We connect with music in order to connect to our own stories.  Music shows us how all of our stories are connected.  When we experience music collectively, our hearts and souls unite through the musical language of melody, harmony, and rhythm.

I attended the memorial of a young artist who’s life was taken too soon by an accidental drug overdose.  A friend of his who spoke shared the vision he had as he was preparing to attend the memorial.  In reflecting on the idea that we are all perfect in heaven, or on the other side of life, he was gifted with a vision of his human flaws and struggles being a giant ruby that tethered him to this earth.  

In my life-long journey with music, the process of singing and writing songs has been the elixir that transforms my human flaws, struggles, and grief into jewels of wisdom, growth, and compassion.  

The journey is love.  


In working with me in your musical journey, you will not only learn how to play and sing your favorite songs, or the basics of musical theory. You will learn how to sing through your whole vocal range, and how to adjust your physical technique to sing at your very best from low to high. 

We will dig out your deep inner love of music so you can share it with the world through musical performance. 

If we encounter musical fear, anxiety, shame, doubt, or regret, we will face them head-on.  Perspective and compassion mitigate the ill effects of these wounded inner voices, and allow you to move beyond them to sing your story. 

Time and time again my students have shown me that this approach of combining deep physical, musical, and emotional elements really works.  The goal is a creative and expressive breakthrough every session.  We are going for those “ah ha” moments of enlightenment.

We sang long before we spoke.

Delve into the roots of your soul by learning to express the songs that live inside of you.  
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Student Spotlights: Savannah and Claire


Savannah and Claire both came to me with similar stories of having had a little experience with piano as kids, and a love of singing.  They wanted to learn to sing and play, and feel more confident playing songs with other people.  They knew a little bit about chords, but didn’t know all of the major and minor chords that are necessary to learn the songs they love.


It’s strange to me that the classical style of teaching piano trains the fingers and hands to play scales, arpeggios, and chord progressions, but does not define for students what they are doing musically.


One of the reasons I chose the language of jazz based chordal theory over classical sheet music fluency is the incredible amount of creativity used in arranging your own versions of the songs you love.


I fell in love with singing, songs, and songwriting early on.  It made sense to focus on a piano style that would allow me to accompany myself as I sang, and understand the chordal techniques being used in the songs that moved me.


It’s surprisingly simple to learn all 12 major and minor chords, as well as a few basic accompaniment patterns that give you immediate access to playing and singing thousands of songs.


Within the first one or two sessions, Savannah and Claire had the tools to start singing and playing songs, and felt empowered to begin exploring songs on their own.


There’s nothing more gratifying and thrilling than sharing the craft, art form, and expressive power of song with my students! It took 20 years, but I finally created a form of musical work that is energetically sustainable, and that I love wholeheartedly.


Thanks Savannah and Claire for showing up courageously to dive into the art of song.


I have lesson spots open for my Spring Session, affordable and flexible rates, and a unique scheduling approach that is designed to make this learning available to a wide variety of folks. These sessions are effective in both in-person and virtual formats.


Please reach out if you are intrigued or know someone who might be. I’m happy to spend some time listening to your musical story and dreams.

I write to process experience and feeling.  For 10 years when my daughter was young, I gave up the daily journaling I had always relied on to sort through my thoughts and feelings.  A nine month long women's circle based in ritual and clearing energy blocks reintroduced me to this practice.  Now, I can't imagine my mornings without my journaling practice.  I sit in my sun room with a strong cup of coffee and write.

This morning I woke with a line of poetry in my head, so I journaled in poem-speak and let myself play with each line.  It was a nice way to write, because I allowed more free drift of thought and the random association of creativity.  

Please enjoy this reflection about the solitary artist's heart.  As Joni Mitchell sang in "A Case of You"-

"I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid"

2.23.22

Back to the fortress of my heart
Cover the walls with Mexican tin
Impressively bright, deceptively thin
Covered with names of past lovers, and the shapes of the stars
Poems to decipher the ways of the heart

My heart and yours, dear
Why I’m alone here

I’ve chosen my songs, I suppose
And men seem to be in rooms of their own
Running scared from the depths below
But that’s where I’ve built my castle, my home

I’ve planted a watery garden with seeds of the sea
The light through the depth is enough for me

Here I listen, dream, and feel

The ocean is big enough to contain
All of my hopes, and each drop of pain
The rocking waves soothe me, they sing me to sleep
I don’t think I’ll ever leave this place

When you come into my heart
You’ll have to face these watery depths

In the life of a siren, the singing comes first
If you sense the danger-  I’ve under-rehearsed

So alone here, with bright walls of Mexican tin
I’ll sing to these walls so deceptively thin
And wait for a sailor so foolishly brave
To cut through this fortress to see what I sang

Heat up my body in carnal embrace
Only a dead man will be able to stay

I don’t mind living with ghosts
Seekers and sayers, spiritual hosts

Do you see the-in between?
Will you chase beyond what we see?

