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I’m still not convinced a double is for me, and right now they’re outside the budget for a second harp.
I’m wondering whether George Stevens might be able to do one of his basic lap harps (look at “other harps”) strung with wire. He makes serious wire harps (look at “clarsachs”) , so he does know his way around that side of things. I heard one of the basic nylon harps in a video and wasn’t thrilled, though I don’t know if it would sound better in wire.
Right, I’ve chatted to him! The 21 string models are made with 21 strings even in wire as the spacing is already narrower, and he’s made three of those. He uses guitar strings, which I’m a bit unsure about, but he says they do well, and suspects they will hold their tuning better than brass. They’re tuned with the bottom note as A. 5mm pegs, thankfully. Walnut has been the most popular wood for them, he says it balances the brightness of the strings nicely. To my surprise, he uses a spruce soundboard. I thought that was meant to be too resonant for wire strings? He doesn’t know how well they hold their tuning, but he’s happy to ask the people who bought them. How does this sound?
I think we’re talking at cross-purposes about the stringing. I have always been talking about a custom design, rather than modifying it myself. So I’m asking whether a harp body designed for 21 KF strings and partial levering would have space for 22 wire strings spaced a bit closer together, without having to revert to smaller tuning pins. Obviously this would be done at the design stage, rather than when everything is drilled and it’s too late to change anything. Possible, do you think? I just get the feeling that 22 strings, or even better 23 (low C up to D – if need be, I’ll make it a transposing instrument in order to fit both the harp’s natural voice and the repertoire, which you can do with a harp that doesn’t have coloured strings) since there’s so much dorian mode in early and folk music, would be a lot better than 21.
By my calculations and looking at Blevin’s more compact lap harps to get an idea of what the narrowest string spacing is you can manage with Camac levers, let’s say he’s using 14mm spacing now for 21 strings, 22 strings would knock it down to 13.3mm and 23 strings would reduce it to 12.7mm. The Ardival has 11.8mm. I found this discussion where a luthier who uses 12.7 reckons it’s a good compromise. What do you think? If he’s willing to curve the pillar a bit to allow more strings in there, and if that would be structurally sound and not too much extra work, I imagine that would help. It seems normal to have a curved pillar, I assume he made it straight just to save space, and I don’t need a harp that fits in a Ryanair overhead locker.
I have finally realised how tiny Brian Callan’s 21 string harps are! The Ryanair overhead luggage allowance is 55 x 40 x 20cm, aka 21 5/8″ x 15 3/4″ x 7 7/8″, and that will be including the harp case. That’s giving the 19 string narrow-spaced Kilcoy (56 x 34 x 26, including things you can do without like the footblock) a run for its money. No wonder it’s only partially levered; I’m amazed it’s levered at all. And no wonder he’s so proud of getting a 21 string harp into that size. So while I was looking at the dimensions you suggested and wincing a bit (less at the size once I looked at other 26 string harps, but I’m still surprised at the weight), he evidently makes very compact harps and I don’t need to worry about that.
Do you need much experience for making a wire harp, by the way? He’s been building harps for five years, starting by making little ones for children to play, as far as I can tell from a video on his page. (In which his wife looks astonishingly like our First Minister, by the by.) He came to it from building furniture for years, as have other luthiers I’ve run into.
Woods – we have different local woods to you, don’t we. Bubinga is definitely not something that grows over here, for instance, whereas British and Irish luthiers have access to elm and hornbeam and such. Cherry is definitely on my shortlist. Any idea about elm or yew? Also do you have any idea how cherry, say, would sound and hold its tuning with a cherry soundboard vs. a birch ply one or a maple one? From what you’ve said above, am I right in thinking that making the whole harp in maple will hold its tuning a little better and sound a little brighter than cherry?
Pressing the tuning pegs in a bit when tuning the Ardival – yep, Bill Taylor suggested that months back. It helped a bit, some of those pegs were really loose to begin with, but I still ended up with a harp requiring daily tuning. Historical models are not for me, it seems. The pegs were a bit rusty and I wasn’t up to the job of taking them out of the harp to clean, so I gave them a bit of a rub with fine sandpaper but left them in place, apart from pressing them further in. Bill said that shouldn’t make a difference, it’s cosmetic.
So if you have the standard spacing and can have wider pegs, does that change how well it holds its tune, or is that more about how easy it is to tune? The Ardival is a nightmare to tune, I was perpetually going up and back down and up again trying to hit the note. If relatively wider spacing means it will last the week without needing daily tuning, I’m in! 21 strings is still plenty for a wire harp, after all. Is that why some wire harps only need to be tuned once a week?
In terms of the string design being the primary thing, does that mean that if you change the number of strings slightly (even from 21 to 22, because a full three octaves is useful), you need to redesign the frame? I still don’t know his exact spacing, which does vary with harps anyway. I didn’t realise until recently that Camacs have wider spacing than most lever harps, so the harp I’m renting is harder work for playing tenths on, and it was much easier when I tried Starfishes, Norrises etc. The spacing for the Camac Hermine and the Ardival Kilcoy for the whole octave going up from middle C is about 28 and 21cm respectively, and that’s a pretty big difference.
