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I’m one of those sad people who name practically everything they own (from my car to the fridge) so yes, her name is Eleni. Apologies to everyone who will be bored to death by what follows but you did ask so I’ll explain. My Sharpsicle is called Orphea (obviously the female version of Orpheus) so I wanted another Greek name to go with that (I’m passionate about Greece). Eleni is the Greek version of Helen (who was obviously extremely beautiful) and means ‘bright’. It is also a derivative of Eileen, which is the name of a much-loved and very musical aunt who died just a few weeks before the harp was completed so ‘bright, beautiful and a reminder of my aunt’ seemed like a good combination.
Jessica, I can’t wait to see your harp but you must be climbing the walls right now. What absolute torture to have taken delivery and still not be able to play! Will you be giving yours a name as well? (Every time I mention names I feel as if at least 90% of the people on the forum must cringe. I have convinced many non-harp-playing friends that it is traditional and virtually compulsory to name harps so that they won’t think I’m too crazy when I refer to her by her name.) She is also settling really well and her tuning hardly needs more than a tiny tweak each day now. I had never played with synthetic strings before so was a bit concerned that they might not be as great as I’d been told but they sound absolutely wonderful. I do have a tiny buzz on one string but I’ll be taking her to my tutor next week to see if I can do anything about that and if not will take her back to Tim for an adjustment (also a great advantage of using a local luthier).
Do you know when your strings and tuning key are likely to arrive? I will be checking in every day to see if there is more news here. I do hope you’re not kept waiting too long.
Jessica and Randal, please come over to this thread and tell us more about your new toys – http://www.harpcolumn.com/forums/coffee-break/posts/62693. I’m afraid I may have started it in the wrong place where no-one can find it so my harp is monopolising everything there and I’d love to hear more about everyone else’s new acquisitions.
Because of choosing a local luthier, I have also neatly avoided the problem of moving the new harp to a different climate (though, don’t forget, this is England, where the climate changes every day – if you count it as a change going from cold rain to warm rain and back again). It would also be interesting to compare how the harps settle in and progress and mature, having all been made/bought at the same time. Hope you’re all as excited with yours as I am with mine!
I promise to post more as soon as I’ve got them. Meantime, I don’t want to monopolise the thread – I know there were several other people expecting new harps and I’d love to see/hear about those too.
PS – I shouldn’t use the forum to advertise but as there’s so much interest in Eleni I just wanted to mention that Tim does ship abroad frequently, so his harps are available to anyone wherever they are. I promise I’ll try not to plug his work again but he doesn’t pay me commission and he definitely deserves a lot of credit for all the great comments here.
Oh boy! People are dreaming about my harp! Nothing extraordinary about the ammonite – I just went and bought it from a fossil shop. (Bit of local geography here – I live in Devon (UK) and the next county over is Dorset where a lot of the crumbling coast over the centuries has revealed all kinds of fossils going back many millions of years. One Dorset town in particular (Lyme Regis) is famous for being part of this ‘Jurassic Coast’ and is dripping in shops selling all manner of fossils (you can read all about the town in John Fowles’ ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ or Tracy Chevalier’s ‘Remarkable Creatures’) both locally found ones and others (like mine) from all over the globe). My original intention was to have the harp decorated with a slice of agate but when I started looking for that it suddenly dawned on me that the ammonite would look every bit as good and be a real piece of amazing history (possibly making my harp, or one bit of it at least, the oldest in the world!)
Tracey, now I’m even more intrigued – how much was that shop selling my harp for?
As long as it doesn’t bother you that’s all that matters. You can look on it as a bit of extra ‘personality’. As you rightly suggest, it could have happened as soon as you first moved it upstairs (the first thing I did with my new harp was drop the tuning key on the soundboard – no damage luckily!) and then you’d really be kicking yourself. As much as we like our harps to be objects of beauty, when it comes down to it, the only thing that really matters is the sound they make so don’t let the bump spoil your enjoyment of that.
Thanks again both. Yes, the four notes of the uke tuner wouldn’t be any use to me in the practical sense – I just want to try clipping it onto the harp to check that there’s somewhere it will clip. though using the sound holes on the back sounds like the answer.
Thank you Richard and Barbara! So much useful info there from both of you. My harps are both lever ones so it sounds as if I shouldn’t have too much trouble once I start experimenting a bit. I’m going to try my daughter’s clip-on (she plays the uke so it only tunes to four notes!) just to see what happens but I think I’ll probably be sticking with the one I’ve got but buying a good pickup. My reason for wanting the pickup is because without it I get that jumping around that Richard describes – is it safe for me to assume the pickup is the answer to that problem?
May I ask a related question? I use a Korg tuner (no pickup) but have been thinking about adding a pickup or getting a clip-on tuner but I really can’t see an obvious place on either of my harps to clip such a thing. Whereabouts on your instrument do you clip them? Am I being exceptionally thick?
God, that’s terrible! When you’ve waited a long time the temptation is strong to make the best of a bad job but this is way beyond a minor irritation. Don’t forget this harp should last you for life and you will hate yourself every time you look at that gouge, so a bit more of a wait while they get it fixed isn’t the end of the world (and they certainly should know how their carriers are treating their workmanship). I hope you’ll eventually come over here – http://www.harpcolumn.com/forums/coffee-break/posts/62693 to share pics and tell us all about your new acquisition.
Allison, you probably wouldn’t thank me if you could see the big smirk on my face. I’m just like a proud new mum. Tim is brilliant!
Good grief, you all sound so advanced! Just to make the other beginners feel a bit better here’s what I’m working on right now. Still trying to perfect by ear Farewell (from Sylvia Wood’s Teach Yourself to Play book). I’ve also been threatening to learn a slightly more advanced version (duet) of Pachelbel’s Canon now I have a few more strings to play with so I’m just getting started on that. My daily repertoire at the moment consists of Danny Boy, Planxty Irwin (simple S. woods version), Come to the Fair (this is an old song that my grandparents used to play on piano and sing to when I was a small child and which I had my tutor arrange for harp), several other ‘less favourites’ from the Sylvia Woods book as I plough towards the end. I’m also trying to figure out my own arrangement of The Rainbow Connection, which I’ve wanted to play for ages and I’m trying to familiarise myself with some of the pieces from ‘Classics for Pedal-Free Harp’ by Bird and Peters, as I hope to progress to some of those soon.
Adam, re your comment that nobody is really listening anyway, I’d say that the only people really listening that hard are the ones who are especially interested and find your playing more exciting than whatever else is going on. I must admit I’d probably be the one counting the number of repeats but that would be because I was fascinated by your harp and your playing and therefore quite happy to hear the same tune over and over again if it was played well. I suspect anyone who notices these things would be someone who is more appreciative than the general audience and probably wishing you’d repeat the song they’ve been trying for six months to figure out the chords to.
