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Espen, there was a thread about this on the old forum under Coffee Break. You should be able to find any information you need over there.
Well, on the other hand Sylvia, it’s one thing to expose your harp to fluctuating conditions; it’s another to *keep* it in those conditions. Although, if you’re moving your harp to all-day gigs every day or even several times a week, maintaining a constant humidity in the room where it stays while you sleep might not make much difference. And you’re right that the instruments are made to be used, which hopefully means moving them to places where people can hear them!
Hi Bay,
It’s my understanding that you want to store your harp at a constant humidity. I live in the Northeast, so for me that means a dehumidifier in the spring/summer/fall and a humidifier in the winter. (Actually, the room has a propane space heater with a water reservoir, so I just keep the reservoir full of distilled water.) I strive to keep my harp at 50% humidity; though that’s not always 100% possible, even with climate control equipment, I figure keeping it close is better than letting it go entirely untended.Oh, you lucky duck! Yes, you remember well, I’m the one on the wrong side of NH. I wasn’t playing harp or even using my voice background when I moved here — now I dream of moving to the Manchester area someday! But if I can get something good going over here, maybe I won’t have to. 🙂 I hope your studies are fruitful and enjoyable!
A person I worked with in the tech booth at church said his mother had a harp she’d bought years ago and never learned how to play. He asked if I could teach her. I told him I’m self-taught, but I could show her what I know. We started out very informally, but eighteen months later we’re still going strong, and I converted her to the formal system I use for my voice students a few months ago. At first I didn’t charge her because I was just sharing my knowledge with her; now I don’t charge her because I intend to use what I’m learning from teaching her to create an actual teaching studio. (Such as it is. This isn’t Boston; I’m the only harper for 48 minutes in any direction, and the only harp “teacher” I’ve been able to find for at least 80-90 minutes. If not me, then no one!) As a next step, I’m teaching an “Introduction to the Harp” class at the local community college in the spring. I’m hoping that will earn me more students, or at the very least get some people interested enough that they’ll teach themselves to play like I did!
My first lessons as a harp teacher were very easy, because there weren’t any expectations. My student just wanted to learn enough to enjoy the instrument, which, let’s face it, doesn’t take much – it’s a harp! I reviewed my expectations for practicing and timeliness, and started showing her around the instrument. She already had “Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp”, so we started with some Twinkle-Twinkle, thirds, and the I IV V I chord progression. The lessons after that largely shaped themselves based on what she wanted to know. Keep in mind that I’m not training a concert harpist here – I’m teaching an older woman how to play the harp for her own enjoyment.
The thing to remember about teaching is that it goes two ways. Draw your confidence from two things:
1. You know more than the student. This was true even in my case. If it’s not true and you don’t have anything to offer that particular person, then you should be upfront and tell them you can’t accept them into your studio because there’s nothing you can do for them. Keeps it simple.
2. You’re learning from the student. Perhaps not as much as they’re learning from you, and definitely not the same types of things, but you are learning from them. Basically what happens is that you learn and grow on your harp in one way and you make certain kinds of mistakes; but your students will learn in many different ways and will each make different kinds of mistakes. You’ll start with only your own experience, but you’ll l have to figure out how to help them learn *in their way* and help them fix *their* errors. There is absolutely no shame in telling a student that you’re going to do some research to figure out how to help them — so don’t feel like you have to fix every single problem right on the spot. Over time, you’ll find you’re doing less problem-solving and more remembering. I could give you a bunch of examples of this from my voice studio, but I think I’ve gone on long enough. 🙂I take it you’re thinking of starting your own studio. Best of luck! Let us know how it goes. 🙂
The old one, as long as it’s still young enough to reasonably maintain. You know what you’re getting, and you’re sure it’s going to knock your socks off (the carving doesn’t matter to me, I prefer cleaner lines anyway). It sounds like the older one was a better harp to begin with, and I also prefer items with their own history. If the older harp is too old to maintain without completely rebuilding (increasing its actual cost), I’d pick the new one – I wouldn’t want to spend all that money just to end up with an expensive decoration.
