The joys of tuning

Q: How long does a harp stay in tune?
A: Twenty minutes, or until someone opens a door.

I've been neglecting my practicing of late as fall semester is coming to an end. (I have also been neglecting other normal day-to-day activities like eating and sleeping.) However, there is another reason I've been avoiding it... winter means chilly temperatures, and chilly temperatures mean uncooperative strings.

I'll admit it: I whine like a little kid when it comes to tuning. I know it's necessary, but it can be such a pain. During the winter I approach tuning with an even deeper sense of futility than usual, knowing the cold will wreak havoc with my strings. It's almost certain that once I've gotten the top C string in tune, the bottom one will have gone flat again.

But I think I'm starting to get the hang of it now. (She said, after five years of lessons...) When I started, I was just plain lazy about it. I would spend time practicing, but I never tuned it regularly. There were times I would leave it untuned for weeks in a row, which I now know is not good for the soundboard. Shame on me. Then on the few occasions I played in public I would freak out because I couldn't get it in tune fast enough, and naturally it wouldn't sound right with the other instruments that were in tune. (Well, duh.)

By this point, I have at least gotten into the habit of tuning it, if not every day, then at least every time I practice. I'm trying to stop looking at it as a chore and think of it as learning how to get my harp to sound its best no matter what the circumstances are.

A miscellaneous little mix tape

I always love reading or hearing about what my favorite musicians are listening to, because they often have some really interesting things to say about why they like it. Vienna Teng made a post a few years ago back when she had first started her blog (her scrapbook, she calls it) in which she listed tracks she might include on a mix tape for anyone reading. I think you see where this is leading... although, unlike Vienna, I can't claim to have played with all the people who recorded these songs. (Lucky her.)

1. Emilie Autumn, "Manic Depression": Emilie is one of my absolute favorite artists because it is so very tricky to pigeonhole her. Her lyrics are always sharp and witty, but she's always experimenting with her singing style. However, this song features neither her lyrics nor her voice, but rather her prowess on the electric violin: this girl can shred.

2. Snow Patrol, "If There's a Rocket Tie Me to It": Snow Patrol is one of those bands whose albums I have always meant to buy and never got around to it. However, I may now just have to give in and snag a copy of A Hundred Million Suns. I heard this one morning on XPN a few weeks ago during the drive to work. I love the energy and the rhythm of it, but it was the lyrics that caught my ear--they're unusually vivid and visual.

A fire, a fire/You can only take what you can carry/A pulse, your pulse/It's the only thing I can remember/I break, you don't/I was always set to self destruct though/The fire, the fire/It cracks and barks like primal music

3. Kaki King, "Doing the Wrong Thing": The word virtuoso always gets tossed around when people talk about Kaki because of her acoustic guitar skills, but she's definitely branched out since her first album. She creates soundscapes--I can't think of a better way to put it. Her songs may not always have words that stick in my head or a melody I can tap my foot to, but they take me somewhere else. The inside of her head must be an interesting place.

4. Gillian Grassie, "Tamlin": When I looked at who Gillian listed in her influences and saw the title of this song, I admit I leaped to conclusions and assumed it was going to be some kind of Loreena McKennitt imitation, but she takes the traditional folktale and twists it around into something entirely unexpected and original.

Do you ever get that feeling of being infinite and small?/Like you're everything and nothing at all?/My love has become a burning coal/And I'm not sure I can hold/My love, he's become a glowing coal/And he burns me/And I hold

5. The Fratellis, "Milk and Money": Ah yes, another one of my very favorite bands. This is the last song on their second album, Here We Stand, and I was lucky enough to hear it live when I saw them a few months ago. Some critics haven't been that kind to this album, but I think it shows how much they've grown since Costello Music. To me, it's songs like this that prove they're much more than "that band that plays Chelsea Dagger."

And the last chance girl in the first dance swirl/Lays her head down on the wooden floor/Won't be dancing anymore/And where do they go when the thrills have gone?/And the last song plays down at babylon/Five hundred kids shout what's the deal?/It's a very confusing way to feel

6. The Animators, "Good to Be Here": I wish I'd gotten the chance to see these guys before they broke up, but at least they left behind them two albums of good solid power pop available for free download on their web site. One of the things I really liked about them was that so many of their songs were little stories, like this one.

I woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling/Look who's back, I saw the doctor smile/Careful, we almost thought we'd lost you for a while/Cecilia was the last thing I remember/On the radio of the overturned car/How long have I been here?/I can't feel a thing/But I think I'm all right

7. Coldplay, "Cemeteries of London": I started listening to Coldplay much later than everybody else did. I got Viva La Vida three or four months after it was released, and enjoyed it much more than I expected. I really like the rhythm section in this tune and the lyrics, which seem like a departure for them in that they're not relationship-focused. Plus, I happened to be reading The Graveyard Book at the time, and this went very nicely as background music.

At night they would go walking 'til the breaking of the day/The morning is for sleeping/Through the dark streets they go searching to seek God in their own way/Save the nighttime for your weeping/Your weeping

8. Solas, "Vital Mental Medicine/The Pullet": With For Love and Laughter, the most recent addition to Solas's discography, Seamus Egan continues his tradition of doing scary things with a banjo, as well as his tradition of giving his original instrumentals puzzling and improbable titles. Personally, I still want to know what "Coconut Dog" is all about...

Shaky fingers

Browsing a thread on Harp Column just now, I came across this post dated a few days ago. And it sounded very familiar...

"Help! I got roped into playing my harp at a small church function in a few days. I still classify myself as a beginner/intermediate, but I've never played for anyone. When I play this little Christmas carol alone, I do fine, but when I try to play in front of a friend or relative, I stumble and draw blanks. I'm afraid I'm going to make a fool of myself in front of a crowd. Tried to get out of it and told them I wasn't accomplished enough, but they wouldn't take no for an answer. Any words of comfort?"

My heart goes out to this person. Why? Because I am this person. Well, okay, not literally, but the situation is very, very similar. I almost never play in public because of this very same problem. I've got a bad case of stage fright where harp is concerned and have never quite gotten over it. I also used to get performance anxiety when I first started flute, but I got over it pretty quickly and played it in public (at church, mostly) for years without problems.

I'm not sure why it's so different with harp, but I can make an educated guess. Maybe it's because I started it pretty late, maybe it's because there are those pesky chords to deal with instead of just a straight melody line, but I'd be willing to bet that it's because I'm just not as confident in my ability. (And, frankly, I could stand to practice more.) Whenever I try to play in public, the fear that it won't be good enough is always lurking in the back of my mind. (Perfectionist, anyone?)

I do feel really sorry for the people who actually get sick from nerves, but that isn't my problem. When I get nervous, my hands shake like crazy, and as you might imagine, those strings suddenly become much harder to get hold of and my fingers just skitter right off them. That's so annoying that I'd honestly be relieved if I just got sick before I played. Then at least it would be out of my system, so to speak. (There are probably better ways of expressing that. Sorry.)

I wish there was a tidy way to tie this post up. I could tell a story about how I found a miraculous cure for this problem, but I'd be lying. I don't think I'll ever get rid of my nerves, not entirely anyway, so I guess the best I can do is figure out how to fake it.

Learning how to stop flinching whenever I make a mistake would be a start...

Creating arrangements

Before I had to quit my lessons due to scheduling issues, my teacher was concentrating on teaching me to come up with my own arrangements. In her words, "I can teach you tunes until the cows come home, but this is going to help you more in the long run." While I don't know much, I agree that it's a useful skill, so I thought I'd pass on what I do know in hopes that it might help someone else. (Bear in mind that I learn by ear. I know absolutely nothing about music theory or transcribing sheet music.)

Before you pick a song to arrange: does it have any key changes in it? This is a matter of some concern to me, but probably not so much to those who play pedal. If it does have key changes and you play lever, it doesn't necessarily mean you can't play it, but you might need to do some lever flipping.

Have you picked the song? Good. You'd better really, really like it. Because before you play anything, you're going to listen to it as many times as it takes to get it into your head. The one I'm working on right now is a tune by Scottish harper Catriona McKay, rather mysteriously named "The Swan Lk243." You can hear part of it here.

I usually focus on trying to pick out the melody with my right hand before I think about chords. As for settling on a fingering for a certain phrase, I've discovered the most obvious fingering isn't necessarily the one that will work best. While I like to have the right hand down pretty solid before I figure out what to do with my left, sometimes it's easier to do both at once. For instance, with this song, I'd made a fair amount of progress on the right hand before realizing that it would actually make more sense to have the left hand play part of the melody in certain places--in other words, they overlap a little. So hooray for trial-and-error. Sometimes I think it's easier to translate songs that weren't originally done on harp.

