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Google “Wurlitzer Pedal Harp”. There are pictures of many styles there. Mine is a C, and has a straight board. I don’t think mine is as tall as what you’ve described. My soundboard is outlined by a conservative Greek Key design, not fancy. You will want to compare the number and inscription of your harp to the ones online.
Besides the standard styles and designs, there are example found that were made by the Wurlitzer workmen in their spare time during and after the work day. There are some interesting combinations of sizes and decorative embellishment. From what I’ve read, most of the survivors are wonderful instruments.
My C sounded great when it came to me from Howard Bryan’s workshop, and after its 2 year regulation, it’s even more fun to play.
The Wurlitzer Museum has a very nice website too. Happy reading!
Hi Deb! A mixed up key signature can sometimes be a way of indicating that a piece has been written in a mode that is different from what we expect to hear in a major or minor scale.
Modal music is frequently written in a traditional key signature with accidentals used to raise or lower specific notes, but if a composer is expressing sounds as he wishes to do so using a key signature of one sharp and one flat, there is no local, state, or federal law preventing him or her from doing so. This is more familiar in folk and jazz and generally not so familiar in Traditional Western music, but even there, some composers during the past 100 or so years did some of this notation experimenting too.
Keep in mind though that the composer you mentioned may also have had something different in mind.
I’m not familiar with “the backward slash” but hopefully someone else will fill us in on that. I’d like to know too.
Hi Cyndee- I am definitely senior to both of you, and I firmly believe that playing my harp keeps me moving better than if I weren’t playing.
I think you both are definitely on the right track in terms of using desirable sitting postures, input with physicians and chiropractors, and well timed breaks while playing, but I feel that the biggest plus for me while playing is the major rush of endorphins when I play. Thay come from the intensity of mastering something difficult as well as the overall wonderful response to the beauty of the music.
For me, it’s very important to breathe and relax through tension when my playing isn’t going as I want it to. Approaching difficult sections with a lot of adrenalin surging through my system will set the misery in my joints for certain!
Just by luck, I managed to wind up with two pedal harps, and I am playing the lighter strung of the two more right now than the tighter strung. You may want to consider harps from Howard Bryan or Carl Swanson. My harp is a Howard Bryan Wurlitzer, and both Howard and Carl use lighter stringing on older harps. Although that doesn’t directly impact on the legs and back, of course, you’d be surprised how much difference it makes to the overallexpenditure of energy while playin.
I love both pedal and lever, and I wouldn’t be easily discouraged from playing either.
OK- the alternate melody is Forest Green. If you google it you can hear it played on an organ. MUCH better for lever harp. If you have to play the more familiar melody, maybe you can get away with lots of octaves and not too many thirds, but it really is just not a good fit no. Matter what you do.
Was just thinking after seeing Andy’s post- there is a second melody for “O Little Town…..”
If your Music Director is looking for the lyrics, you could play the alternate melody. Of course you’d have to play it for him if he weren’t familiar with it. I’ll do a search and see if I can find it.
The problem with playing something very familiar is that it can wind up sounding very wrong if you’re not playing the chromatic notes your listeners expect to hear.
Basel, If you could only know how grateful we are to see your post! Please realize that you are thought of and prayed for often, and it is our fondest hope that you remain safe in body and steadfast in spirit.
You are a harpist and musician, and harpists and musicians practice. It is what we do to further our ownership of our music, seek domination over what is most difficult, pursue what we must to refine what remains awkward, explore what is needed to bring our art to its highest state.
In music one constantly balances reality with hope. For myself, I started playing the harp 62 years too late, but still, almost every time I play I find something a little easier for my fingers, I hear something a little closer to what I’m hoping for, I look at something and see something I hadn’t seen before.
The harp and its music are part of who you are. They will be with you wherever you go. Play, practice and let your music take you forward.
When you can, please let us know if there is anything we can do where we are to help you now. You are still part of all of us, and I, and I’m sure many more of us will do whatever we can.
I’ve googled this question and received conflicting responses. Does Burgundy sell lever gut?
It makes me nervous when I worry about getting the perfect strings for the Wurlitzer.
