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Is there a way you can network with other local harpists and try out as many harps as you can? Can you talk to whoever is selling the harps and ask if they’ve sold to anyone local to you, and if so whether they’d be able to put you in touch? What about local harp teachers? Even if you’re not trying the models you’re eyeing up, you will still learn about what does and doesn’t suit you. I’ve looked up the New Zealand Harp Society, they look worth talking to, and they mention some local luthiers.
Putting harps on boxes is pretty normal. I’m 150 cm and have finally rented a harp that’s a bit too low for me, a Starfish Student, so I’ve stood it on one of those wooden laptop tray things you’re meant to use in bed, with folding legs etc., that was languishing in a cupboard. That gives me about 6cm,which is what I need. I’ve also figured out that an upturned wooden cutlery drawer would work for me. Starfish mentioned that it’s common to use upturned furniture drawers, which also gives you resonance from the wood. Camac harps are on the tall side, as I recall, so you probably won’t need much of a stand. I doubt you’d need one at all with the taller models.
(By the way, yes, I have heard a 34 string nylon harp with a good, full sound, Jon Letcher’s Silver Spear harps, but as far as I can tell, that’s less usual. Mind you, Dusty Strings harps are popular, and they’re often strung with nylon. I see those are available in New Zealand.)
I previously rented a Camac Hermine. I liked the sound of fluorocarbon strings, and when Mark Norris makes my harp next year it’ll have fluorocarbon (I’m vegetarian,which is the main reason). I didn’t like the tension, once I progressed past the beginner stage. The Hermine has very low tension, and in spots my fingers were practically falling off the strings. (Uneven string tension shouldn’t be happening, but I was renting from dodgy people at the time who didn’t maintain their harps, so I’m not sure whether it was the harp at fault there. ) Fluorocarbon doesn’t have to mean low tension, but I think it usually does with Camac. The Starfish Student is miles better than the Hermine, by the way. You pay more for import costs and for large companies. I’m getting a harp made by a local luthier, a one-man-business, so I am getting a much better harp for the money.
Camac are lovely, so could you email or ring them and ask for advice?
Well, hello there, beautiful! I hope you have many years of happiness together. My rental harp finally arrived on Monday after months of waiting, a beautiful walnut Starfish Student, and even though it has the sulks from being moved twice in one week and I have to tune it every day while it settles, I am so enamoured of it that I don’t mind. And that’s only a rental, it’s a shadow of the joy you must be feeling!
(Arggh, my fingertips are sore! I’d forgotten that will happen when you’re out of practice and the strings are a higher tension! I’m guessing it’s a case of little and often until they’re used to it again, and don’t play when my hands are cold.)
Owen – yep, it’s an old narrowboat. I’m not the one living there, it’s my friend who loaned me the Ardival Kilcoy.
Biagio – I just figured out that you can clip a tuner to the tuning key, funnily enough! It was after googling Snarks and harps to see how popular they are, and finding out that Dusty Strings has made tuning keys with Snarks built into them. It worked nicely, especially since I have now learned to switch it over from vib to mic for the top strings. So I’ll probably get another Snark. They’re adorable things, like little red aliens.
Sorted! I found a wooden laptop tray, the sort with folding legs, tucked away in the cupboard. So it even gets the extra resonance.
I need another tuner anyway, should I just get the Korg one everyone recommends, with a plug-in pick-up?
I’ve seen them! They look very nifty, but I don’t think they’re the best option for raising a 20lb harp by 2″. I asked Jewsons and they said I’d have to buy an 8′ sheet of timber and then cut it down, which is a bit silly for a 16″ x 16″ block.
The Starfish student harp is here! Lovely people at the Clarsach Society, and of course thanks to my friend for taking me. It’s just over a year old, walnut, looks and sounds very nice indeed. It feels great to play, too, and is so different from the harps I rented before (from very dodgy people). The cat is wandering around it, sniffing suspiciously at it and the case. Thankfully she never lays a paw on the instruments, and usually lies nearby to listen while I play.
