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It sounds like the audition was fair(someone told me). So that’s the most important aspect. I hope someone really good and deserving gets it. I was told who won the audition and I understand why she is taking her time to decide.
Laura- The key to me into the behavior of the harpist being complained about is when she tells a client,”I will beat anybody elses price.” So what’s her price. Apparently that depends on what other people say they are charging. And it’s a moving goal line. I’m all for competition in the work place. But when a competitor says “My price is lower than anyone elses” then that is predatory pricing. State your low price up front. But she doesn’t want to do that. I just hope this all comes back to bite her in the butt hard.
Saul and Sarah- I agree with both of you completely. However, my experience is that, if you have a really bad case of nerves when you perform-and I had that for many years before taking beta blockers- that no amount of preparation, no amount of repetitions, no amount of studying the music or having repair points can overcome a bad case of stagefreight. For me, once the adrenaline kicked in, then all preparation went out the window, and my performance was badly degraded. So my point is that, for anyone who does all of the great things suggested on this thread and still ends up with badly degraded performances, you then have to address the issue of nerves, because that is probably the root of the problem.
Then I would suggest that the original poster tell all potential clients to call her back when they have found the cheapest price and she will see if she can undercut them.
Tony- I’m even worse than that! Sometimes when I’m sight reading something, I’ll see a tricky measure and suddenly my brain freezes and I can’t remember if my beating unit is quarter notes, eight notes, etc.
You’re right about Debussy. But he makes it even more complicated by shifting between duple and triple sub-division, often putting a rest someplace in the triplet.
Sight reading is really at the core of your musical ability. It consists partly of analysis, as some of the posts here have stated, of being able to instantly recognize patterns, both note patterns and harmonic patterns, so that you’re not simply reading individual notes. But it also consists of memory: the ability to remember the measure you are playing while your eye scans ahead to see what’s coming up. The better you can sight read, the easier and quicker you will learn all of the music that you have to play.
Studio musicians ONLY sight read. They come in to the studio session and are expected to play perfectly the first time music they have never seen before. Often, especially for harpists, the part is not even completely written out, and the harpist is expected to know how to complete it, on the spot.
I wish I sight read better than I do. But I suspect everybody says that. What I’ve noticed is that people who sight read well learn music quickly and accurately, and most of them are good at it because they do it all the time.
Sight reading is instant analysis, and so, in addition to just doing it on a regular basis, it would be helpful to regularly do rhythm exercises(Bona is a good example) as well as learning more about harmony. Sometimes what throws me when I sight read is figuring out where the beats are. So rhythm exercises would help with that.
The brides go for the lowest price because they don’t know any better. They’ve never hired a musician in their life and probably won’t again. So maybe the answer is to do a “dog and pony show” where you explain to the bride all of the things that you mention in your post, without making negative remarks about anyone else. Just say that these are the things that can make or break the ceremony and not all harpists can do this. It’s like making a musical soundtrack for a movie. It has to compliment the movie without taking over or messing it up. If you can establish a feeling of confidence then maybe the commitment rate will go up.
Barbara- My understanding is that, in 1889, L & H started with serial number 500. There was a fire sometime in the 1890’s wiping out their records. I don’t know how high the numbers were at the time of the fire. After the fire, they started up with number 100. There was at least one more fire, possibly two, before 1910. So the early serial numbers are 3 digits, and are scrambled. There may in fact have been some overlap. The last fire, around 1909 or 1910, again wiped out the records. When they started up again that time, they went to a 4 digit serial number, and from that point forward we have all of the serial numbers.
I own Lyon & Healy 300, which has a small bust of Wagner on the column. My guess is that it dates from the late 1890’s or 1900. It has a lot of the deccorative detail found on the 23 and 22, but I don’t know if it has a model number or name. I just took the action block out and the number 300 is written on the back and below it seems to be the number 25(it’s very difficult to read). So unfortunately the early years are pretty vague.
I think that #550 is a very early instrument. My understanding is that when Lyon & Healy started building harps in 1889, they started with serial number 500. If that’s true, then your harp was probably built within a year or two at most of that startup date. So they probably didn’t have different model numbers at that time.
In addition, if you take the little wood action block out(that’s the block between the two action plates at the column), it will have written on the back of it what model it is.
A friend of mine in Boston for years did a gazillion weddings. She didn’t really advertise. She didn’t do bridal shows. She was hooked up with a Justice of the Peace who was very aggressive about booking weddings for himself, and he included this harpist in his brochure. The bride didn’t have to use her. But there she was in the brochure, and the JP actively promoted her. The result was a huge number of weddings every year.
Onita- To me there is a difference between competitive bidding and undercutting. In competitive bidding several contractors give you a bid on how much they can do the job for, without being aware of who else is bidding and how much the other bids are. In undercutting, a competitor is simply saying that he/she will do the job for less than another competitor. I believe that is also called predatory pricing and that’s illegal, because its sole purpose is to drive the competition out of business. As I understood the original post, that’s what the other harpist was doing. She doesn’t seem to be concerned with making a profit or covering her costs. She just wants the job at any cost. She sounds unethical and at the very least should be confronted. Maybe by talking directly with her, some agreement or understanding can be reached. By talking to her she will at least know that her competition is on to her.
I regulate strictly to the strobe, which in my case is a Peterson. I don’t know if there is any stretch calculated into this machine(I suspect not) but I find the tuning that results to be entirely satisfactory. I find that most orchestra harpists want the harp tuned and regulated exactly to the machine.
