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Oh, good, that sounds like a plan, then! Hang around, get to know us and tell us what music you find.
So tell us more about this 26 string. Which maker is it?
I’m also a harpist in recovery from pushy parents, though a new harpist as I grew up on piano instead, and very much need to get over the fear of playing wrong and learn how to improvise. Right now I’ve got a 34 string lever harp, which I’m using for classical repertoire such as Andres and Bach. I’m determined to play those beautiful lute suites if the lever changes kill me. But I’m having fun with it, and it’s a new thing. Mind you, I rebelled all the way through music at school too. My mother wanted Mozart and Beethoven, so I spent my teens playing the modernists instead.
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>A friend is hopefully building me a very lightweight unlevered 23 string harp for playing in bed, as I’m disabled and want something for when I’m bedbound, and I’m determined to use that for different repertoire. Medieval and folk, probably, and I will learn to play by ear and to improvise, damnit!</span>
Would it help to explore areas of music you haven’t played before? There’s a long and fascinating folk tradition, and modal music can take you in very different directions from the traditional classical repertoire. Looking at what wire harpers play might give you some ideas. Ditto medieval music.
As for playing carols for your family and feeling anxious about making mistakes, possibly the solution is not to play for your family? In my experience, that attitude towards music is one you pick up from your parents. I’ve got it too, and I watch my partner improvise and mess around on an instrument without worrying about failure, and make huge progress. You might find there are friends you’d do well playing with, and playing with other people is such a joy.
I finally got back to harp-planning! We are looking at modifying the Waring, and here is the latest sketch at half-size (one small square = 2mm, one large square = 1cm). There’s the wooden string rib on top of the soundbox. No levers or bridge pins, as advised by James Skeen, since he reckons they just mess up the sound on a harp this size. How does it look? 73cm (27.75″) at its tallest, 22 strings, 14mm string spacing, small enough for me to play in bed, cardboard soundbox as per the Waring harp (though perhaps 1/4″ deeper), and I’m going to have a good chat with Aquila about nylgut vs nylon strings.
What range do you reckon would be best? I rather fancy E to E, because E minor suits my voice and it gives you the dominant note for A minor too, but I know G to G is a lot more common. F to F is probably less useful, since F minor is a long way off being practical in an unlevered harp. Extra strings are more useful and nicer sounding in the bass than in the treble, but the important thing is getting strings that sound the best on the harp.
Barbara, could you tell me more about your experiences with cardboard harps? I’m currently plotting to get a friend to build me a slightly adapted version of a Waring.
Sorry, I was talking nonsense. The string angle for that sketch is 39 degrees. Looking at the Salvi Juno 25, which goes down to a low E and uses nylgut throughout, is making me realise that now I’ve curved the pillar, I could change the string angle to get them right up into that corner, and get longer strings. Should I do that? The angle will be more obtuse, of course.
Yep, still lost. Intrigued, but lost. Or rather, I have some idea of what you are talking about, but no idea how to translate it to the design of a cardboard harp.
Allison – I just looked again at the photos of the Waring harps and there it is, that little wooden bridge. Thanks for pointing it out. It’s not in the book on how to make them, which is lacking in a lot of details anyway. So I’d need bridge pins instead, then? The slightly larger Spanish version doesn’t seem to have anything like that.
Here is a sketch on graph paper at a scale of one little square = 1cm. (I will cope with inches in quilt planning, but there is a point where they become ridiculous, especially in a country which uses metric.) There is a gentle curve to the pillar as well as to the arm, with both becoming broader at the join. (My partner was someone alarmed to hear that if you are a harp, your neck is also your arm and ends in a knee joint.) Does it look reasonable? I’ve pencilled in 21 strings at an attempted distance of 13.8mm or thereabouts, although I can’t really do that accurately on such a small sketch. I’m not getting the lengths doubling at the octaves.
I seem to be confusing people with the respective relationships here, as two people so far have thought it’s my partner building me a harp!
My partner is called R. He plays the dulcimer. He has no clue how to build a harp, though he’s cheering me on.
My friend is called S. They are a designer (yep, that’s their correct pronoun, their gender is non-binary). Hopefully they will be building and decorating the cardboard harp, and also making one for their partner E.
