Sylvia Woods’ Blog and Podcasts

Want It NOW?
Audio and Printed Music Downloads Are Here!

I am extremely proud to announce that our website has begun to offer two types of musical downloads. Get your music NOW, with no waiting or shipping costs!

The first type of download is an mp3 music download. These downloads are audio tracks from some of the CDs we sell in our catalog and online store. Most individual tracks are 99 cents, with an entire CD download selling for $9.95 or less, with NO shipping costs! You will receive a link for your download by e-mail immediately after you have placed an order on our website.

To begin, we are offering my CDs as mp3 downloads, as well as the wonderfully relaxing CDs by Paul Baker. We’ll be adding more tracks from other artists in the near future. Check our mp3 download page frequently to see what’s new!

The second type of download is a PDF of printed sheet music. Once again, you’ll receive the link for your download by e-mail right after you complete your order on our website. Then you can print out your music immediately and begin playing it on your harp! Talk about instant gratification! The prices of the sheet music PDFs are generally the same price as the printed sheet music, but the advantage is that you get your music NOW, with no shipping costs!

We are extremely pleased to be one of the first to offer PDF sheet music by Loreena McKennitt. Selections include pieces from her recordings An Ancient Muse, The Book of Secrets, The Mask and the Mirror, and The Visit. These sheet music selections are ONLY available by PDF download.

We also have PDF downloads for some of my sheet music, including All the Pretty Little Horses, America Medley, Flower Duet, In the Bleak Midwinter, Spiritual Medley, and Wondrous Love. More Sylvia Woods music downloads will be available SOON!

We are adding new PDF downloads every week, so keep watching the PDF Music Downloads page on our website for new additions.

We’re excited to be on the leading edge of harp music downloads, where you can receive your music immediately, and not have to pay for shipping! As we add more and more titles to our website, we are certain that harpcenter.com will rapidly become your harp music download destination!

Sylvia Woods

In 1978, I published my groundbreaking book, Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp. Since then, thousands have learned to play the harp using this step-by-step tutor. In honor of its 30th anniversary, this book has been updated and displays a gold banner, proclaiming it as the “30th Anniversary Edition.”

What’s new?
The introduction and appendix have been rewritten and updated. Additional and helpful information has been added for new harp players. You can view and print PDFs of all of the newly revised Introduction and Appendix pages by clicking the links below.

Entire Introduction and Appendix (all of the new pages)

Entire Introduction
• Individual Introduction Pages:
• • 1-Page Intro to the 30th Anniversary Edition
• • The “Typesetting” of this Book
• • How to Use this Book
• • Types and Parts of Harps
• • Holding the Harp

Entire Appendix
• Individual Appendix Pages:
• • Tuning Your Harp
• • Sharps, Flats, and Key Signatures - and - Harp Tuning Methods
• • Accidentals and Lever Changes
• • Taking Care of Your Harp
• • Replacing Strings (2 pages)

• • Tying the Harp String Knot
• • What’s Next?

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view these PDFs.

What stayed the same? 
I have kept all of the music pages in the Teach Yourself book intact, making no changes to the music or any of the pages from page 11 to 71. Therefore, the Teach Yourself companion cassettes, CDs, DVDs and videos are still compatible with any edition of the book.

What if I have an earlier edition?
If you have an earlier edition, you can view and print all of the newly revised pages by clicking and following the links listed here.

What about the companion products?
Because all of the music and lesson pages remained the same, the Teach Yourself companion cassettes, CDs, DVDs and videos are compatible with any edition of the book.

New lower price on the video and cassette!
We’ve lowered the price on the companion video that goes along with the “Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp” book. The video’s new price of $27.45 is over 50% off the previous retail price of $54.95. The video is available in VHS or PAL formats (while supplies last).

The companion cassettes are also on sale while they last. Their original price was $7.95. They are now only $3, or $1 when you purchase them as a set with the book.

