Feed The Birds (from Mary Poppins) // Amy Turk, Harp

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Audio track available via Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Tidal, Microsoft Groove, MediaNet, Saavn and ClaroMusica.

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Mary Poppins is a timeless holiday favourite sure to grace our TV screens at this time of year, so posting this now seemed pretty fitting. I was asked to help transcribe this arrangement (originally by Doug Smith) for a guitarist to play some years ago, but ended up liking the arrangement so much I wanted to play it on the harp - its clarity and simplicity are sublime, and it beautifully hides how difficult this arrangement is on guitar. I'm a huge fan of acoustic guitar music anyway and this isn't the first time I've wanted to try doing some of the stuff those guys do! My very favourite section of this arrangement is the moment where the melody is voiced with almost alternating harmonics and regularly played notes - a device that features far more in acoustic guitar writing than any harp music I've encountered. I just think it's such a magical sound. I think harpists don't tend to write like this for themselves because to play a melody like this requires much jumping between one octave to play regularly and the octave below to play a harmonic, and back again, and it gets really confusing! But I really think it's worth it. See what you think.

As with my last Christmas video, I want to dedicate this to the memory of Peter Cunningham, of Pilgrim Harps here in the UK, who very sadly lost his battle with cancer recently. Peter's daughter told me a lovely story about him - by a strange coincidence, Feed the Birds is quite significant in his life. As a young man Peter met a girl who worked as an usherette for the local cinema, and wanted to ask her out. At the time, Mary Poppins was playing at the cinema, and so he went to see it five times until she'd agree to go out with him! They went on to get married and start a family, and were together until Peter passed away in 2016. Peter was a wonderful and well loved member of the harp community, and will be sorely missed.

www.pilgrimharps.co.uk

Thanks to:
Ben Turk - Director, audio, post-production
John Hoskison - Camera ops, post-production
David Stanton - End title animation

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronmacp...
CC BY 2.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

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#marypoppins #feedthebirds #acoustic