E is disabled like me, and they are a good folk musician and singer who is hoping to play the harp, so they’ll be helping out from the musicianship side of things, though not with any in-depth knowledge of harps just yet.
This may take you to a link for what I’ve put together with cardboard so far. A curved pillar would look better than the cut-out, if it’s not too much extra work. I am now absolutely exhausted from putting it together, so this may be a bit scattered! I’ll dig out your email address later, thanks for the offer.
OK, no fretting and ignore the Rosemarkie, got it.
I can’t make much sense of Rick’s article. I have a GCSE in maths which I obtained when I was 15, and it’s now 24 years later and I can’t remember a speck of it. Ditto physics at 16. I skimmed and saw that the calculations were almost all for nylon, so further info would be needed for another stringing material, right?
28″ seems a reasonable height if there’s a harmonic curve, and making sure the soundbox doesn’t get longer than 26″. I’m not sure of the angle at the moment, I’m crashed out in bed.
12.7mm sounds a bit narrow, are you sure? I was thinking more like 13.5. Obviously we’ll need to figure that out first, as it affects the shape.
Is fluorocarbon an option for the bottom couple of strings? I know some small harps do this, but not whether it would work for this sort.
A low E would be nice if possible, so that I can sing in E minor.
I thought James was talking about nylon harps as well as wire strung when he said bridge pins weren’t necessary, but I don’t know any more about it. I’ve seen quite a few simple small harps which don’t have bridge pins, and realise they’d significantly increase the cost. How necessary are they likely to be in this sort of thing?
Thanks, I was hoping you’d reply!
We’ll be looking at the sort of spacing range used on lever harps rather than wire harps. I don’t play with nails and will be using technique more like that for lever harp, my friend’s partner is a lot taller than me so will have bigger hands, and my friend also may end up designing these to sell to other people, so we don’t want something that only wire harpers are comfortable with.
If we can get 20 strings on instead of 19 that’d be great, but after that the spacing gets too narrow for our purposes, I think. My friend may be able to make a harmonic curve, they said it shouldn’t be much more work, so I hope that should make it possible to have a lower bottom note, F instead of G. Would that sound OK? Is the additional tension likely to cause problems? We really don’t want this exploding or falling to bits! And is it really worth the extra bother of making a harmonic curve rather than a straight piece of wood? The Ardival Rosemarkie doesn’t have one, for instance, but then it goes down to G, and it’ll be better made throughout.
The main thing that had me looking at nylgut is that the Spanish luthier making a slightly larger version of these cardboard harps is using it, and says it makes a big difference to the sound. It’s also meant to be more stable under temperature and humidity changes. I don’t remember enough maths to be able to make those calculations, I’m afraid, but if Aquila (my friend misremembered the string supplier, it’s Aquila) are happy to, that’s great.
I put together a cardboard soundbox from the plans yesterday, and found that I wouldn’t actually want it any wider for the way I sit with a small harp in bed. Possibly 1/2″ deeper, though. I’m tired and having trouble understanding what you wrote: is it worth making the soundbox a bit deeper? I’d have thought it would help, surely the sound is more than what you’d get without it, after all?
It’s definitely already long enough. A Limerick or Harpsicle would be much, much too big for me, and this is also why we didn’t start from a Backyard harp. So while we might be able to raise the height of the pillar a tiny bit to accommodate a harmonic curve, the soundbox is not getting any longer. I’ll finish mocking it up in cardboard and post a picture when I do, so you can see the scale of me to the harp.
I’ll look into Musicmakers and Dusty Strings for the zither pins (been advised against bridge pins), thanks. In my experience a lot of US shops charge incredibly high shipping even for small packages, you should see what it’s like with quilting fabric, but we might be lucky. And thank you for your offer, that’s very kind.
Any idea whether fretting semitones against the edge of the arm is likely to be possible? I understand that’s common practice with historical harps.
I’m now having wire harp lessons, so positioning and such is all being taken care of. I have the little Kilcoy to play in bed at my flat, and a beautiful old Ardival 26 string Rose in dark sycamore wood on its way from the Netherlands to keep at my partner’s.
