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What the…? My handspan was definitely 17cm when I was a teenager. It’s 18.5cm now. I really need to look into hypermobility issues, I’ve had a few people bring it up. Anyway, you and I are evidently built quite differently!
It’s never been called frozen shoulder, but it sounds similar in some ways. Thankfully I got a good physio. It’s not a problem when it’s in remission, apart from not having the same range of movement, but it’s horrible when it flares up. Constantly reaching for high levers in the bass is the sort of thing that flares it up.
Right, time to look at those spreadsheets with proper KF and a stringing scheme going down to G!
I realise it’s been confusing when I keep looking at different possibilities. Right now, the plan is to string it the same on both sides, in KF, avoid wound nylon if I possibly can, keep the string lengths on the short side, and keep the tension low, so that I can keep the frame as small and lightweight as possible. Does that make sense?
There were quite a few of us who were tiny in my friends group at school, and we were all fine playing piano octaves. Two were violinists too. There was a woman in my A-level music class who was your height and found octaves more of a stretch, I think. I’m fairly sure she was in the violin section too. I was away back in the percussion section, MP where it was more my height that was the issue. I used to have to wear big blocky heels to play tuned percussion, and still had to stand on something for vibraphone.
I’m now staring suspiciously at my hand, trying to work out if that’s another area where I’m a bit hypermobile and hadn’t realised it. Last I measured my handspan, which is probably twenty years ago (can’t get to the tape measure right now, there’s a cat on me), it was 17cm.
The shoulder thing is a right nuisance, I have calcium deposits in the tendons. It started with the right one as acute calcific tendinitis. You know how doctors routinely talk down pain? Even they call it “excruciating”. I couldn’t use my right arm for a month, and I remember how horrific it was when the doctors would lift my arm to the side to see how much they could force it to move. They could only get it 10cm or 15cm away from my body, and I was trying not to scream. It turned up in the left shoulder a year or so later, more in the chronic form. It’s mostly settled these days, but my range of movement is definitely impaired.
I know that’s the measurement they give, I end up trying to get a good side-on photo to figure out the soundboard side length as well. Blevins sometimes lists both measurements and they have a lot of small harps in various shapes, so that helps me figure out the relative measurements.
Not to mention that I am also paying a lot of attention to the soundbox side because soundbox volume is so important to the sound. A lot of the comfort seems to be about the depth and shape of the soundbox, plus how the base is made. I’m still surprised that the County Kerry sat so high on me.
This design has a relatively short soundbox at 62cm. I’m trying to let it go up as high as possible on the treble end to maximise volume, which is why the neck joins the soundbox in the same fashion as the Triplett Christina, rather than having a normal knee joint where it curves over the top of the soundbox.
Harp coming up to my chin – hah, things sound so different for taller people! It’ll be higher than that. Anything bigger than the Kilcoy is, on me. Wil sounds like they like their harp sitting quite a bit higher than I do, and you evidently like it sitting lower.
Wil, I have been trying to work out how we fit harps in such different ways despite being close in height, as I doubt it’s all about technique. I know that compared to the average, I’m short-bodied and long-legged. So that might explain why the bass levers are harder for me to reach, plus having more limited movement in my shoulders these days. But I don’t think that much of it is the shoulders. If you are longer-bodied, your shoulders will be relatively higher up the harp to start with, so your arms will be able to reach higher.
That is about the levers; when it comes to how you hold your arms to play a lap harp, it may help to remember that I can’t lift mine as high due to muscle weakness, and forcing a higher position is never going to work. Have a look at some wire harp players, actually, they can end up holding the harp and their arms very low, and still maintain good posture and technique. Simon Chadwick, for instance. That was one of the the aspects of wire harp I got on with.
The hands thing has me puzzled, though, as I’m really surprised you struggled with octaves on a harp. My fingers are shorter than my palm, which doesn’t help with reach, but my piano teacher (who was your height, as I recall) pointed out that I don’t have much webbing in between my fingers, which helped. So maybe it’s a webbing thing? I’ve always been able to play octaves comfortably on piano, but I really had to work up to playing ninths for a Bartok suite I performed for my A-level music, I couldn’t do it now. People who can play tenths on piano can shush, stop gloating, and stop putting them in their piano compositions, damnit.