If you’re tuning in the key of C in order to minimize intonation issues with the levers, wouldn’t that just be a case of six-of-one/half-dozen-of-the-other? If you tune in Eb and engage your A and E levers to get to the key of F, A and E might be out of tune. If you tune in C and disengage your B and E levers to get to Bb, B and E might be out of tune. If disengaging levers isn’t an issue because you’re playing in C and sharp keys almost exclusively, you may want to consider tuning your open strings to C (or maybe F, so that you can access one flat easily), and re-tuning the flat strings when you need them.
How long has it been since you and your students had your levers regulated? I’m finding that I need to do it every 11 months or so (I don’t, but I should!). If you’re playing regularly and it’s been a couple of years or more, you may find that this basic – though time-consuming and often tricky – maintenance will solve your problem with mechanical imperfections.
Of course, I’m assuming that since you’re tuning with levers engaged, you’re using a type of lever that doesn’t pinch the string (not a Loveland, for example). If you have a pinch-type lever, then you shouldn’t tune in this fashion because of the extra wear on the string.
I’m interested to read what more experienced players have to say about this.
I don’t have any personal experience with this, so this is just an idea. Have you tried calling the school and talking to the band and/or orchestra teacher(s) (or suggesting it to her parents)? I wonder if they have an extra equipment locker where your student could store her harp on the switch-off days — or store it indefinitely so that she could use a free period to practice her harp while actually at school. Schools deal with divorce situations all the time, and in my experience, public school music teachers really go out of their way to accommodate students with obvious home-related struggles. I hope this works out well for her!
Susan, I completely agree with you. My husband and I both own small one-person businesses. I sing, and I go to great lengths to protect myself from communicable disease, because if I get a cold I literally can’t work. (Sneeze into your ELBOWS, people!!) I also have a chronic illness, and I know that if I find something important enough (or commit to it a year ahead of time, as it seems vendors do with Somerset), I will burn the candle at both ends and do it with a smile. Nobody would know that it costs me three weeks of resting up for the event and a month of recovery. I absolutely believe that’s what happened in this case.
However, as a person in a position worse than a customer waiting for a harp — I *recommended this harp to a student* — I can also say that the business practices here were sub-par (to which I believe Chris bravely admitted). My husband’s one-man-show is a tech business that he runs in addition to his full-time job. He tracks his shipments when he orders parts, and if a part is going to be even one day late, he’s on the phone with his client immediately. He gives estimates of time required to finish a job. If it turns out the problem is more complicated than he thought — you guessed it, he calls the client immediately to update them. When he’s booked up, he tells clients with new jobs that he won’t be able to get to them until “”, then gives them a realistic time frame and offers them the option to wait for him or try someone else first.
That is supposed to be one of the benefits of going with a small company: personalized, detailed customer service. Things go wrong, sometimes lots of things go really wrong, sometimes it simply becomes a living nightmare from the owners’ point of view, but the customer gets taken care of all the way. That hasn’t happened here, and that is what has been so frustrating for many who have tied up hard-earned money for more than a year to reserve a spot in line (and who knows which spot they have in line?) to get a harp that looks like it may or may not appear. Not only has this kind of personalized information not been volunteered, but worse, people who have called repeatedly to try to get information about their harps haven’t even been able to get a basic response. Wouldn’t you be frustrated, scared, and angry that buying a harp, which should be a joyous experience, has turned into such an ordeal?
Most of us here are reasonable people who are frustrated and upset. I choose to send compassion to all who are caught up in this mess.
Actually, I think it’s the wooden parts that are machine-made, customized to Chris’ specifications. That should be even more promising as to catching up – if there isn’t some disaster with the new supplier. I got the same impression about the time frames as you did, though.
Jennifer, do you know where to buy one? I’ve looked and looked, and I’ve never been able to find one for sale!
Hi again folks,
I received permission from Beverly at Caswell Harps to post the following mass letter from Chris. I received the letter on September 11, and asked for and received permission to post it here on September 13. I hope some of you will find it helpful. To be clear, I’ve simply done a copy-and-paste, and I spent a couple of minutes taking care of some formatting issues created by the “paste”.
