We decorate the house and yard with numerous lights and props. We build many of our props. Sylvia asked if I had ever built a Halloween Harp, at which point my husband pulled out his phone and showed a picture of my bony spider web creation. Sylvia asked if she could feature my handiwork in this year's October Newsletter.

Through countless searches, I could never find the perfect Halloween Harp. I saw many fantastic drawings, but I never could find one I was willing to use as a Halloween prop. A few years ago, I decided to make my own Halloween Harp using plastic skulls and bones of various sizes. The assembly of the harp includes a PVC structure, screws, wire, and glue. We made the base using a plastic bowl and plastic canvas. I used string to create the spider web harp strings. Dried moss adds a little mossy adornment and gives the harp more character. I heated sand in an iron skillet and used the sand to soften the PVC to get the perfect angle.

Since we built the harp using plastic bones, I could not stop there. Why not build a bony xylophone? Our son plays the saxophone, so why not make an entire band? So, I created a saxophone from a snake skeleton. With these three instruments, we now had a band. Please meet . . . "The Cadavers." The band members are Pricilla on harp, Ashley on xylophone, and LeRoi on saxophone. (Side note: LeRoi is named as a tribute to the late LeRoi Moore, a saxophonist and a founding member of the Dave Matthews Band, one of my favorite bands.)

About 15 years ago, I teamed up with two other harp teachers in Utah to form the Intermountain Harp Education Association ("IHEA"), a non-profit organization that brings educational and concert opportunities to the Intermountain area. IHEA holds concerts, workshops, lessons, and master classes with visiting artists.

One of my favorite Halloween traditions, and one of my students' favorites, is a Halloween Harp Ensemble Concert called "Haunted Harps," put on by IHEA. Approximately every four years, the three teachers of IHEA combine our students with other harp studios from the area to put on an afternoon concert filled with spooky music. The performers dress up in Halloween costumes. We decorate the harps with spider webs, spiders, and other adornments. Since the ensemble includes harpists of all levels, from beginner to advanced, I spend many hours arranging music for the ensemble. We use popular spooky songs (The Addams Family Theme, arranged by Sylvia Woods, is a performer and fan favorite!) and many classical harp songs transcribed into harmonic minor keys. I also compose original pieces.* Adding to the fun, we incorporate sound effects in the music. These effects include taps on the soundboard, gongs by slapping the bass wires, whistles by sliding the palm of the hand up the bass wires, fabric woven through the strings to create a xylophone effect, fingertips running up the soundboard to mimic spider legs, using a paperclip slowly moving up and down a bass wire to create a creaky door sound, performers vocalizing ghost sounds into a sound hole, egg shakers to add percussion, a blood-curdling scream from off-stage, using an electric harp run through a distortion pedal, and of course lots of glissandos. Our last Haunted Harps Concert in 2022 had 50 harps onstage from six harp studios. The concert is a lot of fun and always a crowd-pleaser.

I have loved creating and playing music all my life, and Halloween is my favorite holiday. Combining both passions is wonderful, and one result is the Skull and Bones harp cited earlier. Sharing this passion with so many others is lots of fun and extremely satisfying.

Happy Halloween!

-- Barbara Bartee

*P.S. from Sylvia

Check out the sale section below for three of Barbara's Halloween compositions. The PDF product pages on my website have videos of the IHEA ensemble playing the pieces.

I'm thrilled that Barbara Bartee has contributed her story to this issue. Her three PDFs are now available on my website and are part of this month's sale. The best part? Barbara is generously offering the PDF of her early beginner song "Halloween Night" for FREE! Yes, you read that right — it's a complimentary gift. Simply visit the Halloween Night page on my site, click the link, and download the PDF.

The remaining items in this month's sale are books and PDFs containing at least one song with the words witch, phantom, ghost, or costume in the title.

To get the 15% discount, enter the code word Ghost in the "Enter Promo Code" box on your shopping cart page and click "Enter Code" by October 31, 2024. See the "How to get the 15% discount" section at the bottom of this newsletter for more information.