The “Original” Teach Yourself book!
Several books and other products have come out in recent years with titles similar to  “Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp” book and companion products. My Teach Yourself series has been around far longer than any of these other titles. It was the first of its kind that truly showed one how to play the lever harp - and play the lever harp well! With over 75,000 books thus sold, the Teach Yourself To Play the Folk Harp book was, and still is, a proven and innovative learning method.

One of the things I enjoy most when speaking to our customers is hearing what books they like best, and what pieces they want to learn next.

How would you like to help me decide what books I’ll be working on in the future? Now’s the time for you to vote!

I’d love your input on what music you would like me to arrange for the harp. Is there a piece that you want to learn, but haven’t been able to find? Would you like me to arrange more love songs, or perhaps movie and Broadway themes? What is on YOUR wish list?

Go to our questionnaire and give me your input. Check as many boxes as you’d like. If there are genres or pieces you’d like, please be as specific as possible.

For example, if there is a popular song you are interested in, please give me the name of the piece, the composer’s name (if you know it), and/or who has performed it. That way, I’ll be sure to know exactly what piece you’re talking about.

It takes me about a year to complete a large book of music. I spend many hours on each piece, writing the arrangement and figuring out how to make the necessary lever changes as easy as possible. Next, I enter the music on the computer, adding fingerings, chords, lyrics, etc. Once the arrangement is “done,” it goes through dozens of edits and proofreading steps before it is ready for its public debut!

Now, here’s my “fine print” disclaimer:

Please be aware that just because you vote for something doesn’t mean that I will arrange it, either now, or at any time in the future. (But, of course, I just might!) Please don’t “hold your breath” waiting for an arrangement. Be patient. Your wish may eventually come true (but maybe not). Please don’t continually ask when a particular arrangement will be done. That won’t make it happen any sooner (if at all).

And, here’s my helpful suggestion to you!

If there’s a piece you really want to learn that you can’t find arranged for harp, buy a copy of my Music Theory and Arranging Techniques for Folk Harps book, and make your own arrangement! It’s fun, and it will free you from the whims of harp arrangers, like me!

Thank you so much for your suggestions and input through our questionnaire. I really appreciate all of your help! Who knows . . . maybe you’ll find YOUR suggestion in my next book. Won’t that make you feel powerful and proud!

Thanks again,
Sylvia

Click here to fill out our questionnaire.

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, all of us at the Sylvia Woods Harp Center give thanks for our abundant blessings. We are thankful for music, especially harp music, that can bring joy to players and listeners alike. And we are thankful for YOU, our customers. We appreciate your support and your business throughout the years. We are honored that you trust us to fulfill all of your harp needs. And we are extremely grateful we can count you as our true friends.

As our Thanksgiving gift to you, we’re  offering  you
5% off ALL orders* placed through our harpcenter.com website.
This offer is good through December 1, 2008.  
*(Harps, strings, and gift certificates  are  excluded from this offer.)

Simply enter the word THANKS in the Promotional Code box during Step 3 of our checkout.

This offer is ONLY redeemable on-line.
It is not valid for phone, fax, e-mail, or in-store orders.
This offer is valid through Monday December 1, 2008.

Here’s how to get your 5% discount at www.harpcenter.com:
  #1. Put all of the items you want to purchase in your cart.
  #2. Begin the checkout.
  #3. On Step 3 of our checkout, type the code THANKS in the Promotional Code box. (You’ll find this box below where you select your shipping and payment method.) The THANKS code will automatically apply your 5% discount.
  #4. On Step 4 of our checkout, you’ll see your discount listed in parentheses right above the Order Total. This discount will be 5% off.

*Shipping and California tax (if applicable) are not discounted.

(Note: if you go back and add more items to your cart, you may have to re-enter the THANKS Promotional Code in Step 3.)

You must enter the THANKS coupon code in your on-line order to get the discount. If you forget, or if you have trouble adding it to your order, please email us immediately.

All of us here at the Harp Center would like to wish you, your family, your friends (and your harps!) a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Sylvia Woods

Would you like to receive more money-saving offers like this every month? Sign up for our monthly e-mail newsletter to get more discounts!

