In late January of 2025, the Urban Youth Harp Ensemble was invited to perform at the Georgia Music Educators Association's Conference. Two classes from Charles R. Drew Charter School performed, with the class joining at 12:22 in the video being my class. We performed 3 songs: Wade in the Water, Sonata en Re, and Spanish Dance No. 1 by Manuel De Falla. This was a great experience to show my musical prowess while also getting to perform in front of many experienced musicians.

For this project, we had to arrange a piece we chose by ear, and perform and record it. I chose Somewhere Only We Know by Keane.

“Somewhere Only We Know” is a song released in 2004 by the band Keane on their album, Hopes and Fears. It’s an alternative rock song and is a slower, more reflective song.  I chose this piece because I liked the slower tempo and the chords associated with its patterns. It also has a nice melodic ring, and it also has a nice, slow ending. The arranging process of this piece was prolonged and methodical, as the patterns usually repeat with a small change, so I had to work with that while keeping the bass in time. Although the song has many chords, It translated well to the harp. The intro and exit of the piece are also very distinct and unique, and they tie the piece together very well.

For this project, we completed a mock wedding to learn skills about weddings and how they work. I performed the Recessional, which is the ending of the wedding, and you play while everyone leaves. I learned how to go through weddings while watching out for developments and things gone awry. This project ultimately helped me learn about weddings and how they run with harps.

We're about to listen to a new piece called mischief, and these are my thoughts before: I think it'll be a nice, little, trilly piece, with lots of arpeggios and different pedal changes. I also think that it's going to be a quick pace.

My thoughts after: I think that it was kind of enchanting, and repetitive, like a trance. I really like the patterning of the piece, so it's nice to hear.

This piece was very interesting, especially because of the varying  techniques used in the piece. As you can see in he video, we used many uncommon techniques, such as using the pedals on the harp to make a construction sound. Also, we used a wooden dowel to create a buzzing sound on the harp. Plus, we were able to pick our own parts to play out of the ten we were allowed to play on our own. Overall, I honestly disliked this piece, but it was a very interesting new experience for me.

In this piece, we used one specific technique to play this piece, the tuning key slide. When you're doing a tuning key slide, you just need to put the tuning key on the string, pluck the string and move the tuning key up and down on the string to create a bending effect. It sounds very interesting, and in this context we used it so sound like a cat meowing. Furthermore, we used grace notes to accent the notes that we played above middle C. Overall, this piece was fun to play and sounded good as well.