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The problem with a technician replacing the felts and then regulating is that the felts will immediately begin compacting and throw off the regulation. Unless it is done by master technician Karen Rokos. She has the best felt ever. The felts should really be changed months before regulating if you want the regulation to last. If you want the felts to last as well, then you need a really strong supply of felt. I don’t know if she will reveal her source. I have also used bushing cloth from a piano supply house with success. Plastic over rubber can work well, but they can slip more easily. I wonder about using leather over rubber.
As I have frequently mentioned, I do not suppor column-loading the harp. It needs to lay flat on a springy surface so as not to vibrate. There used to be cars long enough to have the harp behind the back seat. If you load it base first, then you may be able to lay it flat and have one person seated next to the base. I used to fantasize about getting a used hearse, as they are quite long and have a lift, but apparently their mileage is very poor.
Perhaps you might consider getting a trunk and securing it to the top of the car? I don’t know if anyone has done that. To have four or more passengers and a harp may require a full-size van or small truck, or an enclosed pick-up truck.
As for column-loading, those of you who have been doing it the longest, have you had to have your harps necks replaced? My concern is torquing, when the harp is on the column and not attached to a frame or the side of a van, then all the vibration goes up the neck and into the knee-block, which has always been said to be the most vulnerable part of the harp, most needing support and protection. And, in case of an accident, what happens when a harp is on its column? I imagine it could be quite deadly to the passengers.
If you have to column load, try making a metal or wood frame for the back side of the harp if not both sides, put a thin padding on it and attach the harp strongly with straps. This frame could have rollers under it to slide in and out. But, that, too could pose a hazard. A well-padded frame under the column and along the side could be attached to the wall of a van. Again, it is more vulnerable in an accident than if laying down.
Lynne Aspnes may still have a wonderful wooden form for laying the harp in and sliding in the car, the best “tray” I’ve ever seen. It has hand holes along the sides, as I recall, and can be attached to a handle on the wheel-well of a station wagon with bungee cords to secure it.You can play harmonics with a wide dynamic range with practice and skill, and raising helps sustain them, which gives them more volume in terms of content and size. They can project extremely well. It is rare that you need a fortissimo harmonic, but doubling it with the note an octave higher takes care of that. You can also softly double a harmonic just to reinforce it, and guarantee the pitch is there in case you miss the node and get a knocking harmonic.
If you don’t place your hand exactly on the node of the harmonic, as you probably have learned, if you are a little too high or too low, you will get an incomplete, bony sound like knocking on the string. Not a good habit. A lot of harpists never get the hang of it, unfortunately. It helps if you are used to playing on or near the center of the string. If you are used to playing much lower on the strings, then the center is harder to suddenly locate. Looking for the top of where the string is stopped, the disc pin or post just before you play should help your eye divide the string in half so you land on the node. Practice doing that.You also adjust the angle of your fingers more sideways to play with the flesh. When you play at the very bottom of the string, there is a very noticable difference in tone quality from pres de la table, which is a good bit higher. It has a wooden nasal tone from the stiffness of the string, which is lost higher up. PDLT is like speaking in a French accent, where Guitaric and Plectric Sounds are like plugging your nostrils and speaking. Big difference. Again, ANYTIME the music says to play with the fingernail, it is Plectric Sounds and MUST be played at the bottom of the string. NOT in the middle of the string, or PDLT. Playing with the fingernail in the middle of the string just sounds obnoxious to me, like bad playing. Osian Ellis did it a lot, though, to get an accent, so in Britten, if you want to do it like him, do, but he used the corner of his finger, not the middle of the nail.
A student should learn to play in the best way from the start, if they have talent. That does not require torture or anything negative, just learning good position and finger action right away, instead of fumbling around and baby-stepping. If the student decides to pursue serious training, but then has to spend months or years correcting bad habits or acquiring good habits never learned, then too much valuable time has been wasted. It’s a very competitive world. And developing good practice habits along the way is also vital. Students grasp what they are able to, and some things take longer than others to assimilate, particularly with coordination. I probably said it before, but to assume a musical child will not ever pursue serious studies is to cut their legs off before they run. This doesn’t mean they have to practice their heads off, but they should learn to play well and learn high-quality music all along and not waste time. If you doubt me, just look at the competition repertoire for the American Harp Society competitions and see how difficult it is. It may be nearly impossible to suddenly catch up to those levels once the student is in high school. I know that I couldn’t. Unfortunately, competitions are not geared to students who start late.