They’re right about harps being addictive. An artist friend and I are plotting to try making cardboard harps, so that I have something to play when I’m at my partner’s and stuck in bed. (I’m bedbound for most of the day due to having severe ME. That poor rental Starfish is being neglected at the moment due to a nasty flare, although I still need to sort out the ergonomics for that one as it’s still making my fibro pain flare up every time.) The Waring harp is well-spoken of for a cheap and cheerful thing, but the cost triples if you want to get it to the UK, my friend should be perfectly capable of making it from a book, and it would end up beautifully painted. I’ve been wanting some of their artwork for years. Their partner, who’s a folk musician and also has ME, would love one two, which will make it more economical for buying strings and such, and we were happily chatting about colours and tree designs.
So I got a couple of Dennis Waring’s books about making musical instruments out of the library. Here are the intro pages plus the pages about making cardboard harps. If anyone who knows about these things is willing to have a look, that’d be great.
1. Is there anyone here who has tried a cardboard harp, especially the Waring one? If so, what can you tell me about it? Sound, feel, anything you did that changed it?
2. There’s a luthier in Spain who makes an adapted version of these, slightly larger with 22 strings instead of 19. He told me they’re strung in nylgut and that it vastly improves the sound, although it looks like nylon on the site where he’s selling them. We were communicating via Google Translate so it was a bit limited. (Again, too expensive to be worth importing.)
3. I am tiny, and I need to be able to play this sitting up in bed, with my legs crossed around the base. I am 4’11/1.50m. This is the height of an average twelve year old, in the UK at least. A cardboard Backyard harp would be far too tall for me. The Waring harp is apparently 25 3/4″/65.5cm tall, and looks promising from the photos I’ve seen of various people playing it. I know I’m fine with the Ardival Kilcoy, which is 22″/56cm tall, and could manage something a bit taller, but the 31″/75cm County Kerry is too tall for me to play in bed like that. So I don’t think we’ll be changing the dimensions of the wooden frame, unless there’s a way of introducing a harmonic curve that doesn’t make it a much bigger job and is manageable to calculate.
19 strings is enough for playing around with, doing little exercises on, and might help me get into improvising and folk music. I asked Dennis Waring if I could increase the number of strings, as I could probably manage slightly narrower spacing, and he said No, but didn’t answer when I asked why. Do you think it’s likely to be possible? Would the tension be too great? If I did manage to get in another string, could it go at the bottom where I’d use it more?
4. A friend has recommended Kuerschner for the strings. She said they can help me calculate the right gauge, and supplied great nylgut strings for one of her harps when she was switching string type. She also recommends nylgut. (I don’t want gut due to being vegan.) Hopefully it will be less prone to tinkliness.
5. The soundbox, on the other hand, looks a bit skimpy, and a bigger soundbox should produce a better sound. (Certainly judging by the cardboard dulcimers I’ve been finding videos of. There aren’t many cardboard harp videos around and they often aren’t very good or in tune, which is understandable in a model aimed at beginners, so I’ve been checking out the dulcimers, since those are popular and I’m used to dulcimers. I think a cardboard dulcimer may be in my partner’s future, because realistically how can you expect anyone to cope on only three dulcimers?) Maybe that’s handy if they are being used for very small children, which I understand happens. I am probably going to mock up some harp shapes in cardboard and figure out what is the biggest I can handle.
On the design plans, the soundboard is 26″/66cm long, 1 3/4″/4.5cm deep, 4″/10cm wide at the top, and 8″/20.5cm wide at the bottom. The length stays, obviously. I’m trying to work out how much I can increase the other two by without making it unwieldy. Definitely 9″ at the base, possibly 10″. Perhaps 5″ at the top? A Harpsicle, for comparison, has a soundbox 6″ wide all the way down, and 2 1/4″ deep. That’s a similar depth to the Kilcoy, so that sounds like a start.
6. From what I’ve heard from the luthier James Skeen, I should probably try to keep the soundholes as small as possible. After stringing a wire harp it’ll be easy to manage this, and it explains why the County Kerry has unusually small soundholes. James also mentions in his article about small harps that the sound on a small harp is better when you have nothing interfering with the string, no bridge pin or lever, so that’s a good thing here.
