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Another excellent teacher via Skype would be Laurie Riley at http://www.laurieriley.com
Biagio
Saul, you may be right, but I really don’t see everyone over reacting. What I do sense are two approaches to early training and that would be the same whether the subject matter is harp or mathematics. There are and should be middle grounds but let’s take two extremes.
At the one extreme is what I might, as a son of two professors and a teacher myself, call the “Victorian”. There is an a priori assumption that the student is expected to follow the teacher’s rigorous direction without question.
At the other, which I will call the “Maria Montessori”, the teacher is more of guide and the student is expected to explore with his or her guidance.
[Interesting factoid: Dr. Montessori was an early enthusiast of the Clark harp. But I digress’]
I feel very strongly that a good teacher is capable of some measure of both approaches, but with a student at an early age he or she would, IMO, tend more toward the latter. There are youngsters who are completely focused on their future profession and the former more rigorous approach would be appropriate.
But I would contend that those are in the minority and one of the worst things that a parent or teacher can do is to push those children to the point where they hate the discipline. I have seen too many intelligent, even brilliant children have their love of learning utterly crushed and alas that is all too frequent in both music and mathematics.
Let us bear in mind as well that Amy’s daughter is only nine, the harp in question is a lever harp, and the child’s previous music exposure has been via the Suzuki Method. Based on this information, it does not seem to me that she is preparing for a career with the concert harp. I could of course be wrong and as we all know the preparation time for that is very long in any case.
On the other hand, I have also seen excellent teachers’ enthusiasm and even reputations tarnished by parents with unrealistic expectations and unwillingness be “hands off”. Few things aggravated me more than parents telling me how to run my math and science classes!
In your remarks you seem to be making the assumption that this parent and child are looking at least a quasi professional career in music. If that is true then I would tend to agree with your approach. Excellence comes from devotion and discipline. If that is not the case – if the desire is for a good grounding in music and the harp but not a vocation – then not so much.
Perhaps some have suggested just “dumping” the current teacher but I guess I missed those. Most seem to be saying, “Talk it over, give the teacher and your daughter more time” which certainly seems to be the most sensible to me.
Biagio
Amy,
We call it “playing” for good reason; a large part of the joy especially for younger students lies in discovery. There can be little joy without good technique but even less if one dreads the lesson. It seems that you and the teacher are forging a good relationship here so best wishes and stay with it for a while. All of my teachers have been excellent and all asked for a) commitment to practice the assignment and b) that I allow some “practice” time to just fool around for fun. “Reward yourself”, they said. It really works.
You had mentioned that you joined the American Harp Society. This is a good thing but with deference to my pedal harp friends here and elsewhere, the lever harp is in several ways a different instrument from the pedal harp, and the AHS is mainly for the latter. So I’d encourage you to look into the International Society of Folk Harpers and Craftsmen as well. It’s quarterly journal (the Folk Harp Journal) always includes a lot of music, tips and regular columns by well known artists.
Best wishes,
Biagio“To dream, the impossible dream…” yep, it has been tried also with solenoids, and also by retrofitting a lever harp with pneumatics. Both judged too complicated and erratic by the luthiers and as a player I’d hate to have to deal with either.
On the other hand, if one is prepared to go MIDI digital, those have been built. Of course then you need all the other audio stuff.
Biagio
Amy I am happy if we have been helpful and really delighted that you take such an interest in learning about the harp as well. Here is something that may be of interest to your daughter and to you:
It is a five part History of the Harp documentary recorded by Catrin Finch. Watching it you will find that there are quite a few kinds of harps being played today – and makers seem to come up with new ideas all the time. For example, there is a comment that the cross strung harp is no longer being made. Heh heh, that was true about 15 years ago but not any more, and the electric, MIDI and double strung lever harps are not mentioned either.
Your daughter has a lifetime of fun ahead and perhaps you do too:-) Speaking for myself, I just started learning when I was 60 – you’re never too old!
Best wishes,
BiagioHere are some additional avenues to pursue, depending on where you live and what sort of harp your daughter plays:
Look into harp circles, on line forums, and harp chapters. Some are the American Harp Society (mainly pedal harp), The International Society of Folk Harpers and Craftsmen, The Scottish Harp Society, The Harplist Yahoo! group (very wide variety of members), The Virtual Harp Circle Yahoo! group (many levels but oriented toward beginners).
