How often do you tune your pedal harp?

[unknown-user]

Not ranting about harpists and their burden or obsession of

[catherine-rogers]

The more you tune your harp, the more it will stay in tune and the better your ear will be trained to hear when it needs tuning. If it is kept all the time in a consistent environment, it may not go much out of tune and may need only a little touch up tuning. Gut strings tend to be more susceptible to changes in humidity and temperature than nylon. Wire strings are usually the most stable.

That being said, one should make the best use of one’s time. If there is only an hour to practice, decide how much time you can spend on tuning and how much on practicing. Tuning can be a relaxing process to put you in the mood for practicing. As your ear improves, you may find it annoying to practice on a harp which is out of tune (depending on the individual). Maybe just fix the strings that bother you most at any given session. Harps don’t go out of tune uniformly, so if you don’t have perfect pitch, you may not know which are right: the ones which sound sharp or the ones which sound flatter than others. If it sounds mostly in tune with itself to you, that may be sufficient for practicing.

[carl-swanson]

You should of course always play a harp that is in tune. I can’t stand hearing someone practice on an out of tune harp. If you use a machine that is easy to read, it shouldn’t take you more than 2 minutes maximum to tune the instrument. The fastest way, using a machine is to tune all the C’s, then all the B’s, then all the A’s, etc.

[Author]

Posts