Ever since we made the announcement that we are reconfiguring our retail storefront of the Sylvia Woods Harp Center and moving to an “appointment only” harp showroom, rumors have been flying throughout the harp world. I’d like to take this opportunity to “set the record straight” and explain why I have made this business decision.

First, let me emphasize:
We are still here! We are still in business! You can still order harps, books, CDs, accessories and gifts by phone or via our web site at www.harpcenter.com.

The most noticeable difference will be for our local customers, who are in the habit of dropping by during our regular business hours. Besides our excellent phone and web site services, we will still be here for anyone interested in sampling the harps or renting a lever harp; you just need to call in advance to make an appointment.

Now, for the rumors: #1. I am not retiring. I will continue to actively run the Harp Center and my publishing business. #2. I am not sick. My health is fine. Thank you for your concern!

The decision to alter the way in which we do business will allow me to remain healthy, by reducing my stress level. I hope to stop “working” every waking moment, and I’m looking forward to actually “having a life” outside of the Harp Center. The good news for you is that this change in our business focus will enable me to have more time to create the harp books you all enjoy.

The current economy and the rise of Internet access has forced many business owners to re-evaluate their companies and make necessary changes to deal with the new economic climate. Our new business model will enable us to stick around for many years to come, and continue to serve our world-wide harp community.

I would like to personally thank all of you who have sent warm, congratulatory messages to me regarding our move. Change is never easy. It is not easy for us, and we know that this has been disconcerting for some of our customers. However, we’re sure that once we’ve completed our move, life will be better, and we’ll be better able to serve the greatest number of our customers.

A SPECIAL NOTE TO OUR LOCAL CUSTOMERS
Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of our loyal customers who have been coming to our retail store for the past 16 years. We know that you are the people who will be most affected by these changes. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. But look on the bright side: with the escalating price of gas, you’ll probably save money by ordering over the phone or on the web, instead of driving to see us! So please remember, we are still here! Just a phone call or a mouse click away!

Thank you again for all of your support. We’ll miss seeing your smiling faces every day! And we look forward to many more years of serving you, our wonderful customers.

Sincerely,
Sylvia Woods

The Sylvia Woods Harp Center is Streamlining to Serve You Better!

So that we may be more responsive to the needs of our customers, we are making major changes at the Sylvia Woods Harp Center.

As a world-wide purveyor of harps and harp-related merchandise, the vast majority of our business occurs through our website and by phone. 

Therefore, to better serve the greatest number of customers, we are closing our current retail store in Glendale, California, and opening a new “by appointment only” harp showroom, about 6 miles away in nearby La Crescenta.

Our last day at our current location will be June 28, 2008.  After this date, you will need to make an appointment to see the harps in our new showroom after our move.

Our new harp showroom will feature harps by Dusty Strings and Lyon & Healy Harps, two of the largest and most distinguished harpmakers in the world today, as well as other select models.

When you make an appointment to try out these fine harps, you will be given personal service and attention, assisted by one of our harp specialists. Books, CDs, gifts, accessories, strings, harps, and all of our other items will still be available through our website, by phone or mail order.   

We currently have a number of harps by Triplett, Salvi, and Wm. Rees that we are offering at a discount of up to 33% off, while supplies last.  This can mean a savings from $200 to over $2,000!   Click here to see our current selection of sale harps.

Our new “Harp Essentials” program is another great way we thought of to help you save money.  When you purchase any harp from the Sylvia Woods Harp Center (including our sale harps), you receive a 20% discount on selected “essential” harp accessories such as strings, benches, electronic tuners, and more.  Click here for more information on our Harp Essentials program.

We continue to add many exciting improvements to our website, making it even more innovative, informative and easy to use.  Some of the new features that are already in place or will be added during the coming months include: sample sound clips of all of our CDs; video clips of harps, performers, and products; how-to videos; personalized help through Live Chat; CD, sheet music and book downloads; and much, much more!  We feel that the Sylvia Woods Harp Center website is the best harp resource available on the web, and we plan to keep it that way . . . constantly working to make it even better!

