Strings for classical music and fragile skin / hands?

[Gregg Bailey]

This is all very exciting, Lily! Is this Ravenna harp eligible for a rent-to-own program in which you could own the harp after making a certain number of rental payments, in the even that you wanted to keep Mademoiselle Mélanie?

-Gregg

[Lily-White]

Hi Gregg,

Yes, it’s exactly like that. I pay a monthly rent, an affordable one! And if one day I want to buy her, I get half of what I have paid in rent off the price. I hope that makes sense, my English…

We will meet with the owner on Friday and sign a contract on all of this. And I can take Mademoiselle Mélanie home with me when I leave. I’m so exited, I have been dreaming of playing the harp for such a long time…

If everything goes well, I might buy her one day. And later, when I have grown and know what I need and want, maybe buy a larger harp – a white one! A big sister to Mélanie. Maybe even a pedal harp…

See what you guys have done to me in just a few days?!! 🙂

Thank you!

– Lily

PS. I have tried to tag your name a couple of times, without success. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong…

[balfour-knight]

What a sweet reply, Lily! We wish you much happiness with Mademoiselle Melanie, and my Ravenna was also very beautiful in black. I could take her to any venue and she looked great.

We have always named all of our musical instruments, and that made them more special to us.

I thought of the famous Christmas song, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” when you said that about a white harp, ha, ha!

By the way, your English is SO GOOD! We do not speak another language, because there are so many, ha, ha! We have studied Spanish and French, but do not have too much memory of them, unfortunately.

Thanks for all of your kind words.

Harp Hugs,
Balfour (and Carol Lynn)

[Lily-White]

Thank you Balfour for your kind words! And thank you for complimenting me on my English! 😀
The truth is that I’m a language freak, I have studied a lot of languages. Most of all I love the Latin ones – exactly like you! – Italian, French, Spanish… But I have studied English only in school, so I have no solid foundation, I just play it by ear. I would like to study English properly, it’s the language “everybody speaks”, but you can’t do everything. And I’m learning a lot in this forum! A nice bonus! 🙂

– Lily

[charles-nix]

Lily, I started to remark earlier that your English reads idiomatically _in every respect_ like a native speaker. It never entered my mind that you were not a speaker from birth until you mentioned it. Even the way you informally punctuate with dashes and form longer sentences reads perfectly without any hint of its being a second (or third) language.

Your ear is working!

(And I’ve always guessed that the reason “everybody” has to speak English is because if they ever want to communicate with anyone from the US for any reason whatsoever, they have to use English. 😉 And I’m among those with little/no other language. )

[balfour-knight]

Lily, I totally agree with Charles! Your ear is indeed working! That nice post you addressed to me earlier appears to be missing, above–I wonder what happened to it? That has happened before, on these forums. Harp Column staff, please help!

[balfour-knight]

Well, I went out of these forums, then came back, and lo! Lily’s post is back, on the first “page” of this thread, thank goodness! (this being the second “page.”)

Lily, I wanted to add that the little harp that my dad and I made when I was a boy was made of our native black walnut, here in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina, in the southern United States. That was my dad’s favorite wood until we started building a harpsichord out of our beautiful native cherry wood! Then he favored cherry so much that he built a beautiful “grandfather’s clock” out of cherry! Much later, we used red oak for my tracker pipe organ. We have gorgeous woods here.

It is very special that Dusty’s birch comes from your country, Finland. We also have nice birch and maple here. In addition, we had spruce on hand to make the solid soundboard of that little harp when I was a boy. My dad loved working with wood!

Thanks for all your nice posts.

Harp Hugs,
Balfour

[Lily-White]

Oh, that’s so sweet of you Charles! I don’t feel very confident speaking English, I don’t have that solid foundation to fall back on that I mentioned earlier. So thank you, it really means a lot! 🙂

I come from a small country, I’m bilingual (Swedish and Finnish), languages that aren’t spoken out there in the “big world”. So for people like me it’s quite natural to want to learn other languages. Your first language is spoken all over the world, there’s a difference…
However, as a language freak 😀 , I still warmly recommend studying foreign languages to everybody. It’s very rewarding, and fun! You don’t only learn a language, you learn about another culture, another way of thinking and living. And you easily get “addicted”, when I listen to a language I haven’t studied I get SO curious…

I got sidetracked again… Thank you once more Charles! 🙂

[Lily-White]

Well Balfour, your dad must have been an artist. What you wrote is very special, I love it! I love nature. I wish you still have your first little harp and the other instruments you and your dad built… <3
And yes, for me it is very special that my Mélanie is made of wood from my country. It’s not very ecological though, to transport the wood from Finland to the US, then to Amsterdam to a harp store (that is a big old church, btw 🙂 ), and then back to Finland. But the circle is completed. And my Mélanie is a very international little lady, so a French name fits her perfectly! 🙂

– Lily

[balfour-knight]

Hi Lily,

Thanks for your nice reply above. Carol Lynn and I just had an invigorating walk in the cold here, 24 degrees F, and I will try to post a photo of the beautiful sunrise we experienced! We do live in a gorgeous part of the country!

Harp Hugs,
Balfour (and Carol Lynn)

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[Lily-White]

Hi Balfour,

Thank you for the beautiful picture!

We have had a lot of snow this year, the snow picture below is taken about a month ago. I live a stone’s throw from the sea, now covered by ice, as you can see from the sunset picture, taken a couple of days ago.

We have a lot of nature here too, but by tram I’m in the center of Helsinki in 15 minutes.

