Introducing myself

Return to forums

Log in to your Harp Column account to post or reply in the forums. If you don’t have an account yet, you’ll need to email us to set one up.

This topic has 2 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 9 months ago by Marco Hilgeman.

Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

Author

Posts
November 7, 2013 at 1:44 pm #113172

Marco Hilgeman
Member

Hello everyone,

I’m not sure if this is the regular place to do so, but since I am new to the forums I think it’s nice to introduce myself.

I’m a harpist from The Netherlands and I play in the style of Andreas Vollenweider, that means I have nails on the right hand but not on the left, which is probably not very common among harpists. I write my own music pieces and I am very much inspired by Vollenweider’s approach of playing harp; I also play electro-acoustic harp enhanced with sound effects such as chorus. I have a band project called Windseeds which includes a drummer, one or two percussionists (depending on the gig), a saxophone player and occasionally a pedal steel guitarist.

Untill now, I exclusively played a Silver Spear celtic harp with a DS pickup, but I just ordered my Camac Mini Blue 44 string electro-acoustic pedal harp and I’m very excited about it…first of all to make the transition to pedal harp and also to have more possibilities in sound and output volume. It will be a 3 months delivery time because it’s gonna be custom made, but it will be worth the wait.

I also like to mention that this is a great forum, I’ve spend the past few days just reading all your advice and tips…thanks everyone, it’s been very helpful. I feel like I’ve already attended some sort of workshop, especially when it comes to pedal harp info 🙂

The electro-acoustic harp section still is a relatively new thing for most harpists though, or so it seems. Especially when it comes to amplification; there’s no specific harp amp designed (not that I know anyway), so we have to look at existing amps such as guitar or bass amps. However, being an (electric) guitarist by nature, I seem to have some advantage with my knowledge about amps, cables and such, to make a proper setup. A good friend of mine is a sound technician, so once I have my Camac mini Blue, we’ll start looking at the possibilities to improve ampliciation for electro acoustic harps, for starters by using a small onstage mixer so the harpist can obtain beter sound control. I’m definitely willing to share that info on this forum once we’ve developed it some more, so the info exchange can become mutual.

I guess that’s all for now, I don’t want to keep you reading all day…hope to see you around soon.

Best of luck,
Marco

November 7, 2013 at 2:16 pm #113173

eliza-bourgault
Member

Hey Marco!

It’s nice to meet you! I am new to this forum too.
I haven’t heard of Andreas Vollenweider, but having nails on one hand does sound a little funky to me … do you have any recordings of the music you have written? It would be nice to hear some of your compositions, especially if you play them on an eletro-acoustic harp!
Around this time last year my parents and I began looking into which harp to get me for university studies (before I was renting my high school’s harp). We weren’t sure if we should get an electro-acoustic harp or just an acoustic one. The benefit of having a harp that can be amplified is, well, when you play at events like weddings, it’s nice to be amplified, especially when it’s outdoors! In the end we stuck to a fully acoustic harp, and use a microphone to amplify it, if needed. I also have a Camac! (Atlantide Prestige).
Well, since you introduced yourself I might as well introduce myself briefly. I’m a harpist from Australia, I started playing harp in 2008 after winning a music scholarship for high school. Last year I graduated from high school and decided to keep studying music at uni. Although my favourite instrument is piano, I decided to study the harp because then the uni covered my lesson fees … but it has been a very challenging year so far and I’m looking forward to learning more interesting repertoire. I love to perform, but I’m very very very interested in music therapy (in particular harp therapy), and I’m hoping to do a course on it later …

So yeah, that’s harpist-me in a nutshell!
Eliza

November 7, 2013 at 2:52 pm #113174

Marco Hilgeman
Member

Hi Eliza, nice to hear from you, that’s a quick reply there 🙂

Yes I have my debut CD ‘Windseeds’ out on Bandcamp, the address is

http://www.windseeds.bandcamp.com

You can have a listen there. Indeed it’s kinda funky, you got that right…I usually call it jazzy world music. The Vollenweider style is quite staccato and the bass lines are written in a way that you don’t need a bass player…because the bass part is also played by the harp, so that’s why an amplified harp is a must. You can check out Andreas Vollenweider as well, just google that and you’ll get there.

It’s nice to read a bit about what you do. Reading through all the posts the past few days I got an idea of what some people do, but a thread like this can just add a little more to that.
Author

Posts