7. Any idea about sourcing zither pins in the UK? What about nice, dense cardboard, specifically in Derby?
Thanks to anyone who can help!
Ah, so it’s Boscha who put in the squiggly lines so arbitrarily? (Damnit, there must be a technical term for those. If I had my laptop here I’d open up MuseScore to see what they were being called there, although it might be one of those terms you never hear in real life. Arpeggiation marks?)
I reckon it would be a lot easier to read, and less confusing, if you edited them in the original etude to look nice and neat like the variation, including the footnote. You’re not changing how it’s meant to be played, after all, you’re just clarifying an ambiguity. Plus I seem to be more advanced than some of the players you’re aiming at, and if I was finding it confusing, chances are beginners will too.
I find I’m far more likely to learn mistakes such as wrong notes if there are confusing formatting features such as this, or something like spelling a note differently in a repeat (in a piano or vocal piece; obviously that has a different impact with harp). Someone else has spotted a change in fingering between etude and variation, which you said was justified. The more consistent everything else is between etude and variation, the easier it is to pick out the significant differences, such as that deliberate fingering change.
Speaking of fingering, with this sort of piece I’m all in favour of repeating the fingering in repeated sections. If you’re concentrating on various techniques plus you’re still fairly early on in learning the harp, it helps to have it confirmed, otherwise you might start sneaking in the wrong fingering for the repeated bits. Some people memorise fingering faster than others, we all have different learning styles. If you ever did decide that was a good way to go, and people with teaching experience will know far more about this than I do, you could probably bump the fingering font size down a notch to keep an uncluttered look on the page, while still keeping it very easy to read.
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>I’ve not been able to play recently due to illness, but I am very much looking forward to getting stuck into these, especially Etude 7!</span>
Carl – I don’t have the music with me, but didn’t it have fairly inconsistent markings for rolling the chords for Etude 7? I think it had the first couple of lines, then occasional ones afterwards. If you had the first bar or two, and then a note saying to roll all the chords (can’t remember what the Italian for that musical marking is), it would have made more sense, but I thought you were deliberately showing that some chords were not meant to be rolled. Also if you’d mentioned it in the note for the first version. You mention it for the variation, but that made me wonder if the first version was meant to be played differently.
34 strings, C at the bottom, seems to be fairly standardised over here, I think it’s offered by all the luthiers and it’s what they assume for lever harp exams and a lot of music arrangements. Student harps tend to be 34 strings, as do the flagship models, and I’m not sure I’ve seen a British harpmaker who doesn’t offer a 34 string harp, but there are certainly luthiers who only offer 34 string models in the lever harps they make (Pilgrim, Ardival). Going down to A in the bass seems to be more usual for Latin American harp music, on the other hand. When you get to the bigger harps, some go one way, some go the other. Norris and Starfish harps add the extra notes in the bass, Teifi adds them in the treble, for instance. I get the impression that the vast majority of lever harps made in the UK have 34 strings, and probably near that for harps being owned (especially as primary harps), although there’s more variation with the imported harps. Do you not have this 34-as-standard thing in the US, then? It’s why I was a little surprised to see a book of etudes assuming 36 strings.
I do have Coupled Hands, it came along with the harp when my friend loaned it to me, and Karen Marshalsay’s primer book as well. They’ve been an excellent combination, and I’m in the middle of organising lessons and planning to go to a local meetup soon. I’ve also got a book of Highland music I mess around with occasionally, much of which seems to have been written for bagpipes, which suits wire harp well.
I have dire circulation, I’m usually wearing fingerless gloves and two thick pairs of socks, and making sure my hands are thoroughly warm before I start playing helps. I also find that ice packs are great when I get blisters. I think I came back from the Edinburgh Harp Festival with seven blistered fingers, I’d been playing so much, and it sorted them all out overnight! I’m very fond of these gel cold packs, which are excellent for injuries or pain relief too, and stay cold much longer than others I’ve tried. Plus you can strap them on.
I’d forgotten how good calendula salve is, thanks for reminding me. Slightly off-topic, does anyone know anything good for stopping bleeding, apart from styptic pencils? Blood thinners + facial moles = seriously annoying shaving cuts. (Not for me, I’m a woman.)
