Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I recently used one that belongs to a client of mine. I love the really large wheels which make it easy to go up and down stairs and over curbs. It does handle nicely. I have a K2 with the extended shelf and with 2 wheels instead of the triangle of 3 wheels on each side. I also ordered mine with both handles; a center one as well as the bar. I did this not knowing which one I was more likely to use. As it turns out, I never use the center one. I took the straps off my K2. So I hold the harp on the cart with my left hand and pull the cart with my right hand on the right side of the bar, even going up and down stairs. I’m very happy with the K2. Given the enormous difference in price, I think I would stick with the K2.
I have to say I’m baffled by the above posts. I don’t believe that a soap dish with a wet sponge is sufficient to humidify a whole harp. Neither is a dampit, which some of you occasionally mention here.
With any humidification system, the humidity is going to be highest nearest the humidifier, and will go down considerably the further you get from the source. Soap dish humidifiers or dampits placed inside the body(soundbox) will raise the humidity there an no where else. That’s why a larger humidfier, such as the type I have mentioned numerous times on these pages, is needed. You need to humidify the whole environment that the harp is in. In a perfect world, the harp would always be in an environment where the relative humidity stays in the range of 40% to 60% year round. In those areas of the country where this is the case, mainly the west coast and the southeast, I never see the kind of structural damage on harps that I see in instruments in the Northeast and central US.
Looking at furniture is not a good indicator of how wood is reacting to the climate. Furniture(chairs, tables, etc.) can expand and contract quite a bit without resulting in cracking. Secondly, furniture does not have a ton and a half of pressure on it.
Too much humidity, and especially uneven high humidity, can cause problems as well. I have seen harps that have been stored in damp basements, and the lower parts of the instrument were all but destroyed by the dampness from standing on a cement floor.
Meg- after reading your post I contacted Jessica Zhou, the new principal harpist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She was born and raised in China so I thought she would know. Here is the email she sent me:
The best way for her to find out is to ask the presenter. I just went to see a concert couple weeks ago given by the Shanghai Symphony in Worcester, and the harpist was playing on a beautiful Horngacher. Most of the symphony orchestra in Beijing and Shanghai have recently bought new harps from either Lyon and Healy or Salvi. But it’s hard for me to say what kind of harp she will be provided because I don’t know what event or how the concerts are related to organizations in China. The best way to find out is for her to ask the manager and they should be able to provide her with the model and maker of the harp.
She’s smart to bring her own strings.I’m with you Janet. That’s basically what I said in the last paragraph of my post up above. I could go on all day with stories I have heard from many people over the years about very negative destructive teachers, and no matter how good they play or how many degrees they have, they are still negative and destructive, and there is no place for that in education.
Here are a few thoughts on playing fast.
I don’t think that learning to play fast should be done on repertoire. It should be done on scales, etudes, and exercises. If for example you want to play the Handel B flat concerto, in which the 16th notes in the first movement are played at about 4 notes to a beat at 88 on the metronome, and you have never played that fast before, then you should work on scales until you can play them at 110 to the beat(4 notes to the beat) at a minimum. This will put the 16th notes in the Handel well within the range of what you can do speed wise, rather than being at the upper limit of your ability.
Learning to play a fast piece requires different practice techniques than learning something that will be played at a slow tempo. In her brilliant little book, SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE, Jane Weidensaul talks about various practice strategies. One of the most effective for learning fast pieces is to practice the piece right up to tempo, but only one, two, or three beats at a time. When a short section like that is learned, then do the next section of a few beats, again at full tempo. When that one is learned, then connect the two sections together that you have learned. Keep working through the piece, practicing very short sections at full tempo, and then connect them to what has been previously learned.
The traditional way of practicing slow(or loud and slow in some circles) is not very effective for learning pieces that are ultimately going to be fast. The reason is that playing fast requires extreme efficiency of movement that slow playing does not. So if you practice a fast piece slowly, and then speed it up gradually, you will have to change what you learned as it gets faster and faster, getting rid of inefficient movement, changing fingerings that worked at a slow tempo but won’t work at a fast one, shortening finger articulation, etc. Practicing a fast piece up to full speed, or at least very near full speed, right from the start will force you to make your movements as efficient as possible right from the start, and will point out bad fingerings immediately saving you the time of ‘relearning’ the piece as you bring it up to speed from a slow tempo.