I’m sure all here agree that a good foundation is essential for enjoyment and progress, and that personal lessons are the best way to go. I’m also sure most would agree that a good teacher will listen if problems come up and suggest alternatives if his or her teaching method isn’t working. Good teachers don’t take offense at this.
Biagio
Personal lessons are certainly preferable to Skype. But if a particular teacher cannot establish empathy then IMO the student will be better off with distance learning, preferably augmented with video. There are several excellent ones that I can think of for beginners, both distance teachers and Youtube video. Of the latter, Marta Cook and Chris Caswell are particular good for hand position.
I would suggest having a friendly conversation with her present teacher first. One question would be the kind of harp in question, your daughter’s goals and the teachers goals. Sometimes these are just incompatible, but a good teacher will be flexible if he or she can.
Biagio
Following up: I made a few comments that could stand a little explanation.
It would worry me somewhat if you, Hearpe, do not have the string design for it.
Nylon strings are graded and sold in terms of their diameter, whereas gut is typically with reference to their position and implied tension. So you have for example “nylon 0.025” which is straight forward. A gut string might be “1st octave concert gut C” or “lever gut C”. This is not very helpful in determining what to choose to replace the nylon string! Take a look at Dusty’s gut replacement chart – some is concert gut, some lever gut, and the notes are all over the place. Hence, you should employ a string designer who can wade through the jargon.
That is where nylon strings will start to sound poorly (the reason being false partials)
This harks back to a discussion that Tacye and I had a while ago. It gets pretty technical – at the core we are talking about the string tension with respect to its vibrating length and how the nodes (partials or harmonics) behave – which acoustic types label “inharmonicity”. Rather than going off the deep end here I’ll just refer interested parties to Paul Dooley’s discussion (Paul is referring to wire harps but the same principles apply to nylon or gut).
http://www.wirestrungharp.com/material/strings/inharmonicity.html
I’m a bit of an iconoclast when it comes to the higher tension lever harps, in that I claim a laminate sound board can sound as good (almost) as a spruce one IF the strings are designed for that board.
It is important to understand that a designer considers the harp as an integrated whole, rather than each structural component in isolation. Most if not all start with the string band but that is done with the intended sound board in mind, and to a lesser degree the acoustic properties of the sound box. If you change one of those it will change the relationship to all the others; and obviously if the harp is already constructed the strings are the only thing you can change. Easily, anyway.
If I decide to use a laminate board it will probably be at higher tension with longer strings than if the board were spruce, cedar, or a composite but otherwise the same. Taking this further with respect to the box, I have two wire strungs – one maple and one sapele – and while the strings are essentially the same, boy do they sound different!
Ain’t it fun?
Biagio
Ha ha, Balfour my friend I might be able to say what gut strings Hearpe could use but I cannot say whether that would be a good idea on her Mikel 34, as I am not familiar with it. In general I would say it is probably not worth the cost, but she could always contact a string maker to do an analysis. It would worry me somewhat if you, Hearpe, do not have the string design for it. Here though are some gratuitous generalities from my perspective.
With the tensions typical of many lever harps, gut is mostly used in what we call the “transition range.” That is where nylon strings will start to sound poorly (the reason being false partials) but heavier metal core strings are either impractical or would sound too – well, metallic. In the Gothics case that is the range that Balfour indicates. It will be different in another design such as the Music Maker Voyageur.
In the treble gut would be quite thin and therefore impractical there as well. You certainly could replace all the nylon strings with smaller gauge gut (keeping the tension approximately the same), if you wish to spend the money.
These remarks again bear to the tension of a typical medium to light tension harp say 24 lbs average over a 34-36 string range. Those with higher tension such as the Troubadours, most Camacs, Teifi, etc. it’s a different story – those harps are designed to accommodate gut and probably sound better with it than with nylon.