Lyra did sell the part at one time. It’s possible they had the parts made for them, perhaps with permission from the publisher, as the copyist is the same as on some other parts.
You can leave out notes in the left hand that double other notes. If the chord is c-g-c-e, you can leave out the upper c so you can play 421, for the upper c sounds already as an overtone from the lower c. Otherwise, it’s just quite a work-out and that’s why the harpist often sits up front by the violin soloist.
You could safely mark the string temporarily with a white colored pencil, but never use any white out, as they contain solvents that can be absorbed into the string. The eye can naturally divide the string in half with practice. Just make sure when you look at the top of the string, you are looking at the actual top, which is shortened by levers or pedal discs when engaged.
To produce the harmonic, you only need to touch the string at the first node, the half-way point, and then play above it. You can touch the string on either side of the knuckle. Your teacher should be showing you how to do this. If you don’t have a teacher, get one.Excuuuuuussssssseee me, as Steve Martin used to say. There is NO room for a Montessori approach in the harp world. One cannot play it well by inventing one’s own technique as a child. That is wasting precious time. Not that a teacher needs to be harsh about it, but proper position must be learned FROM THE FIRST, and maintained. Too many harpists suffer from lax teachers, and have to struggle to learn how to play well in college or even later, for not having been shown good position and finger action, whatever the method used. Learning good habits from the start is essential and children are perfectly capable of doing so without tears. I have seen the exquisite playing of harpists who learned well from the start, and what a difference. Look at Heidi Lehwalder, learning to play from Lynne Palmer. Lucile Lawrence always took beginners for this reason.
And I am irritated by teachers who studied with great teachers but do not pass their instruction along to their own students. Fortunately, there are some teachers who can renovate a student’s playing in relatively short order. And my students have been so grateful for it. It makes life so much easier to be able to play well.Rather interesting. I love his rarely-performed Barcarolle. I would love to hear a recording of the Variations.
Well, the main issue is, when harpists use their tuner to tune, the first and second octave strings will sound flat. I am stretching less, but some, about 2.5 cents in the second octave, 5 in the first octave and 10 in 0 octave, give or take.
Lowering the bass strings can give murky depth, rather like using sour cream instead of creme fraiche.Equally memorable is the scene, I think it’s in Laurel and Hardy’s Saps at Sea, where Stan pulls his mattress off of his cot, and plays the wire strings underneath as a harp in a magnificent solo.
The movie about Catherine the Great starring Marlene Dietrich has an arrangement of Rubinstein’s music that features marvelous sounding harp parts.I have a stock of strings, so I only recently got into the ones that were breaking on high-humidity days. I save any strings that are not false, so I could replace them. Hopefully, I won’t have that problem on my pedal harp, but I have lost track of when I bought them so I can’t probably ask for replacements.
I listened to a harpist playing on Savarez strings recently and I finally figured out the main difference with their sound: they do not ring as long as other strings, I am pretty sure.They sound rather pleasant, somewhere between nylon and gut, but I do not want strings that ring less. If you are after what some call a “clean” sound, then they’re for you. For me, harps are for ringing. That’s what makes them a harp.
I will say, though, it seems like Pirastro has switched to tynex nylon, because their strings are not of the quality I was used to anymore. They’re not holding pitch as well, and not lasting as long. It’s very disappointing. And they are not responsive to customers.
Oh for the days of nice, fat strings with rich, warm tone. At least my harp is rich enough in tone that any string sounds good. But I have tried gut in the third octave, and it’s like putting a mute on the harp.It is possible that as a dealer, Don Henry was able to get permission from the publishers to sell parts and pay them a royalty. The excuse I get from publishers is that a part is what they call performable, so that if one bought all the individual parts, one could avoid renting. No one said they are not short sighted. We are all grateful he sold them, regardless of how he did it.
I think one can show editing by whiting out the actual notes, or showing the edits but not the music, so one can copy it.
Publishers allow excerpts with permission because something is omitted.
Nevertheless, there are no parts police, and publishers know all too well we must have them ahead of time.
