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Are you keeping the back of your hands aligned with your forearms, not turning your wrists in any direction, so your wrists stay relaxed and in a neutral position? Are you keeping your elbows in a relaxed and natural position, not too low and not too high, to help maintain the alignment of your hands and arms? Are you relaxing your fingers between notes? Are you keeping your shoulders dropped and relaxed? Are you taking the weight of the harp on your knee, so you have complete freedom of movement in your back? Do you have the harp at a slight angle in front of you, so you can sit up straight and not lean to the left?
I know it’s a lot of questions, but I see a lot of harpists exhibiting these issues.
How’s your technique? Are you keeping the back of your hand aligned with your forearm, not bent in any direction, so your wrist is relaxed? Are your elbows in a natural, relaxed position, neither too high nor too low, so your hand alignment is maintained? Are your shoulders relaxed and dropped, and not hunched up? Are you resting the weight of the harp on your knee, so you have complete freedom of movement in your back? Are you keeping the harp at a slight angle in front of you, so you don’t have to lean to the left?
A lot of questions, I know, but I’ve seen a LOT of harpists with these very basic issues!
The pedal springs can be adjusted, within limits, but that can also open a Pandora’s Box of other problems.
How does the action respond to the pedals? Quick? Sluggish?
How old/tall is your daughter?How old is the harp, then? Ideally. bass wires should be changed every 2 years. They have a limited life span, and being in humid or polluted air can shorten it. If the strings are rusty, they are probably also dead, and should be changed.
It’s on IMSLP if you want to take a look:
https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/5/59/IMSLP20965-PMLP48602-Caplet_Conte_Fantastique_score.pdfYes, Four Seasons is still in business. I’ve had no problem ordering several covers from them. They did a great job making both a column cover and a padded cover to fit my scroll-top Erard.
Sam Pratt said the distance for a half step was 1/18 of the sounding string length. A critical point is to make the calculation for the 1/2 step from flat to natural, using the flat string length, then calculate again from natural to sharp using the natural string length. I have a Schimmeyer harp, which has some interesting features, but he used the same distance for natural to sharp as for flat to natural, so a lot of the instrument is useless in sharps – way too sharp.
Hope I explained this in a way that makes sense?It appears to have hooks above the guide pins. This is an indication to me that it was never a playable instrument.
