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A comment on wood choices….when a luthier sits down to develop a new design, he or she will first decide on several structural parameters: size, number of strings, tone, sustain, spacing, weight, expense – that sort of thing. Having decided those will set limits on what comes next.
Those are, first, string band and, second, sound board – the material and how it is tapered. What wood is used for the body has some relevance but not as much as the previous two. A heavier denser wood such as maple, especially for the neck, will not absorb as much energy as a lighter one such as walnut, thus enhancing sustain and relative brightness. But – and here is the important point – altering string composition and SB choices may serve to nullify that statement.
Some argue that a tone wood such as spruce or cedar without any hardwood veneer is the only way to go for the SB. High grade ply (typically 5 layers per 1/8 inch of birch, known as aircraft grade laminate) is dismissed as “OK only for lower end harps.” Others – and I am in this camp – point out that solid wood boards with a hardwood veneer (as most are made these days in the US) are also laminates, that a/c ply is considerably stronger and you can use a thinner more responsive board that will cost less.
I’d say that the proof is in the ears and pocket book. Two of my harps have the a/c laminate board; necks and pillars are made of maple piano pin block. In all modesty, honest, I’ve been told by some pretty famous players that they are “as good as anything out there.” Personally I think that the Triplett Eclipse and Salvi Egan sound better for what I had in mind, however, and if starting all over again I could have saved a lot of time just buying one of those!
Bottom line then: one should try a lot of harps and not just go on the descriptions, because they will often differ from one to the next even if they are the same design and the same wood.
A few random thoughts on this topic, staying mainly with lever harps……
We might ask ourselves: in terms of labor and materials, what are the most expensive components for a high end instrument? It turns out that the answer is, first the levers and second the strings. Compare for example the Rees Shaylee Meadow 30s single $2900) and double ($4200) a difference of $1300 for twice the number of strings and levers. About $250 of that are the strings, so we’re talking about $35 per lever which of course includes the time it takes to precisely install each lever. Believe it or not, a double is actually easier to build than a single, so we can say that Rees is charging on average $43 for each combined lever and string. Or roughly $1,600 for just the carcass. The wood itself including sound board is roughly half of that. So if you could do it yourself and not charge yourself for labor you’d be looking at around $500 for strings, $850 for wood, perhaps $150 for hardware and miscelaneous (glue, finish, etc), and for 60 Truitts around $1200: almost as much as all the rest of the harp!
That’s intentionally a dramatic example but consider someone who is just beginning to learn to play. They have several years ahead of them just to master technique so why would they buy a fully levered harp? I don’t know of many beginners who ever need to sharp their Bs to Cs or Es to Fs and most early instruction assumes tuning in C major. So you often see middle price harps sold with only Cs Fs and Gs, or Bs As and Es for those who wish to tune to Eb.
How about the soundboard? I think most honest unbiased harp makers would agree that after 5-10+ years a solid wood board (cedar, spruce, red wood, mahogany) will have better tone than it did at first. I think most would also agree that a laminate (known in the trade as aircraft grade Finnish ply) board on a professionally designed instrument will not improve much over time but right out of the door sound as good or better than the solid wood one. So again a beginner would be paying a large premium for that solid wood board – perhaps $200 or more than the laminate one. So we see makers like Dusty Strings addressing that market. in their case with the Crescendo and Allegra.
Moving over to the kit side of things, MusicMkaers has built a reputation for excellent kits. The Voyageur is their flagship model at $1245 before levers Two of my friends use that as their rental instrument for students. Which price compares rather well to my imaginary cost for the Rees materials cost.
Not everyone will want to build a lever harp from scratch or even from a kit. But I think this does explain a lot about why harps cost what they do: the pedal harp’s double action mechanism is far and away more difficult to design and manufacture than levers and it is simply not economical to make them for smaller harps.
One could say the same about any pedal harp I think Janis. I’ve studied the Dilling/Douglas mechanism and it is quite similar to a pedal harp’s so a qualified technician from L&H or elsewhere should understand it readily. Still, it is a single action changing all at the same time which can be a drawback compared to levers OR pedals for some music. Aside from learning a cross strung, for ultimate flexibility on a non-pedal harp my vote would go to the fully levered double strung.
Carl, perhaps I’m out of line responding since I consider myself a student, but let me share what my first teacher (Jocelyn Chang) used for beginner material. Jocelyn was an accomplished pedalist, a devotee of the Dilling/Douglas harp, and loved exploring the lever harps’ capabilities as well.
