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Thanks, Biagio. I was a bit unsure about some of those things as well, though I’m not crossing him off just yet. Do you know if Folcharp have the usual problems with needing constant tuning?
Here’s where I am now. The County Kerry was a beautiful little thing, but it wasn’t right for me. I found it a bit tinkly, and I think I’m going to find all nylon-strung lap harps that way, since they don’t have the big body of a 34 string. I also didn’t realise it would need daily tuning, which for me is a dealbreaker. Plus I just spend time missing the extra range. A smaller version of an ordinary lever harp doesn’t seem to suit me. It did at least give me some experience of wrangling a 31″ harp, which is a bit awkward. I kept on messing around trying to find the right height stool for it. The strap was definitely a help, but I’ve a feeling it was slightly constricting to wear.
I am reconsidering wire, and I hope I’ve finally found the right luthier. After asking a couple of luthiers making lap harps whether they could be converted to wire (nope), and finding that the general practice for making harps is to use historic construction techniques which necessitate constant tuning, I stumbled across Dreamsinger Harps. I’ve started chatting with Morris, who is lovely. He’s using modern construction, including a birch/douglas fir laminated soundboard and companion stringing, and says the tuning is very stable indeed. My main problem with the Ardival harp was having to tune it all the time, followed by difficulty in seeing the strings (I think I need to experiment more with marker pens and get spot lighting set up) and finding the strings were a bit closer together (I’m using fingerpads, not nails). Dreamsinger harps look like they wouldn’t have the first and third problems, and for the second, I will make sure I have a strategically placed lamp. Morris recommends poplar, he says it’s the best option for sound and stability (cherry ends up too bright on his harps, apparently), and it looks a lovely golden colour in the photos.
Firstly, what can people tell me about Dreamsingers? I’m finding odd scraps of conversation in this forum and others, mostly good, the odd mention of strings breaking though.
Secondly, would a Druid (22 strings, going down to G below middle C) be a good range? I think it’d suit me better in terms of curling up on the sofa with it comfortably and storage (my partner moved to a lovely ground floor flat with a garden, but it’s smaller than his last one), but am I going to miss the range? One of the things I like about wire harps is that they’re a different enough instrument that you aren’t trying to play the same pieces or style, so you can manage a smaller range, and people do cope with the Kilcoy, after all. Although I keep on seeing the Kilcoy on sale second-hand, so either 19 strings is too limiting or I’m not the only one who can’t handle the tuning schedule. The Ardival is 22″ and 19 strings, I could sit cross-legged with it with my back against the sofa arm, and I could manage a slightly taller instrument. The County Kerry was 31″ and awkward, I had to mess around with stools and straps and such and never did get comfortable. (Possibly it would have been manageable eventually with some trick or other.) The Druid is 27″ and 22 strings, which I think would fit me well, and the Bard is 30″ and 26 strings. which I suspect wouldn’t. Or is it a matter of finding the right stick or what have you to support it? Messing around with stools for supporting the harp is a right nuisance and realistically I don’t think it’ll happen in my partner’s flat. I still haven’t quite worked out where we’ll store it anyway! But then those low notes do sound lovely. Is the Druid going to be horribly limiting as a wire harp, or is that fine for a range?
In full-sized lever harp news, I am finally at the top of the Clarsach Society waiting list, and my rental student Starfish will be meeting me on Monday. It’s a new one, in walnut by the sound of it, and they are charging me less because they borrow it back for a week for the Edinburgh harp festival, so I am very pleased!
There’s an old quilter’s trick to run the needle through your hair in order to lubricate it a bit, so that makes perfect sense to me.
