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Bish also had an early episode of the show with 6 harps (but not Susann McDonald). I know, because I was one of them.
>1950s – “The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp” starring Diane Cilento (the first Mrs. Sean Connery and mother of Jason Connery) – apparently available on European PAL dvd but not here – also based on the book of the same name
They made a movie of THAT!?
Since the original post is five years old, I would expect that by now the daughter is in conservatory or a session band or something! 🙂
No problem. Pedal or lever, it’s one of my favorite woods, anyway. I love the beautful quilted maple that dusty and thormahlen get sometimes.
Hi, Leigh. I think Kathy means that in a pedal harp, a walnut harp is a maple harp that’s stained to look like walnut, not that maple isn’t an “actual” hardwood itself.
Yes, Laura is a wonderful harpist and a good composer, too. It’s interesting to me that of the 8 harpists who were at Eastman when I was there, 3 of us became seriously interested in lever harp later on.
I would also add that if you need to replace an existing door, jeld-wen has some solid core noise reduction doors that are not expensive that you can order through places like Home Depot or Lowe’s. They come in most of the same styles their regular interior doors do.
>he’s expecting not to like the sound of a harp
Oh, honey, they *all* expect not to like it. I can’t tell you how many men come up to me at the end of jobs and say, with obvious astonishment, “I really LIKED that.”
The harp doesn’t bother people! I’ve never lived in a single family home and I’ve never had a problem. I once lived in an apartment building with interior hallways and I would often be disconcerted when coming out of my apartment to find my neighbors sitting in the hall on lawn chairs, enjoying the sound (and that was when I *practiced*, so they’d been listening to one measure over and over and over for a couple of hours). The place I lived before that, my next door neighbors encouraged me not to wait till later in the morning to practice because they loved waking up to harp music.
It’s possible you might encounter a curmudgeon, but I’d never let that remote possiblity keep me from getting a harp!
Yes, I was thinking of your happy experience when I wrote that post, June. You are fortunate to have one that isn’t too bent to let you do that. They were great little harps.
>If your levers are chewing up the strings, to me it sounds like you need to have your harp regulated. They shouldn’t be doing that.
The loveland levers do chew gut strings, Cecelia, unfortunately, if you really use them much. Any pinchy lever will eat up gut strings eventually, which is one reason why they don’t use those on preludes anymore. They work fine on lower tension nylon harps like a dusty.
Not only that, but if you use your levers a lot (I do), the strings will eat the lever cams eventually, too, from the constant pressure on the plastic. I have had to replace a number of cams because of this over the years.
BTW, just to point out that the first gen troubadours were all nylon, so you’ll need to reregulate if you put gut on one of those. If you have the square box levers I wouldn’t, since those are real shavers sometimes.
Once the lacquer on a gut string is worn away where your fingers toch, the string is compromised to some extent because it starts collecting the oils and moisture from your hands and the air. The old uncoate guts took care of themselves by making you feel like you were playing the hairbrush instead of the harp, but the new ones don’t give you that feedback nearly as fast.
If the harp had the original gut strings on it when you bought it, what you are experiencing is totally normal. You should replace guts at least every two years, preferably every one year. You sound like a serious practicer and it’s totally possible the strings are just worn out.
Do not use abrasive cord, except on a hole in a tuning pin which seems to break the string. For the soundboard grommets, for the bridge pins, and for the tuning pin holes, too, dental floss is a better first line of attack. But that is for when a particular string keeps breaking repeeatedly in the same spot.
But if you just are having a lot of different older strings break, that’s totally normal. In the extreme humidity of S Fl, I regularly break about a full set of guts in the course of a year on my outdoor harp.
BTW, if your harp has the loveland levers on it, those are stringbreakers, too.
