Harp for Beginners: how to work the pedal harp

Hey guys! Finally back from the hiatus to talk about how to work the pedal harp. Well I explained a lot of generic info about the harp in the last post, along with how to work the lever harp. So there isn't a lot to explain here, which is good because you won't have to read a lot with this one. So if you've read my "Harp for Beginners: how to work the lever harp" post you've learned about which strings are which and how to change keys with the levers. Now I'll tell you how to change keys with the pedal harp with, of course, the pedals. Now I don't personally own a pedal harp, so if I leave out any important info I"ll make it up to you. According to Britannia Encyclopedia there are brass and metal disks along the neck, or the curved top, of the pedal harp that rotate to change the key of the strings. Mystery solved for that one! Now the pedals. When I first tried out a pedal harp from a friend who owned one (or two, or three) I thought, 'hey, the pedals will go from left to right, c, d, e, f and so on!' NOPE. It actually goes in this order, from left to right, so these are the strings that each pedal manipulates: D, C, B, E, F, G, A. Here's a visual for you:

That's what it looks like when you're sitting behind the harp. The reason why they're set up like that is not really important, just so you know which order they're in. Confusing part number one. Now confusing number two involves each little pedal. The pedal is fixed in what looks like a crooked block from Tetris, as seen in the picture above on the right. The picture says that the steps are second notch, first notch and upper position, but I'll just call them steps for now. Now when I was younger and was trying out that same pedal harp I had another assumption that the top step would sharpen the strings, the middle would make them natural and the bottom step would flatten them. No again. I was only right about the middle step, it does make the strings natural. But it's the top step that flattens notes and the bottom step that sharpens them. Here's another visual:

So we have the mechanics down. So now let's say you wanted to play in E flat major, with three flats. You would have to move the three pedals for B, E and A up to the top step to flatten them. It's similar to the lever harp in that you still have to sharpen or flatten certain strings to change keys, but this just saves you time from having to flip every single lever. With one move of the pedal can change like a hundred of them at once. It helps too if you have a flat or a sharp note popping up in the middle of your song. You can just move the right pedal with your foot, keep playing and don't have to create a pause and think 'okay gotta go reach up and flip the lever right now.' I'm going to warn you though, just learn the feel of pushing the pedals around first. When I tried it out it took a considerable amount of effort to move them. Practicing with the pedals will be just as important as practicing with the strings, you may eventually have to move like Speedy Gonzales with them with more advanced, complicated songs. Alright there you go. If you have any questions guys, ask away! In the next posts I'll tell you about taking the harp outside of your house and transporting it to another place. 

  

I'm back!

Hey guys! I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. If you haven't noticed that I had gotten into a bit of a hiatus, then you don't have to worry about this. I had gone on a four day trip to Disneyland in California with my school band. We had performed there a couple times. Nope, I did not play the harp there. I actually played the trumpet, it's another instrument I'm fairly good at playing. But now I'm back, exhausted and sore, and I'll soon be posting stuff about harps again. Talk to ya then!

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! 

Harp for Beginners: picking your harp part 2

Alright, so we're moving on to the pedal harp now. Before I got my Troubadour my parents and I had thought about whether to get a bigger lever harp or to get a small pedal harp instead. In the end we decided to go for the bigger lever harp, because back then we only really had the money for the lever harp. Pedal harps are considerably more expensive than lever harps. Sometimes you can tell why, many of them are very decorative and ornamental. The small pedal harps can exceed the amount of strings too, more than the larger lever harps do. Here, I'll show you an example. This is a pedal harp from the Lyon & Healy Company:

This harp is a Chicago Petite 40. It's a small pedal harp with 40 strings. That's a lot of strings for a small pedal harp. Every pedal harp, or at least every one that I've seen, is decorative and beautiful in some way or another. This one is 11,000$ (US). 

