Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Nothing! And glad to have the time to relax. It’s also lets me spend more of my scant available practice time working on fundamentals that need some attention. When I have 20 minutes to sit at the harp, I might practice scales and thing crossings, the slow alternating notes that will hopefully resemble actual trills someday, or playing large chords and triad inversions, arpeggiated, rolled, and block.
I was asked about some Christmas music at a church I play at sometimes, but I didn’t get the parts in time to prepare it well so I declined, and I’m glad I gave myself the extra time.
At Indiana where I studied the humanities and dabbled in music, jazz studies majors all had to major in their primary instrument as well and give both a classical and jazz recital. I’m not sure if they had to give a classical senior recital, or just the junior recital and pass the upper divisional performance requirement. But at any rate they had to be able to play the instrument inside and out. When I heard their university jazz bands compared with those of programs that didn’t have such rigorous requirements, you could really hear the difference in terms of the players’ overall fluency on the instrument as well as the complexity of what they could improvise.
Not that difficulty is the end-all of jazz — in fact I think the trend to show off by cramming as many notes together as possible is a bad thing for the genre and especially for the audience — but if your ears and your imagination want to take you to Point X, and your chops can only get you to Point C, then that’s a problem.
I’m glad that I took lessons fairly early on my adult amateur path and had a lot of exposure to classical technique. I originally intended to play mostly for fun at home, but I’ve ended up playing some in a large ensemble that performs fairly difficult (grade 5-6 by the most common scale for the US) music and it has served me quite well. We all have our own limitations as far as time and resources, and I’ve had to work with my own as well at times, but some general training in technique will go a very long way if you can obtain it.
Yeah, I guess I got a bit riled up. Not anything in the thread itself of course, but it did touch on some larger issues that show a very ugly side of the classical music industry.
I think for classical harp, its history as a drawing room instrument probably played a significant role, and this certainly could have been helped by Marie Antoinette’s playing the instrument.
But I’ll detour here. For brass instruments, that is the common belief, which is one reason females had so often been dicriminated against as players of many instruments. The numbers of female musicians in American orchestras climbed dramatically once they began implementing auditions behind screens and conductors couldn’t assume that as females they could never properly play a trombone or percussion or you name it. Googling Abbie Conant and reading about the shameful treatment she received at the hands of an orchestra in Germany, having to take breathing tests to demonstrate her lung capacity, something a male had never been required to do, should send anybody with a conscience into a fit of anger. And just this year, a swarm of male conductors have made, and I won’t mince words, unmitigated asses out of themselves in interviews saying that women don’t have the strength or personality to be good conductors, that male players will be distracted by their beauty, and so on ad nauseum. Just the stupidist garbage spewing out of the mouths attached to their very empty heads. Rant over.
I was part of the “slow and steady” group. I rented two different lever harps for a year or two until I was pretty sure this wasn’t a brief fixation. I finally purchased a lever harp, a new Thormahlen. I did so mostly with a credit card, though I knew my cash flow well enough to know I wouldn’t be carrying the balance very long. But still, it wouldn’t have killed me to have saved up some more. For my pedal harp, I was more disciplined and saved up, while patiently looking at used harp listings and waiting until I’d achieved another long-term goal of getting my own place. Eventually, after a particularly good bonus at work, I had enough to buy one of a couple used harps that were advertised by the same person. I made a trip to look at and play them, and purchased a “gajillion” year old Venus in beautiful shape with a nice tone.
Not harp related, but one summer in college I worked as a catering waiter for the student union, which included a hotel and several meeting rooms. After one luncheon at which I served, a lady came up to me and commented how nice everything was. She then asked: “Do you have a summer job?” I’m not sure what reason she had ascribed to the fact that I’d just spent an hour carrying trays of food while wearing a cheap tux if it wasn’t for pay.
I also get that sensation if I’ve cut the nail too short, or sometimes if I’ve jammed something under the nail, or perhaps pulled the nail a bit too hard, maybe trying to pop a can top. I find putting a Band-Aid over the fingertip and nail for a day or two can helps keep me from aggravating it by pulling on it more. It usually heals very quickly, about as fast as nail grow (men’s nails grow more quickly than women’s, so your own rate my vary).
I have a Swanson cover and it is the best harp cover I’ve used. The ties in front let me get to whatever part of the column I need to hold onto (and it’s different loading versus unloading). It folds up easily when I take it off, instead of sprawling out on the floor, and the padding along the crown, neck, and kneeblock is very good. I can also grab the soundholes easily through the canvas to steady it.
I use a base cozy from Harp Couture so I don’t ding the bottom edge of the base setting it down. For short trips it’s probably all you need, though I like to use a column cover as well, since the car I usually use requires resting it on the column at an angle until the neck is past the gate, when I can put it on its side.
It seems reasonable for composers to mark the notes for glissandos, since those markings tell how the glissando should be played and sound, and are therefore part of the composition, as opposed to pedal change markings to assist the player. I usually see them in parentheses marked as a string of letters or the first octave in cues or note heads (except where the composer relies on software playback too much and hasn’t written for harp before, in which case It’s a three octave run of 64th notes).
I’ve only been playing in large ensemble a few years but have already found many printed markings not very useful and some incorrect (too early, too late, redundant, or missing), but leftover player markings have been problematic as well. I think it was last spring I played a piece with a prominent harp part, and the rental part had a player’s markings, in red ink to boot, with wrong pedal changes on a solo section. I can’t help but wonder how the last performance sounded.
PS: I’d forward them the email and give them a graceful exit opportunity, such as “If you believe there was a mistake in the original list…” It seems like you’re itching for a chance to hit the red self-destruct button on this gig and it seems wiser to keep things pleasant. If they come back next year you can turn the gig down at the start.
Tacye’s makes a good point, that it’s mostly a mechanism difference. The difference is largely the harp and how it’s played. Since I started playing pedal harp, I’ve been able to get a much larger, pedal harp type of sound out of my lever harp as well. This has, ironically, allowed me to play it more often where I’ve wanted a classical harp sound but didn’t need a pedal harp’s range or chromaticism, because it’s so much easier to take around.
The passenger seat is not a problem. I noticed today, however, driving on the interstate, that rear visibility in the model I got (2010) was quite an issue, especially the blind spots while changing lanes. I might exercise my 5-day rescission and go back to the drawing board. I live in an area where there is a lot of traffic on the streets and highways (Washington DC) so that is a concern for me. If your area has less stressful day-to-day driving conditions that would be less a concern.
Sherj, either an aggressive flute salesperson heard the word “Julliard” and smelled blood, or your child had a teacher with a gold and platinum obsession. Somebody was trying to take you for a ride, and not in the BMW you could have bought with $40,000.
But anyway back to the thread, I think you’re getting ahead of yourself. If you mean “doctor” as in a medical doctor in the US, I doubt you’ll find yourself with the time and need for a side job later in life, and your main priority right now should be getting an A in biochemistry, anatomy, and all the rest. Lots of lever harps have similar tones to pedal harps, especially if you play with the same technique. I’d suggest renting a lever harp for now and taking some lessons, and let the rest of the harp stuff sort itself out once you’ve learned to play.