As far as the final speed of a fast piece is concerned, I think there is a range within which the piece can be played. A minimum and a maximum tempo. The one you ultimately choose depends on your particular interpretation of the piece. As a student many years ago, I was a slave to metronome markings put there by the composer or transcriber, and considered myself hopelessly inadequate if I could not achieve the tempo indicated. Now I let the piece I’m working on find it’s own tempo. When it sounds ‘right’ to me, then that’s my tempo. I’ll occasionally check my tempo against the one on the music. If it’s an original piece by Tournier, my tempo is nearly always exactly the same as the one he indicated. If it’s a transcription by Salzedo, Grandjany, or Renie, my tempo is nearly always slower than what they indicated. The reason, as explained to me by Dan Pinkham, is that composers and arrangers are almost always taking the metronome speed while hearing the music in their head and not from live performance. Dan said that we always hear music in our head faster than we would play it.
So make sure that you can play basic technical exercises(scales, etc.) considerably faster than the piece you want to learn, make sure your practice techniques are working for you and not against you, and let the piece find a tempo based on how you choose to interpret it.
I’m confused. Are you saying that she is the only flute teacher at your school? You can’t change teachers?
There’s a difference between positive criticism and negative criticism. A teacher can drop a ton of criticism on you and if it is done in a positive constructive way, geared to improving your playing or performance, then you feel good about the criticism. If it’s sarcastic, nasty, degrading, or mean, then 1) it’s uncalled for, 2) it’s of no use to you because it doesn’t improve anything you are doing, and 3) it can be very very destructive to you psychologically because it destroys your self confidence. Nasty criticism doesn’t ‘toughen you up.’ It’s destructive. So you have to decide which kind of criticism she is throwing at you and then decide if you want to continue with her or not.
There is always the possibility that she is a narcissistic self-centered domineering person, and the better you play, the more it threatens her. She more or less indicated that in the audition story you told. Also muttering under her breath that your articulation is better than hers is another indication that this may be the problem. If it is, you need to cut your losses, find another teacher and move on. Staying with such a teacher will cause you to play worse and worse, not better and better. And it could take you years to recover psychologically and musically from such an experience. That happened to me and several other students who studied with Bernard Zighera.
Harps tend to project straight forward. So if you are in profile to the audience with your harp facing stage left, then that is where your sound is going. You should be facing directly at the audience. Even better, you should be up on a platform or riser, which helps to amplify the sound.
Cathy- Here are a couple of stories.
Years ago I rented a harp to a girl in college in Boston. She got several months behind in the rent(my fault for letting it go so long) and when I finally called the number she had given me she had moved. The person who told me this, another student in a house of several students, was obviously angry and said that she had left in the dead of night owing them her share of the rent and utilities, etc. He gave me a number where he thought she had moved. When I called that number I got the same story from someone there. It seems this girl had a pattern of moving into a house full of students, waiting until she was in debt to them, and then leaving with no warning when they were not around. Over a period of weeks I tracked her path through 4 or 5 such houses.
The last one I called, a woman answered. I asked the usual questions and got the by now familiar answers. She had left in the dead of night owing this woman money. Did she have a forwarding address or phone number I asked? No, nothing. She had no idea where this girl had gone. I thanked her and was about to hang up(and give up ever finding the harp, let alone collecting the rent owed), when the woman asked me why I was looking for her. I started to explain that the girl had a harp that belonged to me. “So YOU’RE the one who owns the harp!!” she shouted. ” I’ve been trying for months to find the owner of this harp. She left and took everything with her except the harp.” The poor woman had called the Boston Symphony, the music schools and conservatories, and area music stores, trying to find out who the harp belonged to. This stupid girl didn’t even have the decency to put a note on the harp saying who it belonged to.
Here’s another story that happened very recently to a friend of mine who also rents harps. I was appalled when I heard this. I’ll call this woman Lisa(not her real name) and she is a harp teacher who also rents instruments and occasionally buys and sells used harps. She rented a harp to a woman who said she was looking to buy eventually and if Lisa came across anything she wanted to know about it.
The woman ended up renting Lisa’s harp for 3 years and the last year got very far behind in the rent. Lisa tried to collect, one thing led to another, and Lisa had to take the woman to court to collect the back rent and get the instrument back. The woman countersued Lisa for all the rent she had paid over the 3 years, saying that Lisa had promised to find her a harp to buy and had not done so. Lisa told the judge that she had told the woman about 5 different harps over the 3 year period, all of which the woman rejected. The judge found in Lisa’s favor and ordered the woman to allow Lisa into her house to collect the harp.
