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I’m working on the Arran boat/Three Ships medley and it’s lovely! I’m doing my usual Christmas eve services. A couple of the choral pieces aren’t in lever friendly keys but it’s mostly sound effects so easy to fake.
I’ve never played one but I heard a Janet at a blind harp tasting several years ago and it was one that strongly resonated with me.
I have two different suggestions. Harpsicles are relatively cheap, have a decent tone and if the kids rough it up, it’s not too sad. I brought my yellow harpsicle into a Headstart classroom once and the kids raved about Miss Jennifer’s “Golden harp”!
Stoney End harps are a little more expensive but have a good tone and are ridiculously sturdy.My degree is in music therapy. I started as a violin player in elementary and came to college with only a public school music background. I started as a music ed major and switched to clarinet. I didn’t really feel like I was getting enough instruction in how to teach and failed miserably at my first attempt at conducting class. After talking with my adviser, I switched to music therapy and transferred to a school where it was offered. I took up harp during my internship (which is a story in and of itself). I moved back to Nebraska where MT jobs are a little thin on the ground. After starting my family, it was too hard for me personally to keep up with continuing ed requirements and I recently dropped my certification. However, I don’t regret having that education for a number of reasons. One is that it led me to harp. The other is that all of my children are on the autism spectrum and much of what I learned has helped me make their lives better to cope.
Congrats on the successful transplant and here’s to a successful recovery! My BIL is a transplant recipient due to CF so I know what a big deal this is!
Have you seen the one where a woman plays guns n roses on the ghuzeng?
You see narrow spacing more often on Latin style or historic harps where the technique is quite a bit different than pedal harp. Some celtic players also prefer narrow spacing though I had the chance to meet the Irish harp great Maire ni Chathasaigh once and she prefers standard spacing.
As far as I know there’s only one source, period, for that piece (look it up in the Harp Column archives!). The melody is ridiculously simple and hard to make sound pretty IMHO. The harpiest part is the intro, which I think is in an entirely different key than the main theme, if I remember right.
Lyon and Healy has a trade in/trade up program where you can apply most of the purchase price of your L & H lever harp toward the purchase of a pedal harp. There’s also the Certified Pre-Owned program.
Have you even taken lessons yet? It may be best to start with a rental instrument and work your way up from there. As far as lever harps go, there is a great deal of variety in sound and feel. If you have the opportunity, shop around. You may find something that you fall in love with. Barbara Brundage who posts here regularly has done a number of excellent arrangements of classical music for lever harp. She would be able to tell you how they differ from pedal arrangements.
Those are all very nice! Though I have to say that my favorite version of In the Bleak Midwinter is by Sunita Staneslow 😉
The Pop and Easy books are good. Popular Christmas Album by Mary Jean Zarick is fun and easy. If you tune in E flat, you’ll need to re-tune for Sleigh Ride. The International Christmas Book by Ortiz is a lot of fun. Several of them have religious texts but because they’re probably unfamiliar to your audience, they should be fine. RoJean Loucks has an Arrangement of White Christmas. I think Sylvia Woods has a four Christmas Songs books as well that has some of the fun popular tunes in it.
We always start with a couple of Eastern European pieces (don’t remember the names) because they sound vaguely Jewish and then move into O Come, O come. One of the pieces we do is Erev Shel Shoshanim which I only suggest if no one knows the words! It’s an erotic love song but sounds mysterious enough to put people in the right frame of mind for advent.
I started on a Brittany ( the celtic version of the Eve). It was all I could afford at the time and as I was taking it on room visits at the nursing home where I worked, the size was ideal. Having some musical knowledge, especially of chord theory and inversions, is preferable.
i don’t know what kind of harp you have but I have previously ordered from Vermont Strings http://www.robinsonsharpshop.com/aboutus.html. and was very pleased.