For once in my life, I think I’ve found a harp that’s a bit short for me, at least with my usual stool (which is 38cm high, preferably with a decently padded cushion on top), so right now it is sitting on a couple of big heavy dictionaries, and I will need to fine-tune the height and then figure out what to put it on. Should I get Jewsons (local timber merchant) to cut me a block big enough for it to rest on, both upright and tilted? It’s looking like 2″ is the height I need to raise it by. I haven’t got it quite right yet, I’m getting a bit stiff and achy playing it, but it’s late and we’re going to bed soon, so I’ll fish out my various cushions and sort it out properly tomorrow.
James uses soft maple, which apparently looks darker than hard maple (good good) and I think is meant to sound warmer?
The Kilcoy comes up to the bottom of my ear. How does it work with stands, is the harp strapped in, so to speak, and then you tilt the whole thing? I might try an Ardival Rose at the next festival, if they have stands set up, to see if I can get comfortable with that size and shape of harp.
And yep, I know, I plan to make friends with the Kilcoy first and see where I am in a few months. I was thinking that I’ll delay sending it in for repair for a few weeks, otherwise I am harpless while we spend ten days at my partner’s next week. Unless we can figure out a spot to park the Starfish, but it’s a very small flat.
Considering how stressful it is if you merely have a situation such as renting a supposedly-new harp which turns out to need its ten year old bass wires replaced and all its levers regulated, I can’t even imagine how awful it is when you get serious damage like that.
Hopefully this photo will work! Link to the photo. I turned the reading lamp off in order not to have it shining too brightly in the photo, but it’s perfect for lighting the strings well. This should give you an idea of how I look sitting with a 22″ Kilcoy, being all of 4’11” tall. Though I think my partner was squatting on the floor in order to get an angle that hid my face, and it doesn’t come up quite that high on me. Do you reckon I’d be OK with a 27″ Folcharp on my lap? I’ve tried the method where you cross your ankles and hold it between your knees, and fibromyalgia meant that it just hurt, even with padding. The other question is whether I’d be able to cope with the added weight. The Kilcoy is 4.5lb and the weight isn’t a problem for me, it balances well and I think I could take extra weight if it were sitting well, but I’m not sure how much. James says that the lighter the harp, the brighter the sound, and I don’t like tinkly harps. So we’re probably talking about something in the region of 7lb.
I know it’s all about how the weight is distributed – the first time I went to the Edinburgh harp festival, I was looking at lap harps, which tend to be around the same weight as our tiny 6.5lb cat. The harp companies were probably startled to hear me muttering, “<i>That’s </i>not the same weight as the cat!” What does it tend to be like, wire or lap harp players for whom weight is a problem? Is there anything I could do to help spread the weight, such as a strap going around my hips?
Next, what can Folcharp owners tell me about them? Which size and wood did you get? What is the sound like? Generally, which wood do people recommend for someone wanting a warm sound and playing with fingerpads? He has some woods I don’t know much about, such as mulberry and American sycamore, plus he mentioned maple as being a warmer toned wood and I’ve generally heard that it’s a brighter toned wood, so perhaps it’s different for wire harps.
Let me guess, epic mould? Poor harp. And a mallet?!
The Kilcoy is adjusting to my partner’s flat, which is colder than mine. In other words, it was in fine fettle after we brought it over last night, and this morning the bass was sharp and the treble was flat. I’m sure it’ll get used to it.
This is a bit vague, but here’s what I remember of playing the pedal harp as someone who was probably smaller than your daughter is now.
I took up the harp at the age of twelve for two years. I was perhaps 4’10 and slightly built. My school was well off and owned harps, so I practised at school for perhaps a year, and then my mother rented one. The school was seriously into classical music, not folk at all, so I initially learned on a Pilgrim Clarsach, which is a lever harp that’s closer to a pedal harp in some ways (spacing, tension), as the idea was always to “move up” to pedal harp. Which I did, and I think the school harp was a full-size model. I was perfectly happy playing it and lugging it around the music department on its trolley in search of practice rooms. This might have been for six months, before my mother rented one which I suspect was on the smaller side, being an Erard.
