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Ah, I have about half of those books and they all look like good choices. I particularly like Friou’s Baroque book, Milligan’s Medieval to Modern and pretty much all of Sylvia Woods’ books.
And Friou’s exercises books is excellent. You might also check out Salzedo’s Conditioning exercises book. Those two books I use for my warm ups and both are very good.
The only real difference is the material they are made from and the tone they produce. There may be a slight difference in diameter which might throw your regulation off a bit, I’m not certain and Carl can probably answer that (I recently broke a gut string and temporarily replaced it with a nylon until I can get a gut replacement and it does seem just slightly thicker to me), but the biggest issue is that gut produces more tension, which is why you can’t always just switch from one to the other. A harp built for nylon strings can’t always be strung with gut without the risk of damage.
Conversely a harp built for gut can be strung with nylon without fear of damage, but it might not sound so good.
And others, like the standard Ogden, is built to work well with both, although quality of the sound of each is subjective but L&H seems to have an opinion which why they have a recommended stringing that mixes nylon and gut.
So for the Ogden with gut if you might have a slight regulation issue if you switch from gut to all nylon, but otherwise
I use the same one Dharon uses, and I also have the backpack carrying case for it from Sylvia Woods.
It is light. It can easily adjust height so I can use it with all my harps. Easy to transport, and surprisingly comfortable.
I also am not a fan of a back rest for a harp bench or chair. If you are using proper posture you shouldn’t need it.
Some day I may get one of those fancy, expensive harp benches, one that matches my pedal harp, just for use in my studio. But so far this one has worked wonderfully for me so I am not in any rush. And since my pedal harp is in an ebony finish the black bench blends in well enough.
Yes, the standard Ogden, which is sometimes listed as the gut strung Ogden, is strung with Pedal harp string, so any pedal harp string of the same note and octave can be used. The recommended stringing is pedal nylon in the first and second octave and pedal gut in the 3rd through (most of) the 5th. From the 5th octave G down the rest of the way you would use bass wires.
However the harp itself is built to be able to be strung with any combination of gut or nylon you like, so you can do all nylon or all gut if you prefer as long as they are Pedal gut and nylon.
There is another version of the Ogden which is strung with Lever nylon and Lever bass wires and that one you can’t substitute the gut on it.
So is your Ogden the kind with gut or with lever nylon? If it is the gut strung version then the Shamrock string won’t work because the Shamrock uses lighter gauge string.
If it is the ogden strung with lever nylon the Folk Harp strings won’t work because the Folk Harp is strung with pedal nylon (and typically some pedal gut) which is too heavy for the lever nylon strung Ogden.
Actually I am not certain if the Ogden lever nylon strung harp can or can not handle them, but even if it could they would throw the regulation off in a big way so even if it could you would need to get the harp re-regulated. But before doing that I would check with Lyon and Healy to see if that harp is built structurally different than the gut strung Ogden or if it is just the same harp only regulated for the lighter lever nylon strings.
Power chords on guitar can also just be the root and the fifth. Since it is the third that gives a chord the majority of its flavor leaving it out gives it a neutral sound. Sylvia Woods refers to power chords on the harp as Neutral Chords for this reason in her book Music Theory and Arranging Techniques for the folk harp.
She is the only one I have heard use that term, but I think it is an excellent term for it.
On guitar the reason it is called a power chord is because it is used most often on distorted electric guitar. The distortion causes a lot of sustain and all those notes sustained and distorted can result in a big tonal mush. Leaving out the third gives a more distinct sound when playing strong, highly distorted rhythm accompaniment on electric guitar.
If you are interested in eventually playing Pedal harp then the Prelude is an excellent choice. I took my early lessons on a Prelude and the transition to Pedal harp was made much easier because of it.
So out of curiosity, what books did you order?
Same here. My teacher studied with both Salzedo and Lawrence and I was never told to extend the pinkie out in any extreme way. It was always relaxed and basically stayed near the ring finger as it would naturally fall, and she was always complimenting me that I had such good, natural hand position. That is the way she played as well.
Same here. My teacher studied with both Salzedo and Lawrence and I was never told to extend the pinkie out in any extreme way. It was always relaxed and basically stayed near the ring finger as it would naturally fall, and she was always complimenting me that I had such good, natural hand position. That is the way she played as well.
Same here. My teacher studied with both Salzedo and Lawrence and I was never told to extend the pinkie out in any extreme way. It was always relaxed and basically stayed near the ring finger as it would naturally fall, and she was always complimenting me that I had such good, natural hand position. That is the way she played as well.
So it WAS Loreena.
When I saw that harp I thought to myself, that’s Loreena McKennitt’s Troubadour, it has to be.
After all, she is the only well known Canadian Harpist I know of who plays a Troubadour.
But I kept watching for her and didn’t see her. I figured she must have been playing at some point but just wasn’t featured on screen.
Nice to see the harp, but I would have really liked to have seen her playing it
For me it was strictly a issue that I play a wide range of genres and styles of music and I kept coming across things I wanted to do but couldn’t due to the specific limitations of the lever harp.
However… while I have yet to come across something that I can play on lever harp that can’t be played on pedal harp there are many pieces of music that are much easier to play on lever harp than pedal harp because on the lever harp I can flip one lever and leave it while on pedal harp I have to keep making pedal changes because I need, say, a note sharp in one octave in one measure but natural in the next measure in a lower octave. On lever harp I can just leave the upper octave lever engaged and the lower not engaged and even if every time that upper octave the note is sharped and every time the lower one is played it is natural I never have to make another adjustment. On pedal harp I would have to constantly make a pedal change each time I wanted to play one of those notes.
So Pedal harps are very versatile, but there are still instances where lever harp is just easier to deal with.
So I will never not use lever harps. But more often than that I want to play stuff that just is either impossible, or at least very, very difficult, to play on levers. If it weren’t for that I would have been
In that case I see nothing at all inappropriate about it.
I mean, come one… any time two musicians who play weddings get together stories about the various things that they have seen or experienced at them start to fly. Weddings aren’t national security events or top secret affairs.
So long as he names and identifying details are changed then I don’t see anything wrong with it. And how else do you learn if you don’t hear other peoples’ experiences?
It would really depend. I have one pedal harp and three lever harps currently.
I really use the pedal harp most so if I really had to get rid of all but one I would keep that one. However, if it were a matter of just swapping out harps I could see myself swapping my current pedal harp for another. I would keep my Lyon and Healy Folk harp so long as I had a decent pedal harp as well. I wouldn’t want to part with it. I have had it for a long time. It’s traveled with me, and at one time was my only
