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Carl, I wanted to thank you for your work on the Boscha etudes. The Harp Studio in Wales is selling them, so my copy arrived last week. I’ve not been well enough for much lever harp lately, I’ve just played through the first pair quickly, but they look excellent, and as someone with visual problems I really appreciate the generous font size. (I managed to snag a copy of Cynthia Cathcart’s wire harp primer cheaply on eBay, and it looks excellent but the text is just a leetle too small for me, especially the fingering markings.) The introductory material looks fantastic, and the writing style made me smile and reminded me of Tovey’s somewhat snarky edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. I am really looking forward to having something for practising technique which is interesting enough to keep me going, since I am crap at keeping up with scales and arpeggios.
You’ve got a “pedal” where it should read “lever” on the back you might want to change if it runs to another printing (or is that edition?), by the way.
I’ve got a question about Etude 7: are you meant to roll all the chords?
There’s a bit where you talk about the importance of moving early during jumps, so that you’re at the next note before you play it, rather than trying to start the jump when you’re meant to play the next note. I had forgotten that people don’t know to do that, which shows that even if I’m newish at the harp, having over thirty years of piano under my belt is definitely helping. So that made me feel nice and smug. Also it’s a good explanation of how it works, so I’ll probably show it to my partner, who is at a fairly early level at the piano and struggles with jumps.
Are 36 string lever harps the standard in the US, then? It seems to be 34 strings in the UK. I’m hoping I won’t miss out on much with those two top strings. I have a 34 string harp now, and in about a year I will have a 36 string Norris, but that will run A to A.
Do they know what their learning style is, or can they figure it out? I’m a visual learner, for instance. Reading music is the best way for me to learn a piece. My partner plays by ear, on the other hand, which I wish I could do (he wishes he could read music as fluently as I can), so for him the best thing is to play a piece to him. My friend’s kid is a kinetic learner which is apparently rarer, he learns by doing things and is an excellent mimic. I didn’t know I was a visual learner until adulthood, I was surprised to find it out since I’ve been doing music all my life, but it made sense, especially when I discovered I had a talent for quilting. Anyway, that might give you a clue as to the best way to proceed. I’ve been reading music since I was five and have no idea what it’s like to learn that either.
Something keeps going wrong with the formatting, adding in visible HTML code that doesn’t even apply. Have a look through my latest posts and you’ll see several examples. We think it may be something to do with the Chrome browser.
You can also see them on a harp compared with photos of Camac levers on the same harp here. They look a lot bigger. I can see why Mark went for the ball ending, it looks a lot neater, but I’m concerned that the Fs and Cs won’t be visible enough.
Teifi have commented on this forum a couple of times, though it wasn’t Allan. Here is their page on the new levers, including pricing.
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Mark Norris is using these levers, too. Do </span>the photos on his site<span style=”font-size: 16px;”> help? There’s a description there too. He’s charging £180 more per 34 string harp compared to gold-plated Camac levers.</span>
At this year’s festival, there were quite a few of us going from Mark’s room over to the Teifi room to try the new levers. Teifi were very nice about us all scampering straight back to Mark’s afterwards! They seemed like nice levers, lightweight to handle, although I honestly can’t remember the details by now. I’m getting <span style=”font-size: 16px;”>them on my harp. </span>
(Sorry about the borked formatting. It seems to be a problem with Chrome and this forum. If the links don’t work, look up Teifi and Mark Norris and go to their pages on levers.)
Wil – I do know of an English luthier who builds lightweight harps strung lightly with gut, Tim Hampson, though I’ve not tried his harps. The 34 string model weighs only 6kg/13lb. The main serious luthier I know of in the UK who uses nylon is Jon Letcher, although he does offer gut as an option on one model. He really likes it, including in terms of sound. Generally, everyone here uses gut, and I was thrilled to find Mark Norris offering fluorocarbon as a standard option, as I’m happier with a luthier who uses that type of stringing a lot and has got it working optimally for them. Jon also uses birch laminate soundboards for his (more popular) nylon-strung Camlad range, thinks very highly of it, finds it has excellent stability in terms of tuning and such, and these harps have a solid reputation. So while people, over here at least, are often sniffy about departing from the standard gut-strings-and-spruce-soundboard approach, perhaps because the alternatives are associated with the lower end of the harp market, there are definitely respected luthiers doing good things with alternatives. And there are different fashions in harp-building in different countries, with nylon being far more popular in the US for example.
