Harp Escape is an online place to relax. I began my monthly video series, Harp Escape, this Spring. Each video includes tunes intended to relax the listener, and bring a breath of calm into their environment. Because of the chronic stress, relentless noise and dousing of bad news our modern world exposes us to, life can be downright hopeless feeling some days. Therefore, it is essential for us to take breaks throughout the day and, as I like to say, floss your ears.

It is vital for our individual health to stay balanced, so that our communities and Earth can be healthy too. When we feel stress all the time, that stress becomes a homeostasis, or the state of normal being. Without any stress reducers, our bodies take on a “fight or flight” state, and we may never get out of that feeling of constant stress and overwhelm. Music is the oldest form of human communication, and sound is also one of the most basic forms of healing. It is with these sentiments that I bring you Harp Escape.

Volume 1 of Harp Escape is a song called Happy Apple. Originally, the inspiration for the piece came from a childhood toy of mine that my mother sent to me when I had my own child. The Fisher Price Happy Apple was a very popular chiming wobbly toddler thing of the 1970’s. Its sound was still pleasing to me decades later, so I wrote a song about it. In vol. 1 of Harp Escape, I slow the composition down and change it to an instrumental version. You can listen to The Daphnes recording of Happy Apple on our album Braids of Kabuya.

As a Certified Clinical Musician, I have studied how certain intervals, musical modes, and tempos can have a particularly soothing effect. I merge this ancient healing knowledge with my skills as a life-long musician and harpist of 25 years. As a songwriter and improviser, I bring relaxing arrangements of a variety of songs and styles for the intent of healing with Harp Escape. If you have any song requests, let me know!

As a harpist, it is impossible to avoid playing Irish tunes! A harp is the national symbol of Ireland, after all. Vol. 2 of Harp Escape is Foggy Dew, the song of choice to teach my students this March for St. Patrick’s Day. Many of these old ballads can be short. So, I expanded Foggy Dew and wrote an additional melody in the relative major key of G. Interested in an arrangement? Just send me a message.