As for woods, would I be better off with a harp made all in one wood than having a separate soundboard, then? I get that spruce and cedar have too much sustain to be used as wire harp soundboards. Is cherry something that can be used for an entire harp? I thought it was a softwood? Or would you do something like use a maple or birch ply soundboard with it? I’m concerned primarily with whether it will hold its tuning, then the sound, then how it looks.
Yes, I meant a custom order, so that he could use the right woods from the start, and I’m glad to hear that it would keep costs low, especially since he’s presumably already got some wire strings in stock from that 14 string he made.
I’m not snobbish about birch ply in a wee budget harp, and I know some harpmakers who think very highly of it. Did you mean just for the soundboard? What other sorts of woods would be suited to a wire harp, and are any more likely to hold their tuning for longer? When talking about his 26 string models, he lists ash, beech, cherry, walnut, birch, elm, sycamore, yew, hornbeam, maple and alder. I met a yew harp at the Edinburgh festival and was rather taken, I must say. Sycamore is popular for wire harps, I know. I quite fancy something in a medium colour, like cherry or yew, but of course the physical properties of the wood come first, and the photos on his Facebook page make it clear he picks pieces with beautiful grain even when it’s just beech. I wonder how elm behaves as a harp wood? There was a wych elm in the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens which had to be felled due to disease, and Mark Norris made an aeolian harp out of it which stands there instead. I’m wondering if that means that elm is a more stable wood in terms of holding tuning and such.
How well do you think one of those little harps would work as a wire harp? Can the string spacing be altered, if it’s being done from scratch, so as to get a couple more strings on, or does that cause problems with tension or something? Most importantly, what’s the magic ingredient that would make it hold its tuning better?
Down a 5th – yum.
The 26 string Limerick with standard spacing is probably going to be too big for my needs, especially since you say it’s heavy. I have no idea how well I’d fare with a kit (well, I love putting together flat-pack furniture, but have to be shooed away from it since it’ll make me really ill), but I suspect that the import costs would mean that I would be paying a lot more and still having to find someone to build the harp for me. So a relatively local luthier makes sense if it can be done affordably.
We cross-posted, but yep, I’ve had one lesson in wire harp and have been teaching myself from First Steps by Marshalsey and Coupled Hands by Heymann. So I’ve been doing damping and so forth. Keeping the harp on its back has been fine as well, since it’s such a wee thing. I had to put a few new strings on the Ardival when it arrived, and am lucky to have a friend who works in wire and who did a beautiful job on putting the toggles on.
I forgot the other main problem I was having with the wire harp , and that was seeing the strings. (I really don’t think I’d get on well with two rows of strings, which is a pity as they sound amazing.) I was using the Posca paint markers recommended, and the dark blue was great but the red wore off in about twenty minutes. Still, I’ve got a few colours to play with now, and better lighting set up, and I could probably sort that out if I didn’t have the tuning problem holding me back. I’ve had that Ardival harp a year, I did spend a while tuning it as often as I could, and I don’t think I can keep up with the tuning schedule it needs.
Your harp definitely sounds too tall for me! I hope you find it a lovely new home. Would it be better suited to left-shoulder playing, then?
I have an idea that might solve all my problems! Biagio, do tell me what you think.
So what I’d really love would be a little wire harp that holds its tune well enough to cope with weekly tunings (bear in mind I wouldn’t be playing it for the later half of the week), preferably with slightly wider string spacing than the Ardival since I use fingerpads not nails, and a few strings more than my current 19 would be nice.
I’ve found Callan harps in Ireland. He makes full-scale 34 string harps and also makes budget smaller harps, using a delightful variety of local woods. I know of at least one wire harp he’s made, an adaptation of his 14 string model. I don’t know its exact dimensions, but he offers a 21 string model, also mentioned here. I’m thinking that could convert very nicely to a wire harp. If the same string spacing was kept, 21 strings is nice, and if a slightly narrower spacing was used (I imagine there’s a compromise between standard nylon spacing and the spacing on my Ardival), then 23 or 24 strings would be a really nice range, provided of course it kept its tuning. The one on the website goes down to a low G, and from what I understand from other posts here you drop a few tones when converting to wire, so say somewhere between C and E at the bottom? The price on his small harps is good, and not having levers or needing a stand or case will help. There are more photos and some videos on his Facebook page. The lap harp sample sounded nicer than the other budget lap harps I’ve heard, into the middling range, I think, and wire harps hopefully sound nicer anyway. (I don’t know, what does a bad wire harp sound like? I’m not blown away by the wire harp videos on the Triplett site, but I’m not sure they’re being played by wire harpers, as I can’t hear any damping for instance, and those harps have a solid reputation so I suspect the videos aren’t doing them justice.) It would be small enough to keep at my partner’s flat for weekends, the smaller range and lack of levers wouldn’t matter because wire harps are a different animal, it would be fun to explore the different style and repertoire, and it wouldn’t have the tinkliness that tends to annoy me with lap harps.
Does this sound like a good idea, assuming the luthier is able and willing to produce a nice little budget wire harp? If so, what should I ask about, and what should I be careful about? Could you remind me what the construction features are that make some wire harps hold their tuning better than others?
