Switching from Lever Harp to Pedal Harp

[holly-kemble]

Hi everyone~

I am

[kay-lister]

Hi Holly,

I have played a Thormahlen Swan (36 string) for just under 8 years now.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

For me it was two things: the repertoire, and being freed from having to flip levers all the time while my feet do nothing. And then there was, of course, that glorious tone.

[tony-morosco]

For me it was strictly a issue that I play a wide range of genres and styles of music and I kept coming across things I wanted to do but couldn’t due to the specific limitations of the lever harp.

However… while I have yet to come across something that I can play on lever harp that can’t be played on pedal harp there are many pieces of music that are much easier to play on lever harp than pedal harp because on the lever harp I can flip one lever and leave it while on pedal harp I have to keep making pedal changes because I need, say, a note sharp in one octave in one measure but natural in the next measure in a lower octave. On lever harp I can just leave the upper octave lever engaged and the lower not engaged and even if every time that upper octave the note is sharped and every time the lower one is played it is natural I never have to make another adjustment. On pedal harp I would have to constantly make a pedal change each time I wanted to play one of those notes.

So Pedal harps are very versatile, but there are still instances where lever harp is just easier to deal with.

So I will never not use lever harps. But more often than that I want to play stuff that just is either impossible, or at least very, very difficult, to play on levers. If it weren’t for that I would have been

[holly-kemble]

Thanks for all the feedback. I’ll probably start a ‘just in case’ pedal harp savings fund…but I think I will continue to work on my lever harp materials.

As always…..I appreciate all the feedback!

Holly

[barbara-brundage]

Why, thank you, Kay. What a nice compliment.

[kay-lister]

Your welcome Barbara

K

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