Things I’ve been told about woods by various luthiers and harp shop folk: some people believe that the type of wood really doesn’t make a substantial difference to the sound, not considering that there’s a different wood used for the soundboard, and reckon that you may as well pick based on what you like the look of. Others think there’s a difference, but everyone has different opinions on which wood creates which sound, they may change with age (someone told me that maple develops more), and bear in mind that something called “walnut” or “maple” won’t be the same wood all over the world. I spoke to a lovely woman at a harp shop in the Netherlands who preferred different woods for different luthiers. She preferred cherry for the Silver Spear harps, and I think it may have been walnut for the Starfishes, or was it cherry for the Starfishes and walnut for the Teifis? If you are choosing based on looks, not only is it possible that different luthiers are using slightly different species, but they may also be using different finishes, so a cherry model from one luthier may look very different from a cherry model from another. Cherry darkens a lot, by the way, some say it ends up darker than walnut.
Off-topic, but does anyone know why some of us are getting these weird formatting problems? I am and I’m using Chrome Browser on an Android tablet. It persists even if I try to edit a post to get rid of the markings about font and such.
I think I was quoting Carl Swanson on saying that nylon-strung harps won’t be safe to restring with fluorocarbon, although I seem to recall quite hot debate on that. It’s certainly widely said that you shouldn’t put concert gut on a harp designed for nylon, and may or may not be safe to put lever gut on a harp designed for nylon.
It’s possible I was misinformed by the people renting me the Hermine, or that it had problems, yep. They were dodgy beyond belief, and I later discovered rent out harps in very poor condition, though this one didn’t seem too bad (the next one was). It only needed to be tuned once a week, and I am picky about playing a harp that’s in tune. Oh, the iffy batch thing: I was told that since they’re a cheaper-end harp, it’s a bit hit or miss whether you get one of the better ones, though again this was from the dodgy harp rental people so who knows. I’ve heard the Hermine described as having very low tension by a few other folks, though, including harp shops selling a variety of models. If nothing else, this shows you that it isn’t particularly easy to describe how a harp feels to play, it’s not standardised, and this is another reason why you need to try as many harps as possible! “Folk tension” and “folk spacing” means different things to different people, for instance.
Average humidity in Fort William, Scotland, where Starfish is located: 68% – 88% over the year, from squinting at a graph. (I’m in Edinburgh, which isn’t as humid, and we frequently get humidity up in the 90s.) They do fine with gut-strung harps. I’ve managed to find a chart for Auckland rather than Hamilton, and it seems to be within the higher end of that range, but not higher than it overall. Can anyone explain more about whether gut is suitable for humid climates? What do you regard as humid? I’ve heard that you’re better off getting a harp made in a roughly similar climate to your own, rather than, say, buying a harp made in the Scottish Highlands and keeping it in a desert, or vice versa. Can anyone comment on that?
Good point about its being cheaper per harp to ship them in a bundle. Although if the harp is twice the price to begin with, that might cancel it out.
As far as I can tell, string type will make a difference to the feel and sound of a harp, but the overall build of the harp will make more difference. Two harps from the same luthier strung in different materials, or made in different woods, are going to sound more like each other than a harp from another luthier with the same stringing material and/or wood.
By the way, I expected that I’d need low tension as I have muscle pain, low strength and severe fatigue, but to my surprise I don’t get on well with it and prefer, hmm, not sure if it’s considered medium or medium-high-for-a-lever-harp tension, since I still haven’t tried enough harps yet! So even that isn’t particularly predictable. I also thought the weight of the harp would be more of a big deal for me than it actually is. It turned out that being a good fit physically for the harp was what made the difference, and once I’m sitting well, the weight doesn’t bother me. (I’m not carrying it around, though.) I got horribly stiff and achy after my first evening with that Starfish student harp, when we were both at the wrong height, I couldn’t relax properly to play as a result, and apart from anything else it kept trying to tip away from me as the balance was wrong. The next day I found it a stand the right height, sorted out a supportive cushion to bring my stool to the right height, wriggled around a bit to get it balanced, and found to my surprise that I can barely feel the weight at all. This is possibly why some people report that certain harps are really, really heavy, even when they weigh the same as other models.