I was thrilled to find out I can easily play tenths on harp. Of course, the string spacing varies on harp, tenths are a little tense for me on concert spacing (this knocked all harps with concert spacing off my list, it’s so much more comfortable with folk spacing, and tense hands aren’t good for anyone), but I’d have thought anyone 1.50m or taller should have no problems with octaves. Did you have your hand in an odd position or something? Or is there a lot more to hand anatomy that’s relevant to harp than I’m realising?
Biagio – I’ve slept badly so am going to nap before I dive into spreadsheets, but I did at least sketch the soundboard again when I got home last night. I originally based it on the Waring, as I’d done a mockup in cardboard from that plan, and made it 11cm wide at the top and 21cm wide at the bottom. Now that Biagio has explained about how I should space the string ribs and needing 15cm minimum soundboard width because of that, I’ve tried 14cm wide at the top and 18cm wide at the bottom. That’s about the same surface area, although for the top few strings it will be marginally under 15cm wide, if that’s OK. I don’t want to make it too wide to hold comfortably between my knees if sitting cross-legged, and was messing around with various instruments at my partner’s to see what was comfortable.
I really like the DigiCal app, which hooks up with your Google Calendar but gives you extra functionality. I’m not a professional harpist, just for regular use. I know a lot of people with very complicated schedules who swear by Google Calendar.
Wil, could you please take my word for it about my disabilities? It is absolutely draining to have people repeatedly telling me that I’m wrong about how much I can lift or how far I can reach.
I did find a lever harp that suited me at the festival, and I would have most likely gone for the same harp even if I hadn’t filtered out the taller ones. It’s gorgeous. I don’t have it yet because his waiting list is quite long.
I assumed the woman in the Lorien photo wasn’t playing like that, that she was standing because it gave you a good view of the harp and its strap. I’ve been changing that in my head to how it would look if she were sitting down with it, and looking at the size of the harp next to the size of the woman. Don’t worry, I promise not to play standing up. This is because I can’t stand up for more than a minute or two, and frequently can’t stand up at all.
It’s not just how it’s shipped, it’s the insurance. Yes, I’ve known of harps that arrived with a broken neck, so that can happen. I agree about getting Salvi to cover it, partly because they’re experienced and partly because of the insurance. Enjoy your new harp!
Bow Brand is in the UK, which isn’t much use to a vegan!
I was starting with nylon because I can compare string charts for small harps that way, and then I will convert it to the equivalent gauge in KF, type in “carbon” and that gives me a starting point. It was looking from a quick try that it would come out with slightly lower tension overall, is that right? I only figured out how to use KF on that spreadsheet at all when we were packing to come to my partner’s for the weekend. I kept muttering, “Give me five minutes,” and we didn’t get over till gone ten!
I can’t remember why the US likes nylon and the UK likes gut, I’m sure I’ve seen articles about it somewhere. The high import cost means that people are less likely to buy harps from outside the UK, especially outside Europe. Have you seen the cost of Harpsicles here?! Dusty harps are meant to be great, and incidentally I hear those phosphor bronze core bass strings are amazing, but they’re so much more expensive than even the best luthiers here that I never even tried one. Plus I was looking at the shorter harps, I have shoulder trouble and do a lot of quick lever changes, so tall harps make the bass levers too far away. Still annoyed about that, I’d love to have tried a Silver Spear.
Oh, he uses nylon. Only serious UK harp maker who does, I think. I know a couple of folk making budget smallish harps who use it, but they’re not well known. KF seems to be taking off if slowly, and more popular in Ireland.
By the way, here is a small woman (I’m told), the one with white hair, photographed with a 28″ harp which definitely does not look too small on her. And now I think about it, it’s interesting that they don’t do B levers as standard on an F-F harp, just F and C.
Wil – I’ve just noticed your question about which G I mean. Yes, the one below middle C. I’m still not sure if the F is an option or not. Have you both been thinking I wanted to go an octave lower than that? I copied the Waring measurements, then added a harmonic curve, then made it all about 2cm taller and slightly increased the gauges, which is why I thought I could get away with a low F. I keep trying various pieces on my floor harp in these ranges, with the left hand up an octave as needed, plus any transposition necessary, to see what fits and how to adapt things.
The tall bloke with a small harp is leaning back on a sofa, and I’ll probably be sitting up cross legged in bed. As I said, I do cope with the size of the Kilcoy and my lyre.
I don’t play in the major all that often if I’m playing medieval music, I use a variety of modes. The dorian turns up a lot. If it turns out to be better to put the harp in F or G and transpose a lot, I’ll do that, I’m fine with it. I may be relatively new to harp, but I had a solid musical upbringing with piano, singing and percussion, starting 35 years ago, and studied music as an outside course at university level.