Isn’t he? I’m glad you found a harp for you, it looks lovely on the website. And fair enough, we all suit different instruments. Ocarinas are nice wee things, we’ve been on holiday with an ocarina for my partner and a recorder for me, and they’re easy to slip into a pocket and take to the beach (it was a plastic recorder, before anyone faints).
You’re absolutely right about working out what you need first, I should have been doing that. It just looked cheap enough to be tempting, although not actually that cheap by the time I factored everything else in.
I should really see if I can get on with that Ardival wire harp I have on loan, if it can cope with being used as a weekend harp and scandalously neglected the rest of the week. I asked around on a wire harp group and responses for how well the strings held their tuning varied wildly. Some people were astonished to hear that not all harps need to be tuned every day, some people said they found wire kept its tuning way better than gut. My technique will probably be better now that I’ve had a few months of solid practice on the lever harp, since I think I was overplaying and knocking the strings out of tune that way. Mind you, I don’t know whether being more used to a lever harp means that I now have a steadier hand which will work better with wire harp, or whether I am now used to playing way too strongly for the wire harp. The tuning will probably still defeat me. I wish I had chanced upon a type of wire harp that holds its tuning for longer! I caught myself gazing longingly at the beautiful one you’re selling – how’s that going, by the way?
One more harp with twice as many strings to tune! I think it might work if I transpose it up another fifth, actually. There will be A#s, but they may be possible with Bbs, although chances are they will then demand to be played next to B naturals while the left hand is playing and can’t flip levers. I’ll have a look at it once I’m properly up.
Edit (damnit, I need far more sleep than this): nope, too chromatic.
Well, I’ve found that the first movement is doable as long as you don’t mind playing middle C – C# – C in immediate succession, but after that it can’t be done, as there are similar lever changes which are needed when the left hand is playing. But the first movement was rather nice. Good point about using a secondary voice for the lever changes, I might try to get that set up.
I found one on Musescore! BWV998, transposed to C major. I think I’ve moved enough notes to the right clef (when you transpose it up a major 6th, there’s quite a lot of that, which has to be done semiquaver by semiquaver) and adjusted rests that I can print it out and start working out just how tricky the lever changes are going to be. There are entire lines with no lever changes! But the left hand gets a lot less to do (am I right in thinking this is a general useful feature of lute music?), which leave it free for jumping around flipping levers. There are entire lines with no lever changes at all. The fugue (yes, Meesterharp, there’s a nice tasty fugue) will be one of the more exciting parts, leverly speaking.
Now, does anyone know how to put lever changes into a score in Musescore? The sort Anne-Marie O’Farrell does, where the lever change is signified by a little diamond note. I’ll do them in pencil to begin with, but with the lighting the way I’ve set it up, the light bounces straight off pencil and makes it near impossible to see, plus there isn’t always space in the music.
I looked at that first video and thought, “It’s going to be Anne-Marie O’Farrell and her notorious lever changes.” Yep. Dear God, I’ve never seen anything like it! Beautifully done, but I don’t think I could face quite that much lever-flipping myself. I bought her “Baroque Bouquet” collection, looked eagerly at BWV999, got to the second page, and showed it to my harp teacher, squawking about how on earth you are meant to play a bottom D and then change the middle C lever before you get to the next semiquaver. My teacher said, “Ah, yes, it’s Anne-Marie O’Farrell, she’s incredibly skilled with lever changes, known for it.” And of course now I am learning it and coping, although it’s quite the challenge. I’m finding that I’m better off memorising it so that I don’t have to divide my time looking at the music on one side and the strings and levers on the other, and can just focus on hopping back and forth between the strings and the levers. I seem to be rather addicted to it at the moment, and keep saying to my partner, “just once more through, then I’m coming to bed. OK, another time, but I mean it this time!”
Here is a young woman playing it on pedal harp. She is no doubt furiously kicking away at the pedals under there, since there are so many accidentals, and you can hear the pedal changes enough for it to be distracting. (Now that I know the the piece, I’m also spotting a hell of a lot of wrong notes, although she keeps going like a pro. And I am always tempted to go hell for leather and play it too fast as well, so I don’t blame her in the slightest!) While you do at least get longer to make the pedal changes than you do to change a lever while also playing with your left hand, I’m wondering whether this piece is actually better suited to playing on a lever harp, where the levers are much quieter to operate.
How does the pedal vs. lever harp thing work with other Bach for harp, and more to the point, what other Bach for harp is there around that works well on lever harp? The only other thing Creighton Griffiths have that’s not for pedal harp is the prelude from BWV1006a, which I had fun playing on marimba many years back and may well go for, but I’m feeling a bit wimpish about having to retune strings every time. I’ve already found a prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier that isn’t bad (no. 8 in Eb minor), once you transpose it into a key that actually works on lever harp (D minor), so there must be more out there. I’m not particularly after fugues, don’t worry. Any of the lute music, perhaps, or is that too screamingly chromatic too? I am currently having a rummage on Musescore to see if there is anything I can manage with sufficient crafty transposition.
