Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know there’s a pandemic all around us!
[Sorry, I just hate talking about the pandemic, but it’s relevant context. Since, it’s the main reason I chose the thing I chose!]
So, basically I was looking for something possible to do, since so much is closed/not safe right now. I tried to think of some things I could do virtually [e.g. play chess over zoom with someone, rent a cello or something and take a lesson over zoom].
And as I thought about trying my hand at one of the few instruments I’ve never played [in any context], I ended up doing a socially distanced harp lesson, wearing masks, in a teacher’s giant living room.
Stephanie was super cool, great at harp, and brilliant.
Here are some of the things I learned about the harp. (This is gonna get real music nerd-y, so if that doesn’t interest you at all, please do come back after we finish talking about the harp! :-))
First – there are 2* sizes of harps. There’s a ‘smaller’ harp. (It’s still pretty big, but not the size you normally think of.) It’s generally a lever harp. But, it could be a folk harp, celtic harp, floor harp, and more.
And then there’s the big pedal harp we all know from weddings and fancy things.
*Technically, there’s actually an even smaller harp called the ‘lap harp,’ that literally goes on your lap. But it’s very rare.
A lever harp has actual levers at the top that you can switch on or off. Those levers change the note to being either sharp, natural, or flat.
On lever harps, they only have 2 positions – meaning you can have the natural version of a note and then sharp or flat. Obviously on notes that would be enharmonic with another natural note in some configuration (C, for instance, if you were to do Cb), you would tune your harp so that C# is the note available to you.
And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow!