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The folk harp I was allowed to try at a Christmas house concert in Hartford in 1979 so simple and basic to someone who could play the keyboard. A couple months later I kit-built one and it came natural.
Every instrument has its virtuosi able to play material that’s miles beyond me. That doesn’t inherently raise the bar for taking any of them up, rather it raises the ceiling over musical aspirations. “Brian Boru’s March” can be achieved by a musician whose ambitions do not reach to “Introduction and Allegro”.
A more exact measure for stretching an octave might be to tune the upper string to the harmonic of the lower string,
If I were looking for the best possible piano tuning meter I’d go with the Veritune. The Accu-Tuner produces a tuning from a mere three samples by making assumptions that are only valid in a fine instrument of large scale, whereas the Veritune measures the frequencies of all partials. of all strings while the tuning is in progress.
Not at the moment. The music director at my church knows someone but I have no idea of her schedule.
As a piano tuner-technician I can say that the tuning system I use on pianos (TuneLab Pro runing on an Acer Aspire netbook) produces a better tuning on my Markwood-strung Caitlin than my Korg CA-30 tuning meter ever could. At close to $700, though, it may be a little steep for a harp tuner.
EMS harps are made in Pakistan, but are more upscale than the ordinary Mid-East instruments. I have one of the Round Back group which is solidly made but doesn’t produce much sound from its modest-sized birch soundboard. It might take higher tension and still stay in one piece. The biggest issue is consistent placement of pins, because you may get one where some levers just won’t tune well.
If I had it to do over, I’d run up to the North Shore and buy a Dusty Strings Ravenna 26.
David,
Being made in a war-torn country probably does little to ensure a good supply of Caitlins! Mine sounds reasonable good now that I restrung it with a set of strings computed by Laurie Nielson of Markwood Heavenly Strings, but if you do that, don’t take it too many places unless you are very careful, because a rescaled Caitlin is also overstressed to the point of soundboard failure.How about a “colorless chord”? My keyboard mentor argued that while others claimed that the third determines a triad’s color, a root-fifth-octave had a color of its own. The metallic sound organs can produce is built from a tall stack of octaves and fifths. None of which is rigorous music theory, admittedly.
Harp Column Magazine Forum may not be the right place for non-orchestral players. Some users here, such as Miss Evans, are not interested in playing a pedal harp, or much of anything far from “Brian Boru’s March” or “Londonderry Air”, but their questions will be read by harpists who play in “Nutcracker” and “Planets” and other such. That is all well when discussing study or technique, but undue emphasis may fall upon their choice of instrument. To write “when you want to move up to tunes with modulation you will need a harp with levers that work” is one thing, but to say “your harp-shaped object will ruin your studies and should be sold to a local Irish pub for a wall ornament” will fail to convince, may only alienate.
Carol,
The most desirable lever would be one that supports the string exactly like a bridge pin that is driven into the side of the neck. If a lever is too lightly made, it can lose energy, shortening sustain, and by adding an irregularity to the tension/motion relationship of the string, throw the upper partials out of tune and make the string sound sour. If the lever allows the string to slide on the pin that effects the actual sharping, energy lost through friction shortens the sustain and often dulls the tone, especially at the moment the string is plucked. If on the other hand the pin that does the sharping has a notch to prevent such sliding, and it happens to beThe Honda Fit’s back seat bench flips up, so I could stand two small folk harps side by side on the floor. There is height to spare, in case I ever upgrade to a 30+ string harp.
Mike,
The winding material itself is not under tension. When the soft metal is wound on the core, it is mostly under compression along the axis of the core, while under tension along its own helical axis. As the string is raised to pitch, this compression decreases but never entirely.