Yesterday I picked up Mademoiselle Mélanie, so she’s home now… <3
I concentrate on learning the right technique from the very beginning, guided by my teacher, the importance of which @CHARLES-NIX pointed out earlier (thank you Charles! 🙂 ). Last night I played some simple melodies – what a satifaction! YAY!!! : 😀

I’m sure I’m going to torture you guys again with some new questions – very soon… – so be prepared! 😉

Harp hugs back at you Balfour,

Lily and Mélanie

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[balfour-knight]

Lily, these photos are gorgeous, almost like being there! We have had very little snow here this season, but in some Winters past, we have had a lot.

We have been so happy to reply to your questions; it is never “torture,” ha, ha! It is wonderful that you now have Mademoiselle Melanie to play, look at, and enjoy. We call our beautiful black grand piano Madame Yamaha, ha, ha!

Happy harp playing on your new harp, and best wishes. Thanks so much for the pictures!

Harp Hugs,
Balfour (and Carol Lynn)

[wil-weten]

Hi @lily-white How does your rented Ravenna feel at your hands? Earlier you wrote that the Salvi Mia only felt a bit less uncomfortable than the pedal harp of your teacher, which makes me think that you really would like a low tension or lower intermediate tension lever harp (though, beware that the words low or intermediate tension are not standardized, so they are no more than some vague indication).

Now, yes, there’s a great shop in the Netherlands that sells all kinds of harps: it’s De Zingende Snaar in Rhenen. So, it’s not in Amsterdam!

De only shop in the Netherlands that sells Camac harps is in Rotterdam. It’s a so-called flagship shop. Flagship means in this case that the shop has at least one harp of each model in stock. I wonder though whether this would be the shop closest to Finland. Have a look at: https://www.camac-harps.com/en/ and chose ‘sales points’. I don’t know which of these countries/cities have a flagship shop though.

I’m not sure whether your thin and fragile skin is partly a question of not being used to playing harp strings. Playing makes the skin tougher (normally, in due time, you would develop some calluses. I wonder whether your teacher had some ideas about this.

As to Camac harps, I’ve got a 38 string Camac Excalibur. It’s strung with fluorocarbon string with a tension somewhere between pedal harp tension and folk harp tension. So, the tension lies somewhat between the Camac Isolde Classique and the Camac Isolde Celtique (and it looks very much like those two) For me this is great to play both classic and folk and popular pieces on. I love it very much. For an impression of the sound, you may like to have a look at Josh Layne’s videos of this harp. You say you are very tall, and I think you might prefer to put these harps on a small box.

Now, whether you like the sound of a medium tension lever strung harp for classical pieces is a personal taste. In case you choose a medium tension harp, you may prefer a 40 string harp. In at least some countries of Europe the Salvi Ana and the Salvi Hermes have celtic tension strings, but, because they are so large, still sound a bit more like a pedal strung harp. Their sound is quite different from a L&H Prelude, which is strung with pedal gut and which, in my opinion, sounds most like a pedal harp. But the Prelude plays very heavily. Even though the Camac Mademoiselle (40 strings) is also strung with pedal gut, it plays much lighter. This has probably to do with a quite different way of building harps.

For the time being: enjoy playing your rented Ravenna!

[Lily-White]

Hi @WIL-WETEN,

WOW!!! That was extremely interesting! I have been looking a lot at Camac, Salvi and Dysty Strings harps, but the kind of information you gave me, I hadn’t found anywhere. THANK YOU! 🙂

It’s very hard to listen to the sound of harps only on the computer. They have been registered in different circumstances, so you can’t compare them. And a registration isn’t the same as hearing it live. However, so far I have liked the sound of Salvi Gaia, the Camac Classical Isolde and Korrigan. The strange thing is that I have liked Celtic Isolde as well, I haven’t noticed a big difference in the sound, but this must be due to my ignorance and the registrations. There has to be a difference, the names Classical and Celtic Isolde tell two different stories… The sound of Celtic Isolde is a question mark for me.
I have been looking at Excalibur and Ulysse as well. Ulysse is so light and durable, and both of them look nice in my opinion (simple lines). Ulysse is expensive though, and not high enough for me. I have listened SO many times to Excalibur, it could be perfect for me – simple lines and I could get it in white – but the recordings give me a pretty strong and dark sound, a “masculine” sound, if that makes any sense. In comparison with Isolde Classic and Gaia for example. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong.

My dream is a white harp. Salvi would make me a white harp. Camac does’t make student harps in white, so that leaves Excalibur (and Ulysse). Dysty Strings doesn’t make any harp in white. My second choice would probably be a harp in walnut, which would give me more options. But I haven’t given up on a white one yet…

My skin issue is a mix of not being used to playing the harp, and a skin condition I have, that makes the skin very delicate. I can now practice on my Ravenna only for about 15 minutes a day because of the skin. Time will tell if can play more when I get used to it. But “heavy strings” certainly aren’t for me. Which leaves Celtic Isolde (?), maybe Excalibur and Ulysse. Or maybe a larger Dusty harp. You also mentioned Salvi Ana / Hermes and Camac Mademoiselle. I hadn’t thought of those, thank you! They are heavy though, 20-22 kg, which is not a plus for a lever harp. But I will have to make a compromise somewhere.

As you said, now I’ll practice with my Ravenna and see how it goes. But at the same time it’s interesting to look and listen to different harps, read about harps, get to know this world. This way it get’s clearer to you what you want as well.

Thanks a million Wil-Weten!

– Lily

[wil-weten]

Hi Lily, just to make sure I understand what you mean with a ‘white’ harp. I guess you mean a harp which natural woodcolor doesn’t have a colored finish. There may be a few harps, like the Brilliant harpsicle, which are painted white. I guess you meant natural woodcolor, because of the harp models of other builders you mentioned. Do I understand that correctly?

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