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There are several issues here – one is obviously how you treat the harp. There are instruments over 200 years old in lovely playing order (after attention!), but are not what you would think of as sturdy. With lever harps especially there is the issue of these ingenious makers who keep inventing improvements. A harp of 30-40 years old may be just as good as it always was, but won’t have the snazzy new levers or whatever.
What is going off with the Heartland? I have just sent a Pilgrim off to have a going over at 27 years old and then assume it will work as well as it ever did.
I do this with gut – buy both lever and pedal gauge Cs and Fs for the colour but usually string harps that need lever gut with pedal gut in a different position. I don’t want to buy or keep more strings than I need to.
There are two aspects to tension. What a harpist calls tension is often how hard you can/need to pull on the strings – so a very responsive harp will be perceived as lower tension even thought the pull on the strings between tuning peg and soundboard, which a physicist calls tension, is the same.
For a given pitch the physical tension will depend on the length and mass of the string. If you have two harps of different sizes but the same strings the one with longer strings will need the higher tension to pull each string to pitch.
Also, a more massive string will need more tension to bring it to a given pitch. Mass (or more precisely mass for a given length) of string can be altered in two main ways. Firstly by changing the thickness of the string. Concert gut is thicker than lever gut so higher tension. Similarly concert fluorocarbon is thicker than lever fluorocarbon and higer tension. Different materials also have different densities so changing a string from nylon to one *of the same thickness* in the more dense fluorocarbon will increase the tension. However, harpists usually don’t buy strings by thickness and if you buy a middle C string in nylon and one in fluorocarbon the nylon one will be thicker. Any harpbuilder who wanted to could make high, low or medium tension harps strung in any of the three materials mentioned.
I was told sometimes levers squeek because of friction with the string and the answer is the teeniest bit of oil on the string – the suggestion was to rub your fingers on the side of your nose and then on the string where the lever contacts. You may wish to use an alternative source of barely greasy fingers!
You don’t look at your pedals – run your feet over them and feel. If you want to see something glance at the disks and see what position they are in.
Sherri – I don’t know anyone who plays pedal harp with nails except for special effects, though there could of course be people who do. I think Karen Marshalsay is the player I am thinking of who uses nails on gut or nylon lever harps.
Is she playing her own harp in lessons? I am much more relaxed about nails whenthe instrument is owned by the same person as the nails!
If you adopt a very fingers down, thumb up hand position it is possible to play the harp with quite long nails and good technique. There is the risk to the sounboard of gouges if the nails hit it by accident and along the edges when pulling the harp back to playing position.
Are you happy to work with her playing with nails? Wire and Paraguayan harp players do, and while much rarer some players play gut or nylon folk harp this way.
The easiest keys to use with Eb major in the same piece, as a middle section for instance, are going to be C minor (some of the Bs natural – I suggest you start with all the Bs in the base natural and are guided by ear for the melody) or Bb major (all As natural).
The Boulevard is a Dusty Strings; the one at Edinburgh is a preview. It has pedal tension gut strings. I liked it too, which is interesting as my harp likes don’t otherwise match that well with Mae’s.
What does your teacher say? If she or he has strong opinion go with that. If not I would support what Donna and Gretchen say – hire something , probably the Troubadour if there isn’t a waiting list, so you can start learning while you think long term. Probably the Merlin would sound louder and brighter when you play, but all the basics will transfer just fine. I would expect it to only take you a couple of days, if that, to adapt to lighter string nylon and slightly different spacing after some months on the higher tension gut.
In my opinion the Ogden is a decent harp for its price. Whether you will like it or not is a completely different matter. I have an unfortunate tendency to find I like more expensive harps better than less expensive ones, but there are a large number of very well made harps available in your price range. Are there any recordings you particularly like?
Are these hand over hand arpeggios or turn under/overs? If they do have turns, which is possible though less likely for continuous four octave passages then isolate the turn and check that you can sound the note before the turn clearly and place the notes after without adjustment or extra movement.
