What is Hip Harp Academy by Deborah Henson-Conant?

That is why I created HipHarp Academy, the home of creativity, confidence, and connection. And what we have here, there are three things that make the academy run. Coaching, classes, and community. So I’m going to show you each of these very briefly.

So let’s first, let’s look at, let’s look at the coaching. So there are three different ways that we connect live each week online. There’s the live master classes, there’s the weekly office hours, and there’s the catch -up coaching.

So you’re going to be able to see how this works now. So this is what the schedule looks like each week. There’s masterclass learning chat at 11 a .m., and there’s the same chat, but it’s going to be slightly different because it’s different people.

We have people around the world, so we have this to chat twice a day. We also have this really cool class called transformational practices that happens right before the afternoon master class. These yellow ones are the things that happen every week.

There’s catch -up coaching with Sally, where you get to look at technical things, or you get to have things broken down as far as you want to have them broken down. Office hours with me, where you can ask absolutely anything.

This is one of my favorite parts of the academy. And these two sessions switch. Like one day, office hours will be at 7 p .m. on Thursday, and the next week, it’ll be up here, and vice versa. And that’s, again, so that we can serve the international community that we have.

Then there are these other events that happen once a month or once every two months. The elite chat is for people who’ve been in the academy for over a year, and techie tidbits and harp time live and the book club.

Those are all things that happen periodically. Homework is due Sunday night. Now what is homework? There is homework with many of the classes, and you can do that homework, but many of the members make up their own homework, so that they are something they’re working on, they want to get feedback on it, and so they create.

homework, which is usually a video share, although it can be something else, that they can get direct feedback from me on and that’s part of that feedback is part of these chats and it’s very powerful.

It may sound scary at first but it but in fact it’s it’s it’s really fun and really powerful. The classes, so there are many classes, many many classes in the Academy. We focus on two or three each quarter.

We are focusing on blues harp style, summer harp jam. We always look at blueprints for creativity and I don’t see Natalia and the oh and modulating warm -ups. So that’s what we’re focusing on this quarter but all of them are available to you.

Once you’re an Academy member you get access to all of them while you’re a member. Inside, this is what it looks like, inside the Academy this in the train the trainings are all pre -recorded so you can watch them at your own pace.

and you can watch the videos, you can download the audio to listen any time, and then there are also, oh, you can speed it up and slow it down, and there are also PDFs. And for those of you who are in the academy, right now we’re having a tech problem with these particular audio files, so we’re starting to put up Google download files for you, and you’ll start seeing them this week.

There’s also PDFs, downloadable PDFs and playsheets and lead sheets and worksheets, and there’s soundscapes that you can download as well for certain classes. So it’s a living, playing experience, and to help you live and play it, there is this amazing, amazing community.

It really is an amazing community. A powerful community of harpists all around the world. Everyone is at a different level with a different intention, but with the same passion to learn, and that’s what makes it so exciting, because you are not alone, and you really get that you’re not alone in this journey.

And there’s your harp buddy. You get a harp buddy if you want a harp buddy, and that’s the first person you share your ideas with, someone who you keep on track with, the person you share your entire journey with.

And those are the elements that make the academy so powerful, coaching, the classes, and the community. you Is there anyone from the academy I would love to have someone just kind of come up and share what your experience has been in um because you know I can talk about it blah blah blah I can say what I’m noticing but it’s really helpful if there’s someone who’s in the academy who can share and I might even ask um Tammy I know you’re our our um admin I’m looking for anybody else or Madam would you be willing and it’s okay if you say no yes I’m here I was gonna gonna jump in Okay,

great. All right. Yeah, yeah. Just talk about your experience and what it was like kind of what were your reservations before you jumped in or what made you jump in and when what’s what have you actually experienced?

Yeah, so my reservations at first were a lot around the cost. And then when I started to look at well, gosh, it’s only like a little over $100 a month to have this kind of access to the wealth of information that’s available through all the self -paced materials, that it really seemed like it was an incredible deal and I was foolish to pass it up.

So and then when I also discovered that there were payment plans so that I didn’t have to do it, I could either pay, you know, the hundred and something per month or three payments of like 500. It just made it very doable for me.

So so I decided to take the plunge. And it’s changed my life. It’s changed me as a musician. I have grown. in ways that are hard to describe, but it’s really been a beautiful experience. And I wasn’t even sure I needed the community, but it’s been really wonderful to have the support and the inspiration of all the other harpists and just hearing and watching what they do and all the different levels and the beauty that comes out of the different levels and that it’s also changed my ideas about that things don’t have to be complicated to be beautiful or to be musical.

And so it’s really given me a lot and I’m developing different arrangements. I’m mostly a singer -songwriter. I use the harp more like a guitar in most of my own music, although I can play melodies and pieces too, but I kind of choose that it’s not really my thing.

