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1) Yes, sometimes it is not only OK, but necessary to not place.
2) No, there is no absolutely right way, although there is some logic to it and so it is not surprising to find two different harpists have worked out very similar finger placing. But you mention Sylvia Woods books. I like her arrangements, but I have never played any of her arrangement using all, or even most of her fingerings. They don’t feel right to me so I change them.
3) It depends on the piece. I can wing it if I am sight reading, but I may find myself fingering things more awkwardly than I would like. If, however, I have the time (which is almost always really) I sit down and look at the music and write in my fingerings. Then I run through it to see if there is anything I find awkward or that I think could be done better, and then revise.
There is a certain degree of personal preference that can come into play when you are working out fingerings. If you are playing a run of six notes ascending do you place four fingers and then cross under the thumb with the second finger and follow by placing the thumb on the sixth
How old are you asking about? I don’t think anyone knows how they played in Druid times, but if you want to know about O’Carolan and his contemporaries, or the few centuries prior, then they clearly played polyphonic.
I would be very, very surprised if that hasn’t always been the case. After all, isn’t that the whole reason for having a harp over, say, a lyre? If you aren’t playing polyphonic music you just don’t need all those strings.
Definitely Farewell to Music. It was the first harp piece I worked on that I picked myself, not my teacher. She wasn’t familiar with it but once she heard it she loved it too.
My Second favorite is Robert Jordan, followed third by Fanny Power.
What Barbara said. Also, I still have a set of the Salzedo fonts that let you do all of the speical Salzedo effects notation as well as pedal diagrams. I don’t know if it is still available, but I’m sure if someone wanted to look hard enough they could find a copy. It also has the diamonds for lever changes.
Of course finale is kind of like crack. They hand out the free samples, then the next thing you know you’re shelling out hundreds of dollars for the most up-to-date full version because the free stuff just isn’t enough anymore.
I would have to assume it has to do with a combination of factors. The shape of the body, the tapering of the soundboard, the materials used…
I doubt any one factor could be pointed at as THE cause for the tone. Like any instrument it is about how all the pieces come together to work.
I don’t recall any specific symbol used to indicate it, but I have seen it notated as Sur les cordes entre chevilles et sillet.
A Lyon & Healy Folk Harp should last a heck of a lot longer than 10 years. I have had one for over 20 years and it is still going strong.
Strings do go sharp. It happens to my lever and pedal harps. It has to do with environmental changes. If you are in a part of the world where it is winter right now, and you are using the heat in your house more, that can cause a lowering of humidity which can cause the strings to go sharp.
Or cold can cause strings to go sharp because it causes them to contract.
If the temperature and humidity is kept constant then you could expect strings to go slightly flat over time even after they have settled in. But most of us can only maintain environmental conditions to a certain degree. Enough to protect the instrument itself from negative effects, but most of us can’t keep the environment 100% constant and stable.
Ever notice that other than while playing the next most likely time that strings break is overnight? It’s because the temperature goes down at night and the strings contract a little increasing the tension.
What Barbara said :^)
Yes, there are some things that rarely show up in lever harp music that prove to be a challenge on a pedal harp, but not impossible. Playing enharmonic equivalents to the notes written is one way around many of those (admittedly few) instances.
What you are more likely to find is not that there is music for the lever harp you can’t play on the pedal harp. I have never come across anything arranged for levers that was impossible to play on pedal harp. Rather you will find that some music is easier on one harp or the other.
A single lever change on a piece for lever harp may translate into multiple pedal changes when played on a pedal harp. Say at some point in a piece you have to raise the C below middle C to sharp, and for the rest of the piece that particular note is played sharp. But you have to play Cs in the treble as natural. On lever harp you just throw that C lever below middle C to sharp and you are done. On pedal harp you have to change the pedal back and forth every time you play the low C vs. the high C. And as Barbara said, if you have to play both at the same time you have to play one of them on the enharmonic equivalent.
But I can’t ever remember coming across anything written for lever harp that I couldn’t play on pedal harp. I just prefer to use the harp that is best suited for the way the music is arranged. But a great deal of lever harp music has no problem being played on one or the other.
Definitely get what you want. Any of them will look great, but it reflect YOU, not the church or hall you are playing in.
My teacher had a bias against ebony finished harps. So for a long time I only had natural or mahogany finished harps even though secretly I really liked the ebony finish.
The last time I purchased a harp was about three years ago. I was without a pedal harp for a long time and really wanted one again. But this time I just got what I knew I really wanted. I feel far more comfortable behind my ebony finished harp now than I ever did with any of the others. It just looks right for me. And I get far more compliments on it’s looks than I ever did with any of the other harps I have had (with the possible exception of my electroharp which is blue with gold highlights, but that is kind of a special case).
I’m not saying to get ebony. But get what you really want. It is YOUR
I think this is one of those rules where it is a rule because it is generally the way it is done, rather than being a hard and fast rule. Outside of classical music I don’t think many people pay too much attention to this rule.
In fact most notation software doesn’t even attempt to force you into this convention as they tend to do with most other conventions.
The reason for
I am viewing it on an iPad, But honestly any ebook or emagazine should be optimized to work on iPads and other tablets since that is how a lot of people view them, and more and more will be in the future.
However, as I mentioned in my first post to Hugh, the image wasn’t terrible and was still readable, just not as easily other magazines (I don’t subscribe to any print version of a magazine anymore other than the Harp Column). The bump up in resolution Hugh made improved it. I was