The very earliest material was Grossi and Friou- page by page with the etudes by Pozzoli. The etudes came only after she was happy with how technique was progressing plus lots of very simple tunes with the metronome. Clap and stamp, clap and stamp:-) We had reached the point where she asked me to select my favorite tunes and try to play them by ear – just the melody – before she tragically passed away.
She would also share with us what she herself was working on with her husband, a very avant-gard composer. Pretty tough even for her, but she’d have us tackle some of the passages with her as a duet.
One of her assignments was to sit at the harp and just play chords, arpeggios, and scales incredibly slowly trying to make each and every note sound beautiful. She would also drag her students to every single concert and recital she could.
So you see with Jocelyn those early studies were all about entraining the hands ears and mind, with etudes often oriented to what we enjoyed listening to.
I’m sure she would have had more advanced things in mind but you see that those would have been structured to the students’ interests, not the particular style of instrument, until much later.
Incidentally if you’re playing solo tuned to C , flip up ALL your levers, then flip down those for a flat key. For example, B A and E down, C D F G up: voila, you’re in Eb – granted a half step up from A 440Hz but big deal if you’re not in ensemble. Which is why I tune to C or G and play alone….Said the lazy man:-)
To play fully in pentatonic without skipping strings, just change all the half steps to whole steps. This is easier if you are not tuned to a flat key but rather a sharp one. Id est: if tuned open to C just flip the Bs and Es, in G flip the Fs too and so on. This is really fun for yuck-free improvising, you can’t hit a wrong note. Kids and invalids love it too.
Hi Saul,
I don’t know about pedal harp trends, but “folk” harp sales are definitely increasing over the last few decades; a new maker seems to pop up every year. The market seems to be getting differentiated into three major groups and a couple of minor ones:
1) Top of the line production shops
2) Limited production high end, often custom design as well
3) Middle range quality and higher end kits
4) Minor groups:
a) Low end junk
b) One at a time custom
c) Specialty – antique reproductions, wire, triple, double, cross etc.Pretty typical for any emerging market – after all folk harps enjoyed their revival in the US only a few decades ago. Broadening the field, one maker (Dave Woodworth, Heartland Harps) has come out with a carbon fiber pedal harp and some others have begun to produce more lever harps with concert tension.
“Interestinger and interestinger” as Alice would say.
Sorry, one further comment on lever harp ranges and designs (boy I’m on a roll, must be all that coffee). My favorite harp other than the wire strung is a 34 string high headed formerly nylon strung harp much like the Salvi McFall; the lowest string was a C2 in scientific notation. I like a lot of sustain and bass but decided that I wanted even more bass and slightly less tension and slightly mellower tone. So I dropped it two steps to bass A and put Savarez Alliance fluorocarbon in the transition range. (I might have gone with gut instead of FC but did not want to deal with the humidity issues where I live).
The take home message: you are not necessarily restricted to exactly what the maker has designed – but check with them first before messing around like that. Since this happens to be my own design I felt free to break that rule:-)
You are very welcome Janis and here’s two other suggestions:
-Join the International Society of Folk Harpers and Craftsmen
-Join the Virtual Harp Circle
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/virtualharpcircle/info
The latter was specifically started for beginning “harperists” – although we now have many advanced students and professionals from all over the world on every conceivable kind of harp. I am one of the owners/moderators so when you are asked for a reason to join just write “Biagio invited me”:-)
Hi Janis,
Gosh I can think of a slew of resources; though due to the great diversity of instruments they can’t really form a continuum. Here are a few of my particular favorites (in no particular order):
Alfredo Ortiz – Special Effects for all Harps
Laurie Riley – Secrets of the Celtic Style
Sylvia Woods – Music Theory and Arranging Techniques for Folk Harps
Kim Robertson – Just about anything she’s written:-)All assume that the player is serious about PLAYING at some level (but not necessarily in an orchestra or even in performance).
Which suits me just peachy. I’m 64 years old and although I’ve been making instruments for over a decade I’ve only seriously studied harp for two years; my performance horizon is limited! But I do want to play as well as possible for as long as possible:-)
I highly recommend some of the collections by Harper Tasche for the small harp:
http://www.harpcrossing.com/
Some tunes may require levers but many do not. Ask Harper what he would suggest; he’s a really nice guy!Happy if what we’ve written is helpful, Carl. Yes I think that there is a huge gaping hole for lever players and I encounter it all the time on the Yahoo group that I moderate. I’ll sum it up this way: a very common question from beginners is, “What harp would you recommend I buy?” My short answer not so snippily is, “It might be better to ask, where can I find an instructor?”
