When did you guys first get introduced to the harp?

We started playing harp in middle school. We knew someone who played harp and she let us try out her harp. We were hooked! Harp had always seemed like a magical instrument to us, but our mom didn’t have the money for a harp or lessons. So, we earned the money ourselves for a pre-owned harp by babysitting, dog-walking, and other small jobs. When our mom saw that we were serious, she later helped us to purchase a second pre-owned harp so that we could play duets. It was always our dream to play harp together.

Were you both introduced to it at the same time?

Yes! We both fell in love with the harp at the same time and were very motivated to learn to play it!

When did you guys decide to make an act out of the two of you playing harp?

As long as we have played harp, we have enjoyed playing together. We didn’t immediately realize that we would make our career as a harp duo. When we were studying harp performance classically at university, we discussed what we would do if we knew we were guaranteed to succeed at anything. We both agreed that the answer was performing together. However, we knew that classical music wasn’t our primary passion. We didn’t just want to sit on a stage and wear the “accepted” classical wardrobe, playing the “accepted” classical music that harpists have been playing for centuries. Our dream was to perform the music that we wanted to play in the way we wanted to play it. So we followed that dream. We have always had “performer personalities”, but we also found that we had a knack for arranging, producing and creating. We’re passionate about music, playing the harp, and out-of-the-box thinking. Our career is really being ourselves and taking the things we love and putting them all together.

Are you focusing on covers to get more exposure?

We started arranging the music that we like to listen to – which is how we got our start with covers. We didn’t start covering music to gain exposure; it was just an organic start to our contemporary music careers. In fact, we didn’t think there would be an audience for two harps covering modern music. We had no one to “model” our career on – we just had to follow our dream and hope that it worked! We had to create a “niche” for ourselves because no one else was doing what we were doing. As we have gained a following, we’ve had more and more interest by fans in our own original music, which is amazing! We never dreamed a few years ago, that we would have a growing worldwide fan base. We feel so blessed to have the opportunity to do what we love.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejqIU2BMkTw[/youtube]

Are you shooting the YouTube videos yourself?

Yes, our videos are 100% self-made. We arrange the music, find/scout the video locations, find or make our costumes, film with a small hand-held video camera on a tripod, record the sound in our living room, and edit the videos ourselves.

Do you like to cosplay?

Yes! We have loved playing “dress-up” since we were little kids! Our mom would buy clothing from resale shops and put them in our dress-up basket. It was so much fun! Being able to put together costumes for videos is another way to use our creativity. It’s a blast to become a different “character” and add another fantastical element to our music videos.

Are you making your own costumes?

For most of our videos, we just re-combine things that we already own to make the outfit look “new”. We sometimes also make costume pieces that we need or alter items we already have in our wardrobe. 🙂 🙂 If you watch our videos carefully and look at our performance photos, you will see that almost every item of clothing can be seen in several videos and performance outfits. For example, we cut the sleeves off of a shirt, made bows from an old sheet and created costume pieces for our Final Fantasy video. Later we wore the original shirt (now sleeveless) in other videos (Silent Hill and Harry Potter).

How do you guys put together the arrangements of the cover songs, given that you’re covering songs without harps?

We always start our creative process by listening to the song we’re going to arrange again and again. We usually start with building the melodic framework and then start discussing other elements. Often we’re tweaking arrangements even as we’re learning and memorizing… we think of additional ideas to try, or figure out techniques/patterns that work even better that our initial arrangement. We love the challenge of taking a song usually performed by an entire rock band or orchestra and making it “work” on just two harps – no overlays, loops, or backtracks. There is something very beautiful to us in stripping a song down to its essence and building again from there. It’s exciting to bring new life to a piece and make it “our own”.

Are you following the World Cup?

We haven’t had a chance to watch any of the games (our schedule is too hectic right now), but we’re following the outcomes of the games. 🙂 🙂