I’m a bit of an iconoclast when it comes to the higher tension lever harps, in that I claim a laminate sound board can sound as good (almost) as a spruce one IF the strings are designed for that board. With those designs, gut may be preferred over nylon, depending on the player’s preferences. Personally I like the brighter ring and longer life of nylon compared to gut.
Most harps with laminate boards are not designed that way however. I don’t know about the Mikel but if it is a medium – low tension with laminate board as I suspect, I would not replace with gut – it would be to me a waste of money.
Hope that helps!
Biagio
Depends on how much time you have available but here are some general guidelines that many have found useful:
Set aside a specific time (or times) per day. No more than one hour at a stretch.
Set up a work space or table with all the essentials so you don’t have to get up in the middle to find something: wrench, tuner, metronome, egg timer, pencils, whiteout, nail files, water, music, etc.
Tune up even if you don’t think it’s needed. Get used to “stretch tuning” while at it. There was a discussion about this recently.The above does not count as “practice time”.
Decide what you are going to work on, broken into discreet intervals, and set that egg timer at no more than 15 minutes. Get up and stretch or do something else between intervals (Why? Because it is a rare mind that can retain much beyond 15 minutes of intense concentration).
Here’s one suggestion of what to do in a one hour sessions:
-Warm up with music that you know and like.
-Exercises and etudes
-Work on a new piece
-Revisit an “old” piece.
-Free time – have some fun with improvisation, play a chord progression in different keys, just gliss all over the place….I find that it is very helpful to organize music in a binder as follows:
-Ready to perform or at least have memorized
-Working on
-Want to learn
-Want to arrange (or change the arrangement)
Rotate through the binder so you are always revisiting stuff you know already.Some other tips: getting in the mood beforehand may be helpful – listen to a piece you want to learn some day, do a little quiet meditation, visualize the music. For stretching, be especially aware of strain on the lower back, neck, and shoulders. Yoga or Tai chi are especially good.
Have fun!
Biagio
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that (ergonomics aside) the string design is critical on these. More so than on an acoustic or electro-acoustic since the choice of sound board has no effect (there is none LOL). This would mean to my builder’s mind a lot less work and therefore expense on the one hand, and rather more expense for materials on the other (pickups, pre-amp, synthesizer, etc.).
I did a little research: a package for a 36 string harp (less synthesizer and/or amplifier, headset etc.) costs about $600 US. The rest is like an acoustic less the soundboard so we’re looking at about $1100 for strings, wood and levers, or $1700 total. So in principle a harp maker could make a custom one for you, though the charge for labor I could not predict. But as I mentioned earlier, the labor is much less than for an acoustic: I’d guess about two weeks maximum including finishing. So if you know of a custom harp maker it might be worth looking into that.
It rather surprises me that there are only a limited number of people making these at present. I suppose that has to do with limited demand – although I also notice that David Kortier is also offering electric cross strung harps. Pretty cool!
Biagio
In this case I would start in the middle, and go down, then back up – one string at a time. My rationale being that I don’t want to stress the soundboard any more than necessary and the greatest stress is from the fifth and sixth octave down. So I also keep those lower frequency strings about a whole step (or more) below the actual pitch on the first pass, especially the wire core ones.
Sorry to come in late on this one:-)
Biagio
Hi Emma,
Thank you; yup, I’ve had that for a while now, and another she transcribed as a cello and piano version. Haven’t gotten around to revising the piano part to a more “harp friendly” version but you’re right. When I hear something I think would work I’ll often end up with a score for another instrument, then revise it. Copyright can be a bit tricky, especially for pieces composed in Japan. I just love the piece and love the movie too! So I fiddle and fool around just for my own enjoyment. Some of “Joe’s” music tells a story all by itself, he’s just a marvelous composer!
Biagio
Angie, yes I did the Clark restoration. Most competent harp makers have worked on a Clark at one time or another and the models are well known. So you should be able to find someone to look it over and recommend what needs to be done at what cost and what it’s value might be.
Related to that issue: it’s a popular design – best known from the Egan harps – and has been used by many, other than Melville Clark. Several modern ones are electro-acoustic which gets us to your MIDI question. A MIDI instrument has no sound by itself (or at least not much!). Since I posted one of Kortier’s you can go to his website where he discusses the differences.
Biagio
