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They’re way too big for me, and they tend to be tinkly when they’re smaller. Finding one that’s the right size and weight has been pretty much impossible, without dropping thousands on a Blevins or similar, and even so the range is really high. We do have a design for a small cardboard harp with a better range ready to go, but the friend who was meant to be building it can’t do it for the time being, and also it is probably still a big big for me. I may be better off waiting and seeing if I can save up enough for a serious lap harp in the future. Did I mention that I’m 4’11?
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Something like this would be playable even if I’m unable to sit up (I’m currently trapped under a cat!), and the tenor range would be really nice. I’m excited about learning to do things with a limited range, there’s a long tradition of that with folk instruments and I’ve seen how much my partner has grown as a musician in this situation.</span>
Oh, I know what the cheapest not-rubbish 27 string is, it’s the Morwenna Rose. Beech ply, from what I recall from chatting with the luthier. Cheap and cheerful, optional levers, and there’s an ex-rental one on Gumtree. What do people think of the look of those for a beginner? Would they be practical for taking around if need be, for someone without a car?
Come to that, what’s up with this harp on eBay? Looks like a Stoney End Eve, heart cutout is upside down, suspiciously cheap, seller doesn’t know squat about it? Built from a kit or a knock-off, do you think? It should have one soundhole but has two, and something looks wrong through the bottom one.
Thank you both, that’s very helpful. She’s a home care worker, massage therapist, Reiki therapist, and already teaches sound meditation using singing bowls. She plays the guitar and sings. I wonder if playing the guitar at hospitals etc. might be a good thing for her to try, and to take up the harp as an end in itself if she wants to learn the harp, rather than with the object of plunging straight into harp therapy without having learned the instrument thoroughly first. (I thought that sounded extremely odd as well.) Then if she’s a skilled enough harpist in a few years and is still keen to try harp therapy, she can. Different people learn at different speeds, and of course it depends very much on your musical experience. I kept thinking of myself as a newbie when I had thirty years of piano and singing under my belt, studied music to university level, and a couple of solid years of harp study at school, so when I took it up again as an adult I was at the intermediate level.
I get the feeling she’d still enjoy having a relatively portable harp, though. The Musicmakers Gothic is no longer on their website, but importing always runs the cost up anyway. I’m trying to think what’s recommended in the not-a-lap-harp-but-still-reasonably-portable range over here in the UK, and I think the Camac Bardic 27 is fairly popular. The Silver Spear Camlad 27 is probably very lovely, but it costs half as much again. Either of them are over her budget, I think.
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Looking at the County Kerry, I know I’d miss the extra three notes with a 24 string, but then if you need the portability, it’s a lot smaller and lighter. There’s also a black unlevered Harpsicle going for £400. It’s one of the newer models, 36″ rather than 33″, so the four bass strings could be upgraded, which someone here (Biagio, was it you?) recommended.</span>
The Clarsach Society rent out harps at £25 a month. Two friends of mine have a harp they’re not using, which I borrowed for a few months for free to see if I wanted to get back into harp. It’s 25 strings, really 24 as the bottom E is useless due to the big cracks on either side of the bottom of the soundbox, surprisingly big and heavy, quite a sweet tone but quiet, and I persevered with the levers (because I’m bonkers and leapt straight into wild lever-flipping for Bach) but they’re honestly rather dire. It’s thought to be a Border harp, and I have heard allllll about the shenanigans with those.
Ridiculously late reply here, but I came across this thread when searching for “therapy”. Someone I know is interested in getting into harp therapy. I think it would be a good fit for her in many ways, but the harp therapy programmes and materials cost a bomb, and I’ve had an encounter with someone selling one of these programmes which has me rather concerned. I’ve seen other websites about harp therapy and such which are chock full of woo, and as someone said in this thread, are they just overcharging people who want to volunteer to play at hospices and hospitals?
Could anyone tell me more about it? Private message works fine, though I’m not sure if I’ll be notified of it so give me a prod if I seem to be ignoring you!