I’ve got a disability that effectively makes you get old when you’re relatively <span style=”font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;”>young (although we tend to look much younger than we are, oddly), and apart from playing for a couple of years when I was twelve, I’m taking this up in my late thirties. At least I am going into it knowing what the issues are, and with no pretences of performing publicly, so I’m not even going to try lugging the harp about. I’m mostly bedbound these days, which is frustrating and boring beyond belief. Some days the only half-hour I spend out of bed is when I’m at the harp. Getting positioning right is absolutely crucial for me, I’ve faffed around no end with stools and cushions and such, and even took my folding storage stool to the Edinburgh harp festival with us, which is quite a feat when you’re a wheelchair user going by bus. </span>
As well as being 4’11, I’ve also got shoulder problems, so I have difficulty flipping the bass levers on some harps, especially if they’re stiff. I’m really glad I chose to rent initially, it’s given me the choice of shorter harps. The muscle pain hasn’t been as much of an issue as I expected, and by now I’ve trained myself to stop at the first sign of pain and be sensible with rest breaks anyway. (I learned this the hard way with quilting, and would end up wearing wrist splints for weeks on end after overdoing it only a few times.) The muscle fatigue is meaning that I have difficulty keeping my arms up, though, and I’m not very happy with leaning my forearm on the soundboard, I imagine it could cause problems. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out a solution with a teacher.
Lighting is so important! I need to be a bit picky about the size of the music, too, due to the eye problems, but that’s more an issue for when I’m arranging and printing out music myself. I certainly won’t be reading anything handwritten any time soon, and I’ve bought a few pieces in music fonts I can’t actually read.
Although I would love to know how to put in lever changes in MuseScore so that they look like the way Anne-Marie O’Farrell does it. Has anyone figured that out yet?
Edit: I think I may be onto something with that. You need to have Voice 4 available, which it usually is. Use Voice 4, make sure it’s a black undotted notehead (e.g. a crotchet or quaver), put it in place, and delete the rests. Make sure you have the Inspector panel visible, then select Voice 4 only and you can edit them as a group. The first thing you want to do is tick “stemless”. I am currently experimenting with different colours vs. differently shaped noteheads. I’ll get back to you later, but here is the one I’m working on at the moment.
I’d go for renting a pedal harp, but only if the family’s finances can support it, and if they will be able to manage buying a pedal harp eventually. If they’re never going to have eighteen grand to spare (is that about right? I’ve seen a few second-hand instruments around, but a lot of them seem to be either antiques needing oodles of restoration, or student models which are frustrating due to fewer strings and strings without discs at the bottom), then I’m not sure that studying an unaffordable instrument is the best option, not when you can do so much with the lever harp. I’d have a serious talk with the student about how they are enjoying the harp, what they are planning to do with it, and with the parents about what they can afford and where they see this going in the future.
Bernard Andres writes harp music in ways that would be frowned upon for other instruments, such as a key signature of two sharps and two flats together. He’s a highly acclaimed composer for harp. It makes it clear for the harpist and I’m all in favour of it. Anyone bothered by a B# should try playing the sort of piano music that runs to double flats and double sharps! I’ve studied music at school and university and if I want to see the harmony of the piece, a more harp-appropriate spelling isn’t going to deter me, any more than someone who’s studied English literature is going to get thrown by novels from two hundred years ago using “chuse” for “choose” and “shewn” for “shown”. (I was originally going to suggest Shakespearean English, but it’s not that great a change.)
I have a one year old County Kerry in maple arriving tomorrow! I am preparing for it by getting out songs that will fit, putting them into MuseScore, and transposing them into a key that will fit both my voice and the harp’s range, with a spot of rearrangement if necessary. The lute seems to have a good range for converting to a small harp, if you can handle the chromaticism. Dowland songs tend to be slow enough that you can get to the levers without fluster. Here’s Weepe You No More Sad Fountains, done on avoidance from the 89 bars of In Darknesse Let Mee Dwell.
What music can folks recommend for a 24 string harp, tenor C up to E, for an intermediate harpist? I’m thinking of tuning it in Ab, so that if I’m playing in F minor I’ve got the dominant at the bottom.
