Reverie “harp” tuning?

[jane]

Recently I bought a pretty little Reverie-type harp (more like a kantele) just for the heck of it. It came with a tuning chart, but I can’t suss it out. I was thinking it would say “G” and “D” and so forth, but instead it says “G4” and “F3” and “A5.” What do these numbers mean? How do I use a chromatic tuner to get these notes?

I hope this isn’t too far beyond the harp pale. 🙂

[catherine-rogers]

I’m not familiar with that harp, but the number probably refers to the octave. As you likely know, octaves on harps run from E down to F. Middle C is in the 4th octave, so middle C is 4th octave F or F4. The highest octave (shortest strings) is 1st octave and so on, down to the bottom 3 wire strings on a concert grand which are 7th octave E, D and C. Also, the top two strings on a concert grand are just above the first octave and are 0F and 00G (zero F and zero zero G).

Smaller harps don’t necessarily start at the uppermost limit and count down. If you can find middle C on your harp, you can figure out what octaves are on it from there.

[shelby-m]

Catherine answered your first question pretty well.

[barbara-brundage]

But is this a harp harp? It sounds to me like those might actually be the string numbers themselves, not anything to do with pedal/lever harp numbering. In sequence F=3, G=4, A=5. Are you sure that’s not meant to go along with some kind of special notation for playing this? If it’s like a kantele it’s an auto harp, not a harp as the folks around here mostly understand it.

Those usually have music that you put under the strings and it gives a kind of paint by numbers approach to what strings to pluck or strum.

[hannah-roberts]

The Reverie is not like a harp, but a zither or psaltery. The 3, 4, 5 seem to refer to different octaves, but I never have figured out what the first octave would be. It seems like it would be the octave around middle C, but that would make the 5 octave very high indeed.
I just tune to the notes on my Reverie and don’t worry about it. It’s pretty intuitive in that the lower notes are towards the centre and the higher notes are on either side of the instrument.
However, if someone can explain the 2345 thing, I’ll be grateful. Sunita Staneslaw uses this system to refer to lever changes in her “Great French Composers” book and I’d like to be able to understand it rather than picking through the music to figure out which F she’s referring to.

[hannah-roberts]

I need to read instead of skimming. Catherine has shed full and complete light on the subject!

[jan-fetty]

http://www.harpkit.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=MK&Category_Code=revtune

Music Makers site has videos illustrating tunings of the Reverie harp

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