Hello All,
This is Chris Caswell (the now infamous). Please take a moment to read the following. I’m sorry that it’s a bit long.
First let me say that I am in deep sympathy with everyone’s
frustrations, and am in the shop nearly every day trying to catch up. I feel extremely frustrated for every harp I deliver late, and for every time I have to put someone off due to the situation here. The expansion of my sales over the last year due to the SweetHarp, coupled with production issues I could in no way have foreseen, and now with a health situation, have thrust my weaknesses and blind spots to the foreground. It overwhelmed my ability as a small shop to keep up.
As soon as I identified one of these problem areas, however, I have taken the steps I could to organize around my own limitations. I have been blessed to be able to add a professional bookkeeper, and a person to make sure I stay in touch with those who are waiting or have questions. I also have new help in the shop (the goal has always been to largely extricate myself from the process, both for stability, and since only I can do the larger harps).
Have we caught all the problems? No. Some issues have still slipped between the cracks. But we’ve done a lot to make sure that folks who are waiting have the most honest appraisal we can give them of the situation, and that harps continue to get out the door.
Let me give you a summary of this “perfect storm” which has gotten me where I am right now. (Some have labeled my attempts at explaining what’s been going on as “excuses,” implying that I’m trying to “get away” with something. From my point of view that’s a bit like saying your car’s transmission went out on the way to work and that’s your “excuse” for being late. These are events of life that happen and we deal with them as best we can. (Some I’ve obviously dealt with better than others.)
Part 1, the production issues:
About a year and a half ago I released the SweetHarp after having done two prototype runs to make sure I had my production ducks in a row. The SweetHarp is a distillation of my nearly 40 years making and playing harp, designed to be light, strong, good sounding, good to play; offering a harp I thought was a real step up in the growing “less expensive” harp market. It is designed as a production
instrument using some very sophisticated woodworking technology. It was in this cutting-edge technology that I hit my first landmine.
The harp is made nearly entirely from parts that are cut in batches by computer-controlled machines. (It was my reticence to explain this clearly earlier which, I think, caused some of my explanations to sound a bit disingenuous, but I consider the process proprietary.) The parts are then gone over in the shop – sanded, etc. – and assembled. The assembly is designed to be very quick (one of the key ideas in making a sophisticated harp affordable).
As soon as I released the harp, one of my main parts suppliers simply disappeared. I then put the drawings out to bid again and got several inquiries. The most promising seemed a shop in Des Plaines, Il.
Now, every time I establish a new supplier it means sending them the drawings. They enter this into their machines, cut a test batch of parts which are sent to me for approval. We fix any discrepancies, and then can start a production run. This process can take several months.
The folks in Des Planes were hit by flooding that summer, which closed them down for a while. After that, we spent several months trying to get successful parts. They finally had to admit that they didn’t have the expertise for my kind of job. By now I had a trickle of parts from my original supplier, but they were less than perfect in terms of the “snap together” aspect of the design, and were taking a lot of time to make work. And the sales were starting to come in. The backlog was increasing.
So I started developing a relationship with another supplier in Florida. They had a very sophisticated German machine which promised to be able to do my parts no problem. But after a hurricane and nearly six months of trying to get parts from them, they also decided they couldn’t do it. Remember – this is after I’ve had several batches done by other folks, so knew it was possible. What I came to see was that, even though these companies had the hot-shot machines, they didn’t have the expertise to really get the most out of them.
By now it’s Winter. At our local Christmas Fair I start talking with a very talented younger man whom I have been acquainted with for years, and who has been wanting to do something similar to my approach but with other instruments. He teaches how to use these machines at a local co-op tech shop, and is very excited to take my drawings to the next level, allowing for an unprecedented level of precision and ease of cutting.
We have been vetting the parts since about March and should be in full swing in about a month, and finally, my dream of a quickly-made great little harp should be n full swing. Meanwhile I have that trickle of parts from the first supplier, but they are slow going through the shop. (The upside to this wretched little history is that I have continued to refine and improve the SweetHarp. Each time I’ve sent my drawings off to a potential supplier, I’ve been able to incorporate these improvements. So the harp folks will be receiving has matured a lot.)