There are definitely ways of entering music in MuseScore which speed things up. I’ve just copied in a four page piece, transposed it up a fourth for lap harp, and put in a few changes, in a fairly short time. You use letters and numbers for entering notes, and since music is based on repetitive figures, you can do a lot of copying and pasting, including pasting a figure and then moving the pitch up or down a bit and perhaps changing a note or two. Although it threw a hissyfit when I copied a section which kept changing between 3/4 and 4/4 without putting the correct time signature changes into the blank measures before pasting into them, so I won’t do that again. It’s an Andres piece, so involves various less common techniques, different note heads and so forth, but to be honest I haven’t written them all out in detail as I know it well enough not to need “sons xylo” or “sons pinces” written over every single phrase it applies to. I still haven’t worked out how to put accented letters into the text, though.
Ideally I want something that’ll work on a 34 string harp too. If it’s clipped to the access holes on a bigger harp, surely it’s too far away to see while tuning the harp? How well do they work when clipped onto a tuning peg, do you have to move them often?
I do love the name Snark, and it’s a lot cheaper than the Korg clip-on tuner.
Aha, I’ve just spotted an advantage to using a pick-up plugged into my phone: if the cable is long enough, I can clip the pick-up to the soundholes and plonk my phone on the music stand where I can read it while I’m tuning.
I took a video demonstrating the tuning problems with that rental harp which shows what my tuning app is like. I am attempting to upload it to YouTube and will post it here when I’m done, and you can let me know what you think of my app and whether I’d be better off getting a pick-up that plugs into my phone, or a separate tuner.
Yes, a D# would be preferable. Are you giving the harpist enough time to change the D lever or pedal? Is it for lever or pedal harp?
Fascinating! I’m glad I didn’t go for a wire-strung harp from a maker who kiln-dries his wood and wanted to use steel strings, then.
If a lever harp is described as “fairly new”, how old would you expect it to be?
Could someone recommend a clip on pickup that would work with an Android phone? I have a Sony Xperia Z3 compact, and am currently using the G-strings app, but the needle wavers around too much in the bass. I’m in Scotland, and I’ve been playing a Starfish 34 string lever harp, although that’s a rental harp which is going back due to needing serious repair work. It’ll be a few months before I get another rental harp, which will hopefully be another Starfish, but meanwhile I have bought a County Kerry 24 string arriving next week. Where are you meant to clip it on?
Unfortunately, the rental harp turned up needing new bass strings and a lever regulation, the people renting it to me are being incredibly unpleasant, and I have been having to spend hours talking to consumer advice lines instead of actually being able to play the harp (which isn’t really playable since the levers are out of tune). I’m probably going to be harpless, or at least restricted to a lap harp if I can buy one, for the next few months. I will look at your recommendations when I have a harp to play them on, though!
My rental 34 string harp has fallen through in a particularly stressful way, and it may be a while until I can get another one. My Mark Norris won’t be made for another 16 months. So I am thinking of getting a more serious lap harp now, to tide me over until I can rent a decent harp, at which point it will become my weekend harp and live at my partner’s.
Has anyone tried the County Kerry, and if so, what do you think of it? What’s the tension like? I’d get it fully levered, Truitt levers (you can paint the Cs and Fs, right?), in cherry if I have a choice. It goes from low C up to E, 24 strings. It was my favourite lap harp when I went to the festival last year, but I hadn’t laid hands on a harp in twenty years and wasn’t sure what I needed at that point.
Nope, apparently the frame isn’t built for it. Wire may not be happening for me after all. I am now wondering about a Callan 26, perhaps with FCB levers, if it turns out that there’s space when my partner finds a new flat. Everyone says the range is more important than the levers, and I suppose I could stick to simpler repertoire. If it’s 30″ or so (I’ve enquired, along with asking what the string tension is like and how much it costs to go for fluorocarbon strings), I could possibly play it sitting on the sofa with my feet up and the harp resting on the sofa between my legs, like I did with the wee wire harp, although I don’t know if that’d work for a harp this size. It goes down to a C below middle C and has 26 strings, which I understand is a good range. How limiting is it to have levers only on FCB?
Edit (we keep postinng at the same time): the Zephyr you mentioned is $850, which would come to a lot with shipping and customs, so probably not. Pity, that would be a nice option.
