Correction appended.
TikTok is an ever-growing platform among today’s teens and young adults. With a user base of over 800 million, it has topped Twitter’s audience in a fraction of the time. When a video goes viral, various elements of videos see changes in interaction. Songs featured in videos can become new chart-toppers, artists can have their work featured in other projects and creators grow their audiences.
One popular creator on TikTok is Hannah Stater, also known as “Hannah Harpist,” a 22-year-old harpist from Pittsburgh. She is known primarily for her mesmerizing audio and covers that she posts to the app. Accumulating over 6 million likes on videos and nearly 265,000 followers, she is behind some of TikTok’s most recognizable audios, even if users don’t realize it.
The Post sat down with Stater to talk about how TikTok has impacted her as a musician and where she sees herself going in the future.
The Post: How long have you been playing the harp?
Stater: I've been playing the harp for about 15-and-a-half years now. I started when I was 7 after I had played piano for a couple of years.
P: Where do you go to school? What’s your major?
Stater: In my undergraduate career, I attended the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. I'm currently getting my master's degree in harp performance at University of Michigan.
P: Why did you decide to start posting TikToks?
Stater: I would post videos of myself singing and playing the harp a little bit on Instagram, and I didn't really think anybody thought they were cool or anything, but this one girl from my high school said that she really liked seeing the videos and that I should post more of them.
P: When you got your first viral video, what were your thoughts?
Stater: I think my first thought was, ‘Wow, this is happening. I'm going to be famous,’ but I don’t know. It was kind of silly and surreal. I use a template a lot of classical musicians on TikTok use, and it was a ‘what my teacher wants me to play, what my parents want me to play, what I want to play’ video. I was playing a lot of classical music, but I was also playing some music from The Legend of Zelda, so I think it was a dose of nostalgia for a lot of people.
P: You had a successful video during the “remember my ancestors” trend. What were your thoughts about that?
Stater: It was a cover of someone else’s song actually: his name is Jacob Tyler Hoover. I think he’s actually in the process of writing that song still. Other TikTokers like Addison Rae used the audio, too, so I think that’s where it started to gain popularity. I covered it I think in February, and I think one of the coolest things about it is that people started to use my sound to retouch and enhance pictures of their parents.
P: Has your success on TikTok changed what you want to do with music?
Stater: I thought for my whole life I would be on the classical music track, and hopefully be in (a) symphony orchestra one day. But I still want to pursue that classical track because I genuinely do enjoy making classical music with people. This opened my eyes and my mind to the possibility of not defining myself by just one thing and being a little bit more versatile because there are people who want to hear what I have to say. And I guess I never really realized that until I found these people through TikTok, and I've made friends from all over the world from TikTok, which is kind of crazy. But I have friends in Los Angeles, I have friends in Italy and Russia. It's just surreal.
P: You’ve done several arrangements in videos. Have you written any original songs?
Stater: I'm in the process of writing a few right now. I have one that I've released a little bit of on TikTok just to get some first draft feedback. I'm planning on releasing an album in, like, the Fall Semester, possibly around November.
Q: You’re currently on a quest to get a harp of your own, but your university lets you use one over this extended period. With your own harp, what would you be able to do differently?
Stater: I would be able to travel a bit more and play gigs just around the country because there are a lot of people who want me to play at their weddings and play at funerals. There's certain technology that you can attach to your harp, so I could work with more looper pedals and more electronics. This would allow me to work with sound mixing because I'm not allowed to modify university instruments at all. If I had my own harp, then I would be able to really take my career forward and expand on the possibilities of what the instrument can do and experiment with the sonorities that it can produce.
Correction: A previous version of this report incorrectly stated a quote from Hannah Harpist. The article has been updated to reflect the most accurate information.
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