Twenty-five years later I came to the Edinburgh harp festival to try out harps, and mostly looked at lever harps, having changed as a musician and realised that I want to stay with the lever harp. I went in my wheelchair and unfortunately everyone was too polite to suggest that I got out of it, which didn’t occur to me either having not touched a harp in quarter of a century, so the lever harps were surprisingly uncomfortable because I was sitting too high for them. The pedal harp I tried, however, was far more comfortable. The weight was between my knees far more than it was on my shoulder. I don’t think I was doing much with the pedals, that’s one thing I’d need to relearn, but I was happily playing away on it and getting on fine. No one has ever suggested to me that I’m too small for the pedal harp, and I’ve ended up a whopping 4’11. It’s possible that I was being steered towards smaller harps all the time and never realised, but between my school’s being well off and using that pedal harp in the orchestra, I doubt it was a petite one.
It does sound like your daughter may not be in a place for committing to the purchase of a pedal harp just yet, and that’s fine. The lever harp is a serious instrument, and you have a good one now. Maybe defer this decision for a year? One thing she could possibly try in the meantime is joining the percussion section in the orchestra, if they have space, and getting used to orchestral playing that way. I did that throughout my school years and loved it. Basic musicianship will get you started, and then you can more or less learn the rest on the job. I did have percussion lessons from the ages of 16-18, but I was the only one doing that, and the rest of the percussion section (mostly pianists) were fine.
How difficult do you reckon it would be to keep a small wire harp happy on a houseboat? What sort of maintenance could overcome that kind of problem? My guess is that she was doing OK with it, then stopped playing for a while due to injuries, and that’s when it sat about unattended and developed problems.
We brought the harp over to my partner’s last night, and the setup there is so much better than at my flat! He’s got one of those parent-and-child lamps by his coffee table, so the reading lamp part is in the perfect position for playing the harp on the sofa, with the music on the coffee table. I need really good lighting for playing the harp, especially with wire strings, and this is actually better than I ever managed at my flat. (Although my flat has a nice nook in my bedroom set aside for the lever harp with a spotlight clipped onto the bookcase behind it, which worked out very well once I swapped desks with my partner to give myself more space. Two days till the Starfish arrives!)
It’s also started holding its tuning better, to my surprise. I managed to get in a practice session after only a bit of tweak-tuning. Any idea why it’s finally settling? I might hold off a bit on sending it back to Ardival, which will cost a lot more in postage than the actual repair will, since I’m going to have to go through the tuning settling from scratch all over again when that happens. We’ll be at my partner’s for ten days next week instead of the usual long weekend, and I was going to bring the Starfish over, but honestly I’m not sure there would be space for it, so it might be better to have some quality time with the Kilcoy, if it continues to behave its little self.
Having a better tuner helps, too: it’s much easier with a wee Snark clipped onto the pillar than when I was using an app. I bought that Snark just before the previous, thoroughly damaged rental lever harp that I was scammed over went back to its thoroughly dodgy owners, so my partner promptly snaffled it for tuning his various dulcimers and bouzouki and such. It now lives at his flat, so I can use it for the Kilcoy. Should I get another Snark for the lever harp, or is there a better tuner I can get in the UK? I think I had to keep clipping it to the tuning pegs and moving it along with a lever harp, since the clip wasn’t wide enough to fit on the pillar. Is there anything with a clip that does fit, or do you just get used to moving it around on the tuning pegs?
Photos will be posted shortly!
I’m not planning to send it back to the houseboat! (Well, as far as you can say to a friend, “Thank you so much for lending me your harp, and on second thoughts everyone’s decided you’re not allowed to have it back.”) It wasn’t on salt water, unless there’s something they’re not telling me about Oxford canals. I realise that the idea of a harp on a houseboat is giving you the heebie-jeebies, but just out of curiosity, do you reckon a carbon fibre body harp would cope? That flat body design looks like it’d slot into odd corners rather niftily, and there’s very little spare space on a boat. Or should she just stick to the violin?
Not that I have a car, but I would never do that to a harp! Please tell me it isn’t common? I mean, the first thing I do on getting any musical instrument is to think about where it will be in relation to the windows and the radiators, including radiators on the other side of the wall. I learned this the hard way through my mother’s neglect of the beautiful family 1924 grand Bluthner piano leading to a split soundboard. She’d left it sitting in a nice sunny window and next to a radiator for twenty-five years, and then moved house. I came back from my first term at uni, sat down to play, and realised something was very, very wrong. *shudder* Cost a fortune to get the piano refurbished, and they left a problem on the F# above middle C.
I’ve just spoken to Alex at Ardival, who says the Kilcoy definitely sounds like it needs professional work, so here are my notes on sending it back to them. It’ll add £40 or so to the cost of repairing it, but it means I don’t have to wait months.
