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Hi Sherri
I am no expert, but I understand that the placement of the bray pin can give a range of sounds, from subtle purring to something more forthright. So “exacting” is actually a good thing because it embodies lots of possibilities. I also like a harp with brays set on the bass and the top sounding clear.I’ll post progress as it happens. We are also working on an ‘affordable’ harp using a metal neck and pillar with levers integrated into the design.
Hi Sherri
I am working with an engineer to explore all on/all off bray system. Talking to early music specialists Ardival, I’ve been told it can take 20-40 mins to set traditional brays really well, though they come off very quickly. We are looking at moving them further up the string, where the vibration is wider and tolerances aren’t so critical. My main interest is in an additional texture for folk dance music, so I am willing to forgo the extreme subtlety for instant ‘welly’. We will install it on a Thom “Elf 26” which has handy metal brackets.
I have set all my levers as brays before now for fun, but you can’t change key.
Hi Angela – I co-run a community harp group in England. We managed to get charitable grants to buy harps to hire out for a class, and it has lead to a great community of players locally. A dead-easy first experience we use is to set the levers to pentatonic (D & A levers if tuned to Eb) so everyone can do what they like and it all sounds great together. Our teacher Elizabeth also wrote and arranged a series of tunes for learners from scratch, available free from our website harpotunities.co.uk.
I’ve done talks on harps and love to bring in the Robert Ap Huw manuscripts (which look so beautiful), especially Paul Dooley’s playing of the muisic – almost like Philip Glass. I also talk about the Harp of Ur, our oldest known string instrument (4000BC). Ayub Ogada opened the Live 8 concert with a reproduction of the Harp of Ur, then played his modern nyatiti, which is almost identical.
