Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp instruction book
Start playing the double-strung harp, or take your double-strung playing to the next level.
Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp is for double-strung harp players who are brand new to the instrument, who already know how to play the single-course harp, or who already play the double-strung harp. How do you make it sound like a double? How do you focus with two sets of strings? And then, what do you do next? Get the hard copy or PDF.
Learn how to play the double-strung harp
Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp is available as a PDF and a spiral-bound book.
Enjoy taking advantage of the double-strung’s signature strengths—overlapping accompaniment, effortless ornaments, faster repeated notes, and fewer mid-song lever changes—by learning the technique, appreciating how the technique works in a real arrangement, and perfecting that technique via exercises or etudes.
Because there will never be as much sheet music published specifically for the double-strung as there is for the regular, single-course harps, you will also learn how to apply double-strung techniques to single-course repertoire and lead sheets, as well as single-course method books and technique exercises. This means the book grows with you, offering immediate entry points for beginners and deep exploration for experienced harpists.
You’ll also discover solutions to practical issues like tuning both sides, dealing with levers on the side you can’t see, and dusting between the string rows. Fascinating, right?!
Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp is available in hard copy and PDF. Here is the first section.
Chapter 1: Why play a double-strung?
Welcome to the world of the double-strung harp. The thing that makes a double-strung harp unique is having two rows of the same strings. Here’s what that gets you:
Melody and accompaniment never collide. Take arrangements for a larger harp and move the left hand up an octave. You don’t have to make any adjustments to prevent both hands from touching the same strings; they can’t touch the same strings.
More strings, much less weight. A double-strung harp with 24 strings on both sides is approximately 20” deep and weighs around 10 pounds. A 36-string single-course harp is over 30” deep and weighs at least 26 pounds. Which would you rather carry to gigs or into patient rooms?
Special effects. Echo yourself. Play the same note in both hands simultaneously for a richer sound. Roll overlapping chords for the notes to ring in an unexpected order. Extend arpeggios over the melody for serendipitous ornaments, echoes, and harmonies.
Easier arranging and playing from lead sheets. You can put much more concentration into your melody, because your accompaniment can be a repeating pattern that will never crash into your melody hand.
Freer improvising. Being able to echo and create close harmonies with each hand on their own side invites opportunities to experiment with low risk.
Better-sounding repeated notes. For songs with lots of repeated notes, you can split the playing between rows, so you don’t have to quickly damp the same string to play it again.
Fewer mid-song lever changes. Set your accidentals on one side so you don’t have to flip in the middle of a song.
More resonance. No matter what you are playing, the double-strung harp sounds fuller, because there are more strings to vibrate sympathetically.
This book explores how to take advantage of all of those things.
Arrangements and etudes in Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp
The lowest note in all but three of the arrangements is the G below middle C. The highest note is three Es above middle C. About 12 of the arrangements and exercises are lever-free, about 17 use an F♯, and four also use an A♭, B♭, C♯, D♯, E♭, or G♯.
“Adeste Fideles” (O Come, All Ye Faithful). Discover how much echo is too much. No one knows who wrote or composed this. Partially finger-numbered. (F♯. Bass clef for part of one measure.)
“Aura Lea.” Version 1 is arranged for one hand. Version 2 has both hands sharing the melody. Get used to seeing the strings for each hand, and learn how to do this on single-course pieces. This is the tune for Elvis’s “Love Me Tender.” Full brackets and finger numbers.
“Beautiful Dreamer.” Version 1 presets the melody accidental in the left hand. Version 2 presets it in the right, allowing the accompaniment to be more involved. Published posthumously. Stephen Foster was almost penniless when he died; he had three pennies in his pocket. Partially finger-numbered. (C♯. Bass clef.)
“Carol of the Bells” (Shchedryk). Try different options to find your preferred method for accidentals. The title is derived from the Ukrainian word for bounty. Partially finger-numbered. (F♯ and G♯. Some bass clef.)
“Cloud 9” and “7th Heaven.” Practice extended arpeggios with 9ths and 7ths while hearing the accompaniment approach, meet, and surpass the melody. ChatGPT helped me name these etudes. Almost fully finger-numbered.
“Cremonea.” Learn how to alter single-course sheet music for your double-strung and adjust scores that don’t fit your harp’s range. Sometimes attributed to Turlough O’Carolan. Fully finger-numbered. (F♯. Bass clef.)
“Dona Nobis Pacem.” Version 1 demonstrates how to play multiple melody lines. Version 2 demonstrates multiple melody lines plus accompaniment. No one knows who composed this music. No finger numbers in v1, some in v2. (F♯.)