Recommended box size: 70 x 45 x 35, bubblewrap, then paper intestines, double-walled box. Menzies Distribution do the boxes.
Hey, crutches are good things! /steps off disability activism soapbox
Funnily enough, I don’t really like the sweeping glissandi style of harp music either. Growing up a pianist used to a fully chromatic instrument means I am already having to adapt a fair bit to playing lever harp (and I do realise that flipping levers all over the place to play Bach is slightly missing the point, but damnit, I love Bach, and lute suites sound awesome if you can play them on the harp. Whereas the idea of playing Chopin on the harp just seems wrong to me, it’s so pianistic), and yep, playing on a purely diatonic instrument is new to me, but I’m looking forward to learning more, and working with a small range is part of the challenge. My partner’s a mountain dulcimer player, after all, and those are principally diatonic, so we’ve both been learning more about modal music and so forth. He often remarks on how much easier it is to improvise and to arrange a piece on a diatonic instrument.
As for transposing, hah, it’s way easier than on the piano. One of the first pieces in Coupled Hands goes down to the F below middle C, and if you don’t have it, which the Kilcoy doesn’t, she suggests that you just play it all up a note, since that works for the notes involved. I’m already transcribing plenty of music onto MuseScore, I’m happy to keep doing that, and transposing is blissfully easy on that.
I did like that rant on James’ site. It also explained to me why lap harps tend towards tinkliness. His site is a delight in general.
Wow, I’ve missed some exciting posts! People offering me their harps: that’s really kind, though possibly not where I’m at just now.
I emailed Biagio, who got me talking to James of Folcharp, then spoke to Ardival, and we have realised why I am having to tune that Kilcoy all the time. Did I mention that the friend who loaned it to me lives on a houseboat? And that it turned up looking very sorry for itself, strings all slack, a few strings gone, a few more needing to be replaced, tuning pins rusted? I replaced the strings, thankfully a friend of mine makes chain maille jewellery and did a beautiful job on the toggles, but the tuning pins remain a problem. So Ardival are going to take it in when they can, take out the tuning pins, clean them thoroughly, put them back in so they’re tight enough. James from Folcharp recommends coating them with paraffin before they go back in, not sure what the general view on that is. I’m also not sure whether I could be doing all this myself. I mean, for starters, how can you do it without having to completely restring the harp?
After that, I’m told that it will be like a new harp in that the tuning will take a while to settle, four times a day to begin with and all that, but then it should settle properly and I shouldn’t have to be constantly tuning it. I tuned it two days ago for the first time in ages, twice in a row as recommended by Ardival, then the same yesterday, and yet again it was going out of tune when I’d barely started playing it. I don’t know how much of that is the tuning pin situation, and how much might be my technique, if I’m somehow yanking it out of tune by playing it, even though I think I’m playing gently. I know that you can play much more lightly using your fingernails, but I have never been able to stand having my nails anything other than as short as possible, and do like the sound perfectly well with fingertips, at least if it’s in tune!
It’s a relief to hear that wire harps are not meant to be this much of a nightmare, and that it’s not just me being incompetent. I am going to try to make friends with this harp, and reassess where I am once I’ve been playing it successfully for a few months. It may be that there’s a Folcharp in my future, or I might keep the Kilcoy. 19 strings is more restrictive with range, but easier for storage (my partner’s flat is pretty small and already crammed with dulcimers and such), tuning is quicker (I’m curious to see how big a deal it is once the harp is fixed), and I can fit it comfortably on my lap, whereas I’d run into problems with a larger, heavier harp.
Since I’d given up on it, my friend had been vaguely talking of taking it back, though I think she’ll be OK with me hanging onto it. However, she’s still living on a houseboat, and I’m wondering whether it would ever be a happy harp in such high humidity. I was then curious as to whether any harp would cope with living on a boat, did a hunt to see if there are affordable smallish carbon fibre harps around (Heartland are neither), and came across Hayden Harps. Does anyone know what they’re like? They look rather ideal for boating in terms of size and (hopefully) resistance to humidity, and if she has the money and is interested, I’ll let her know about them. It’s hard to tell from a video, but they didn’t sound as tinkly as is usual for that size.
