Harp for Beginners: how to work the lever harp.

Hey guys! We're talking about the lever harp again, hooray! Well maybe not too much 'hooray', since it's a little bit complicated, and I think that's what adds to the confusion. By that I mean people think it's the hardest instrument to learn to play, and I think part of that is because of the layout of the strings and levers. But I'm here to cut it down into understandable pieces. Alright, let's start. First of all, the harp is really similar to the piano. Pretend, for a moment, that you're sitting down behind a harp. Your head will be looking at the strings from your left. The strings, in order, if you are not looking at them straight ahead, will be going from left to right. Just like a piano. On the piano the keys go from your left to your right, and so do the harp strings. Except that the harp strings are turned so that they are coming toward you. It's like looking at the piano keyboard at a horizontal level. Here's a comparison:

(the harp is seen with the sound board to your right.) Here's another picture that may help more. 

Here's a string chart. A 36 string harp compared to a key board. You may be thinking 'well geez, that's helpful, but how on earth do you know which strings are which?' The string chart may already give it away, but I'll tell you in detail anyway. First of all: remember, just like the piano, the harp also has a middle C. You can look to that for reference if you're ever stuck on where you're supposed to play while reading music. It's usually the C that's more in the middle of your vision if you're looking at the strings. Enough said for that. Second of all, as you can see, certain strings are coloured to tell you which is which. The red strings are always C. The blue (or black) strings are always F. The rest you can pretty much figure out. The strings are basically just:

C D E F G A B C

Over and over again. Alright? Good. If I'm not making ANY sense whatsoever, leave a comment! I'm totally cool with questions and 'I don't get it, you're not doing a good job of explaining' comments. And I will try harder. Alright, cool! So now we'll focus on the levers. Those dreaded levers! Whatever do you do with them? Of course, the answer is you change the key of the harp with them, but how? It's okay, I'll explain. Every string has a lever hovering over it. 

Voila, there they are. You see those stickers on some of the levers? The red and blue ones? Sometimes harps will have stickers on the levers, specifically the C and F string levers, to help players quickly find out which levers belong to which string. Having those levers clumped together can be a bit confusing, especially when you have to make a quick lever flip. It's happened to me a couple times when I aim to flip the G lever up, but I accidentally get the F lever instead and not the G lever. Whoops! Oh well, play it cool and no one will notice. Anyway, so if you look up harp levers online you might find some descriptions calling them the 'sharping levers'. Eeeeehhhh, not quite accurate. Yes, they sharpen strings (like going up onto a black key on the piano), but they don't sharpen ALL the strings. Just a few. And only a few can be flattened. Let's look at some keys it can play. Here's the circle of fifths, or the circle of key signatures, if you will:

There we go. Let's start with one key and I'll tell you what the levers look like. The key of C, or C major. No flats, no sharps, nada. All is good. Except that the levers aren't all down. If the levers were all down, it would be in the key of E flat, and if you look at the chart that means that every B, E and A notes (strings) are flat, so the levers to those strings are pushed down. So to make it into C major you push the levers over every B, E, and A string UP, and now they are natural. Now it is in C major. Remember, all levers down: E flat major. B, E, and A levers up: C major. Of course if you wanted to play in the key of F major only the B string levers will be pushed down. To play in the key of B flat major only the B and E string levers would be down, et cetera. Now to play in sharp key signatures. If you wanted to play in the key of G major, you would push all the F string levers up, and now they're sharp. D major, same thing, except now both the F and C string levers are pushed up, making them sharp, and it goes from there. A major, three sharps (F, C and G), E major, four (F, C, G, D), it goes on. Technically, on the lever harp, you can only play the flat keys up to A flat major, and the sharp keys up to E major, without doing something different to accommodate. That means, in place of A sharp, you may have to play B flat, or tune the string so that it goes to A sharp (because the A string lever is already up to make it natural, right?). Everything good so far? I hope so. And oh yes, you have to tune your harp. The harp has tuning pegs, on the right side. If you look you can see the top of the strings are tightly wound around the other ends of the pegs, on the left. (this'll be useful to remember when you have to replace certain strings, but that's for another post.) The harp should come with a tuner, generally looking like this:

Though tuners like this WILL look different in size and shape, depending on what type of harp you get. Different tuners fit for different harps. And you should have one of these bad boys:

Of course maybe not that particular brand, there are lots of good tuning machines out there. I myself have an Intelli Metro Tuner-IMT204 AND a Digital Metronome and Tuner Combo MT-22. Unless you have a REALLY good ear and can tell when a string is too sharp or flat, get one. Or two, as I have. One went missing and I had to find another. Why would strings go sharp or flat, you may ask? It's the same for any string instrument. Sometimes it gets too warm or too cold, or just suddenly a change in temperature or weather, even humidity, and it can wreak havoc with your strings, making them go hay-wire. And then you have to tune each string. It can be tedious work, but once you're done it'll be such a huge accomplishment. What you do with the rubber (or wooden) tuning lever is you push it onto each peg like this:

Yeah! Like that. You usually tune it with your right hand and pluck the strings with your left. That's how I usually do it anyway, but sometimes I cheat and tune and pluck with my right hand and hold the tuning machine with my left. Whatever works. Remember, tune the harp when it's in C major, when everything is natural. You remember what levers go up in C major? So your harp is in the key of C, you pluck the strings with the tuning lever on a peg, and the tuning machine tells you if the string is natural, sharp or flat. Let's say it shows you it's flat. Well we can't have that. So how do you make it natural? You take hold of the tuner, and make sure it's ON ALL THE WAY onto the peg. You can't tune it very well if it isn't. What you do is you grasp the tuner and you GENTLY push the peg (with tuner) slightly forward, away from yourself. You're sharpening it that way. Forward=sharp. Keep doing it until it's natural. You'll have to pluck the string several times to know for sure. And now what if you come across a string that's too sharp, or if the string you were trying to sharpen is sharpened too much and you have to correct it again? This time PULL the tuner and peg toward yourself, flattening the string. Backward=flatten. Just a side note: This may get more tricky as you move up onto the smaller, tighter strings. Just moving the tuner a millimeter can throw the string either too flat or too sharp, so be careful with those. Be gentle, always always always. If you don't you could very well snap a string and have to replace it. It's happened to me before, I know. Sometimes, in rare cases, you play the harp and it sounds like only one string is off. That can happen. But then now you'll only have to tune one string. Lucky! Whew! What a whopper, eh? This is a lot to take in. Of course some of these things are true for ALL harps, not just the lever harp. The layout of the strings and tuning the harp is the same for pedal harps too. I've just saved you some explaining for the pedal harp, hooray! Though the pedal harp is complicated on its own. But for now both of us need a break from all this harp mumbo jumbo. I'll look forward to talking to you in my next post. Remember, ask questions if you got em!