We will conitnue to send our compact catalog through the mail every fall.  However, the best way to receive updates on new products, sales, and special money-saving coupons is to sign up for our monthly E-Mail Newsletter. Click here for more information and to sign up for our newsletter. 

Change is never easy.  However, we are confident that this evolution of the Sylvia Woods Harp Center will allow us to focus our attention and expertise on giving the best possible service to the greatest number of our wonderful customers. We’ll still be here, going and growing strong, ready and willing to assist you! 

I would personally like to thank you for your business, and hope to continue serving you through our new, improved Sylvia Woods Harp Center.

Sincerely,
Sylvia Woods

Sylvia Woods Harp Center

“Harp Essentials” 20% Discount Program

I’d like to tell you about an exciting new program that we have at the Sylvia Woods Harp Center. Purchase a harp from us and you’ll get a 20% discount on the following “Harp Essentials.” This offer is valid from the time of your harp purchase until 7 days after you receive your harp.

Harp Essentials
* Extra strings (individual, or a complete set)
* E-Z Adjust bench
* Adjustrite Musician’s Chair
* Electronic tuners
* Clip-on tuning pick-ups
* Music stands
* Extra tuning keys
* Metronomes
* Space Blanket (to protect your harp from the sun)
* Rubber rings for levers and/or tuning pins
* Kart-A-Bag folk harp cart (not for Prelude or pedal harps)
AND
* Any (and all) publications written by Sylvia Woods
(including books, sheet music, Quick Charts, CDs, and DVDs by Sylvia)

This can add up to hundreds of dollars in savings, just when you need it most: when you’re buying a harp!

Contact us today to order your harp and get the 20% Harp Essentials discount.

You spoke . . . we listened . . . and now YOU can listen, too!  

Our customers have been telling us they would love to hear audio samples of the CDs we offer. Listening to an audio sample can help in choosing from the myriad of wonderful recordings we have available for you to add to your music collection.

Now you can listen to more than 1,000 audio clips from over half of the CDs on our web site, and we are adding more audio clips each and every day!

Depending on the CD, audio clips between 30 to 120 seconds of selected tracks are now easily accessible on our web site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with many offering an audio clip from EVERY track of the CD!

Here is a partial list of artists with audio samples on our web site:

Adagio Trio
Lori Andrews
Erik Ask-Upmark
Paul Baker
Barnes & Hampton
Stella Benson
Robin Huw Bowen
Greg Buchanan
Stella Castellucci
Maire ni Chathasaigh
Ellie Choate
Elaine Christy & Patricia Davila
Cormac De Barra
Cynthia Douglass
Robin Fickle
Aryeh Frankfurter
Deborah Friou
Grainne Hambly
Deborah Henson-Conant
Nancy Hurrell
William Jackson
Jan Jennings
Beth Kolle
Margot Krimmel
Elaine Litster
Jo Morrison
Rudiger Oppermann
Alfredo Rolando Ortiz
Laurie Rasmussen
Kim Robertson
Susan Robinson
Shawna Selline
Sunita Staneslow
Christina Tourin
Michelle Whitson-Stone
Kim Robertson
Sylvia Woods

Go online, browse and listen! Listen to someone you know or someone you’ve never heard before. And keep coming back, ’cause we’re adding more audio clips every day!

In January, 2008, I will be giving concerts and harp workshops at three locations in Florida: 
Marco Island: Saturday January 19, 2008
North Fort Myers: Sunday January 20, 2008
Orlando: Sunday January 27, 2008

You can see the complete schedule, locations, times, and prices at www.harpcenter.com/FloridaTour.htm.  I hope to see all of you Floridians there!  Many thanks to Kim Adamson, Barbara Kraichy, and Jan Jennings for setting up this tour for me.  I really appreciate all of their hard work!

