· Learn the relaxed and economical approach to playing with the least effort for the greatest result

· Learn exercises that will allow you to develop the maximum beauty in each note

· Develop more articulation than just “loud/soft”

· Eliminate the clunky, plinky sound in your music

· Put breath in your fingertips and play from your core center

· Relieve tension and develop healthier ways of playing

· Begin to integrate your skill with learning a Daily Harp Hello and early music piece

Touch-&-Tone Technique for Harp (tm)

A new old harp technique!

When Cheryl Ann Fulton embraced the world of early music and historical harps, she learned it was necessary to develop a deeply nuanced touch and subtle articulation in order to get the best tone from historical harps as well as execute the necessary performance practice requirements, such as duple articulation, for early music. So she set out to determine HOW to physically do this on the harp.

Animated tone

And what a breakthrough! Most modern 20th century harp techniques emphasize playing all the fingers with equal weight and force. Touch & Tone emphasizes independent control so each finger, including the thumb, is able to shift weight and emphasis for more refined phrasing. Playing scales with equal emphasis on each note becomes one of many possibilities instead of the main choice. Expressive articulations create amazing improvements for all kinds of music – for Celtic music it makes speed and ornamentation cleaner and easier, Renaissance and Baroque music becomes alive and authentic, therapeutic music can be imbued with deeper tone, and all music becomes more expressive.

A transformative experience

Wind instruments, Woodwinds, brass, organs & accordions, like the human voice, use breath or air directly to create sound and phrasing. Bowed stringed instruments use the bow like breath to control length, volume, and color. Now we can play our harps, plucked string instruments, with breath in our touch due to Cheryl Ann Fulton’s decades of work continually developing and refining her Touch-&-Tone Technique for Harp (tm). This foundational technique, suitable for all harps, will initiate you into the art of blending your own resonance with that of your harp to create an inspired, animated tone. She will share with you the path to connecting your musical intentions with your harp, and get you started on what will become a transforming experience that will carry you through a lifetime of more beautiful harping.  

Yoga for the hands

Her approach treats the harp primarily as a melodic, not percussive, instrument with an emphasis on putting breath in your fingertips and playing from your core center. The exercises are like yoga for the hands, and like yoga, a subtle and ongoing commitment to small steps makes improvement happen slowly and organically over time. An awareness of how to be present in the spacebetween notes with silent but active breath develops naturally. How you play every note, not how many notes you play is what creates the profound effect. The ability to play any finger strongly or weakly in any configuration leads to fingering choices that best communicate and sing the melodic line rather than fingerings chosen for convenience.

Relaxed delight

This relaxed and economical approach to playing uses the least possible effort for the greatest possible result. If studied patiently, this technique gives the player the ability to play true legato phrasing on a plucked string instrument, and to have articulation and tone color become integral to one’s basic touch rather than just applied as special effects. It enables the harpist to play with a full, rich tone and extensive dynamic range, free from tension, stress, or blockage. Thus this method harmonizes the physical work on technique with the aesthetic goals of creating fully expressive music on the harp. The result is the delight in bringing out the best tone on your harp.

For all levels

The Touch & Tone Technique for Harp is essential for beginners. It's invaluable for intermediate and advanced players wishing to relieve tension and develop healthier and more nuanced ways of playing.

Recognized as a leading pioneer in the field of historical harps and a popular performer and teacher of Celtic and pedal harps, Cheryl Ann Fulton has had a rich international performing, recording, teaching and scholarly research career since 1986. She earned a BS degree in pedal harp, and an MM and DM in early music/historical harp from the School of Music of Indiana University, Bloomington. During her graduate work at Indiana University she was a dedicated student of Thomas Binkley, and served as Associate Instructor of Historical Harp. In 1987 she received a Fulbright award for research and performance in Lisbon, Portugal. She became principal harpist for the Orchestre Gulbenkian and performed and recorded under the baton of some of Europe’s distinguished conductors. Her solo recital performed at the John F. Kennedy Center featured five historical harps on one program of which the Washington Post said, "Fulton drew from all of them a serene and delicate sound.... remarkable instruments which Fulton played with total skill and reverent affection." Her performance for the World Harp Congress in Geneva affirmed her rank as one of the world’s leading historical harpists. REcent;y she performed for the 50 Anniversary Conference of the American Harp Society in Times Square, NYC. She is performing the Handel harp Carmel with the Carmel Bach Festival in July 2012.

A versatile recording artist, Cheryl Ann can be heard on over forty albums and soundtracks broadly ranging from medieval, baroque, orchestral, and contemporary music to Celtic music and film scores, most on major labels including PolyGram, Deutche Harmonia Mundi, Koch International Classics, Nonesuch, Erato, Dorian, Gourd Music, and others. Her first solo album, The Airs of Wales, brought her recognition and acclaim as a "genuine virtuosa of her instrument." Her original compositions from her second solo album,The Once & Future Harp, have been featured on National Public Radio. Both recordings are available online at http://magnatune.com/artists/fulton.

A leading scholar in the field of historical harps, Dr. Fulton is a contributing scholar for the latest edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and authored a chapter for A Performers Guide to Medieval Music (IU Press, 2000). She was awarded the Burton E. Adams Prize for Academic Research for her doctoral thesis on the history of the triple harp.

A founding member of Ensemble Alcatraz, she has also worked with many distinguished early music ensembles including Anonymous 4, Sequentia, Les Idees Heureuses, American Bach Soloists, American Baroque, The Boston Camerata, and Chanticleer. She has been on the faculty for the Amherst Early Music workshops for over twenty-five years and was the first Director of the San Francisco Medieval Music Workshop. She is the founding President of the Historical Harp Society. She has worked closely for over 25 years with some of the world’s most distinguished harp makers. In collaboration with John Westling of Sandpiper Harps she helped design the Cithara Nova contemporary lever harp that combines historical and modern lever harp features. She worked closely with historical harp makers Rainer Thurau, Tim Hampson, David Brown, David Brooks and Patti Pike as part of the 20 century early music revival .

Known for her exceptional artistry, she has become a highly sought after teacher of her masterful and expressive Touch & Tone Harp Technique and has a full private studio in her San Francisco Bay Area home. When she is not harping she is playing with her Belgian Tervuren puppy or out riding her two Arabian horses on the trails in the East Bay hills.

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Fun at the 2012 American Harp Society Conference in Manhattan