A Timeless Musical Structure… with a deadline

Classes are in session!
Early registration discount ends: Oct. 29!

This is a musical framework that has been used by improvising musicians from Mozart to Thelonious Monk, across genres from classical to jazz and therapeutic music.

The essence of this structure is simple yet powerful:

Melody – Exploration – Melody

Home – Adventure – Home

1. Melody (or Tune/Theme): The piece begins with a melody or theme, a recognizable musical line that sets the tone.
2. Exploration: This section can take many forms, often involving variations on the original theme or a melodic improvisation over a related chord progression (like the one I taught in the 5-Day Harp Improv Challenge).
   This is the space where creativity thrives, and the music explores new ideas while staying connected to the melody. And this is a big part of what you’ll learn to do this quarter in Hip Harp Academy.
3. Melody: After the exploration, the melody returns, giving the piece a sense of closure and completeness.

This form can be expanded into four, five, and even six-part structures. You can see them all in the diagram above:

• Intro: a way to bridge to the silence before the piece and welcome listeners to the music
• Ending (Coda/Outro): a way to say farewell
• Cadenza: a freer, open section of the music that creates a moment of suspension before returning to the theme

Advanced players can also use this form to play jazz. That’s why we also offer “Jazz for Harps” this quarter in Harp Harp Academy so that harpists who have already taken Hip Harp Toolkit can expand the framework with jazzy harmony and rhythms.

This is the structure we use in the “Structure is Freedom” quarter at Hip Harp Academy and we combine it with a set of skills and tools that let you build this simple framework into a complete musical arrangement at your level of technical ability whatever that is.

The goal is to have it match your skills, so you can express the musician you are right now exactly as you are in a world of creative resonance with yourself, your instrument, your music and the people you play for.

Join us to create YOUR unique repertoire this quarter, so you can play with FREEDOM.