Left Hand Harp Mechanics for Beginners

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Jesse Sparhawk on behalf of Expert Village. I can be reached at myspace.com/jessesparhawk. In this segment, we will be covering left hand harmonics. So here we are again playing a harmonic, but in this case, instead of using the first finger as we did with the right hand to make the halfway point on middle C, we actually use the inner part of the thumb or the meat of the thumb. I’m not really good with my anatomy. It’s almost passing directly through the bottom of the hand, the contact point, and the thumb as you can see, is much higher than it had been for doing with the right hand. So here again, we are at middle C, and again I said it could take some practice or some figuring out to get it just right. I’m a little better with my right hand, but there you go, you are getting it. Again, as with the right hand harmonics, I want to make sure that both the thumb and the butt of the hand are leaving the string at the same time, so that you are getting again an octave tone on the middle C and every other string. That’s how to play a harmonic on the harp. "