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HELL NO! I’m Londoner and & no way would I take a pedal harp on public transport. It would be far too stressful & risky an experience. On busses, it would simply be impossible/not allowed. On the tube (subway), I would be terrified to do so for the following reasons: not all stations have proper disabled access so you can’t use those anyway, rush hour is brutal and too crowded in ANY city for a harp & people at rush hour (& in cities in general) are incredibly oblivious to their surroundings, trains often have gaps/aren’t level with the platform & the doors close quickly & violently.. I could go on but I think you get the idea.
As for walking it down the street, Boston has a lot of cobbles so it’s easier said than done. Also, there’s the whole crowded streets, oblivious people rushing everywhere etc. In some situations it’s feasible though.
I started a similar(ish) thread here: http://musicstand.harpcolumn.com/forums/performing/posts/60628 about the high cost and lack of practicality of running a car in the city. Using zipcars & other car rental services was suggested, as outside of harping, it makes little sense to drive anywhere.
At my conservatoire, if you need to transport a harp for part of your course, they will often do it for you or at least cover the costs of doing so. I’m sure it’s the same at most music colleges. However, I assume as you’re looking at Berklee, that you’ll end up playing a lot of gigs outside of your curriculum which you’ll have to fund.
Ultimately, I take taxis everywhere & find that most efficient. You don’t have to worry about parking, they pull up straight to your door + you’ll always have someone to help you move the harp.
Hope this was helpful!My vocal coach films every single lesson & gives it to me on a disk which is incredibly helpful as it’s easy for me to go back & look at certain exercises or pieces of music covered. I found it so helpful that I film myself practicing all my instruments to catch out any bad habits that need work. With voice however, the camera doesn’t need to focus in on any fingerings or the like. It’s much harder to set up a camera angle that gets a clear shot of both hands (not to mention feet) when harping, so unless you’re moving the camera & adjusting the zoom a lot, which is fairly intrusive to the lesson flow, the usefulness of filming an entire harp lesson is somewhat limited by comparison. My harp teacher has filmed me occasionally though, just on her phone doing a particular exercise in the correct way, then emails it to me so I have a reference.
I have to admit though, every time I use tech in a lesson, despite it’s usefulness it can also get quite distracting, fiddling with settings & the like. I’ve ended up on many tangents with my teacher about using different apps, which are all great but it does cut into actual playing time.
Amplitube is a brilliant app! If you have an ipad it’s probably the best option for fiddling with effects on the harp. Tony, if you like amplitube you should try out Ampkit; it’s the same concept but with far more by the way of possibilities & variety. It’s become an essential tool for me when performing live.
I don’t own either of the harps you mentioned but I have played around with them before & though it makes a little noise, it’s not enough to really annoy anyone unless you’re being really aggressive with it, much the same as an unplugged electric guitar. You won’t be able to plug headphones directly into it; you could use an amp with a headphone output or if you want to play along with a cd you can plug into the mic input on your computer & listen to both your playing and the cd through that. A karaoke machine would also do the job.
I strongly agree with the statements above. High heels make pedaling so much easier. I really struggle doing anything fast or complex without a small heel; you can pivot your foot really quickly and easily & because you have leverage you barely need to apply any pressure to the pedals. I wear heels daily but if you’re inexperienced with heels, you don’t have to walk in them so they just need to fit well & you’ll be fine.
Also, aesthetically it looks SO much better. Why wear boring ballet flats, especially if you’re in formal dress, when you can wear an incredible pair of heels?!
I’ve tried a variety of condenser & contact mics for amplifying my LH Style 30 & by far my favourite is the Dusty Strings Harp Pickup: http://manufacturing.dustystrings.com/instrumentbuilding/harps/amplification/pedalharppickup/tabid/909/Default.aspx It picks up the full range of the harp wonderfully as it’s basically 4 separate contact mics down the soundboard combined into one output. Ergo, you don’t loose out on the attack of the bass or ringing of the upper octaves whereas with many pickups you’re forced to pick one. You also don’t have the issue of worrying about mic placement.
It can only be used on a harp though so if your church is looking for something more versatile then I’d opt for a condenser mic. The Shure KSM137 is the best I’ve had experience with & it’s little brother the SM137, isn’t too shabby either. The KSM137 is I believe marketed as an orchestra microphone so it should be more than adequate for playing in church. For the purposes I need amplification for, pickups make far more sense than a freestanding microphone but if I were to go that route I’d definitely opt for the KSM137. Shure microphones in general are incredibly resilient in live situations.
