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I made it! Totally shattered now, but it was worth the exhaustion and the blisters. I am indeed going for a 36 string Norris, fluorocarbon, string gauge to be determined nearer the time, most likely American walnut, and minus the inlay as it’s not my style. Renting that Starfish Glencoe in the meantime will be lovely, too. He didn’t have any harps there with the new Alulite levers, but Teifi did, so we were all sneaking off to try them there. And now for pizza.
Lovely meeting you, Jennifer, and by the way, did you know you can get practice pads for snare drum? Much quieter!
I just checked the height of the Ravenna, and at 3cm taller than the Hermine, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to reach the bottom levers comfortably. I also don’t know which levers the second-hand one has on it. I think I’d rather spend the money on renting a harp I like while I wait for mine to be built than buy one I’m not that suited to and sell it on afterwards. Of course, I’ll check the Ravenna just in case it does suit me!
Tacye – thanks, good to know. I’ve been practising a few pieces which do various things, use different parts of the range differently, use techniques such as quick lever changes or playing the strings in another way. So far that Andres suite has me playing bas dans les cordes, pres de la table, sons xylo, harmonics, and pince, not to mention rapping on the soundbox. Pistache has a nice range of styles and uses most of the harp, I should probably spend more time on that. Also I’m doing a couple of Bach preludes, one with fiendish lever changes. There’s a book of easier medieval music for the slower, more sonorous stuff, and also some Dowland songs. But singing as well as lots of lever changes seems to be a bit challenging right now, so I probably won’t bother with those. Oh well, spending yesterday evening working out the lever changes for In Darkness Let Me Dwell was fun anyway.
All three of you look very happy together! Beautiful harp. Camac levers?
I’m trying to remember exactly what I was told the problem was with the Ravennas. It was something to do with not bracing the soundboard properly, and apparently a few of them have exploded. Also bear in mind I wouldn’t be getting customer service directly from Dusty Strings, since they’re on another continent! I’ve chatted to them about their harps and they’re lovely.
When the rental Hermine arrived in December, a string broke ten minutes later, the second one down. I chalked it up to temperature changes, but the same string has broken again, despite not being played. It’s very frayed, so Camac reckon there may be a sharp bit inside the tuning pin, and recommend rubbing a tiny bit of fine sandpaper inside it. I also asked them about the difficulty I’m having with the bottom levers. I’m wondering how much of it is that I’m short and it’s harder to reach, and how much is that maybe the lever is running a bit stiff. They’re always going to be stiffer to use on the bass wires, I imagine. Anyway, I’ll see how other harps feel at the festival.
Out of curiosity, has anyone tried one of the Heartland Starlight harps yet? 38lb, apparently, due to being made in carbon fibre.
Balfour – what a sweet love story! Cherry is a beautiful wood. My partner’s new mountain dulcimer is cherry with a sinker cypress top and maple fretboard, and it looks and sounds gorgeous. Any photos of the beloved?
Chances aren’t that high that I’ll be taking a harp home with me, what with most of them being too tall for me and/or strung in gut. But you never know! Dusty Strings harps are pretty expensive, by the time you pay for import and VAT and so forth. I hear there are serious structural problems with the Ravenna models, otherwise I’d consider buying a second-hand one if I need one to tide me over while I wait for a harp to be built. The FH series have a good reputation, they look lovely, and the hybrid soundboard sounds intriguing.
What a kind offer! I’ve just spoken to Pilgrim and if you mean the little unpadded wooden stools, they’re too low. The one I’m using right now is 38cm, and it seems to be the right height for me for a Starfish, but I need a cushion on it when I’m playing the taller Hermine. The cushion is the easiest part, I can use the wheelchair cushion. How tall is the stool you’re bringing?
Are you driving there, by any chance? I’m in the Southside and would be thrilled to bits if we could get a lift off someone, one way or the other. The wheelchair is a small manual one and folds down.