But that really begs the question of understanding a harp’s design and as far as I know there are no thorough guides that are written for the player (as opposed for the design world). For example:
-What are the reasons and the differences between a high headed harp and a lower headed one?
-Is a spruce sound board really the best and only way to go?
-Is there really a difference in tone between walnut, cherry, maple….?
-Is is true that I should not substitute gut for nylon or vice versa?
-What’s with all the different ways of naming strings (there are at least three accepted ways)?
-How about those wound strings????
And so on.I have my own opinions, some of which would cause angst in certain quarters. But these are all pretty valid questions and I really wish some one would go out on a limb and write it:-)
Biagio
PS In reply to Angela regarding Celtic style: we hold the thumbs low and the hand cupped because we principally play with the nails and the thumb often carries the underlying tonal center. Playing is often rapid with many the instrument has a lot of sustain, spacing is narrow, and damping becomes quite important. Closing the fingers into the palm and the thumb over the hand as one would on a gut or nylon harp can result in really long ring: up to 30 seconds or more. Thus, technique has been developed (or re-developed!) to accommodate. A really fascinating book to study (and actually for any harpist) would be Ann Heymann’s “Coupled Hands for Harpers.”
I’d like to add as well for beginner’s materials the “Play the Harp Beautifully” volumes by Pam Bruner and two by Ray Pool: “3’s a Chord” and “1,2,3 – Play.”
Two books I really wish every lever harper would buy, although not concerned with instruction: Laurie Riley’s “Harper’s Manual” and David Kolacny’s “Trouble Shooting Your Lever Harp.” These two address a lot of the practical aspects of choosing and maintaining their instrument (and save the instructor some time in answering technical questions).
Hi Carl,
Grossi is excellent as Tacye suggests and so is Kondonassis (On Playing the Harp), also oriented toward the pedal harpist. Generally speaking, technique transfers readily. The are a few “buts” however and they can be big ones depending on the harp design and the student’s preferences.
Not long ago it was common to assume that the lever harp was a relatively inexpensive instrument to begin study, later graduating to pedal. Therefore technique (other than the pedals) and repertoire could be taught identically and instruments such as the Troubadour are designed accordingly: gut strings, concert tension and spacing, minimum 5 octaves, balanced for tilting to the shoulder etc.
This is no longer an entirely valid assumption; using pedal technique may actually result in injury on a lightly strung instrument, and certainly will not sound pleasing. Modern lever harps are designed in a bewildering array of ranges, tensions and string spacings just to name a few, and often for specific purposes. The Thormalen Ceili and Triplett Celtic are designed with the Celtic player in mind, and are more amenable to wire harp technique; the Lorien Raphael and Triplett Christina for therapy instruments; meanwhile Camac and others have come out with electric and electric- acoustic harps. Let’s not even begin to get into the subject of modern wire harps, doubles and cross strungs!
So it is difficult to say whether there is any one standard range or technique. Rather than bore you and everyone else with a long dissertation (it’s getting pretty long already) let’s consider some harpists who have trained on pedal and now often or principally play the lever harp: Kim Robertson, Frank Voltz, Catrin Finch, Marta Cook, Deborah Henson-Conant. To widen the field somewhat more let’s also include Paraguayan style (Alfredo Ortiz). I think that studying these artists will be helpful when considering where to focus and what to ignore with respect to technique.
As to range, it probably would be best to consider the particular student(s). Certainly the more strings the merrier, but a good 26 string can be just fine for the student who does not have a predetermined focus. Some may decide that the concert harp is for them eventually. Others may not. So I’d suggest minimum 26 strings, medium tension, “concert spacing” and a full set of quality levers. Many of such instruments have a C as the lowest string but not all and personally I don’t think a 34 versus 36 or 38 is that big a deal other than cost.
In addition to Salvi some excellent makers to consider are Triplett, Thormahlen, Sligo, Rees, and Dusty Strings. Most of these provide a great deal of information and thoughtful discussion on their websites. Rick Kemper (Sligo Harps) even tells you exactly how he makes his harps and goes into great detail on string theory (always a useful thing for the student to understand).
Best wishes and have fun!