“Five Trios.” Train the left hand to play triads while the right hand moves around. Learn how to add variety to a repetitive piece. This is just an etude made up of five triads. Partially bracketed and finger-numbered. Both hands share the melody.
“Floating Balloons.” Discover the beauty when rolled chords overlap. This is the first piece I composed for the double-strung. Partially finger-numbered. (F♯.)
“Für Elise” (Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor) abridged, WoO 59. Play this Beethoven classic without changing levers mid-song, then experiment with different lever options. No one knows who Elise was. Partially finger-numbered. (D♯ and G♯. Some bass clef.) SAMPLE BELOW.
“Home on the Range.” Accompany using the same shape with different rhythms. How gorgeous is this song? Partially bracketed and finger-numbered.
“How Great Thou Art” (O Store Gud). Hear richer harmonies with accidentals, or leave the accidentals out. An old Swedish folk tune with new lyrics. Partially finger-numbered. (Optional B♭ and E♭. Some bass clef. Three pages.)
“La Cucaracha.” Use the left hand in both the melody and the accompaniment. No one knows what the original lyrics were. Almost fully finger-numbered. (F♯.) SAMPLE BELOW.
“Loch Lomond.” Use two hands for snappy Scotch snaps. “Oh! ye’ll tak’ the high-road, and I’ll tak’ the low-road…” Partially finger-numbered. (F♯. Some bass clef.)
“Neap Tide.” Learn to accompany with triad arpeggios using a consistent rhythm. Four additional rhythms are provided for fun. We named one of our cats after neap tides. Partially bracketed and finger-numbered.
“Oh! Susanna.” Hear the connection of echo and syncopation when hands strategically overlap. What you will not hear is the shocking second verse. Partially finger-numbered, including fourth-finger slides.
“Prelude in C” (Praeludium), BWV 846, from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Use both courses to work around accidentals with minimal lever changes. It’s Bach, baby! Partially finger-numbered. (A♭, B♭, C♯, E♭, F♯. Some bass clef. Four pages.)
“Scarborough Fair.” Discover serendipitous melody decorations from the accompaniment for this piece in the Dorian mode. The version of the tune we’re most familiar with comes from a retired lead miner. The first verse is fully finger-numbered.
“Skye Boat Song” (Outlander Theme). Hear the changing density of overlapping accompaniment notes. The lyrics used in the television show are based on a rewrite by Robert Louis Stevenson. Partially finger-numbered. (F♯.) SAMPLE BELOW.
“The Sheep-Shearers” (Next Oars). Version 1 lets you delight in the magic of echoes created from overlapping, syncopated accompaniment that sounds harder than it is. Version 2 is an etude for training the left hand to play melody, which is harder than it sounds. Slip jig in the Mixolydian mode. Partially finger-numbered. (F♯.)
“Silent Night.” Start playing hands simultaneously with more and more variety in the accompaniment: one note, two-note chords, triads, and arpeggios. Practice simplifying any piece to make it playable at your current level. They dug up the lyricist’s skull to make a sculpture of him! Versions 1 and 2 are fully bracketed and finger-numbered. Versions 3 and 4 are almost completely finger-numbered. SEE THE ENTIRE SCORE and analysis for “Silent Night” 4 in the images for the hard copy or PDF.
“Streets of Laredo” (Cowboy’s Lament). Learn the sound and feel of an octave reach versus a seventh. Do you have a cowboy outfit? Almost fully finger-numbered.
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Use a busy, overlapping accompaniment to reduce repeated melody notes. Written by a father and daughter who were freed after being enslaved by the Choctaw Nation. Melody is fully finger-numbered, accompaniment is self-explanatory.
“Syn-echo-pation.” Think of syncopated notes as an echo. Just an etude. No finger numbers. (F♯ in the accompaniment.)
“Taps.” Accompany using arpeggios an octave wide. There is extensive information available on the tune, but almost nothing is known about the lyricist. Fully finger-numbered and almost fully bracketed. SEE THE ENTIRE SCORE and analysis for “Taps” in the images for the hard copy or PDF.
“Wayfaring Stranger.” Both hands help with repeated notes in the other staff. No one knows who wrote this. Fully finger-numbered. SAMPLE BELOW.
“When the Saints Go Marching In.” Make echoes of short phrases and individual notes. This was first recorded at a restrained tempo and became more raucous as years passed. Partially finger-numbered. (F♯ in the accompaniment.)
No sharps or flats needed unless mentioned. No bass clef unless mentioned. Scores are on one page or on two facing pages (no page turns in the hard copy) unless mentioned.
Except for “Carol of the Bells,” all songs have lyrics for at least one verse. Except for “Five Trios,” all pieces have chord symbols, so you can treat them as a lead sheet and do your own arrangement.
