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Many blessings to you Sherry and I wish you success with your CD project! There are many joys and challenges along the way. Keep going, don’t stop! 🙂
All the best,
from (another) SherriHi Sheri!
No worries… all part of the learning! 🙂 My wire harp is actually a floor harp, but I might get a smaller lap wire harp in a year or two. Portability is nice. I’ve got a cart to move my harp around, even if I just want to go outside on a nice sunny day and play outside for a bit and work out a few arrangements… At the moment I load him on the cart and buckle him in, then go for a roll down the stairs. You can see some pics and read a bit about my harp here: http://www.sherrimatthew.com/harp.html.
Hot Cross Buns? 🙂 Don’t think I know that one. That’s ok. Variety is fun, if you can work it in. Might help to bring your technique up to speed, trying a bunch of different pieces. Do you think you might be headed for cláirseach eventually? I always like to see more people taking that instrument up and doing new stuff with it.
Hi Sheri! (from another Sherri),
Glad to hear you like the sound of the wire harp too! I’m a wire harp player (exclusively, don’t play nylon) but I’d like to make one gentle correction to your above comment “but are harder to play….very rough on your fingers!” Actually, wire harp is no harder to learn to play than nylon-strung when you’re starting out. It’s just a different technique is all. And it would indeed be hard on your fingers if all you did was play with your pads! So normally, we play with our nails. The strings are of course, spaced closer together to accommodate this.
I’ve written a tutorial about this on my website at: http://sherrimatthew.com/wordpress/. Please see the entry, “Wire Harp Technique: Playing with Nails” for a discussion of this. Also, wire harpist Ann Heymann has written two very accessible books for the beginner and they are what I learned on. Not hard at all! Please see:
http://www.clairseach.com for further info about her and her writings.For the original poster, there’s lots of options out there, Here’s one more for you to consider! Sheri does make a good point about starting on nylon and moving to wire. I did in fact do just that and I think it worked out well for me, because there was the cost issue to consider. However, I had to remain mindful of what my goals were the entire time and know when it was time to change – technique issues and so on. Hope this helps!
What a great idea! I’ll have to get some mirrors. A quick and easy way to start a harp orchestra!! LOL Thanx for posting! 🙂
Hi Janis,
Wow, Some nasty stuff. Why would they care, as long as you were sounding good? At the end of the day, that’s what it should be about, yes? Hope you got out of that toxic place, doesn’t do much for the musical spirit over the long haul.
Mirror harp! Could have a snazzy one built, with pretty glass inlay here and there 🙂
Hi Janis,
That’s why, when the Irish tradition presented itself, I just went with it. Didn’t worry about what everyone else was doing. Like you, I’ve been playing piano a long time too. My harp is a happy fit for me. Probably not the instrument of choice for most folks, but that was love at first sight (& sound!). It just sings and rings. Love my lefty wire harp! 🙂
And yes, why not give a switch to the left shoulder a try? Just for fun! Might work well for you!
Hi Alison,
Traditionally the Irish wire harp was always played on the left shoulder. Also I’m a lefty, so I had Triplett Harps build my Luna with left shoulder orientation (strings are on the right side of the neck). If you look at my profile photo of me playing my harp, you can see it was actually built that way, not the photo reversed (as some people have asked me!) And yes, it is very comfortable for me to play it that way. I don’t plan on taking up pedal harp and I arrange all my own material from sources, not studying repertoire, so it’s not an issue for me. The sharping blades are on the right side. I don’t do any teaching either so again, not too concerned about it. I do what is comfortable for me. I tried playing a regular nylon-strung harp once on the right shoulder and it was very difficult for me! My eyes kept crossing. 🙁
Hi Katy,
That’s it. My copy didn’t come with a CD. I used a pencil as I worked through the questions so I could erase any mistakes. If you buy the used copy on Amazon, no telling if the former owner wrote in it with a pen!
I remember having an 8″ x 11″ sheet of paper with the circle of fifths printed on it, that I folded in half to cover the answer key side as I went through the exercises, and I wrote down the really important gotta-remember-this notes on it so I had a reference bookmark to help me solve the tougher problems as I got deeper into the book. And that was good because I kept looking at my earlier notes all the time, so the material got imprinted on my brain with all the repetition.
I don’t remember any typos in the book either. If there were any errors there were like maybe one or two in the whole thing, and it was part of the fun to catch them!
Hey Tracey,
I hear you about needing somebody to actually show you the theory in practice and on the harp at that, but if I may recommend one book – it’s a workbook actually – I used it when I went back to school to finish my degree and I used the second volume in my independent study: no teacher. Very easy to work through and it’s self correcting. See if you can find this: it’s called Harmonic Materials in Tonal Music: A Programed Course, by Greg A Steinke. Not hard or pedantic like a lot of theory books. Just work your way through one self-teaching exercise at a time. My two cents anyway. Best of luck to you and hope this helps!
Hi Tacye,
Don’t want to hijack the thread but… would there be any playing problems on those instruments due to spacing issues? On the wire harps the strings are set a little closer together to accommodate nail playing. So I can see why Elisa would have mentioned proper articulation. I would think if the strings were further apart there might indeed be a problem with nails.
btw, I’m not familiar with Karen Marshalsay but I will go check her out!
Hi Tacye,
Thanks for your post… I don’t play pedal harp and I was unaware that it could even be played with nails. In the wire harp community, there’s a lot of emotion about this too but it runs the opposite way: “real” wire harpists play with nails!! I must admit I’m one of them, although I’ve experimented with brushing the strings with pads to see what kind of sound effects I can get this way. (I did write one tutorial blog on my site about playing with nails and nail care.)
But back to Elisa’s original post. What’s your student’s preferred repertoire? Primarily classical material or some folk? If the latter, as Tacye points out, Paraguayan and/or wire harp could be a musical path for her to take, if she really wants to stick with harp but hasn’t settled on a direction yet. I can understand you don’t want to lose a student but then you’d want to guide her towards something that in the long run would make the both of you happy and not stressed, if that helps.
Hi Rachael,
When Triplett Harps shipped my Luna from California to Vermont, they didn’t detune it. It arrived nicely in tune! 🙂Hi Mr. S,
I understand you play pedal harp? What pieces (composers) do you like to play most often? (I don’t play pedal harp myself). Do you play lever harp?
I’m not sure if this meets the definition of a false string, but on my wire harp the G above middle C is variable in quality depending on the humidity. For example, if I have to lower the tension to tune that string (because the humidity has changed), it will sometimes develop an unpleasant rattle. But if I need to raise the tension so it’s in tune, the slight buzz goes away. It shows on the tuner as being on pitch pretty consistantly, so I haven’t replaced the string. Also I checked the tuning pin and there didn’t seem to be any problems there, so I concluded it was the string beginning to show metal fatigue.
Hi there Mr. S,
I became active on the harpcolumn some time after the situation in Syria worsened, so I didn’t get to know you online but I followed your friends’ posts here with interest. May I say hello and wish you the best. I had wondered how you and your harps were doing and I hope you are able to escape and find a pleasant corner of the world at long last, to play your harps in peace.
Many blessings,
Sherri
