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Wow, bit of a bummer. I remember back in the early days she was strictly mail order. I guess maintaining regular hours at a brick and mortar store is too expensive. It requires a regular staff that gets paid no matter how good or bad business is.
I did enjoy being able to just drop into the store when I was in the area, which wasn’t all that often. As long as I can still get what I need from her online I guess we should be lucky, but I will miss not being able to just walk in and be able to try out any number of different harps just sitting on the showroom floor.
They are almost impossible to compare because of the differences of individual harps and the differences in playing technique.
Both Celtic and Paraguayan harps can have various string spacing and tension, although it is my experience that Paraguayan harps are a bit more consistent in terms of being lightly strung, but both have a lot of variation and there is no standard recognized for either.
The reason I believe for
My fingers are the same proportions as yours. Middle finger longest, ring finger next longest and pointer last.
My hands are fairly big with long fingers. I have never had much problem with my finger placement so long as hold my wrists correctly. My fingers just fall on the strings naturally and comfortably. My teacher often commented that she envied me my hands because they seemed almost perfectly made for playing the harp. She is a fairly small woman with small hands and it always amazed me to see the twists and tricks she needed to do in order to play some passages or play larger intervals.
“I certainly feel like I am working at 50% of my full capacity when I am practicing, at least 50% of the time. Does that add up to 100%? “
I agree with the others. Such a system would add a lot of weight and expense to the harp to the point where it makes more sense to just go with a pedal harp. There are petite model pedal harps that are smaller and lighter than even a semi-grand, but are still double action pedal harps. It makes much more sense to go with that.
Or you can go with a MIDI harp. You can use the same basic concept, only instead of mechanically changing the pitch of the physical string it simply alters the the sound generated by the sound module for that strings signal. Of course then you have to deal with the extra equipment needed for MIDI, but it still would be a lot simpler, and it is already available and tested.
The best advice I can give you is to get a copy of Jan Jenning’s book, The Harpist’s Complete Wedding Guidebook.
It answers most of your questions, and is an invaluable resource for any
Often. It usually is only when I play for others and get a positive response that I can remember and admit that I’m not all that bad.
Briggsie’s advice is spot on.
On harp playings the notes of scales is very easy in any key, unlike the piano. However what makes scales hard on harp is playing them evenly, so focus on that. Start trying simply to keep the loudness and tone same though out. Later on practice playing scales in cressendo and decrescendo. When you start paying attention to what causes the loudness to change you automatically start learning how to keep it even as well.
And the Salzedo exercises are great for this kind of thing as well, but start with scales. Also runs or arpeggios. In fact if I recall correctly when I needed to focus on this my teacher had me playing arpeggios before scales.
We all have this problem at first so don’t feel bad about it. Just keep practicing and working on it and you will eventually develop full control over the dynamics of your playing.
Honestly, I think that not only is criticism not considered acceptable, any disagreement is, unless you cloak it in such heavy disguise that it is almost unrecognizable as such.
If you say you disagree you can get away with it so long as you wimp out and say something like “we will have to agree to
A price list would definitely be nice, but I understand why they don’t. They sell in many countries through many retailers so any price list would only be an approximation in the end anyway.
Personally I am wanting to know about some of those accessories. Particularly the tripod stand for the baby blue. I have played around with different approaches using camera stands and such, but have not been very satisfied. Also that baby blue hard travel case.
I have to wonder if they will work on my older b.b. I can see that the new version is a little different shaped. I think I like the look of mine better, but I have to wonder it the accessories will fit the older versions as well.
I will have to make some phone calls to my dealer (harp dealer that is).
“I still don’t get the request for “Stairway to Heaven”, but I really like the song!”
For about 90% of people who learn to play rock guitar Stairway is the first complete song they learn. It has become a cultural joke in the rock world to the point that in the movie Wayne’s World when the main character goes to the guitar store to try a new guitar he gets reprimanded for playing this song and ignoring the “no stairway” sign hanging up. The truth being that most guitar shop workers hate the song because they have to hear it being mangled by people every day.
It is one of the most requested songs for bands that play bars regularly.
So it is a joke to ask a harpist to play it as if they were asking a rock band. And it is great fun to surprise such jokers by actually playing it.
The other one that I think every harpist should know is Freebird because it is probably the only song requested more than Stairway.
What Barbara said. String with nylon, but get it regulated by a competent harp tech when you do.
And I agree, Pedal vs. Lever, neither is harder to learn on, but they are different. If you know you want to play pedal there absolutely no reason (beyond expense) that you should not learn on a pedal harp.
And also she is right that you can play classical and pop on lever harp. Certainly, there are things within those genres you can’t really play on lever harp, but I think you may be surprised at exactly how much, and what pieces, can be managed on lever harp. I play a lot of classical on lever, and a bit of pop too.
Personally the reason I want to get a pedal harp (still saving, always seems some emergency happens when ever I start to get close to having enough) because I like to play Jazz, and Jazz is one of those genres where you really need the chromatic abilities of a pedal harp. You can play some jazz, and you can play “jazzy” on a lever harp, but for full on, unhindered, improvisational jazz