Although I have lived in California since kindergarten, I have had several ties with Florida. I lived in Talahassee from the age of 3 until 5 when my father was a physics professor at Florida State University.  I only have a few memories from that time . . . one of them was hiding under the bed when I heard on the radio that a hurricane was coming!  Luckily, my mother found me an assured me that it wasn’t going to come anywhere near us. 

I have many more memories of Florida from when we spent the summer of 1961 at Cape Canaveral.  By that time, my father was working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, but he was often sent to the Cape for rocket and moon mission launches.  We spent the summer in a small house on Cocoa Beach, playing in the ocean and being bitten to death by mosquitos!  Our favorite pasttime was to wade through the water out to a sandbar, wiggle our feet in the sand, and find sand dollars.  I also remember several times being awakened by my father in the middle of the night so we could go out and sit on the beach and watch a rocket being launched from Cape Canaveral.  It was quite a magical summer! 

 Here’s a picture of me from that trip.  My father loved to take “trick” photos of us.  This one shows that I’m almost as tall as a rocket!  Yup, that’s me!

 I’m looking forward to seeing you all in Florida in January.  Be sure to check the schedule and make your reservations in advance!  See you soon!

 Happy New Year to you all!

I’m very excited that my new book, Groovy Songs of the 60s is finally out. I had so much fun arranging these forty songs for harp. I graduated from high school in 1968, so the 60s were my prime “radio-listening years.”

Here are some of my musical memories from that decade.

When I was in bed with the measles, I listened to Simon and Garfunkel non-stop. The 59th Street Bridge Song was one of my favorites!

I sang Blowin’ in the Wind, and The Times They Are A’Changin’ around the campfire with the Girl Scouts, and those were some of the first songs I learned on the guitar. I wasn’t aware at the time that they were both written by Bob Dylan.

The Association was a local band in my area. They gave an assembly at my high school, and their hit Windy was one of the songs they performed. (The Doors also gave an assembly at my high school, but our principal “pulled the plug” half-way through the assembly because they were singing “dirty words!”)

I was a huge Beatles fan. My friend Corie and I went to see A Hard Day’s Night about a dozen times. We had most of the dialogue memorized. Paul McCartney was (and is) my true love . . . he just doesn’t know it! One of my prized possessions is a Coca Cola can that Paul drank out of. My brother happened to be in a recording studio when Paul was there, and rescued his Coke can from the trash. He had it mounted on a plaque that says “Paul McCartney’s Coke.”<

There are no Beatles songs in this new book, however, because they are all in my Lennon and McCartney book that I arranged in 1998. I wanted to add George Harrison’s Here Comes the Sun to this new book, but wasn’t able to get permission to arrange it. Apparently his estate is not giving permission for any of his songs to be put in collections. That is too bad, because it is a lovely song!

At the end of each piece in this book, I’ve inluded some extra information or trivia about the piece. Here’s a fun trivia quiz for you. To get the answers, you’ll have to buy the book!

1. What Simon and Garfunkel song was written about the Queensboro Bridge in New York City? (See page 7.)

2. What hit by The Turtles replaced Penny Lane at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the spring of 1967? (See page 11.)

3. What 60s song did the Nigel Wick character “play” on a pedal harp in an episode of The Drew Carey Show? (See page 17.)

4. The Toys’ 1965 hit A Lover’s Concerto was based on what classical melody? (See page 20.)

5. Was Jerry Jeff Walker’s Mr Bojangles written about Bill “Bojangles” Robinson who appeared in many Shirley Temple movies? (See page 45.)

6. Who was the only member of the original Beach Boys who was a surfer? (See page 67.)

7. After the Beatles, what was the next group to sign Brian Epstein to be their manager? (See page 75.)

8. What Gerry and the Pacemakers hit was named after an English river? (See page 77.)

9. What song was English songwriter Tony Hatch inspired to write after his first visit to New York City? (See page 79.)

10. What was the first song written by Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards? (See page 81.)

I hope you enjoy playing these songs as much as I enjoyed arranging them for you. So put on your embroidered bell-bottoms, wear some flowers in your hair, and feel groovy!