Also if she does want to go ahead with harp, there’s a cherry County Kerry, full Truitts, going on eBay for £800. Assuming it’s in good condition, is that worth going to visit? She’s tried my floor harp, with me giving her some pointers and helping her learn a simple piece, and is enchanted so far.
Another late but fascinated reader hoping for a video! I’ve found a source of nylon wound strings in Europe, I think, at Optima Strings. How do they look to folk? They cover an octave and a half.
Late to the party, but this is really lovely! How are you doing with it now? More videos are always welcome!
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>I am starting to get tempted by a double strung, but I too am in the double strung desert that is the UK, and I am looking for a very light harp on a budget. Biagio has been immensely helpful in talking me through designing a version of the harps which have cardboard soundboxes, so it should be suitably light. The friend who’ll be doing most of the building is ill, hence the delay. And now I am tempted to try making it a double, but I expect that is far too much to aim for in a first attempt. We’ll see how the planned one goes. </span>
Robin Ward in England builds a variety of multi-course harps, I wonder if he could do one or know someone who could? The French luthier Violaine Alfaric is warmly recommended by a friend of mine and makes a wide variety of harp styles, so I’d ask her too. I think both would cost far less than importing from the US.
I’m planning to put together a little lap harp with a cardboard soundbox, a friend will be building it for me, and Biagio was very helpful in working out the design. This included helping me work out the best string gauges for the length and tension. I looked into getting nylgut, and realised a snag. If you order from Aquila in Italy, there’s a 50 euro minimum order and that gets in the way of ordering individual replacement strings. If you order them from Bow Brand in the UK, they are called silkgut, as used on the Salvi Juno harps. It is not entirely clear whether silkgut is nylgut rebranded or something very similar, but what is clear is that you can only get one colour in each gauge. So if you are using different gauges to what Salvi uses on their Juno harps, you won’t be able to get strings the right colour. Also I spoke to another UK luthier who generally uses nylon and tried nylgut, and he said that with nylgut, he had a lot of string breakages and wasn’t thrilled with the sound. With KF, again Bow Brand are only selling one colour per gauge, but thankfully Mark Norris has all three colours available for each gauge, so that’s what we’re going for instead. It may or may not make much difference on a harp of this size and quality, but at least the tuning will be more stable, and I’m hoping that it’ll improve the sound a bit.
So whatever string materials you are going for, work out which gauges you need, and then check whether you can actually get the strings in the right colours and affordably for individual replacements!
Double strung harps sound very nifty. I don’t think they’re the most obvious harp for my needs, but I’d love to play around with one and see how I got on with it.
I’ve tried the new Teifi levers briefly at the Edinburgh harp festival last year, liked them immensely, and am getting them on my Mark Norris harp when I get to the top of his waiting list. I don’t think I know of any other luthiers using them. They have a very light action, easier to use if you’re doing a lot of fast lever flips.
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Teifi have a solid reputation, although some people find their harps heavy. The Eos model is a bit on the heavy side, the other models are in line with other lever harps around. It could be the way they sit on you, that’s such a personal thing and I’m shorter than most adults, but it could also be that they’re making them lighter these days. I didn’t notice the weight when I was trying out a Telor with the new levers, I was mainly focusing on the feel of the levers. It had a nice full, rich sound, oddly stronger in the middle range, but I suspect it needed new bass wires or something, as I’ve never heard anyone else mention that problem. Beautiful harps.</span>
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Mark is using a version of the levers with a round head and less obvious colour markings, by the way. They sound easier to use but harder to see. I presume Teifi will put on that version instead if you ask, since they’re making them. They do look more elegant. I think I’ll be getting the round headed ones with the Cs and Fs painted or something, but I’ll sort that out with Mark when he’s making my harp. </span>
Hopefully by now you have a harp, but just in case, I wanted to encourage learning to sing. You don’t have to buy an instrument, but you get to learn the musicality, and can focus on getting past the basics of learning to read. I was put into a choir at the age of nine, one which sang challenging twentieth century music, and the benefits have been incalculable. Being a good sight-reader opened up so much music to me.