Here’s what I know about fluorocarbon. It’s also called carbon, carbon fibre, KF, Savarez, or Alliance, so if you see any of those terms, they mean the same type of string. They do not necessarily mean the same tension or gauge of string, however. The Camac Hermine has notoriously low string tension, which in my experience was worse on the bottom two fluorocarbon strings (not sure if that’s a problem with the model in general or just that harp, it’s a relatively cheap student model which is apparently a bit patchy in terms of quality). The strings break a lot less often, are cheaper than gut, and take a long time for the tuning to settle down when you replace a string. A gut strung harp should accept fluorocarbon strings, although you realistically want the luthier to be organising it so that the best strings for the harp are put on. A nylon strung harp probably won’t, from what luthiers in this forum have said, as fluorocarbon is higher tension than nylon, just as you shouldn’t put gut strings on a harp designed for nylon. As far as I can tell, your choices with fluorocarbon are to buy a harp that is already produced with fluorocarbon strings, or to go to a smallish luthier who ordinarily uses gut but is happy to use fluorocarbon, and has some experience of doing it. Big harp companies such as Dusty Strings are less likely to do this sort of custom order, but it is worth asking if you want one of their harps. Buying a harp designed for another stringing material and restringing it yourself is not the best option, especially when you’re inexperienced. At best, it could sound or feel poor, and at worst, putting too much tension on the soundboard could make it explode!
Camac seems to like low tension on its fluorocarbon harps, in general. It’s lower than most lever harps out there, from what I understand, and less popular as an option. They make the Isolde with a choice of medium or low tension, and it’s a bigger harp, so that sounds like one that may suit you, although you should probably postpone deciding which tension you prefer until you’ve had longer with your Aoyama (the Kerry, right?). It’s a popular student harp, so people should be able to relate to it when discussing their models.
Mark Norris is the only person I’ve found talking about using three different gauges of fluorocarbon, and I reckon he’s worth chatting to, even if you can’t afford one of his harps. (I have no idea yet which gauge I’ll go for – that’s one of the good things about his 18 month waiting list, it gives me the chance to improve as a harpist and figure out what I need.) When I was at the festival and trying his harps, he mentioned that he’s started putting fluorocarbon in the top octave of his gut-strung harps as standard, as that’s where you get the most string breakages. It sounded just as good as gut, and he said the harpists trying out the harps didn’t realise he’d done it. So it’s not necessarily the case that fluorocarbon is going to sound too bright in the top octave. You do need a luthier who is experienced enough with fluorocarbon to do a good job with it, and more to the point, a harp which is good enough that it will generally sound good.
In terms of sound, I find nylon tends to be too bright for me as well, although it’s hard to tell as I still haven’t tried every harp at the festival, and recordings online vary too much to be all that useful. I do like the sound of fluorocarbon, it can be very mellow.
Teifi seem to have a much shorter waiting list, by the way, and their 36 string Eos is in your height range, but it’s also extremely heavy at 15kg, and fairly pricey too.
Another thing to consider, as you get more experienced, is what sort of levers you like.
Congratulations on your new hire harp! How are you getting on with it? Are you enjoying the extra range and not having to faff around with a box? It’s not massively to my taste visually either, and I know what you mean about the legs, but it’s meant to be a fairly solid student harp, and sounds a lot better than your previous one. I hope you have great fun with it and learn more about what you like and need as a harpist.
Starfish are in the Highlands of Scotland, where it’s fairly humid, and they do fine with gut. I’m vegan and don’t want a gut-strung harp, so I’ve been asking a lot of the UK luthiers (well, mainly Norris, Starfish and Teifi) about whether they can string a harp in fluorocarbon, and the answer is yes. Mark Norris has done quite a few and offers three different gauges of both gut and fluorocarbon, if you want to email him for opinions, and both Starfish and Teifi have strung a few harps with fluorocarbon, no idea about the gauge. If you happen to prefer fluorocarbon, that is. It certainly breaks less, though whether or not you prefer the tone and feel is personal. Perhaps other harpists in NZ can report on how well gut holds out over there? I haven’t tried the Mamore, I was focusing intently on the Glencoe and Glenelle, but it’s meant to be a lovely harp, it has the extra strings at the bottom which I personally like, and it looks like it’s in the height range you prefer. Bear in mind that Starfish have a year’s wait, though if you have a good rental harp that’s less painful. That was why I was mentioning second hand harps, although there it’s a risk in terms of quality. I’d hate having to choose a harp without being able to try one first, you really have my sympathies on that.
Yep, I had a feeling the second hand Norris would come out over budget. Those brass levers add a lot to the weight and the cost. Some people love them, some people report that they’re a bit clicky. I’ll be going for the Alulite ones myself, which were recently invented by a chap at Teifi. Apart from that, Camac levers are generally the rule in the UK.
