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In the long run, you want a full set of levers.
At first it may be OK, but eventually you will want to play in different keys and having to retune the harp every time you want to play in a different key is annoying. Also at some point you most likely will want to play something with accidentals in it.
But even if all the music you choose is diatonic, like most traditional Celtic music, you will still need to play in different keys. Particularly if you want to ever play with other people. Also if you have a smaller harp you may need to change keys to get a piece to fall within the range of the harp. And most definitely if
Pianos may be more common, but honestly, even in books on music theory they almost always use the piano keyboard to demonstrate the relationships of the notes.
I haven’t noticed a difference. I just restrung the top three octaves of my harp, two of which I did in Burgandy strings, and they seem pretty much the same as always.
Some excellent information already.
To add some:
Learn some music theory. Ultimately to improvise means to play a melody you make up off the top of your head over the chord progression of the piece you are playing. Your melody notes have to harmonize with the chords, and you
I second Carl.
Differnt things will work better for different people, but in the end how fast a person learns isn’t what is important. It is how motivated the student is that matters most. The fastest learner still isn’t going to get far if he or she isn’t motivated to learn in the first place.
I’m with Tacye on this one.
Once you are past the beginner stage, and you have a good technique down, and you pretty much can figure out things like fingerings and where to put pedal or lever changes and things like that, you don’t really need a teacher to learn the notes. They are on the page, you can learn them yourself.
At that point the teacher is helping you understand and interpret the music.
I would suggest watching the PBS documentary Harp Dreams, about the preparation and pressure of a major harp competition. There are several instances showing the students working with their teachers, and none of them have their teachers showing them how to play. They are helping them develop their interpretation and “polishing” their pieces. These folks don’t need someone teach them the notes. Most of them can sight read stuff that would give the rest of us a headache just looking at. It’s understanding the music, it’s history, and figuring out what they want to say with it that they get from their teachers at that point.
My take is that a good teacher begins by teaching you how to play the instrument, but they also help you learn to play the music, which is a very different thing in my opinion.
I also want to hit on what someone else said. That the reason and motivation people learn to play now may be very different then in the past, and probably has changed many times over the centuries.
From the ancient Irish harpers to modern harpists, the role and reasons have changed. Once harp was something that women learned, not to be professional musicians but to simply entertain in the family parlor and because music was simply a part of a well bred young ladies “education”.
Then as society changed pretty much the only people who learned were those seeking a career with the harp.
Now there are all sorts of reasons a person may learn the harp, and today we probably have the highest number of people who learn to play just for fun and their own enjoyment, much like how many people who learn the guitar have no intentions of being a professional but just want to be able to sit around with friends and play some music, so now I think many who take up the harp do it with that same mind set.
Once you start there is no telling where you will go with it, but I do think that a teacher needs to take a students goals into mind when they are teaching them. The approach with someone who fully intends to make the
I agree. Aside from the fact that it is simply a very interesting book, the graded listing of Salzedo’s compositions and arrangements is a very, very handy reference to have and useful guide.
Oh, and your introduction was just chock full of good information Saul. Well done.
The two things that I would suggest, if you haven’t tried these already, is first to copy by hand the sections that give you the most difficulty remembering. Part of memorizing is going beyond just remembering the notes to understanding the structure of the piece and the logic of the arrangement. If you can analyze the piece, see the patterns, and follow the structure you will have an easier time memorizing it, and copying it by hand, mindfully, will help you see these things.
The second suggestion is to learn the piece backwards. Not literally backwards, but divide it into logical sections and start with the last section first. Once you have that add the second to last and do them both. When you have that down add the third to last, and so on and so on.
What happens is that by the time you get to the first section you have practiced the last sections so many times that you have them down and the piece actually will become easier as you play rather then harder, which happens if you start just at the beginning so that by the time you play the whole thing you have less practice and memorization down as you go along.
Mostly by genre, but it gets a little hap hazard. Some things don’t fit nicely into a single genre. Some books have selections from different genres… So there is a bit of fly by the seat of my pants method of organizing.
Generally I have no problem finding what I am looking for, but if I ever had to explain to someone how it works I would not really be able to except in a very general sense.
We hit an outrageously high 76 today.
Luckily tomorrow we return to a more manageable 66.
There is a reason I pay through the nose to live where I do.
Perhaps they are, but I know that when I got mine I was specifically told by the folks at Lyon and Healy to be sure to use the folk harp wires. If you put a gauge to them and they are indeed the same thickness then it probably won’t hurt to use the ones off the pedal harp.
The Lyon and Healy Folk Harp uses Pedal gauge string, not folk gauge string. The bass wires are different from the pedal bass wires so you need to be careful when you order them that you get the correct ones, but the rest of the strings are standard pedal harp strings.
The Folk Harp is built so that you can string it with either gut or nylon as you please.
Mine also has a little bit of a bulge in the sound board. It is common on the Folk Harp. As long as it isn’t an extreme bulge it should not be a problem, although if you haven’t regulated the levers for a while you may need to in order for it to play in tune with the levers engaged (the bulge changes the length of the string slightly, and as a result the levers need to be adjusted for it to raise the pitch properly one half tone).
Switching the old strings off your pedal harp to your Folk Harp in this case will not hurt it (except the bass strings. Don’t put
Adam, that reminds me of something that happened to me.
Many years ago I was picking my lever harp up from Mr Henry of Lyra music when his shop was in Manhattan. I had to walk a few blocks with it and it was actually only covered in a plastic sheet so I was being very careful with it. I set it down while waiting for a light so I could cross the street and I saw a little boy about four years old looking at the harp, which you could easily see what it was through the plastic sheet.
He pulled his mother down and whispered something in her ear. She turned to me and she said, “my son wanted to know if that was a magic harp”.
I looked at him and I told him, “all harps are magic, they just don’t all like to show off.”
He smiled big and then the light changed.
