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Avital, I hope, if you do a youtube video of your song, you include the lyrics in Hebrew, and their English translation. I enjoyed the videos you posted – was that you playing the harp, with the flute player, for “Can’t help falling in love?”
I generally need my glasses to see the strings clearly. Lately, I’ve found that I can play just fine without them – the strings look fuzzy, but that doesn’t stop me from hitting them accurately. Playing without wearing glasses provides the advantage of not having to turn my head so much, and of not having to look downwards so much to see the strings – the strings can be more easily viewed using peripheral vision.
Another thing I do is to practice singing with the camera pointing at me, but not on. In this fashion, I sing to the camera, and become comfortable with its presence. I still require more than 40 takes sometimes to perform a song without obvious errors, in either playing or voice. With practicing with the camera pointing, the errors that occur when you record are not due to nervousness – they’re just errors. I just stay calm and keep going – I take my cue from professional actors I once worked with – they were filming for TV, and when they made a mistake, they just calmly proceeded again and again until they got it right (although I grant that they didn’t usually require 40 takes!)
I intersperse singing with improvisation of lines played on the harp – but I work to keep my attentional focus most strongly on my singing. I try to sing relatively accurately and expressively; I acknowledge that professional singers don’t have to be too concerned about competition from me! – yet I’m not aware of any other men out there singing with their harp as they play. Can someone post some youtube videos of men self-accompanying voice on harp?
Hi Deb,
This page has listings of harp circles (actually, chapters of the International Society of Folk Harpers and Craftsmen). Maybe this’ll be helpful.
http://www.folkharpsociety.org/pages/chapters.html
Zep
Sherri, you’re probably right, but its hard to know. This was the tune to the jewish prayer “Ain Kay-low-hey-nu.” It turns out it fits well with the changes to “I Got Rhythm” (assuming you just improvise over the bridge). Its a simple tune, but I like the one I ended coming up with better, which I’ll probably record eventually. I couldn’t see maybe offending someone out there completely unnecessarily. Then again, maybe I’m blowing this all out of proportion.
Lindsey, Thank you. I enjoyed your execution and fluency with that piece. I always liked that song. If you wanted to play around with it, you could alter aspects of the melody, or the timing of the melody, or the harmonic structure, the possibilities are endless.
I recently composed a jazz version of a sacred tune, but someone pointed out that some might find that offensive, so I used it as a starting point to create a tune that was harmonically similar, but you could never discern its melodic origins.
Here’s a little article about doing covers on Youtube. The whole issue seems far more complex than you’d ever have thought:
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/05/opinion-baio-criminal-creativity/
(you’ll have to paste the above into your URL line – I tried to read “Hester Blog” mentioned above about adding links, but, alas! it paradoxically doesn’t link to Hester’s Blog)
If you could add links, it would answer the question of how to add multiple videos to a post.
Zep
Sherri, That’s a Stoney End Esabelle cross-strung I’m playing. I bought it in the white – cheaper that way, and then just sanded it, applied danish oil as finish, and put pegs and strings on. If you view the video from youtube directly, you’ll see that I always provide information on the harp I’m playing, and the equipment used to make the recording. I advocate that folks always indicate the harp used in any given video, and I like the idea of revealing what consumer-level non-professional equipment you use for recording. Lastly, in the case of songs that I write, I generally provide the lyrics in the text portion of the youtube video. Zep
And here’s the traditional “Parting Glass,” but I rewrote the lyrics to make the character less dissolute.
Here’s another video. I would have placed multiple videos in the same post, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that.
Lili,
I think the problem you’d find with the inline chromatic is that, if the strings were spaced so that you could play them with the pads of your fingers, the octave would have to be more than 1.5 times the width of the octave your accustomed to on the diatonic harp (as you would now have 12, rather than the usual 7 strings comprising the octave).
Saul, since I read your past comments, I have been trying to minimize my looking at my hands as I play, and rather gaze out at an (during my practice, imaginary) audience.
I’ve spent some time yesterday observing videos of various professional harpist/singers – Deborah Henson Conant, Mary O’Hara, Orla Fallon, and various others.
Well, singer/songwriters on the harp must be truly rare – my work is the only material populating this thread!
I trust there will be more, eventually.
Patricia, thank you so much for drawing my attention to those performers – great players, with beautiful voices who I think, use the harp in a secondary, understated (but technically facile) way to accompany their voices.