So what sort of things do you play? I’ve been getting very into Andres, am furiously flipping levers for various arrangements of Bach, and have a nice easier book of medieval music for when I’m feeling lazy, amongst other things. I keep meaning to print out my arrangements of some Dowland songs and learn them properly, but there’s something about the combination of singing and flipping levers which I get stuck on.
I have some, funnily enough! That’s not the problem I’m having, though thanks for the reminder, it may be useful at some point. If I put the harp on my lap, it sits there fine but it’s a little high for me, my hands get tired reaching up and I end up with an achy back. People generally have wire harps sitting a bit lower than I do, but then I’m 4’11 and most adults are a lot taller than me.
Biagio, thank you for advising me to tune the bottom octave with a Snark and then tune the rest by ear. I’m doing that for the wire harp and it is now sounding a lot better, as well as generally working out easier while also helping me learn to tune better. It’s back to needing to be tuned every day, so I’ll send it in to Ardival soon. I’m trying to figure out the best position to play it in now, in order to hold it comfortably and minimise getting achy afterwards.
P.S. Further second-hand harps in the UK, if you end up deciding to risk that. Including a Mark Norris, though perhaps not in a style that will suit you (concert tension, not everyone likes that style of lever). The Teifi Telor harps are good, and there are a couple of Salvis you might like, quite tall harps as I recall. (The Salvi Juno range is liked by some but a lot of people think it’s poor quality, I’d be wary of those.)
A thing to think about if you are looking at a harp of more than 34 strings: firstly, 34 strings is standard, it’s what lever harp repertoire will generally assume you have. If there are extra strings, think about which end of the harp they’re at. The top two strings on a 34 string harp don’t get used much as it is, so going higher may not be worth it. If you get into Latin American harp music, that goes down to a bottom A quite often. I’ve ended up ordering one of Mark’s slightly bigger harps with 36 strings because the size suited me better, the price was the same, and the extra strings were at the bottom where they’re more likely to be useful, and will sound lovely (whereas the top strings tend towards pinginess). But I suspect they won’t see a lot of use, and I’d have been perfectly happy with a 34 string.
Mark said he was making 32 (or was it 33?) string models for a while because people so rarely use those top two strings, but ended up dropping them because people expect 34 strings as standard. I rented a 34 string fluorocarbon-strung Camac for six months, playing at intermediate level, where the top G kept breaking and taking months to settle down again, and it didn’t matter because I didn’t need it once. Since then, I’ve come across one piece using the top two strings, possibly because Andres is determined to get the most he possibly can out of harps. So yep, I expect that top A to be there, but I am not interested in going up to a C.
I personally wouldn’t pay hundreds extra for two more strings at the top going up to a C, if we are talking about the Dusties for instance. I don’t know if there’s any particular type of repertoire where extra strings at the top are likely to be useful. If there are other factors, such as a better sound and/or shape, that’s probably more important.
Well, I meant that for me it wasn’t an option to sit so high that my feet weren’t flat on the ground. How tall are you, and what height do you find works best for the stool? I’m 4’11/1.50m and currently really like using a 38cm storage footstool with a thick foam cushion on top, the rather hideous sort you get from occupational therapists, so it probably ends up at 40cm by the time the foam has squished down a bit. A dining chair, which is 45cm as standard, is too high, I can’t get my feet solidly on the ground. Funnily enough, the height I prefer my walking sticks at is much higher than the height I’m supposed to use! Yet another reason why it’s so important to figure this out for yourself, as we all have different bodies and use them differently, and what works for one harpist may not work for another.
Edited to add: any chance you were offered one of those really low stools to sit on? I’ve had people offer them to me, and they are way, way too low. I suspect they’re a good height to stand smaller harps on for taller harpists, and a good height for small children to sit on, and they offer them to shorter adults because they never have the right height chair around and don’t know what else to offer us! Taking my own stool to the festival when I was travelling by bus using my wheelchair was a right nuisance, but I rang every exhibitor plus the organisation running the festival, and no one had a harp stool the right height for me which I could borrow. I’m not sure anyone had a harp stool the right height for me on the premises. Apparently I’m the height of an average twelve year old, so eh, I get that it’s a minority thing, but it’s still frustrating. The Clarsach Society were very interested in my folding stool when I brought it along to check out the harp I’m renting before taking it home, so it seems to be a gap in the market.
