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I don’t think it is necessary at all to learn piano before harp. I know many harpists who don’t play piano at all.
That said I think there are advantages to playing the piano either before or along with virtually any instrument. The main thing being that piano visually presents the relationships between notes and playing piano makes learning music theory much easier because of that, and I am a strong advocate of learning at least basic music theory for any musician.
Congratulations. Getting a harp that sounds and feels right to you is important so if this one sings for you that is really what matters most.
May you and your new harp have many, many years of music making ahead of you.
Barbara,
Yes, I am running IOS4 and after I updated it also updated the strobosoft app and it works fine for me. Both the strobe display and numerical readout both work.
You might try removing the app, restarting the phone and then reinstalling. That sometimes works for me when I have a misbehaving app.
I play several instruments and like others have said, each has things that are easy to do on them and things that are harder than you would expect.
That said I would put Harp fairly high up on the difficulty level.
As someone mentioned, one of the things about the harp that is an advantage is that you can produce a decent sound right off the bat. Certainly to get a really great sound takes practice, but unlike many other instruments you can make a nice sound your first time sitting at a harp just by running your fingers across the strings. You can’t do that on a flute.
The harp is easy to learn to play basic, simple yet nice sounding tunes. Particularly diatonic music. Once you get to more advanced arrangements or more chromatic pieces then the difficulty increases exponentially. When you are talking about chromatic music on a pedal harp you are now in the really difficult range of experience.
Yes, you can play in any key on your first day of playing, but if you are going to comp over chord changes it is much easier on a piano where you can visually see the relationships between the notes than on the harp where the strings may play one note one moment and a different note the next and you basically have to keep track in your head what note the string is going to play when you get to it.
On top of that the music is equal to piano music in terms of difficulty. Playing music which includes chords and melodies and counter melodies on a grand staff is just plain hard. As one music teacher told me once, people give up the flute or the violin because they can’t get it to sound good, not because they can’t read the music, but people give up piano all the time simply because the music is so hard to read. And that goes for harp too which uses the same basic kind of music and staff.
And of course the more advanced the music you are playing the harder it is to keep a good sound. Once you start playing fast, chromatic music filled out with lots of chords and such it gets harder to produce good tone, and you are more likely to buzz against another string.
I would put harp up there with pipe organ in terms of difficulty to play really well.
But, it is easy to start. In fact easier to start than most instruments.
What Barbara said.
I use a Peterson Virtual Strobe tuner with a clip on tuner pickup. It has no issue with the lower strings at all, but for the top two I need to move the clip right onto the tuning peg of the string right below in order to get a good reading.
I thought it was fantastic. I loved how much they focused on the preparation for the competition, and how they went into the mind set and mental preparation.
I’ve never been big on music competition in itself, but one of the things that they mentioned several times that kind of helped my change my view a bit is how just the preparation for a competition of this caliber really teaches the harpists a lot and helps prepare them for their futures as professional harpists. Even if they don’t get past the first round all the work never really goes to waste.
Thanks. Although I already have a tuner app I like for 99 cents I’m happy to add another. You can never have too many tuners.
Check out the published music from Deborah Henson-Conant. She composes in a pop / jazzy / bluesy style and plays electric lever harps so
Celtic harp is one of those not so clear terms. It is used for harps used to play Celtic music or that are made to appear in a Celtic style. Originally harps in Ireland and Scotland were wire strung and completely diatonic.
The
Well, the thing is that as your strings age and the sound deteriorates it happens so slowly that you may not actively notice. But once you change them you hear the difference immediately.
How often you need to change depends on lots of things like how often you play, what kind of environment your harp is normally kept in, and even your body chemistry because some people simply have sweat that causes more deterioration than others. I actually wipe my strings down after every time I play to help prevent that, other wise I notice faster deterioration, and also faster discoloration of the bass strings.
For a professional who practices frequently, performing frequently and moving the harp often in to different environments I would say once a year.
If you are a non professional then it is really much more subjective. If your strings are over two years old then chances are they are no longer sounding as good as they did when new even if you don’t notice it yet.
But the thing is that if you aren’t noticing it and the strings can still sound in tune and keep pitch then you aren’t causing any harm so it is a personal choice. However I think most of us want our instruments to sound as best as they can so to that end I would recommend changing strings at least every two to three years.
However I also have to say that from my perspective brand new strings don’t actually sound good. It takes about a month or so for my ears to like the sound again after I restring.
As for storing strings, you can go a couple of years if you store then in a dark, dry, relatively cool place.
And also remember you don’t have to restring all at once. You can do an octave a month over the course of a few months, which is an effective approach particularly on a not too big lever harp.
I have never played a Mademoiselle, but I have played many Camac lever harps and own a Camac.
So while I can’t address the specific issue of the sound of the Mademoiselle I can say that Camac harps are well built in general, and their levers are among the best out there. In fact I wish it were reasonably doable to replace the loveland levers on my other lever harp with Camac levers.
All three of the harps you listed are made by companies with great reputations. I have played on both the other two and they are fine instruments. And while I haven’t had the pleasure of trying this particular Camac model I have a generally good opinion of Camac harps. I currently own one Camac harp and two Lyon and Healy’s and really, you can’t go wrong with any of these makers so long as the instrument appeals to you personally.
As a genral rule I find that Camac harps sound a bit brighter than Lyon and Healy or Salvi. Lyon and Healy harps tend to have a mellower sound. Neither is better, just different. And this is, of course, a generalization.
It would be nice but it is a lot of work that needs to be done by a professional. I would wait until some time you needed some major work done anyway.
On my lever harp I did once, after about 15 years, remove and polish the tuning pins, but that is a much different thing than polishing anything related to the action on a pedal harp.
Personally I wouldn’t touch the action on a pedal harp if you paid me. Too much that could go wrong. It’s a job for a professional and best done in conjunction with necessary work.
Think of it this way, it gives your harp character. These little imperfections tell the story of an instrument that has been used and played and has a history. So long as it doesn’t effect the way it plays then just consider it a map of it’s history like our own scars and imperfections that crop up over the years.
Lovely harp. How old is it?
I have a little brush I got from Sylvia Woods to clean all those nooks and crannies in my harp. I would try that first to see if the white can just be brushed away. If not a slightly damp cloth followed immediately with a dry cloth to prevent and damage from leaving moisture on the finish should do the trick.
If it really gives you a hard time you can use something like Lyon and Healy harp polish. It does work great, although I only use it once in a very blue moon because I don’t want any kind of build up of polish. But when years of playing starts to leave it’s mark nothing makes the wood look as close to new as possible.