Lyre with small cat and the Gesto collection for scale. Edit: well, that was rejected as too big! But you can still see it. The lyre is 59cm/23″ tall, and if it rests on my lap thr top is level with my forehead. I normally have the bottom bit held between my legs, though.
I’ve got the chart for converting nylon to KF now, so once I’ve redone it in KF, there’ll be smoother lines all round, as a there are far more gauges available.
Unfortunately no one round here has a Waring for me to try, but I haven’t heard anyone complain about having to use a ought touch. As you’ve quoted Harper Tasche saying, play the harp in front of you! On the other hand it could drive me up the wall. But I know I’ll definitely not cope with a large or a heavy harp, so it seems like learning to play with a light touch is a better option for me. I think I want to keep it very lightly tensioned, but with an even feel and nice sound, those do matter to me. That Camac Hermine I rented for a whole suddenly felt floppy for the bottom two KF strings, the tenor D and E, and that was really annoying. I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to get back to wire harp or not, but it certainly taught me about playing with a light touch. I don’t mind a quiet instrument, either.
What I don’t want is pingy or tinkly. The reason why I can’t play the Kilcoy now is that the high pitched brass strings are actually painful to hear. It started a few months ago along with other neurological symptoms I’ll be talking about with the neurologist in two weeks. The high notes on my rented Starfish Student are pretty much OK, although since that’s a 34 string I’m not really playing up in the top end all that much. This is why I got that lyre made with wound bronze strings. It turned out very nicely, by the way, and I’m attaching a photo as I can’t remember if I did before. I’m basically treating it as a small wire harp with wider spacing.
I’m definitely going to try Mae’s double before making any decisions, having just chatted to another disabled harpist who said that the two rows of strings did not play well with her neurological issues. I think I’ll *probably* be fine, but I should check.
The narrowest guage wound nylon that you mention aren’t currently sold in the UK, for what it’s worth. Morley harps are the ones selling wound nylon, the ones specifically for the imported harps they well, as can be seen through the links Wil gave earlier.
By the way, Wil, did you get that I’m 150cm tall? I wasn’t sure why you mentioned a big man with a small harp, and wondered if you’d converted the units wrongly.
Biagio, I’ll look at those in the spreadsheet on Monday. I didn’t realise I probably need to switch to G as my bottom note I too after I’d come to my partner’s for the weekend and didn’t have access to the spreadsheets on my laptop, but I think I’d had a quick look and the tensile strength came it as 20% for the bottom string if it’s G. Is that what you were getting? If it’s just he bottom few notes that need to be lengthened a bit, say 2cm, that’s probably OK, especially if it saves me from having to order strings in from the US. (I saw a comment by you on anot post where you mentioned that four wound strings each side in the bass of a double added 60lb of tension, which does not sound good for this situation.) It would be making the whole thing taller that would get awkward.
How does the Waring get away with low tension and short string lengths, if that’s a question that isn’t too much of a pain to answer?
Also the lengths I’m talking about using are the same as some very popular small harps, such as the Musicmakers Limerick and the Stoney End Brittany (if I put G on the bottom note). Am I missing something?
Oh, I’ll use music, but I’m not importing lots of small books of music at huge cost from the US. I’ll be working with what I can get hold of here. So far I’ve been going through a few books of music and seeing how they’d adapt for a double strung harp of the range I’m looking at.
I think it’ll be left in C, yes. G gives me the dominant chord for C major, the tonic for G mixolydian, and A as the tonic for A natural minor and the dominant for D dorian. I’ve stuck with a C tuning for wire harp as well, though sadly I’m currently unable to play that for disability reasons.
I have an Ardival Kilcoy that a friend lent me sitting around, and that’s only 56cm high, so yep, I’m used to playing harps that small!
I really can’t afford those harps, I’m afraid. Also I quite fancy a double, so that I can get a more usable harp that’s still very small. If I had more money I’d ask Jon of Silver Spear about whether he could turn one of those harps into a double, but I’m broke and he’s got a waiting list. I tried a County Kerry harp, which is around that size and weight (though I think it may have been heavier than they claaimed, it was maple for starters), and it was too big and heavy for me. Significantly. The whole thing was sitting too far up for me, and that was having it sitting between my legs while sitting up in bed, not on my lap.
Yes, I’m planning to have the same strings on both rows now.
