic string which has a stubborn harmonic and you want to produce a pure harmonic sound. 

Here, you can see how they are used in context in the opening and closing sections of Celestial Spirals.

I find you can also have more control over dynamics using this effect than you can with harmonics.