Hi Briggsie- Did you have your harp regulated, or regulate it yourself, after you changed the strings?
I had my Wurlitzer regulated in early August, and as much as I loved it before, I can’t get enough time in on it now, it sounds and feels so great.
When the time comes I will be using Bow lever guage (it’s a Howard Bryan harp), so it’s nice to hear that you’re happy with the pedal guage Bows.
Briggsie, the Taurus X is basically the same body type as the Flex, and the price is very close to the Flex basic model.I can’t say enough good things about the Flex- comfortable, safe and lots and lots of room. Actually when we were looking, the Flex was a little easier to load than the Taurus X.
Interesting point, Deb. I am distinguishing between printed music and Traditional music that is played without written notes.
I love all of the musics you mentioned. I think Janet Harbison and Grainne and in fact all of the Scottish and Irish and the rest of the Celtic styles are Heavenly. But one of the wonderful things about them is that every time they are played they can and probably should be a little different in some way from every other time they’ve ever been played.
Almost every book of arrangements of traditional music I’ve ever looked at, quite a few, will even say that the notes that are written are not exactly what the arranger plays. So the idea of the written arrangement of something that is actually meant to be played without written notes is yet another different, wonderful style of style of harp music.
What I’m looking for is a subgroup of lever music, and you and Gretchen and Paul have described ideas that are helping me clarify in my own mind what it is that I’m thinking of.
Hi Gretchen! Actually I’m looking for pieces that are not fun to play and are moderately to quite difficult.
One of my harp issues is that my brain can play music about eight years ahead of my fingers, so my practice pieces are very (very) basic but my interest for study music is advanced. I have a nice collection of simple to play pieces that I can execute reasonably well, and I’ve done some original pieces and arrangements that I’m proud of but when I curl up with a piece to analyze, I’m looking for something like what Paul had mentioned.
Sorry I wasn’t clear about that! I do dearly love Frank Voltz’s music, by the way!
Wow- The first time I’ve ever been called out on a public harp forum!!!
You have made a shrewd guess, but as you know I’m blessed by owning one of those absolutely astounding Thormahlen Serenades that sound Heavenly, even in the toughest situations, so I just didn’t feel as though I could convince myself that I NEEDED the Koa Swan just now, but as far as harps are concerned, I definitely never say “Never”, especially about a Thormahlen.
Actually, the harp that is being fashioned as we speak hit me upside the head from a somewhat different direction at Somerset 2011, and then I thought and brooded about it for one whole year before I even considered making that thought a reality. When I first “met” it, I thought it was amazing, but I didn’t think I needed it, then after I realized that I needed it, I learned that I couldn’t have it.
So it wasn’t until this year at Somerset 2012 that I became aware that I did need it, and I could have it, and so sometime in September, it will be here.
And when it comes I will describe it to you. I will tell you now, though, that it is the first time a harp ever ambushed me. I heard other posters here talk about that happening, but I was totally shocked when I had the experience myself. But it’s kind of fun.
SO—————- i’ll be seeing you mid September!
First of all, many happy returns of that wonderful day when your beautiful Concertino arrived, Kay.
I was just laughing at myself yesterday at my lesson. It has taken me MUCH longer than I had originally thought it would to get as far as I am, but I am SO glad I stuck it out.
Just in the last month or so I’ve been able for the first time to generalize more of the technique I’ve been working on to what I’m actually playing, and needless to say, it makes the experience of practicing and playing so much more fun.
The only problem now is that I want to buy practically every piece I hear to see how fast I can learn it!
BB PLEASE don’t doubt yourself! The harp is so very wonderful that one wishes to start in an instant!
I will soon be getting the last harp I will ever “need”, and after five years of lessons, it took me a year to be sure that it was all I expected it to be.
You want to play and you love the instrument but there are things you will learn that you may not be thinking of now that may change what you are thinking now to something different.
There are SO many kinds of wonderful harps, and the more that you learn, the better the choice you can make.
Don’t doubt the depth of your desire to play this wonderful instrument. Just be sure you are taking all the time you need to make the best possible choice for you!
