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I was curious why this thread was still going, then peeked in and whoah, it’s gone on to all kinds of cool stuff.
As far as keyboard instruments, the organ predates the harpsichord and piano quite a bit, with the ancient Greeks making water-powered organs from the first couple centuries AD. Ancient architect Vitruvius, who was born
Yup. Scammers get cashier’s checks by forging them, and sometimes the forgeries are very good, taking a while to catch, especially if they use all the numbers a valid check would use.
Pants only in the opera pit? I bet the box seats love that. Sorry, I couldn’t help but tease you for the double reading.
The original question wasn’t about sound resondating inside the column, but about sound coming off the soundboard and hitting/passing
I think of all the things that affect a harp’s sound, carving would be so low on the list to have an imperceptible effect if any at all. I think there might be other differences or subjective factors.
There might be a perceived effect, where we expect a harp with a certain appearance to sound a certain way, and that changes how perceive the sound and/or play the instrument. People might tend to play Salzedos, style 30s, etc. differently than they would play a style 23, a Venus classic, or one of those scroll-top baroque harps. Or, as has been demonstrated with things from instruments to wine, what we see and expect has a huge influence on what we hear/taste/perceive.
It could also be that if there is an expectation that a “modern-looking” harp should have a certain sound, then builders might build it to sound that way.
Also, since many of the highly carved harps out there are older, it’s possible that general differences people here are due to either the age of harps (i.e., maybe harps mellow with age).
Or perhaps there is a preference over time for harps to have a certain (brighter, louder, etc.) sound. So it could be that during the mid-20th century, when many of the sleeker-looking harp models were being built, there was a changing taste for what a harp should sound like and how they were being built.
If someone wanted to test this, they would need to come up with a way that the person playing the harp would not know which they were playing. For example, they might be blindfolded. Furthermore, anybody evaluating the sound would have to have no idea which they’re listening to. Finally, something more objective, like measuring frequencies etc. could be helpful to reduce human error or at least add a more objective way of evaluating the sound.
Ideally, it would be the same harp except for the column. As in the exact same instrument. This would be far from practical (I don’t really know if it’s possible without ruining the harp – maybe someone could temporarily attach some raised surfaces to simulate carving). So at least the harps should be identical in every way possible except for the column/carving. Exact same measurements for string lengths/gauges, soundbox, soundboard, as close to the same wood as possible, same age, etc. And there’s the big difficulty – a gazillion things go into a harp’s sound, including the performer and the audience. But I have major doubts the carving has any noticeable effect on the sound, beyond what we expect it to sound like when we play or hear it.
Yes, that’s another consideration. If the wood has a beautiful figure, I’d hate to cover it up. I see some harps with interesting grain in the columns
I love ebony harps and am thinking of it when I get a pedal harp. My big pause, which I’ve heard others share, is how dings could show up on ebony, assuming a kerchunk in the finish would reveal the constrating wood underneath. Being somewhat clumsy, I imagine my harp will get a ding now and then (i.e., first ding three seconds after I breathe on it), and I think a natural finish might end up being a safer option for me.
I played on a used straight soundboard Clio the Virginia Harp Center brought to the Mid-Atlantic festival this spring (not sure if it’s the one they still have on their web site), and really liked the tone it had. It was a very pretty sound and if I’d been on the market for a pedal harp I might have bought
A couple of years ago I learned the dirty secret that when a program, especially for a touring company, says “synthesizer,” it’s often not somebody playing particular parts on a keyboard, but rather a machine with an entire orchestral track digitally recorded onto it, and the player just taps a key to the conductor’s tempo over and over and the whole thing comes out. It could just be a box with a single button, but they make it a keyboard so it looks like an actual instrument.
I like Aquatintes. They have a lot of rolled chords on both hands, which are fun to play and nice to listen to. There are a couple places that puzzle my ear a bit, but I also enjoy the slightly unexpected directions they sometimes go musically.
I intend to switch in a year or two. I don’t necessarily feel limited by solo repertoire at this point – I think there’s a lot of interesting, challenging music out there for lever harp. Sometimes it takes some digging or advice from others. Since the instrument is used so much for beginners, there are a lot of arrangements out there that don’t do much for me. Not that I’m super-advanced or anything, but I like beginner-intermediate music to still sound like thought-out compositions.
I think my main reason for wanting to switch is for easier ensemble playing. I’d like to be more able to play chamber music without having to seek out pieces that have been arranged just for the harp. And I’m also eyeing some possible large ensemble playing of the harp at the community band/orchestra level.
Oh, and I hate flipping levers. Hate hate hate hate hate flipping levers. I can barely stand flipping the levers to get my harp from E-flat to C when I warm up, and sometimes I play my Grossi exercises in E-flat just to avoid flipping (plus many of them sound pretty cool when you do that).
