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>I have just started reading I Mac’s book on the blues and he recommends a special blues tuning.
I’m curious, Heide. I don’t have his book, but he has an article on playing the blues in the latest issue of the American Harp Journal. The four blues scales he gives there are all accessible to anyone who tunes in E-flat without any special tuning. Does he advocate something else in the book?
>For avoiding repetitions of mistakes on levered strings, I think I’ll do the exercises in key of C minor instead then raised all of the levers necessary when I have quite mastered it…
Hi, Indra. I’d recommend not doing it this way if you were a student of mine, but each to their own. The sooner you get used to what the lever setup for the key of C looks like, the better, IMHO.
It is best to tune a harp as it is designed to be tuned: for the prelude, this is E-flat. Just put your levers up to change the key to C. Aside from the fact that IMO harps that are constantly retuned to different keys often don’t hold pitch well, as a lever harpist you need to get used to what it looks like when the levers are where they need to be in different keys. If you tune in C, yah, it’s easy to find that one F-sharp lever you want, but once you go back to tuning in E-flat it’s going to disappear in the forest of raised levers. Get used to finding things now. It saves time and effort in the long run.
Yes, the L&H levers are string busters. That’s just part of the cost of doing business, I’m afraid. If your harp was levered properly, it shouldn’t be too bad. If you keep breaking a particular string, inspect the lever. You may be able to help matters.
Just be glad you play the pedal harp, David. What I really, really hate is when I’m playing, say, “Moonlight in Vermont” or something and someone starts singing behind me and I know it’s Vic Damone or Rod Stewart or Tony Bennett or someone like that, because I know what’s coming–everything is just absolutely swell till the bridge and then I hear, ‘Hey! It should modulate to [key of their choice] there!”
Yes, I like the Damase, too. I also like the 12 etudes + Theme and Variations for lever harp by Naderman, but they are more exercises than musical studies.
Oh, no, I didn’t think you were, Jennifer. I wasn’t responding to your post, just to Sherry’s. For myself, I certainly consider all the lever changes in my arrangements as just suggestions–the important thing is to find the right spot for you and to stick to it.
You must move the lever in *exactly* the same place every time or it will never become automatic. Ditto for pedals. If you keep moving around where you make your changes, it’s always a thought process, never something that happens without your thinking about it.
this may be useful:
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/audio/portable-recorder-comparison/
and of course if you have a current ipod touch or iphone, there are recording programs for those that you can download from the itunes app store.
They say they were having problems with it. There used to be a link to doing a google site-specific search, but it seems to have gotten left on the cutting room floor with the last content update.
If you search google for site: harpcolumn.com + your search term, you’ll get hits from just this site.