Would it help to wrap the outside of the harp in something reflective to keep the heat out? Use insulating materials?
I’m currently working on a design based on the Waring cardboard harp as given in the book mentioned above. Be warned that you will need to do a certain amount of research, as the book lacks some details. I’ll report back once we’ve made it, but we’re adapting it fairly significantly. Hopefully it will be compact, very light in weight, and relatively cheap.
Does it help to give you the point of view of the student? I’m not elderly, but I’m severely disabled at a level where people in their eighties can usually run rings around me. Fatigue is the main symptom (I’m mostly bedbound), followed by muscle weakness and pain, amongst various others including a mild visual impairment, cognitive dysfunction, memory loss.
Keeping your elbows in the air gets to be utterly exhausting when you’re at this level. You need to be able to adapt the technique you’re teaching to the student. If you try to force them to do something that’s painful, they are likely to leave and not return. I had a teacher do that, and worse still, she kept on grabbing my hands and forcing them into really painful positions. It was horribly invasive. Somewhat oddly, she was trying to force pedal harp technique on me for a lever harp lesson, even though she supposedly taught both. Teachers I’ve met since then have been far more flexible in their approach, and far kinder and more patient.
Circulation is likely to be another issue. If they have problems with perpetually cold hands, it can help to wear wrist warmers/fingerless gloves through the day. I can’t play when my fingers are cold, as it hurts.
Bear in mind that people with health problems may be shy about bringing them up, so it’s worth asking about fatigue, pain, cold hands, visual problems.
They may need to practise in shorter bursts.
Getting the harp and the chair at exactly the right height for me has been absolutely crucial, because it doesn’t take much for playing the harp to set off a fibro pain episode that will last days. The next problem was making sure I was not sitting too rigidly. That made the pain worse, and being in pain made me more likely to tense up and sit stiffly. I found that I had to concentrate on moving around with the harp (34 string lever harp) as I played, which felt a bit silly and exaggerated at first, but did the trick.
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Doing shoulder shrugs, and if need be getting up and doing some basic stretches, also helps. Something that’s recommended in a book about ergonomics for quilters is that loading and unloading the dishwasher, if you have one, is a great task to do as a break from quilting, as it makes you bend and reach, stretching out the muscles you’ve been holding more tensely. I reckon it’d apply to harp as well, as we’re basically talking about arms and back here.</span>
Elderly people tend to be shorter than the younger generations. As someone of 4’11, I’m the height of many a little old lady, and it’s a height that will affect harp playing, especially if your movement is more restricted. I’ve briefly tried pedal harps at the Edinburgh Harp Festival and found they were OK, but with lever harps I have to bring my own stool to be at the right height, and pick harps that aren’t too tall for me. If they’re on the tall side, I can’t reach the bass levers comfortably enough to flip them during a piece; I’d probably have been OK when I was younger, but not now I have shoulder problems. I would have hated it if someone had assumed that I was always going to be a beginner who would never need to change levers during a piece and told me it didn’t matter if I couldn’t reach them while playing, as I got to the stage of doing multiple quick lever changes fairly quickly. After all, some beginners at the harp have decades of experience with other instruments under their belt (piano in my case), and you learn a lot faster with that head start.
Visual problems – start with good lighting. Make sure it’s good where you’re teaching and good where they’re practising. Fluorescent light is harsh and difficult to see by. LED lighting is pretty good these days, though I’d avoid cool white bulbs. Incandescent and halogen are fine, and sunlight is excellent. You need both the music and the harp well-lit, obviously. I generally play the wire harp from memory, and even so I feel more confident when it’s in better lighting. I have a clip-on spotlight near my harp so it’s really well lit. They’re pretty easy to get hold of. It makes you more confident and it makes everything easier to do, as it’s easier to concentrate when you can see more clearly.
For gut harps, there are Concedo strings which are more visible than the ordinary ones, and that may be useful. Also make sure that whatever is in their sightline behind the harp isn’t going to be confusing, such as a strongly patterned rug.
Do not under any circumstances greet questions about visual difficulties with, “Well, there were all those famous blind harpers and they were fine.” I am going to growl very fiercely at the next person who says that to me.