The Salvi student lever harp range doesn’t seem to have the best reputation, from what I’ve heard. Quite a few people are saying the construction quality is alarmingly variable. I spent a while looking into that range because of the silkgut strings, but eventually concluded I was better off with fluorocarbon and a more expensive harp.
Doesn’t that new Norris harp look exciting? The extra strings are in the bass, too, where they’ll be far more useful! And it’s no bigger than many other 34 string harps.
Thanks! I’m not 100% decided, I have only had one lesson each on a Starfish and a Norris and didn’t get to concentrate on them as much as I’d have liked, so it’ll be down to trying them out on Saturday. Any tips, apart from bringing several pieces covering a range of techniques etc.?
Bubinga apparently adds a good 2kg to your average lever harp, but they say it sounds amazing and is so pretty! I have a hair fork in it. I have hair toys in various woods, I even got one in cherry just so that I could see what it was like while thinking about harps. If I go for a Norris it’ll be American walnut, unless I fall wildly in love with that striking-looking yew he sometimes uses and save up a lot more money, and if I get a Starfish, cherry or walnut. Teifi are starting to drop out of the running now I know that they use concert spacing, but you never know.
Note to self: this forum is not, in fact, sending me emails when I get replies. I had no idea you were all posting on my thread!
I had a lovely chat with Mark Norris, and am very keen on getting a harp from him. The 36 string harp is looking most appealing, once someone pointed out to me that being able to reach a low C with Camac’s wider spacing will be the equivalent of a low A with narrower spacing.
His waiting list is 18 months. So then I rang the people I’m renting a harp from, and they can rent me a maple Starfish Glencoe from June until I get my own harp. If I fall head over heels in love with a Starfish or a Teifi (pretty much everything else has been ruled out by being too tall for me to reach the bottom levers comfortably, but you never know), then I’ll go for that, but the general opinion is that Mark’s harps are head and shoulders above the competition. The prices start at the same price as a Starfish (excluding the student model), but he doesn’t have to pay VAT, so you’re getting more harp for the same money, so to speak. It’s also great that there is a finally a good harpmaker who is so keen on working with fluorocarbon and can help me find exactly what I need. The long wait won’t be so painful with a better rental harp, and it means I’ll have had much more experience by the time my name is at the top of the waiting list and will be better placed to choose exactly what sort of harp and string gauge I want.
The thing that is currently tricky is that I need a slightly lower stool, being 4’11 tall. The one I’m using at the moment is a 38cm folding storage box. It’s too big to fit in the wheelchair bag. We may have to rig up something with bungee cords to attach it to the wheelchair, and then take that on the bus. It’s rather heavy, and I really wish we didn’t need to do that. But no one I’ve spoken to so far is going to have a suitable harp stool at the festival which I can borrow for trying out harps. Camac has a few, but their room is always mobbed and they understandably don’t want to let me borrow them to try with other luthiers’ harps. Teifi has one that’s too low and one that’s too high! Everyone else is generally going for ordinary chairs and raising the harp instead, which makes sense if you are taller than me.
And, erm, I might have seriously overdone it ringing various harp people and pacing while on the phone yesterday. The cat looked concerned and eventually herded me back to bed, and is pinning me down in bed right now, but I am absolutely bushed. Hopefully I will have recovered by Saturday, and will be able to get enough practise in that my fingers will be up to trying out lots of harps.
I’ve just seen Mark Norris’ new website, and am really excited to learn that he uses three different gauges of fluorocarbon. He’s a bit more expensive, but I think I could stretch to it. Opinions on his harps too would be lovely!
The harp festival starts on Friday, and here’s where I am so far.
I’m making good progress on the Hermine, enough to realise its limitations for me and have a much better idea of what I want. At 122cm tall, I can’t reach the bottom few levers comfortably. I’m playing a Bach Prelude which involves flipping the bottom F, and I have to hold on to the top of the harp to do it. This might be easier with different levers. I had a lesson on Thursday with a teacher who brought over her Starfish Glenelle, and they were easier to flip, but they look so different, they’re not coloured as obviously, and they’re laid out differently, so I was getting a bit lost when using them. I also had the brains of a beetle on Thursday, it wasn’t a good day for my health, which didn’t help.