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Jenny – I ended up editing my previous post, it’s a fair bit longer now. By the way, I have been trying to work out what harp you’re renting, and if it’s the one I think it is, yep, that doesn’t look inspiring. </span>
Height isn’t the only factor with producing a big sound, believe me. That Camac Hermine was the tallest harp I’ve played, but the better harps I’ve since played from Mark Norris and Starfish had a much bigger sound. You mentioned hating putting the harp on a stool. Could you tell us more about what you don’t like about it? It may be something with a solution, and it would be a pity to rule out half the lever harps in existence for that reason. Some harps have optional legs to raise the height, for instance, and some stands are a lot better than others. Starfish has brought out new stands for their harps, for instance, which attach to the harp. Dusty Strings do stands/legs for their harps. </span>
And hey, you’re lucky, that problem is fixable! I can’t play harps which are too tall for me because I do a lot of fast lever changes during pieces, and have shoulder injuries to boot. I couldn’t reach the bass levers comfortably with a 122cm Camac, I had to hold onto the neck of the harp to flip them, which took too long. Sitting higher up is not an option, for the sake of comfortable and proper posture. So that does rule out all the taller harps for me, including Dusty Strings and the lovely Silver Spear harps.
Don’t make decisions yet, if you can. Find your local harpists, visit them and play their harps, learn everything you can about what you like and don’t like in a harp, and make sure you check for solutions to any problems. Play even the ones you don’t think you’ll suit. I can’t even start to tell if I like a harp until I and the harp are both at the right height for each other. It’s the first thing we sorted out when I saw a harp teacher. I went to the Edinburgh harp festival this year with a folding storage footstool that I know is a good height for me strapped to the back of my wheelchair, and adjusted cushions on it according to each harp. The previous year, when I hadn’t played a harp in twenty five years, I didn’t think to get out of my wheelchair, so I was way too high for the harps, and none of them were comfortable except the pedal harp I tried on a whim.
Is there any option of renting a better quality harp for a spell? You can’t figure out what you need in a harp if you’ve only been playing a poor quality one you don’t get on with. I initially borrowed a rather awful harp in poor condition from friends, and there’s very little you can do with that. It tells you that you like the harp and want to keep going, so it’s useful for that at least, but that’s it. There’s a good reason why people rent harps to begin with, and it’s not just about seeing whether child learners will stick at it. Have you spoke to the New Zealand harp society? They may know of people renting decent harps, rent them theirselves, or even know of someone with a harp sitting unused which they’d be willing to rent or loan out. I had no idea about taller harps being out of the question for me until I was doing proper practice on pieces which involved a lot of lever changes, for instance. Like many people, I liked the feel of one type of tension at first, but found that changed. (I went from low tension to medium tension, I think. It varies,partly depending on what type of music you play.)
Edited to add:
Dusties have a good reputation and following. I haven’t spent much time looking at them personally once I realised that I need small harps, plus the import costs make a huge difference when you live in Scotland and have local luthiers who are significantly cheaper. I’ve been googling a bit and ye gods, New Zealand seems a desert for harps! The hybrid Dusties seem like they may suit you, I know the facets on the upper soundboard are meant to make a big difference. (By the way, were you and the harp at the right height for each other when you tried it out? We<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>re you relaxed and playing with a flexible body?) I’m currently renting a harp with a five-stave back, the student Starfish I mentioned, and while I prefer round-backs too, or at least stave-backs with enough staves to be nearly rounded, I’m not finding it a problem in the slightest. Once I had the harp on the right height stand and myself on the right height stool, I found that I barely feel the weight at all. </span>
<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>Buying sight unseen from overseas is probably not a great choice, but Starfish currently have a twelve year old Glencoe, their flagship model, going for a lot less than a Dusty Strings. It’s a shorter harp but includes a stand and their stands are good, attaching solidly to the harp. I’ve seen a ten year old maple Starfish and the wood had aged to a beautiful gold. They’re top of the line harps, very popular worldwide. They were my second choice after Mark Norris, and I held out for renting a Starfish locally, which meant being harpless for a month or so longer as most of the local stock is Pilgrims. If you can get that checked out, and can figure out whether it’s likely to suit you, then as far as I know it’s a far better harp than the Camacs. The back has eleven staves, so it feels the same as a round back and is very comfortable. No idea about the Loveland levers, they’d switched to Camac levers by the time I tried their harps, but they’re reputable levers and I think are meant to be easier to fix if need be. Their waiting list is around a year for a new harp, I believe. Beautiful harps, amazing sound, lovely to play. The tension is on the firmer side of folk tension, I think.</span>
Where are your thoughts on string materials, and is it particularly humid or dry where you live?
