Hannah Harris

Hi, Reader! Last week's chat about modal tunes had some great replies! Here are a few more tunes for your radar if you want a "spooky-ish" feel to your playing this Halloween season without going totally overboard (unless you want to, of course): Rodney's Glory (set dance with a hornpipe feel that bends an F natural and F sharp throughout the tune) Blackberry Festival Footrace (3 part d minor jig) Halloween (a nice Scottish strathspey in F) I'll also add Chief O'Neill's hornpipe to the mix...

Halloween is approaching, Reader! I can't say I'm one of those people who puts out a lot of Halloween decorations, or starts drinking pumpkin spice lattes as soon as September 1st has hit. But I do love a good modal tune in Irish music with a couple of "spooky" notes that make your ears perk up! My private students can vouch that this is the time of year where I start assigning more of those spooky tunes. Liz Carroll has written some fun hornpipes that definitely fit the bill -- if you're...

Hi Reader! There's something about the name "Liz" that immediately has me thinking "incredible fiddler and amazingly warm and kind person." (Liz Carroll, Liz Knowles, Liz Doherty, Liz Hanley, Liz Kane, Liz Faiella... the list goes on!) Today I want to chat about something that Liz Knowles said a year or two ago in a podcast interview that has stood out to me to this day. "Isn't it interesting how we all come to trad music differently and learn tunes in different orders!" I'm paraphrasing...

Hi Reader! There are some weeks where I sit down to write these letters to you, and I know exactly what I'm going to chat about. Then there are other weeks where I have a bunch of different ideas spinning through my head (and still others where it's all a blank 😅). This is one of those "busy spinning brain" weeks. Do I tell you about how a student and I tweaked one bowing pattern to totally change the character of a tune? Or the bonus video training I recorded on wrist flexibility for the...

Hi Reader! I had this bright idea last week that I'd wait to just write you a Sunday letter the morning of, fresh off of our set at Michigan Irish Music Fest so that I could share the excitement and recap in the moment... Only to forget that the morning after staying up until the wee hours of the morning playing tunes is not the best time to try and get the brain into a writing state! 😆 So no new letter from last week, but I am still very much enjoying thinking back on the weekend, and all...

Hi Reader! So I've been living in metro Detroit for a little over a year now, and it's been one of the best decisions I ever made for my well being. One factor in particular that motivated the move was the expanded opportunity to put myself in sessions where I don't know all the tunes played. I've heard various versions of the advice "put yourself in rooms where you can learn" before -- and maybe you have too! But it can be helpful to put concrete examples to that advice. Just the other night...

Hi Reader! This past week felt like a string of behind the scenes steps for me and my partner -- you know, the less flashy "wins" and more of the necessary action steps needed to get to your actual goal. But they were wins all the same, and I wanted to share them with you today as a form of solidarity in case you're going through something similar! Bear and I spent a good chunk of our Tuesday sending out emails and applications to different festivals and local venues to start playing more...