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>Yep, alot of the Daphnes I’ve seen have been pretty nasty. Especially the more recent ones.
Interesting. I’d say that the European Daphnes I’ve seen lately, especially the larger ones, haven’t been nearly as bad as most of the South American ones were. A couple of the larger ones I’ve played I wouldn’t have minded owning.
I’d suggest doing it the other way round, Becky. Find a teacher first. Most teachers have a harp or two to rent to students and that’s a good way to find out just how much you like it. I never recommend to my students to buy a harp till they’ve had a couple of months of lessons and are sure they want to pursue it.
If it makes you feel any better, Rosemary, a friend of mine has one of those early Daphnes for outdoor weddings and she describes hers as “a log with strings on it.”
I don’t think tiny has all that much to do with this Rosalind. A dud is a dud whether it’s small or large. Listen to a good Wurlitzer A or a Dusty next to a 23. You may not like the sound quality as much, but they are certainly capable of a large sound, (if not as much low register in the Dusty). If you’ve ever seen Ray do his thing where he plays both a concert grand and a lever harp, there’s not the enormous difference in volume there is between a Daphne 40 (especially the South American ones) and almost any other harp model.
Gee, thanks, everyone! I’ve always thought the Passacaille is a great teaching piece, so I was really happy that it works so well on a lever harp.
You can’t do better as a start than by looking for Roslyn Rensch’s three books about the history of the harp. I forget the name of the first one, but the second was “The Harp: Its History, Technique, and Repertoire” and the third is “Harps and Harpists.” Your library may have one or more of them.
Actually, I’ve seen this happen both ways. I would disagree with Carl that the neck has no influence on the sound: with an instrument made of wood, the entire instrument resonates to some extent, not just the board. But I very definitely have seen two instruments sent back to two different highly respected shops that returned as much poorer instruments than they went, although nothing was done but the neck, and I’ve seen the opposite happen, too.
I had a 17 which was very very beautiful but imcredibly hard to play, although it was my main instrument for about 5 years. The woman who bought it from me knocked it over putting in the car to go to a gig on a windy day. She had to get a new neck, and the sound was very greatly improved by the change in the neck. As far as I know the neck was all that was done–I saw no evidence of any changes in the body, like the extra bracing L&H sometimes puts in, and she was not charged for anything but a neck.
Thanks for the clarfication, David. Do you happen to know who that is in the Ashley’s birthday party scene?
Hi, Bernhard. Sorry, didn’t mean to slight you: I just wasn’t aware of your midi harp.
Personally, I think midi is a fiddly way to input music, whether you use a keyboard or a harp. I have friends who engrave for Warner and they all use Finale’s speedy entry system, where you type the music in on a computer keybarod. A bit difficult to learn, but very fast once you get used to it.
There are midi harps. David Kortier makes one, which I believe Sylvia Woods uses to input her arrangements.
>However, if you are talking about playing the music in, any program is going to require a midi setup. That’s just part of the deal.
There are several programs that put a little keyboard onscreen that you can use to type in the notes, but most of these only take input on one note at time (your mouse can only click in one place).
