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Two cents from an amateur harpist so take it for what it is:
From a pure formatting standpoint, I assume your software will let you clean up the arpeggios towards the end at some point, to get the hooks away from the ledger lines and off of the note heads. A couple spots were hard to read and there was one place where the note was completely obscured. If that Andante is half note = 60, that section might be very difficult to play cleanly with much volume. If it’s based on the quarter note it will be more playable. If you want it to fly and be dramatic, there might be some chordal glissando options that would get the effect better and let the harpist really rip them. They could use pedals to run up and down pentatonic scales in those keys pretty easily and at a solid f or ff, though there might be issues getting all the pedals changed in time in the places where there is part of a beat between runs in different keys. The first movement to Pines of Rome has a lot of glissandi that change directions in tempo if you want to see how they can be notated.
137 and 139 could be written as glissandi since that’s probably how they’ll be played. I’d set out the first octave so the harpist can see the desired accidentals and write in the pedal markings as they see fit. Preprinted pedal charts seem prone to misprints. Some composers spell them out below or between the staffs, such as “C – D – E# – F – G – A -B#” though players usually have their own conventions for how and where to spell out pedal changes and will rewrite it to something they can read at a glance. In addition, even composers who write a lot for the harp (I won’t mention one in particular since he’s famous and still alive) often leave something out so I’m checking them against the printed notes anyway when I’m marking a part.
I’d probably use an A sharp to play the last note of 505. The b-flat will get cut short compared to the other notes when the player puts their finger back down to play the B natural. I think most people will mark that anyway so it’s not a big deal if there is a theory reason to have it written a B flat.
Also going out from the middle it’s a scale in either side. BCD and EFGA. Probably the most frequently used accidentals, B, C, E, and F, are in the center where they’re easiest to reach. And as the feet alternate they go up in fifths: E B F C G D A. Maybe something else would have worked as well, but the layout seems reasonable enough.
I’d suggest buying a few replacement strings from Vanderbilt music. For free they’ll include a set of anchors cut from leftover strings and you’ll be good to go for a couple years.
I think ensemble time should be spent working on musical expression and ensemble elements such as balance and blend. Players should be able to play their parts fairly cleanly before coming together. The areas they work on hopefully won’t be where individuals have problems playing, but where the group isn’t playing well together or needs to agree on things musically, such as how to play an attack together.
I wonder if Lyn’s purse theory has some validity. When I go out and am wearing a jacket, as I usually am at a concert, my phone is in the inside breast pocket. It only takes a second to turn it off and put it away, and another second to double check during the announcements before the performance (I always double check). A purse would make that much more difficult and keeps the phone out of sight and mind.
I also, however, have a much different view of my phone’s place in my life, compared to many people I know or see in public. I don’t think the phone’s purpose is to allow people to interrupt whatever I am doing at any moment, and I regularly let people go to voice mail. If I’m out for a walk or enjoying a coffee and the news at Starbucks, that’s what I’m doing and I’ll talk with them later. I might send a text saying that I am out and will call back in the evening. Consequently, I leave the phone on silent almost the entire day unless I am at home.
They used to have a girl in the voiceless band who played harp on some numbers. She had a mahogany Venus Diplomat and the parts sounded like real harp though they were usually small. I don’t know if she really played it but at least some of the band members can really play, if nothing else so it looks convincing on screen. One of them is interviewed at @http://www.adampknave.com/2011/04/04/an-exclusive-interview-with-glee-band-member-scott-henson/ and another at @http://www.adampknave.com/2011/03/31/an-exclusive-interview-with-glee-band-member-john-lock/ . The second was cast through the Musicians Institute of Hollywood so there met have been some desire for a musician. But some of the more part-timers, like the girl who hangs in the back on a violin and sounds like an entire studio string section? Who knows.
I chose my first harp based on the car I already had. I was getting a lever aro and wanted to make sure it would fit in the back seat of my Toyota Echo. I measured, checked advertised height etc., and when I narrowed down asked makers for full dimensions of models.
I no longer own a car, but my Thormahlen Cygnet can fit in the back seat of almost any car except for Mini Coopers and others with similarly tiny back seats. I use ZipCar when I need to drive. For my pedal harp, Iuse ZipCar again but have a much smaller choice of viable vehicles. Since they move vehicles around and they can age out of inventory, it’s a gamble. There might be a minivan or Ford Escape two blocks from my house, and a month later I need to go Four Metro stops to cram it into a Prius.
The only halfway amusing story I had is when a band member gave me a ride once. I knew he had a Rav4, but I didn’t know it would be full of stuff, including a large box of music and several metal Manhasset stands. I have no idea how I got it in.
In electric harp would give the added benefit of being able to practice silently, but it wouldn’t be terribly portable. I wouldn’t, for example, regularly take something that size on a bus or the Meteo unless I expected it to be empty at that time. In addition, being more expensive, you might be discouraged from taking places you might take a lap harp.