Hear my double-strung arrangement of “Skye Boat Song” (theme from the Outlander television drama). The first line of the score is one of the sample images on this page.
See the full scores and analysis for two other pieces when you click for more details on the hard copy or PDF.
Exercises to develop good harp technique and practice double-strung effects
“Drunken Sailor.” Three versions and a lead sheet explore how to make repeated notes prettier. Based on the sea song in the Dorian mode. F♯.
“Frere Jacques.” Four versions teach you how to decide when to use which hand to “help” with the melody.
“Going Home.” Twelve accompaniment variations on the first eight bars to learn and listen to develop your ear for creating your own double-strung arrangements, which you can practice on the full lead sheet.
“Kum ‘Baa’ Yah, Little Star.” Practice and listen to the different ways to repeat notes between both hands so you can decide when you want to do it. Based on “Kum Ba Yah,” “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.”
Eight examples of how to modify single-course exercises to make them more doubly.
Six exercises to practice using the left hand in the melody, plus a bonus based on “Prelude in C.” F♯.
Four exercises to practice using the right hand in the accompaniment, plus a bonus based on “Carol of the Bells.”
Six exercises to learn how to roll chords through both hands, plus a bonus for trills and bisbigliando.
Five exercises to practice mid-song lever flips, including one that uses the right hand to flip a lever on the left side. The flipped levers are A♭ and B♭. Contact me for a different version if you do not tune in flats.
Three exercises to flip levers on the blind (right-hand) side! The flipped lever is F♯.
Twelve exercises that also make good intros, outros, or interludes, including some in the Dorian and Mixolydian modes. Some use F♯.
Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp works for all levels of harpers
There’s “level” as in your familiarity with double-strung harps, there’s “level” as in your skill in playing a harp of any type, and there’s also a “level” with regards to music theory and musicianship.
If you have never played harp before, use Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp with any other “regular” (single-course) harp learning method, such as books like Sylvia Woods’s Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp➚, online schools like Learning the Harp➚ or How To Harp➚, or whatever your teacher recommends. My book explains how to apply double-strung techniques to everything you’re learning from those methods.
If you already play single-course harp but are new to the double, then you already have the technical skills, and you can focus on applying them to this instrument. Start with the section about how single-course and double-strung harps are different, then read about how to see both sets of strings. It will take about a week to get adjusted; don’t give up.
If you already play the double, you’ll probably just skim the scores and analyses for “Aura Lea,” “Five Trios,” “Taps,” and the first three versions of “Silent Night.” You’ll have a fun challenge with the syncopated version of “Neap Tide,” and you might learn something interesting from “Home on the Range” and the fourth version of “Silent Night.” After that, you have 28 arrangements, etudes, or explorations to play and learn from, plus all of the exercises. At a minimum, you will add dozens of gorgeous pieces to your repertoire when you finish this book. If you utilize this book to the max, you will be well versed in creating your own double-strung arrangements and tweaking single-course pieces to be more doubly.
With regards to music theory, you will need to be able to figure out treble clef and sometimes bass clef. Most of my arrangements have chord symbols, and I spend the first several pieces pointing out how the chord symbols relate to patterns in the left hand.
I use six examples with variations to teach you how to simplify my arrangements based on reading the chord symbols. If you consider your skill level at the harp to be “beginner,” you will be able to play a version of most of the pieces in here with the modifications I recommend. As written, the arrangements are “intermediate.” Here are some characteristics that might help:
EASIER: Almost all of the arrangements have some finger numbering.
EASIER: There are almost no chords in the right hand.
EASIER: There is almost no bass clef (both hands are usually in treble clef).
EASIER: All of the arrangements sound beautiful when played slowly, even “La Cucaracha.” Most songs don’t have sixteenth notes.
LESS EASY: Almost all of the arrangements have hands playing simultaneously.
LESS EASY: The accompaniment rhythms are usually touching an octave, which means you use finger 4.
LESS EASY: Several arrangements use cross-unders in the accompaniment, but my section on simplifying addresses how to eliminate them. Crosses and slides are rarely used in the melody.
I’m happy to answer any questions you have to help you decide if Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp is right for you; contact me.
Two ways to purchase Enjoy the Double-Strung Harp
Click either option to see the full table of contents and more sample pages from the book:
Don’t have a double-strung harp yet? Check out my list of double-strung harp luthiers. Want even more double-strung harp music? Here are all of the composers and arrangers for double-strung harp, including links to their social media channels and double-strung sheet music. Not sure what a double-strung harp is in the first place? Find out what makes the double-strung harp different. Contact me for more answers over email, or set up one or more private lessons for double-strung harp, regular harp, or therapeutic harp.