Showing off our new harps!

[Gretchen Cover]

I am so excited for you! Congratulations! Pls. post a clip on youtube so we can hear what it sounds like. You will have a lot of fun with your new harpl

[Marco Hilgeman]

Thx Gretchen! But I’m not sure about the vid (yet)…the sound of this harp is not easy to capture in a lo-fi vid like youtube, especially not the bass strings; the richness and depth would not be reproduced properly. But I can give it a shot and see how it sounds. Anyway, one can definitely compete with drums or any electric instrument on stage with this baby! 😉

[natalie-wagner–2]

What a beauty Marco! You appropriately named her. 🙂 I would love to see a video too, I haven’t much experience with Camac’s.

[lyn-boundy]

She’s gorgeous Marco – so very elegant. There’s something very special about knowing your harp was made just for you and I believe it increases that close connection we feel with our harps. I can definitely understand your reluctant to post anything that won’t do justice to her wonderful voice but your descrip[tion of her sound has obviously made us all hungry to hear her. Looks like you’re going to have to visit every one of us individually and play for us in person. 😉

[Marco Hilgeman]

Hi Natalie and Lyn, thanks for your enthusiastic replies. It took a while to get back to you because I was sick, but I’m ok now…just a little flu which unfortunately kept me ayway from the harp, I just didn’t feel like playing. I do play again now, what else would one do with such a nice harp!

It seems like I created some expectations here, right? I’m not sure if I can meet them right now, haha…but I’ll see if I can get someone with a proper camera to shoot a decent vid with good audio. The only option I have myself is an iphone cam and that really doesn’t do justice to the sound of the camac.

Will keep you posted ok?

[natalie-wagner–2]

Sounds perfect Marco! I’m glad you are better. I’ve had company in so that’s my excuse for this week’s lack of practice. 😛

I don’t have a new harp, but my precious L&H 85petite is becoming one of my favorite sounding harps. I recently had a chance to hear a couple different harp makers for the first time, and it opened my eyes (ears) to how warm of a tone my little pedal harp gets. Everyone should be proud of their harp, it’s a wonderful feeling!

[lyn-boundy]

Glad to hear you’re feeling better Marco. Natalie, I so agree with you – brand new or old favourite we should all be proud of our own harps. I believe an instrument that is played regularly and lovingly becomes a part of its owner and there is a connection between the two that is unique and deeply satisfying; presumably players of other instruments feel the same way about theirs too. I’ve seen some very beautiful harps since getting Eleni but none of them match up to her in my opinion because she’s the one I have such pleasure from playing and we’re definitely a team.

[meg-dixon–2]

My new (and newly-built) harp!! I picked it up this week from Rick Kemper of Sligo Harp Shop (a 10-minute drive from my house). It’s his Luchair model. The levers are gold Camacs . The wood is cherry from eastern Pennsylvania (except for the soundboard, which is Sitka spruce) and the strings are Savarez fluorocarbon, except for the lowest octave, which are are composite (steel core, with a fiber bed and bronze or copper overwrap). It’s about four feet tall and weighs only 17 pounds — very portable. I just moved up from a Dusty Strings Allegro 26, so it’s a big change. It has a lovely tone. My only problem is tearing myself away from it.

[meg-dixon–2]

A close-up of the gold levers and decorative wood inlay on my Luchair. (That’s my teeny-tiny reflection on each of the levers.)

[meg-dixon–2]

Rick does such lovely woodworking: here are the tuning wrenches he made that came along with my harp. Actually, he’d made about a half-dozen of these, and told me to take my pick; these were the loveliest, IMHO.

[Sherri Matthew]

Wow, congrats to all of you guys on your lovely new harps! They look great!

Meg, that’s a great idea photographing your tuning wrenches… (I should have thought to do that for my harp page on my site, didn’t occur to me). Btw, I really like your decorative inlay a lot – what material is it? Different woods?

And Marco, that’s quite the harp! Going to play it with the windows wide open and crank your amp?? 🙂 Seriously though, are you going to be doing some shows where you’ll be able to plug in and present an amplified concert?

[meg-dixon–2]

Sherri: Yes, the inlay strip is of sapeli and walnut: http://www.inlays.com/product-p/is-245a.htm. When Rick first gave me a tour of his shop, he showed me the various inlays available, of which this one was the most popular (and the prettiest, IMHO, which is why I chose it to go on my harp). Interestingly, the purpose of the inlay isn’t entirely decorative: it’s to disguise a seam between two different pieces of wood.

[Marco Hilgeman]

Hi Meg, that’s a beautiful harp indeed! I like the inlay very much as well, it gives the harp just that extra special touch…very nice.

@ Sherri: yeah that’s definitely the reason why I bought this harp…because it’s a serious upgrade to playing amplified. Until last year, on stage I used a celtic harp with an inbuilt DS pickup, but the amplified sound of this Camac is so much better! So yes, I will perform live with this new harp, I’m planning on doing the first gigs this autumn (you can check the link here on my HC profile page in the ‘about me’ section to hear some of my work, which I also perform live with my ‘Windseeds’ band project).

[Sherri Matthew]

Fabulous stuff Marco, you sure do have a lot of Andreas Vollenweider’s style! I used to love to listen to him as a teenager. I’m beginning to think now it’s a good idea to post your musical influences so people can get a good sense of where you’re coming from and not be afraid to click “play”… for me, Enya really defined my sound and her albums taught me how to layer-record. I’ve just started making people aware of that on my site and elsewhere. I used to think “just let your music speak for itself” but you’ve got to get them to click that play button first, so they know what to expect!

And you sure do have a lot of his essence, without being a copy (big difference there). Maybe you could do a blog here on that, how you arrived at your style. Would be interesting reading!

[Marco Hilgeman]

Hey thanks Sherri, I appreciate it. Will check out your stuff soon as well.

Yeah and it’s the Vollenweider sound that got me into playing harp but I certainly don’t wanna copy him and try to create my own style, so I take it as a compliment that you hear the difference. I could write a blog about all this, that’s a good idea…have to find some time for that though, but I’ll see if I can make a start one of these days.

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