Anyway, shorter, smaller harps seem more likely to suit me, at my giant height of 4’11. I was having trouble figuring out the balance point on the Glenelle for me, but hopefully I will manage that better at the festival. A lighter harp is also going to make it easier to carry it between my flat and my partner’s when we move between them twice a week, which I would love to do if we can find the space for it in my flat.
I’m told the tension on an Hermine is relatively low, and it’s too low for me. Rubber-bandiness, especially on the bottom few fluorocarbon strings (they go down to the D below middle C), where I’m sometimes having trouble holding onto them. You can also hear the difference when they switch to wire. It’s easier on the fingers than higher tension strings will be, I think, which makes it hard to judge where my limit is. So far, the only blister I’ve started has been on the fourth finger of my left hand, after practising lots of rolled chords in the bass on an Andres piece last night. (I iced it and it worked, it’s gone today!)
Starfish are still the top of my list. A lot of harps are being ruled out by simply being too tall for me, such as the Silver Spear ones. Starfishes are about 117cm high, and mercifully have closer spacing than the Camacs. They’ve made a fluorocarbon-strung harp in the past, and tried stringing a harp in silkgut recently but only had two weeks to give it to settle in, so I hear it was hard to tell what it was going to be like. The chap at Starfish I spoke to said he thinks fluorocarbon will sound better and silkgut will be easier on the fingers. So they have some familiarity with synthetics, I’m sure they can do a good job of putting them on a harp for me, but not enough that I can figure out which stringing materials will work best.
I don’t know whether I should be mixing and matching strings. The fluorocarbon does sound a bit pingy in the top octave. Some of that will be my technique, I’m still overplaying with my right hand thumb, but I assume some is down to the materials. What are the best synthetic options for avoiding a pingy sound and a bitey feel on the fingers? Nylon? Silkgut?
Does anyone know of fluorocarbon harps which have a higher tension than the Camac Hermine, so that I can try them at the festival?
I’m getting very mixed reports on silkgut. I spoke to a store in the US which sells various harps in nylon, gut and silkgut, and they said the silkgut was no better than nylon. It’s certainly not very popular. Other people think it’s amazing. The only harps I know of which are strung in it are the Salvi student range, and they’re apparently not the greatest harps in other ways, so I’m going to find it harder to single out the strings in terms of sound. Does anyone know what the tension is like on them, at least? Or how bitey they are in the upper register?
What does it mean when lever harps are strung with pedal gauge strings an octave light, and are there any fancy options of this nature with fluorocarbon, or indeed silkgut? I’ve noticed that the Camac Isolde is strung with two different brands of fluorocarbon, Savarez for lever tension and Kurschner for pedal tension. Has anyone tried this one, and if so, how does it feel and sound?
Teifi harps are still an option. The Telor is 10kg, which is manageable. Everyone says they feel heavier than you’d expect, so I will see how they sit on me in person. I’m going to bring my folding stool to the festival, and I will be able to put my wheelchair cushion on it if I need to be higher, as I do with the Hermine. Rumour has it that they are going to be unveiling a lighter harp at the festival.
Going back to the stringing issue, because chances are I am not going to be able to hear my preferred choice of string on my preferred choice of harp before it’s made up, which is making it harder to choose: I chatted to Bill about Ardival’s 34 string lever harp (whaddya think?), and he mentioned that they’re tried Nylgut (which he is pretty sure is Silkgut, they just rebranded it). He says in the end they decided that they just preferred gut, the Nylgut wasn’t quite as nice, but he does understand some people not wanting animal strings. He said it’s heaps better than nylon, though, and very close to real gut, including being the same diameter.
