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It’s a matter of repertoire. There is no one better way.
You can’t really play the classical harp pieces using fingernails without having the pieces sound strange. The only pieces that work are pieces which assumes the melody to be consistently played on the right (or left).Many times in the classical repertoire (in the bigger pieces) the left and right hand fingerings intertwine within the melody line and you can’t carry out the tone od the melody consistently if one hand is playing with the tips and the other playing on the nails…
Also classical techniques like trills, large arpeggios, scales, harmonics are played on both hands. You can’t do all these with the fingertip/nail technique without having them sound really strange.
Agree with Lyn.
It really depends on what you want: lever or pedal, and going for it.
Compromising a pedal harp and settling for lever harp will probably bring disappointments in the future, if the intention is to eventually play on a pedal harp. I did this long time ago, ended up having to buy a completely new set of music to play on a lever harp.
Though both are harps, plucking on strings seems to be the only commonality. They are actually 2 different instruments with completely different repertoire.
It’s like wanting to play an organ but settling for a piano – never works that way, even though they are both playing on keyboards.
i used to play on an aoyama monarch. the sound is bright, but the harp centre of balance is not that great… it tips over too easily. looks beautiful though, gilded in gold.
there are many ways to stop a buzz… i encounter this problem myself once in a while and it seems not only you can work on placements, but also vary the hand position, or shape, or muffle in a couple of ways, or just change of fingering.
maybe you want to post a clip of that section and see if anyone can help find a solution to it?
on my harp (or maybe on any harp) the strings on the upper registers are the ones requiring more frequent tuning. usually the gut strings in the middle register (of my harp) hold quite well.
so maybe you could tune the middle registers with the tuner and tune by ear the rest on the upper until the upper strings tension stabilizes. it saves a lot of frustration having to retune all the time with a tuner… i guess its not a problem if you’re patient. for me it would just be eating up practice time.perhaps i should update. i videotaped and troubleshooted myself. i saw that it was a (very old) habit of mine that came back, and that’s about placements when playing arpeggios. fixed that and its fine now. 🙂
maybe you just need to get a teacher with a good eye to fix that french technique or return to a proper salzedo technique…?
not sure if it’s the tension itself that’s causing the problem, to a certain extent you do require a certain amout of tension to get the right tone produced. it could be the ability to release tension after producing the notes…
if you take a video and post it on youtube, maybe some of the experience harpists/teachers here can take a look and provide some feedback.
I am a guy with dark hair so I like it natural.
It fits better to my home as well. I have bright parkett floors so the harp looks as if it “grew” out from the floor in my living room 🙂
I use the korg as well without any pickup. It tunes everything pretty well except just the top 2 and bottom 2 strings. Top 2 are easy to be tuned by ear and the bottom 2 don’t disturb me that much so am happy with the korg.
Hi Jennifer, I think we might share the same problem, with nails growing to the edge of the fingers. So my enemy in harp playing has been loud passages with fingerings like 4-4321 or fast arpeggio passages 123432 -123432 on the R.H.
The “harsh” sound you mentioned, I would assume caused by the nail hitting same string as you pluck it?
– if this is the case, then the fix is to have proper technique, which is a rounded position. I have a weak 3rd finger on my R.H. and with the “long” nail, thus less fleshy tip, a very bad combination… but if i do it 100% right, i.e. with strengh in the finger then i don’t get this extra “hit” by the nail.I really appreciate it if anyone has any other tips on fixing this… (or a way to cut back the nail to expose a more “fleshy” fingertip… 🙁
Roslin Castle on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U23lfuzF1KE