Lisa went with a court officer, got into the house, and began removing the instrument. The woman came up close to Lisa and whispered to her, “You tell anybody about this and I’ll make sure that no parent will ever leave their child alone with you!”
When Lisa told me that story, I asked her if she had a written contract when she rented harps. She didn’t. I read her the riot act and told her she absolutely positively had to have a written contract for every rental. I emailed her mine to use as a template. A written contract would probably have avoided this whole mess. At the time of my story, I didn’t have a written contract either.
Cathy- There are not too many of us who rent harps. But when we get together we all have stories to swap. I don’t want to give the impression that all renters are trouble. Far from it. Maybe one out of 100 is trouble. But what trouble!! Maybe tonight or tomorrow, when I have more time, I’ll post one of the more interesting ones here.
Your post points out a major problem in insuring harps. DON’T EVER INSURE YOUR HARP ON YOUR HOMEOWNERS POLICY! Your homeowners agent in all likelihood has no experience insuring musical instruments. To him or her, complete coverage is fire and theft, and only when it is in your home. It does not cover accidental damage, which is the major thing you need to insure for. I’ve had clients bring me their harps for repair who had insured their harps on their homeowners policy for years and were assured it was “completely covered.” When it came time to collect, they were told that it didn’t cover accidental damage. One client battled with her homeowners agent who then agreed to cover the repairs, but insisted she get three estimates! An insurance agency like Peter Anderson knows that the policy has to cover the harp wherever it is(a floating policy) and that if damage occurs, the owner has his or her preference for where it is to be repaired. They don’t ask for competing estimates or lists of materials and parts costs from me, which is what one homeowners agent did.
I currently have 22 pedal harps rented and 5 or 6 lever harps. I have a written contract that they must sign before taking possession of the instrument. They have to insure the instrument, listing me as the loss/payee. The reason is that, while I own the instrument, they are in possession of it. So they have to insure it. Luckily, in 30 years of renting harps, I’ve never had an insurance claim. I could write a book though about the problems I’ve had with various clients over the years.
Tony- Your very thoughtful post(as they always are) brings up some interesting points.
It took me a long time to realize that not every student coming to me wanted the rigorous technical training that I had. Nor do they necessarily want to play at the level that I do(an unrealistic goal if one is not willing to do the above mentioned work). I get that, and for that reason I just don’t teach very much and limit myself to students who have been playing the harp for a while(indicating that they are serious and will probably stick with it) and have transferred to me from another teacher. That’s my niche.
I would only point out that even if someone started to play the harp for their own amusement or to play for family or friends occasionally, they are going to find that what they can play is completely dictated by the level of their technique. The fact is, most adult beginners WANT to play harder repertoire but are unwilling to do what it takes to play it. I have occasionally given one-off lessons to adults who have been studying with a teacher for a while. They come to me and always ALWAYS put a piece on the stand that is way beyond them and want me to teach it to them. I spend the hour teaching them how to break the piece down, learn patterns, how to practice, etc. and invariably their eyes glaze over in the first few minutes and I know they have not the slightest intention of following my advice. So I don’t bother teaching one-off lessons anymore either.
If someone wants to learn the harp with the goal of improvising or playing pop tunes from fake books, their arrangements are going to be completely controlled by how well they can get around the instrument. A self taught person, or one who just doesn’t want to work on the technical aspects is going to be riveted to one or two octaves in the middle of the instrument, and limited to 3 finger arpeggios and chords.
What I would suggest to teachers who do teach adult beginners is to find out, right of the bat, what their goal is. What kind of music they want to be able to play. Then come up with a plan for getting them there. The teacher might even, at the first lesson, play a variety of easy pieces to see which ones grab the student and then tell the student if it’s possible to get them to that level
and what they will have to do to get there.Steven- Have you tried any of the Bochsa etudes? I think those are great. Start with the 40 easy etudes and see how they go. Like most 19th century etudes they are very right hand oriented. But with the majority of them you can play the right hand part with the left hand an octave lower and either let the right hand sit it out or play the left hand part an octave up.
Classic French technique works well for any type of music. It’s totally adaptable because it’s so effortless when you learn it well. Catherine, like most career orchestra players, usually played too loud all the time when playing recital repertoire. She didn’t use the whole range of dynamics available to her. Now that she’s been out of the orchestra scene for a few years she has shifted gears and plays with the sensitivity that she always had in her. But put her back into a situation where volume is required, and she can blast out the back wall of the auditorium.
