Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Also, if you google “Adjust loveland levers” without the quotes you will find a couple of pdf files with instructions. (Didn’t want to link one here since it would start a direct download when the link is clicked.)
Well, in the US you can always get a van from a rental agency in an emergency, or in many cities (not where I am, alas) you can request a station wagon/van taxi if you don’t have any friends you can call on.
If you have a breakdown that’s going to prevent you from being able to get a loaner or rental that will serve, you’re most likely to have this happen on the way to a gig. It’s rare to be without your car for more than a day for a repair, although it’s not impossible, but I sure wouldn’t keep an extra car just for that rare occurrence.
To J P: I did what you’re suggesting in reverse when I first started playing out–I had a VW beetle and I bought an old clunker just to use when moving the harp. But for me it’s more sensible to have a single vehicle. There are reasonably efficient options out there if you can divest yourself of the prevailing mentality that a car needs to have room galore for everything you might conceivably sometime, someday want to tote in addition to you and your harp.
Another thing to keep in mind with this plan is your housing situation. If you have a single-family home with adequate parking and you plan to stay there long-term it’s not a problem, but over the years I’ve lived in several different complexes where there was only one assigned space per unit and people weren’t encouraged to take up the guest parking with extra vehicles.
Personally, I would love for there to be a more cost-effective version of the Tesla X or a wagon version of the Chevy Volt, but then I wouldn’t have anywhere to plug it in, anyway. 🙂
And if you live in some urban areas you may be able to use a zipcar when you don’t need the harp with you.
>They DO have money but don’t want to spend it on their residents. Believe me…their bottom line is money and how to MAKE it.
So true. I used to feel slightly guilty about the place where I played all the time for their marketing luncheons, knowing that once the prospects signed on the dotted line they’d never see me or those fancy salads in pineapples again.
There are usually two different entities, and sometimes three, at retirement facilities:
1. Marketing. This is where the money is. They have a budget and they will spend it on things like background music for luncheons to attract potential residents. I charge my regular fee and get it.
2. Activities. The Activities Director usually has a very small budget and can’t afford to pay much. You will be lucky to get as much as $100, and often closer to $50, depending on the facility.
3. Concert series. Only a few of the really large communities have these, but they usually pay regular market price for touring artists and reasonable fees for local ones.
The problem you need to balance out is this: If you agree to do a program for a token fee for the activities division you have set your price, and you can be sure that marketing will call you for their activities too, but they aren’t going to pay your regular rate now, since they know you can be got for less. It’s a thorny situation sometimes.
(BTW, I don’t really see what difference it makes which harp you play.)
Sorry. This:
Make sure the sidebar is visible (View menu). In 10.7 you will need to click one of the icon arrangements above the image to show the thumbnails, too.
should be:
Make sure the sidebar is visible (View menu in 10.6). In 10.7 just click one of the icon arrangements above the right side of the image to show the thumbnails.
Whew. That’s a lot easier then. If your scanner driver won’t scan that way, first try scanning into Preview and see if OS X can scan to a multipage pdf. (Probably not, but worth a try.) If that’s no good, you can scan to individual pages if you must (I find it odd that you do, but then HP is mostly an ink company these days), then there are two ways to fix it.
1. Open the first page of the scan in Preview. Make sure the sidebar is visible (View menu). In 10.7 you will need to click one of the icon arrangements above the image to show the thumbnails, too. Then you can just drag the additional pages into the sidebar and save the combined PDF.
2. For really long files where this would be too much trouble, you can use automator to combine all the pdfs in a folder.
Thanks, Tony.
Sidney, there are published arrangements for everything in your list except the Bach, and that’s quite easily adapted for levers–lots of lever harpists play it by making the lever changes in one voice and forgoing the octaves in those sections (you’ll need to lose a lot of the left hand octaves anyway since the lever harp doesn’t have the bottom notes).
However, I’d keep in mind that some of these will require a reasonable amount of lever technique, especially the Prelude in C (no matter whose arrangement you opt for–there must be half a dozen lever harp versions in print) and the Arabesque.
Also, for lever harp you’re probably going to want to do things in different keys than you would with pedals, which may or may not need some mental adaptation on your part. (Some people aren’t bothered at all, others are driven a little crazy by, say, playing Pachelbel in G when it’s in their fingers for twenty years in D.)
For example, on a pedal harp, I’d do Pachelbel in D and Lohengrin in B flat, but with levers that takes too long to change the key, so I do both in G so that when the unexpected happens I’m good no matter what.
Thanks, Lisa. If you play pedal harp, you should check out Robert Maxwell’s ‘Scheherazade’, which includes a lot of the bits that don’t work well with levers.
As others have said, the part is pretty easy to play, and it’s not hard to follow to fit in with the ensemble, either. A really nice part–audible and fun to play.