So I’m doing a modified version of the scientific method, then? I’m too small to get a harp that goes down past that C, that much has been made clear by the rental harp, so I may as well use that as my first octave.
The rental harp is here! It arrived Thursday evening, a bit out of tune but very happy. Naturally, a string snapped ten minutes after the folks renting it to me had checked it over and left, but it was only the top G, and Camac had it with me the day after I ordered the new one. I’m guessing it wasn’t happy with being taken from a warm room to a cold car and back to a warm room. I hear Hermines are hit and miss, and either I got a good one, or I really have no concept of what a good harp sounds like, because it is way better than I expected! A tad pingy right at the top – what synthetic string is best for the top octave? – but otherwise a lovely full, rich sound. Fluorocarbon turns out to sound and feel a lot nicer than I’d expected. It’s also way louder, so no more practising late in the evening for me.
I didn’t know how fast I’d adjust, seeing that I’ve been playing music an octave up on that 25 string harp. Not only did that go absolutely fine, but I found myself sightreading quite happily without being able to see what my right hand was doing much of the time. I am having enormous fun with it. An old friend of my partner’s, only recently back in Edinburgh, was over for some jamming, so we had him on guitar, my partner on mountain dulcimer, and me on harp. We’ll have to do that often, and I’ll have to work out some bass hand parts to play.
The main snag is that I’m finding it a bit of a large harp for me. It’s on the bigger side for a 34 string lever harp, it seems. This may be a posture issue, especially since I was having a pain flare that day, but I will definitely need to get a good teacher round to look at this. My left shoulder was getting achy in particular, and it wasn’t easy reaching the lowest strings.
Wire harp update: I have worked out a good spot to play on the sofa, and have installed this clip-on lamp on the kitchen cabinet above and behind me. The light is making it way easier to see the strings, although stretched out that lamp looks like something out of the <i>Alien</i> films and is mildly freaking me out. I was really stuck on the book I was using, I’d been going over the same pages for ages, so I decided to stop using that one and try <I>Coupled Hands for Harpers</i>. Bill Taylor said it’s probably not the greatest book for a 19 string, and he prefers other methods generally, but it’s got me unstuck and will keep me going for a bit, until I can sort out a teacher.
I am having trouble with painting the strings, though. I’m using the Posca paint markers, and the red is actually a lightish pink and comes off within twenty minutes of playing. The dark blue on the Fs is fine. Any suggestions as to what to paint the Cs? I wear orange-tinted glasses after 9.30pm to help my sleep patterns, so a dark green is going to look exactly the same as a dark blue by that point. I was wondering about the light green, maybe the purple (apparently it’s a lavender). Or else a different brand. Has anyone else had this problem? Bill says model paint works fine, and my partner does have that in his flat, but he says it doesn’t stick on metal without an undercoat.
Naming a musical instrument is like having a tattoo, for me personally: it’s not something I’d do, it feels wrong for me, but I admire them on other people. I love the idea of calling a concert grand harp Minnie!
My first love is my piano, which is a Bluthner grand in rosewood that was made in 1924 and has been in the family for generations. Naming that would feel presumptuous.
I keep being tempted by cross-strung harps, but I already have enough trouble seeing two rows of strings where there is just one!
As well as rearranging Can She Excuse My Wrongs this afternoon in MuseScore, I wrote in lever changes for Flow My Tears. I need to figure out a system for marking which octave a lever is in. I was using the system used for ordering strings, but it’s not terribly intuitive, what with the break being between E and F and starting at the top, and I’ve just realised there’s no particular reason why I should do it. Assuming I am most likely to end up with a harp that goes down to C two octaves below middle C, I am thinking of calling that C to the next B the first octave, and then moving up. What does everyone else do?
Good point about the strings. I will get started on the Hermine tomorrow and see how I do. It’s way too early to decide, really.
Thanks for the recommendations, I’ll look into them. Did I mention that I’m in the UK, so I’ll be ordering from UK shops?