A scorpio moon lives in me
Infused with utter intensity

Bring me brave fools, the ones who feel beyond what they should
Who dive like seals
To play in the depths, bask in the sun

My lover and I have just begun

I’m helping someone write their first song.

She’s a fairly new student and we’ve already had tears and laughter and witchy wu-wu moments together in our lessons.  She’s healing some vocal pressure and tension that runs deep, related to a neck injury and some severe anxiety.

Amazingly, as unique as her particular story is, this isn’t an uncommon story line for the people who come to me for music lessons.

Vocal work and musical creativity are healing arts. They can open a portal to the hidden layers of our bodies and souls.  I wasn’t surprised to find that we were going to be exploring more than the technical work of freeing the physical voice.

I had a feeling that she might enjoy songwriting. She has a creative mind and naturally collects and creates ideas and impressions.  She had written little song snippets before, mostly as jokey jingles she’d sing to her dogs in the kitchen. I believe that if you can write a song snippet- any piece of a song- you can develop it into a song with some basic knowledge of song structure.

I suggested she try to write a whole song.

She took off with it.  She started writing song snippets to process deeper and sometimes difficult emotions.  I showed her the beautifully concise and precise structure of songs. She began to see how the snippets she was writing could come together to form a whole song.

She even found an app to help her play with a chord progression for the song.

We’re slowly exploring what this song will turn out to be.

I joked with her that she was having her first song baby, and I was the midwife.

We have a first version of the song, but there are still plenty of mysteries to solve.

What will the feel and tempo turn out to be?  How will the different sections end up relating and transitioning into each other?  What chords match with her melody? Does the melody in this section go up or down?  Where does this song start, and where does it end, in terms of the key? Does it modulate?

What does the map of this song look like?

I started helping map out the chords and connect the melodies of the different sections together.  My student, understandably, got super excited and for a moment wanted all the answers at once.  Does this chord work here?  What note do I start on?  Is this the right chord for this section?

I thought about my grandfather, who wrote songs during the golden age of Hollywood.  He wrote completely by ear.  He’d literally dream an idea. He’d spend a year slowing drawing the song out of his imagination and into the piano keys.  Then he’d take it down to the club where Nat King Cole was playing and ask him to take a look.  The great musicians of that era appreciated my grandfather’s music because he was writing outside of convention, from a dream, with total surrender to imagination and creativity.

The structural and mathematic elements of songwriting are helpful when finishing a song.  There is a strong mathematical component to music, which is why many musicians become doctors.

I believe that the most important function of a song is the mystery of its depths.

When we write a song, we don’t always understand where it’s coming from, or the story it’s trying to tell.

It’s a message from our subconscious, a place far beyond the capabilities of our analytic brains.

A song is a dream, the spontaneous energy of laughter or sobbing, the timeless quality of intimate pleasure.

When you start writing a song, treat her like a lover you are trying to seduce, a stranger who you are infatuated with and must learn everything about.  Take her to different places, meet with her at different times of day.  Invite her along to a wide variety of experiences.  Stay curious about her.  Let her glow with mystery before you try to figure out exactly what might be going on beneath the surface.  Long for her form before you touch the shape of her body.

After all, chemistry requires a bit of mystery, the deliciously uneasy thrill of not knowing.

Eventually you’ll discover all of her secrets, but it might take years.  Just when you think you know her, she’ll reveal something you didn’t know.

I finally have a home recording set up again.  I've been wanting to play around with this song in 3 part harmony for MONTHS, so I did a casual home recording and laid down some harmonies.  It was SOOOOOOOOO fun!  This is me basically playing live in my living room.  Enjoy! 

A song about the ultimate longing.  The 10 year type.  The one that ties in other songs and melodies along the way.  Complete with Coastal Views, Wurlitzers, Stellar Coffee. . . you know, all the good things.  It's Chemical. . . 

Chemical- Words and Music by Alison Harris

You flew away, freeing my heart
I finally know, it isn’t the start of something beautiful


Oh what a love, oh what a day
Baby to think I was ready to give it all away


We’ll meet again, high as the stars
when you’re fighting to win, the need for a victory is Chemical


I fought for your heart, I fell down with ease
Scraped up my elbows and tore up my knees
Oh what a love, oh what a night
If you’re trying to find me I’ll be in the last dream on the right


Someday you’ll say, give me the key
When the lock has been rusted away and your heart gives in to Gravity


I don’t know what it is about you
I just can’t get enough of the view
Fell so hard, I got proof in the scars
This love is adrenaline, it’s Chemical

This one just poured out of me this evening and I recorded it.  It's really the way I like to create most- from a deep place of processing and healing.  I hope it brings you some of the same or provides some kind of window through to a new space.

Music is beautiful therapy for the blues.  Creativity takes the blues and turns those feelings of sadness, depression, anxiety-  into rejuvenating lightening to share with the world.  This song expresses that beautifully.  Thanks for taking a listen to my cover of Hot Rize's "Blue is Fallin'."