Hope this was helpful!I’d youtube videos on how bassists achieve slap bass & then take what you will from it to apply to the harp. I play bass as well as harp & apart from using different hands the method is much the same. It’s all about the thumb & rotating the wrist to slap it down on the strings (this will hurt a lot until you’re used to it); as stated by others before it’s more a way to create a particular sound while muffling the strings rather than to sound a note itself like you would on bass. The main difference is that you’ll have to use your other fingers to dampen other strings while you’re bringing your thumb down, though depending on what kind of music/effect you’re looking for this may not be necessary. Hope this made sense & was of some help.
Yes, yes and yes! My ipad is the single greatest music accessory I have ever purchased. It’s like the ultimate notebook for a musician. I couldn’t imagine going without it now I have it & not just for saving space on carrying a tuner & a metronome.
If I’m just doing some practice recordings, I use the soundcloud app (really simple, just press the big orange button to start & again to stop) and upload it so then I can link it to teachers/collaborators etc easily. For getting down ideas, I use garage band. I use Virtuoso, which is a piano app, to help complete music theory/composition work while commuting.
It also saves a ton of space when gigging. Apps like forScore & Tonara I use to keep, annotate & edit (so the page turns, or screen taps in this case, are in a better place) sheet music. For those of you who use effects pedals, you’ll know buying lots of pedals individually is expensive & they’re a pain to carry around. I have pretty much every effect I could possibly want on the apps AmpKit & Amplitube, which I connect to instruments using the Apogee Jam. Also, Tonara listens to you play & shows you where you are in the music. A limited library of music is available & nothing for harp but playing some of the piano music on it is pretty cool.
However, the best music features on the ipad in my opinion, are the synthesizers you can download. They are nothing short of incredible & keep me occupied for hours, these aren’t apps that are just toys but serious instruments. Korg has made ipad versions of some of there best analogue synths, such as iMS-20, iKaossilator, iELECTRIBE & iPolysix. Yamaha has created an app of their tenori-on which costs in excess of a grand, whereas the app TNR-i, costs about £12. There are also lots of great free synths & drum machines like Alchemy, Launchkey & DM1. You can record these all into the ipad & bounce them to garage band & create some crazy stuff.
As for your question about photoshop, I believe Adobo has made a version for ipad & a quick google search would probably list you some other good apps for graphics editing. I only have some of the more basic photo editing & sketching apps, such as iPhoto & Skitch. My other job is that of a make up artist & I find it incredibly easy & convenient drawing face charts on my ipad so I’m sure you’ll be able to find something for your purpose.
Basically, there’s no shortage of apps & uses for the ipad & I’m permanently attatched to mine. So my advice would be, GET IT.
Ok, I’m done.
http://shadowshecries.tumblr.com/
I post the odd photo here & there to do with harping but what I write about tends to invoke just about anything in the arts that I feel like commenting on.Thanks for all the ideas! I’ll have to look into zipcars & work out all the costs. Playing more in more commercial situations has crossed my mind & that’s definitely something I’ll be up to doing. Finding clients will be the difficult part so it’s just down to stepping up the networking now I guess.
I must admit dating someone with a harp car has crossed my mind too & would be kind of perfect, but the only people I know currently who own them are married & have kids to shuttle around. So I’ll just have to keep looking haha.
I’m in the process of making a few custom ones myself, I was just hoping there were some with slightly more bulk out there beyond the solid colours. As I don’t already possess the materials or the time for that matter, to make a more resilient one.
I used to mic up my harp without a pickup but in that scenario I’d definitely opt for a PA system over an amplifier. I would never bring my own though & would just use what the venue had to offer & where the mics went would be dictated by the acoustics of where I was playing. Ultimately I find using pickups much easier & less fussy to create the sound I want. The Dusty Strings harp pickup is great because it has detailed instructions (a touch overly complicated imo) of where to place it so you shouldn’t hear the pedals. Also it is built specifically for the harp so it contains 4 different contact mics of different sizes connected to a thin rod running down the inside of the soundboard (so you don’t hear any wires moving about). These all go into a single jack output which you can secure to the inside of the harp, drilling a hole into your baby isn’t necessary like shown in the images. I’ve used a lot of pickups & this is by far the most effective one I’ve come across that doesn’t require lots of unsightly duct tape everywhere.
http://manufacturing.dustystrings.com/instrumentbuilding/harps/amplification/pedalharppickup/tabid/909/Default.aspxDon’t be alarmed by the superglue either. I found a bit of blu-tack/putty works just fine to secure the mics, like you would with any other pickup.