This guy:

Style 11 Nouveau Concert Grand pedal harp. From the same company. This guy has 47 strings, and costs 39,000$ (US). Now don't worry, not all the harps are this pricey. I know I'm harping a lot on the Lyon and Healy Company (harping, hah hah...that was bad) but there are other harps from that company that have 47 strings and are less expensive, like the Chicago Concertino. 47 strings, costs 15, 500$. Not bad. Now there is a site called the Clive Morley Harps Shop, and if you find that they have a few 40 string pedal harps to choose from. One is called the Cecelia 40 pedal harp, and it's designed for beginners:

The price is about 6,500 GBP each. That would be 10, 790$ in US dollars, and 11,830$ in Canadian dollars. So if you're looking to buy a beginners pedal harp, these would be good to look at, if you're not too troubled to pay an extra buck than you would for a bigger lever harp. If you want to save up a whole bunch of money and get one of the big pedal harps, the big golden ones, hey go for it. But when you're starting out, I recommend getting the smallest, cheapest one first. Especially if you're planning to get paid from playing the harp, then definitely get the smaller one, then you can play and get paid enough money until you decide to get a big one (and be able to carry the smaller one around easier than you would a big one). Thanks so much again for taking the time to read this, I feel honored when you do. I'll try to get these posts out often. Right now I have free time to do that, but when school comes around again they won't come out as often, but I'll try. If you have any questions guys, please, any comments or anything, please let me know, and I'll see you in my next post! That's when I'll be telling you how to work the levers, then the pedals. Whoo!

Harp for Beginners: Picking your harp part 1

Hey again! So let's just say you're interested in the harp and you want to learn to play it. And that's good! But what harp do you choose? There's about two different types of harp to choose from: lever and pedal harp. So what's the difference? Both the levers and pedals are different in design but the same in function, which is to change the key. If you're already a musician you'd know, at least vaguely if not completely, about C major, B flat major, A major, et. cetera et. cetera. If you don't know anything about that, well I'd recommend learning about them first before moving onto the harp, because it can get difficult. I'll let you know why in another post. Alright, let's take a look at the lever harp. Levers on a lever harp basically look like this: 

There's a lever for every string. I'll explain in the next blog how to work them. Now the pedal harp on the other hand has these:

The top of the pedal harp looks like this:

We'll talk about lever harps for now. My first harp was a 29 stringed Ron Wall lever harp, made in Vancouver. From a friend, we paid 500$ for it. Right now I'll warn you, if you're going to buy a (lever or pedal) harp, better save up a lot of money first. Harps in general are freaky expensive, even the small ones. But once you get one, it's totally worth it, since their sound is really beautiful. Anyway, 500$ is pretty reasonable for a small lever harp. Not a bargain per say, but reasonable. In most popular harp companies you see, like Lyon & Healy, Harpsicle Harps and Dusty Strings Harps, 26 to 29 string lever harps are usually in the middle to late hundred dollar range. The harp I have now is also a used lever harp. I got it in BC when a friendly lady decided to sell it. Its brand name is Troubadour Four, 36 stringed. It was made by the Lyon & Healy company in Chicago. The woman who owned it gave it to us for 2000$. Now that is a bargain, because a new Troubadour Four is 4000$, easily. Of course the more beautiful harps have much higher prices, like the Louis 15 Special is 189,000$ in the Lyon & Healy store. That would be the gold harp with the transport cover set. For beginners, perhaps like yourself, I'd recommend starting off with a 29 string lever harp. Yes, you could get a 26 string harp, but for the 29 string you'd get a bit more for about the same price.The lever harp is good for beginners because the sort of songs you'll start out with will keep the same key throughout the piece from start to finish.  If you have more intermediate or advanced songs that have a sudden sharp or flat or just generally a key change then you'd have to flip levers. It works if you're quick to flip them, and with practice you can get good at it, but only if there's only one key change with a note or in the whole song, in my experience. Jazz songs are tricky with the lever harp. And that's a subject for another post! I'll tell you about how to work a lever harp, and if you do then look forward to my post about the pedal harp next and how they usually cost. I'm doing this in small parts so you don't get tired of reading these extremely long posts. See you in my next one. Ask questions if you have em!