But my husband and other people who have heard me play before have been commenting about how much my playing has changed since I joined the Academy and been expanding my improv skills. Wow, that is cool.

So I wanna ask you a couple of things about what you just said. I’ll come on with you. So I love that you said, I wasn’t sure that I needed the community. And then, but in fact, like, so what can you think of a couple of things that have happened because of the community that might not have happened otherwise?

Oh, gosh, I don’t know. On the spot, right? Yeah, I’m kind of drawing a blank on that one, but yeah, I really look forward to being able to connect with people. And I feel like I have new friends all over the world, really.

And I’ve brought, actually two people I’ve brought into the, Academy. Lynn Reardon was my former bandmate from decades ago and Deborah Nodell is also a good friend from from long long ago and Deb and I are now harp buddies and we we messaged each other so we’ve we’ve actually kind of reestablished our friendship through the academy and then Deborah Sawyer and I have been talking also doing a little bit of buddy work there now as well so so she’s another so I’m meeting other people that are doing the same thing with the harp that I’m doing that I didn’t know I mean I knew there were others others like me out there but I don’t know them so I’ve been able to connect with with more people that are that are doing the same type of things song songwriting and and singing.

Yeah that’s great and I know there’s a lot of people who are not songwriters in in the academy but that’s really great I love hearing that and I and one other thing I wanted to ask but don’t worry if you’re Don’t worry if you’re on the spot, you can just say, I refuse to answer that question.

You said that people have said your playing has opened up. And in terms of improv, have they said anything else like in specific about the improv? Like, is it opening up your tunes? Are you adding improv to your tunes or where is it showing up?

Yeah, so I think I’m just doing a better job. Like I was, I would always kind of freak out when I got to the improv sections, you know, like instrumental breaks and pieces where I felt like I had to sort of play the melody exactly as I sang it.

And now I have like a completely different attitude about it. It’s like, I don’t think about it. I just sort of, okay, my left hand is going to do the chord pattern and then my right hand is going to dance.

And so I just have a very different approach to it. And I also, leaving a lot more space, like, and a lot of that I learned from watching you and how you play, that there’s, that there’s, it doesn’t, I don’t have to fill every beat, that there’s a lot of, you know, to give a little bit more space in the music and which actually makes it more expressive.

And that’s in turn changed the way that I sing, oddly enough, like my vocal approach on the guitar as well as on the harp have changed, has changed a lot in the past few months too. Yeah, I’ve seen that with you.

I mean, or I’ve seen that with you with a harp, like only in that you are like, like, is this okay? Like I just did the same pattern over and over again and I was like, yes, I mean, because we get to hear you.

That’s what we want to hear. It’s been really fun to watch you, you know, watch that blossom. And I’m really excited to see you in Tennessee. Yes, yeah, I know. I just rebooked my flights. I will be there.

All right, well, I will let you off the hook here. Okay, thank you. Sure, thank you so much. Is there anybody else who wants to come up and sort of describe their journey? I think it can be helpful to others.

Aha, if you’re open to it. just jump up, jump in. I’m reading what people saying, Christina saying to see what the others are doing is extremely motivating, and kind of makes me try things I never even thought before.

Well, I see that all over the academy all the time. And then I love it. People are like, Wait a second. Oh, I didn’t know you could do that. Okay, I’m gonna try that. And then the other person’s like, Oh, wow, you can do it that way.

Okay. And the another thing I really love about it is, you know, we can just like we can get stuck in these blocks of perfectionism, we can also start seeing other harpists as the competition. And so I really love an environment where we are seeing each other as colleagues.

And that’s been something that I’ve been really lucky to have. And so I wanted to share I wanted to pass that on because it’s so powerful to have that kind of those kinds of relationships. Cherie says, there’s so many wonderful things about the Academy and having a harp buddy which can be set up in the Academy is so helpful.

I’ve learned everything from DHC as I didn’t know how to play the harp in the beginning. And now I can play which is amazing to me. And it’s amazing. Cherie, do you want to jump in because it is really amazing to watch your journey too.

Because I remember some of the first videos you did. And I love them because you brought humor into everything. But I’ll just jump at it and let you kind of share and I’ll jump back in. You stay on. You stay on.

You want me to stay on? Okay, I’m coming in with you. I’m coming in. Thank you. All right. Yeah, no, I’m just amazed that I can actually play the harp now. And I feel okay about playing the harp. You know, like I didn’t actually know any of the things.

The things about you, you put in little things about theory, which I didn’t understand any of it, like the numbers that you’ve got 1625 that progression. I wouldn’t have understood what that was. And you explain all of those things as if and I’m and I was a complete beginner.

So you can actually come into the Academy as a complete beginner, not knowing anything at all. And I’ve learned everything from you because I didn’t have there’s no harpist around here. So I haven’t don’t have a trainer or anybody locally or anything.

I went to a teacher once, but she said because I couldn’t read music and I couldn’t do this or that, didn’t it? I really probably couldn’t do it. So that was rather disheartening. But what I find with the Academy, it doesn’t matter.

Everybody is at different levels like this, like Sally, who’s been playing classical music for 50 years. I mean, but and you can have somebody who’s just right at the beginning and everybody is so kind and supportive and encouraging is you don’t get put down.

You don’t get told, oh, no, no. can’t do this you’re always encouraged to keep trying and do something different and I never in my wildest dreams thought that I’d be able to make up my own music. I didn’t know how to improvise, I didn’t know what that was and you explain it right from the beginning like that fence post thing and when you use that 1625 progression and then so you’ve got a structure you’ve got a pattern to work with and then you show how to use that pattern what to do with the right hand you don’t have to play a melody per se but you’re just but I people would say well improvise but I didn’t know what what that meant I didn’t know how to do that there was no there was no structure to it and you give a pattern you give us patterns to work with and and the power of pattern last year when you didn’t Italiana really clicked with me it just kind of oh gosh you know each each year um i just keep building on from the year before that something i didn’t understand before i get it and you have these little light bulb aha moments where you um think oh that’s what it’s about now i understand and it clicks into place yeah it’s why it’s just and having a heart buddy is fantastic i mean carol boots my heart buddy and we meet up after class and have a chat most weeks and we can compare what we’re doing in the academy and we can um set goals for ourselves and because we’ve got someone to talk to about it put you know it just it’s brilliant it’s it’s great having a heart buddy it’s fabulous you know sherry as you describe your journey i’m i’m taken back to my journey because i didn’t read music as a kid but the way you describe it is actually the way that i learned and in including what you just said which is you know you have something and then you um and but you don’t quite get it and then and then something comes in and you’re like oh that’s what that’s about and that literally still happens for me now when i’m like oh that’s what they meant in the third grade when they said this about music and it is really fun because then it’s expanding and expanding expanding it’s so fun now we don’t normally and i mean i always say fledgling to professional because there there are you know other places that you know where where they’re literally teaching start start how to start the harp i don’t know that those were there when you began maybe or maybe not um but um but it’s i love that you i didn’t even i didn’t even realize that because as soon as you jumped in you were like i’m i’m doing this and and and And you just took everything that you were,

including your dog, and brought it in, which is wonderful. So it’s always fun to hear and to just see how. And I love one day you said, you know, I just put all these snippets together. Is this music?

Am I playing music? And it was so great because, you know, we saw you doing it was like, yes, that’s music. And because you were being so musical. And so it was really so fun to see you, you were able to shine through it.

Yeah. And the other thing I wanted to do was to be able to sing and play. And I have sung before, but I’d never played an instrument before. So it was quite a challenge for me to do two things that felt like it once, how to play an instrument that I’m not familiar with.

and even just play an instrument full stop and to sing at the same time because I’d always had a compliment with my singing. So I didn’t know how to put those two things together. And so that’s been a big achievement.

And then the other big achievement was then doing talking, so telling stories and playing as well. And it kind of goes together. If you can do one, you can do the other. And watching you, how you talk and play all the time and you sing and play.

And I thought, how do you do that? And you’ve got courses that, you know, and just practicing that concept. It happens. It works. Hmm. I love hearing that. And I love I love seeing, you know, what you’ve done with it.

And that’s another joy for me about the coaching sessions is actually getting to see people over time and remember what they did three years ago and then see what they’re doing now. And then when they try something new and how that starts and then how that expands.

And I love and I love that we get to see that whole spectrum. We’re not just waiting and then seeing this is the final product. We get to see with each other all along the way. Yeah. Yeah. And and the homework doing the videos has been really helpful for me.

And it is rather seeing other people’s videos and what they do gives you ideas and think, oh, I hadn’t thought of doing that. And and and so for the person doing the video, too, it’s it’s really it’s getting that feedback and encouragement from the other members in the academy and the excellent feedback that you you also provide.

And it feels like so supportive. You know, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes or whatever you do. It’s it’s irrelevant. It’s just putting yourself there forward. And that. has also helped with some of my nervousness of performing.

So during the video, I used to get really, really nervous just doing a video. And so practicing that, just the act of actually putting something in and completing something, a sense of achievement with that as well.

So the homework is useful, really useful. That’s really great to hear. And I know that I work really hard when anyone’s sharing to get people’s minds to understand that we’re watching others not to assess.

That’s not going to help us. It’s just going to get us more stuck, that we want to watch each person to discover what’s newly available to us through that. And that seems to make a big difference. That’s great.

Thank you so much. That’s great. I love it too. Thank you. I always love hearing you share about it.