If the price isn’t as much an issue (it’s about the same price as a Silhouette in the US), you might also look at the Heartland Infinity. I think Morley sells those in the UK now. It has 36 strings and is a bit more compact than most lever harps that size, but being carbon fiber is very light and would survive a lot of situations (such as rain, hot sun, or a fall) that would be terrible for a wooden harp.
Very interesting. I don’t know if it would be a total replacement for my lovely wooden harp with its naturally antiqued (i.e., old but well-cared for) finish, but a harp I could carry up the stairs into a choir loft, where my pedal harp currently does not go, or quickly and easily load, would be nice. I’m absolutely curious how it will play and sound. The look isn’t everybody’s thing, but the smooth lines and obsidian aesthetic aren’t without merit.
I was at a performance abut a week ago, and somebody’s cellphone went off. It was on the old fashioned ringing sound, and because they ensemble was playing a trio by Ligeti, it took us all a few seconds to realize they ringing noise wasn’t coming from a performer.
Michael Daugherty’s “Niagara Falls” has a prominent harp part and might even be a harp feature piece, though not quite a solo piece. The harp part isn’t technically difficult, though the piece is rhythmically challenging for all involved, and counting the rests and getting the entrances right is hard. It would be quite difficult for many high school bands due to the rhythms (it’s classified Grade 6).
The third finger has much more strength when the little finger moves with it. This is harder in my left hand, since I have a ligament separation between the fingers and they don’t naturally move together like the do for most people (like the trick where you lower the little finger and the third involuntarily lowers itself too). I have to consciously move it. To help, I try to pretend they’re one big finger when I play.
I also have some issues with reaching certain intervals with the third finger, particularly a fourth (don’t even ask me to play an unbroken fifth!). I’m a but envious of some harpists who seem to have these superhumanly long third fingers. Mine isn’t terribly short, but compared to my fairly long first and second fingers it is. And because of the relative length of my other fingers, sometimes my second finger has to bend quite a bit to fit into a chord while the third is much straighter. It is tricky getting the same tone out of both fingers sometimes, like a 4 note chord with the dominant on the bottom.
My own voices sounds a bit like I’m underwater, and it sounds fairly loud in relation to other things. I don’t know if the earplugs interfere with the sound conduction through which we hear much of our own voices. You might experiment with using one of your amps as a monitor to hear your own voice while using plugs, and see if it helps to have it coming at you from another direction.
Lyn’s statement that nobody in the audience probably noticed anything could be quite true. I’ll share a story from my own experience. A couple of years ago, when I was still getting used to playing in public and had only had a pedal harp a year or so, a flutist in our band wanted to play Berlioz’s Trio of the Young Ishmaelites for a Christmas concert. In this piece, the flutes play a lot of long, sustained phrases, and the harp plays repeating triplets under them. It’s not too difficult (except for the opening measures, which are quite hard to time together and we cut most of them), though a few parts are a bit pedally. The main danger is that the flutes want to run off with the piece, since their parts barely move for most of it, and a tempo at which they feel quite comfortable can easily stress the harpist.
So along comes the performance, the ZOOM! they’re off. I butchered so many measures, and there were a few were I had to just pluck one or two strings while I regained my composure. To my credit, I kept playing even while it sounded like Charles Ives had transcribed our edition. Afterward, one member of the audience came up and said how it was his favorite piece and he really enjoyed the harp. One lesson is that the harp is seriously sexy and people will forgive almost anything a harpist does. But another is that a lot of people miss things we notice, and if you keep going, keep the tempo and rhythm, don’t act like you just killed somebody with your harp, and end well, they forget or at least forgive a lot.
Finally, while we have some more musical people in our audience who probably heard the mistakes, they can be pretty understanding. They know everybody has their moments, and also know that in many community groups, people have had varying training and experience and they’re holding down various other commitments while trying to fit in rehearsals and individual practice. They expect some effort and I wouldn’t like an amateur performance where they didn’t take it seriously at all, but the great thing about community music isn’t that they sound just like pros. It’s that they sound as good as they do given that they’re not professioanls. Our ensemble, while not as amazing as some community groups, is nevertheless quite good. And because we’re an open ensemble with no auditions, we take extra pride in how far we’ve come, the repertoire we play, and the fact that we play it fairly well.
I have a pair of attenuator plugs that I got from an audiologist. He took a mold of my ear so they’re custom made and fit extremely well. They’re designed to reduce all frequencies evently so that pitch isn’t distorted and can be purchased in two different amplitudes. I think I got 20db and the other option was 40db, which is more popular with those who work around heavily amplified music. I do notice that my own voice sounds distorted, though we usually hear it differently from how it sounds anyway, so I guess the natural sound of our own voice is arleady distorted. They were a little pricey but not prohibitive and they last a long time. I think I paid about $200 US.
At a flute event a couple of years ago an audiologist’s office also had some on display that are designed to go into any ear but still preserve the sound quite well while protecting the hearing. Many of the Alpine should be similar.