Astigmatism combined with fatigue can make me see two rows of strings. It was a hell of a shock when I went to the festival the other year, having not touched a harp in twenty-five years, sat down – still in my wheelchair, so too high, though I didn’t realise that until afterwards – and saw two rows of strings. Now I have good seating and lighting, it happens a lot less, and is generally a sign that I should rest and try again later. This is also the kind of problem that tends to arrive with old age, I understand.
I expected that I’d need really low tension because of my very low hand strength, but to my surprise, I don’t. That will probably vary enormously, of course. Wider spacing, on the other hand, becomes tiring when playing lots of octaves and such. When I switched from a lever harp with pedal spacing to a harp with lever spacing (Camac Hermine to Starfish Student), it was noticeably much less tiring for my hands, even though the string tension was higher. I’m still having difficulty getting the harp and seat heights right with the Starfish, however, so I keep having to stop playing due to shoulder pain kicking off.
With cognitive problems and fatigue, firstly I think it makes us much more likely to make mistakes during lessons, as the lesson itself is exhausting, and that can be embarrassing. Secondly, it’s hard to concentrate on my playing and on what the teacher is saying. Keeping notes helps. I have my Android tablet with a little keyboard, but that’s because I can no longer write with a pen. It does mean I don’t lose the notes and can read them, though. I take in much less than other people do of what the teacher is saying, don’t remember it as well, and may need to have it explained in different ways. By the end of the lesson I am exhausted, pretty much nothing is going in, and I am playing badly. I find that if I was shown an exercise at the end of a lesson and couldn’t make sense of it, it’s much easier when I start fresh another day and tackle it then. As long as I have enough in the way of notes to know what I’m meant to be doing.
Since then, Biagio has kindly sent me harp stringing charts and a huge amount of advice, and we are making excellent progress. We worked out that we can get 23 strings in there, running from F at the bottom to G at the top. At some point I will figure out how to get the sketch in here, but it’s currently at 76cm/30″ tall. According to my cardboard mock-up, that should be OK, what with the fairly slim soundbox.
After looking at the domestic hardwoods available from my friend’s local timber merchant, we have settled on (European) beech. Apparently it’s as hard as maple, nicely close-grained, and only suffering from little usage because it’s rather bland to look at. But we don’t need to worry about the grain as we’re painting it. We were thinking of getting 9mm beech, laser cutting it (which saves a lot of labour and produces nicely sealed edges), and laminating it, doing two layers for the big string rib and three for the neck and pillar. This is the same thickness for the string rib as in the original Waring design, but 50% thicker for the pillar and neck, which it will no doubt need with four more strings and consistently longer string lengths. Although Owen from Teifi mentioned in Facebook Messenger that they actually use beech plywood for their student harps, as it’s really strong and allows them to keep the weight down, so I may do a bit more looking into that. I have been trying to work out what the weight will be like.
Other issue: stringing material. A couple of people have recommended nylgut. It looks like harp nylgut is only available from Aquila in Italy, who have a 50 euro minimum order. That makes it impractical for getting individual replacement strings, and they don’t seem to be easy to get in touch with, either. They also sell silkgut, practically the same thing from what I’ve heard, in the UK, but I’m waiting to find out if all gauges of that are available in all three colours, since their stringing chart isn’t the same as the one Biagio has me using.
Reading through old posts here, some people love nylgut/silkgut, some hate it, the only lever harps it’s used on are the Salvi Juno range and those apparently have Issues (more about construction, from what I’ve heard). So I’m not sure what to go with. When I had a relatively low-tension fluorocarbon harp, the Camac Hermine, I found the top few strings pingy and the bottom couple of KF strings were too loose.
What I want in strings for this harp:
* nice warm tone, though obviously without getting muddy
* affordable, this is meant to be a budget harp
* available in the UK, or else in Europe if there is quick, cheap postage for small quantities
* less bothered about volume. If this is a quiet but nice sounding harp, that’s fine with me.
Ideas, O helpful people?