Part 2: My Health
As you who have read some of my Facebook postings, or elsewhere, you will know that I went through a health crisis back in 2006-2008. I had rectal cancer. It responded very well to treatment and was gone for several years. During those years, my insurance company decided that my group plan (of which I was the only member) was invalid, and offered to convert it to a personal plan – at over $900/mo. Since I couldn’t do that, I had to let my insurance go.
Last Thanksgiving, as I was setting up for the Dickens Christmas Fair, I came down with a bad cough. A number of folks at the fair had something similar – either a bug going around, or a mold issue, or who knows? Anyway, mine persisted throughout December and into January.
Eventually it seemed to knock some ribs out so I went to a
chiropractor who said that yes, a cough could actually break a rib. And that coughs were very fatiguing to the body. That helped explain that symptom. I was also, by this time, in pretty severe pain shooting up the right side of my back from hip to shoulder, seeming randomly.
I could only sit at a computer for a few minutes at a time, and when I was at the shop (even answering emails was an ordeal), I was only doing a fraction of what I could usually do. The pain was often triggered by standing. So I could only stand for a few minutes, then find something to do sitting down. At the end of a day, all I could do was come home and lie on the floor. My productivity plummeted.
But after four decades of working in a shop, my mental model of what could get done didn’t adjust quickly to the new situation. This didn’t help me when I would give clients what turned out to be overly- optimistic delivery estimates. But, in my ignorance, all was done in good faith from my end. And I continued to go to the shop nearly every day to do whatever I could.
What I noticed as the winter wore on was that in addition to fatigue, I was losing weight. Finally I went to a respected elderly Chinese doctor near me. He pointed out a swelling in my liver, and ascribed my pain as being the result of pressure on a nerve (he pinpointed all the spots in question). He also said that, though all my symptoms were consistent with a slowly-evolving liver condition, that it could also be cancer.
For those who don’t know, folks with pre-existing conditions have to wait about two years between being insured to be available for some of the alternative plans. However, none of those plans were available to me until just recently. California has a new, affordable “Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan” (PCIP) which I am now enrolled in. I get my first major tests next week.
The good news is that since seeing my Chinese doctor, the swelling has decreased and softened, and the nerve pain is greatly reduced. My vitality has increased. And though I still have some low energy days, in general my hours in the shop are longer and more productive than they have been in many months.
Throughout this whole period I have remained dedicated to building SweetHarps. Since harps have been slow to get out the door, you can imagine how my cash flow has been. But I’ve found a way of persisting, even though some things have not been handled as nearly as quickly as I would like, and for that I apologize. For me, the only way is through. Get harps out the door, no matter what difficulties arise.
I have dedicated my life to the harp and it is very sad to me that now, after four decades, I should have put myself in this position.I accept responsibility for it, and have only the kindest thoughts for those who are affected by my situation. I know I will get through this. At what cost to my reputation, God knows. But I am doing my best.
For those of you that are still reading this, may I ask something? This is something I’ve never asked before: Maybe occasionally you could play a tune on your harps for me and send me a little well-wishing.
I heard a wise man say once, “When your load gets heavy, don’t ask for a lighter load. Ask for stronger legs.”
All best wishes,
Chris
I received a mass letter a few days ago. I was told it had been “sent” to Harp Column, but it isn’t showing up in the forums yet, so I’ve asked for permission to post it. If I get the okay I’ll put it up.
Thanks for that information, Mary (post 98). Based on the last letter I’ve strongly encouraged my student to withdraw her order, but I haven’t heard her decision yet, so I’m guessing she’s having a rough time with it. Now I can offer her another option, though we’ll have to wait and see to find out what good it might do. Thank you. 🙂
In case anyone is looking for something similar later on, I just found this: http://clipartist.info/www/MUSINIQUE.COM/P/papapishu_harp_3.svg.html
You can easily paste it into Word and create your own labels. I’m going to use it to make a diagram with blanks for my class to fill in the terms.