As for the left hand... I haven't much advice to offer. I feel like I never do anything very creative with it, except for throwing in syncopation whenever possible, just because it's fun. Usually I just end up going with variations on whatever chord "sounds right." I should also note that I'm not trying to reproduce exactly what McKay does. For one thing, it wouldn't be an arrangement if I did. And for another, at least for me, it's downright impossible to do. No matter how many times I listen, I just can't quite hear exactly what she's doing, especially with her left hand. The most I can do is make an educated guess. I figure the first time through the tune I'll stick pretty close to how she plays it and maybe figure out some variations for the second run-through.

I probably don't even need to say this, but once you have the basic structure figured out... repetition. Lots of it.

Some things you should know about Gillian Grassie

1. Her Myspace is named Harp Power - gotta love it.
2. Her music's more contemporary folk/pop than traditional, but she manages to make the harp sound completely natural in that setting.
3. She has a really lovely voice. Reminds me a little of Regina Spektor, a little of Thea Gilmore.
4. She's not only a skilled musician, but a great songwriter. Her song "Silken String" (which you can hear in full on her Myspace) took second place in this year's New York Songwriters Circle Contest.

I'm rather excited to have found out about her music. I'm a decent player, but I've never been able to compose melodies or write lyrics, and I suspect I never will. Maybe I'm wrong, but it strikes me as something you either have or you don't - you can't learn. The Philadelphia Inquirer did a feature story on her a few weeks ago, and she described the melody to "Silken String" has having actually come to her in a dream. I'm always ridiculously jealous of people who talk about songs "just sort of coming into their heads." The only songs that ever show up in my head are usually somebody else's, so seeing another harper close to my age playing and singing original compositions is pretty amazing.

If any of this sounds intriguing, check out her CD, Serpentine. If you like musicians like Vienna Teng, Tori Amos, Charlotte Martin... you'll probably like this.

A reminder

To all those in the US...

GET OUT THERE AND VOTE.

(Sorry to shout, but hey, it's important.)

Some haunting music for you

Alas for my digital recorder. I cannot find the bloody thing and so cannot regale you with one of my favorite jigs, "I Buried My Wife And Danced On Top of Her," which I thought would be perfectly appropriate for Hallowe'en. So instead I'll leave you with a performance from Emilie Autumn, who is not a harp player (thank heavens, because she'd probably be brilliant and then I'd have to roll over and give up), but who is nevertheless a wonderfully gifted and experimental artist. She does some rather nifty things with electric violin, and this piece is an example of that. It's an instrumental entitled "Face the Wall" and is haunting in every sense of the word.



Have a lovely Samhain, everyone!

Of gothy harps and other curiosities

Big news for plucky people: Amy Lee of Evanescence appeared on The Tonight Show armed with a harp in addition to her usual piano to help out in her rendition of "Sally's Song" from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Her cover of this song appears on the new album Nightmare Revisited.



Interesting, even though the harp plays a pretty minor role. I'm not sure what make it is, but it seems to be a pedal (makes sense, she played piano first) and looks like it's got a black finish (of course). That said, her playing isn't all that impressive. As you can see, she doesn't really grab it until the very end, and it looks like mostly basic double-handed chords.

But to be fair, she's just beginning, so maybe we'll be seeing more complex things further down the road. And hey, it's a still a harp on TV, right?

Pedals and levers and electrics, oh my!

Before I go any further, I thought I should give an explanation about the different kinds of harps so you can know what I’m going on about. (If you already know, I apologize. Feel free to scroll on past.)

Basically, there are lever harps (sometimes referred to as Celtic harps) and pedal harps (also called concert harps). Lever harps are more often played by folk or traditional musicians, and pedal harps are usually associated with classical musicians. However, I don’t claim to be an expert and there are exceptions to every rule. For instance: Joanna Newsom, who I talked about in the entry below, is usually categorized as a folk musician… but she plays a pedal harp. In fact, she started out on Celtic harp but has explained in interviews that she couldn’t use it for her songs because it didn’t allow her to change keys easily.

So how will you know if you’re looking at a pedal harp or a lever harp? Well, for one thing, the pedal harp is going to be bigger. If you’re standing in front of it and it seems to be towering over you in an intimidating fashion, chances are you’re standing in front of a pedal harp. Chances are even greater if said harp happens to be in the middle of an orchestra pit. On the other hand, if you’re sitting in the middle of a session at an Irish pub, the thing you’re looking at is more likely to be a lever harp. Lever harps also tend to be quite a bit smaller—I’m about five feet tall and mine reaches just to my shoulder when I stand next to it.

These two types differ in range and as well as in size. Pedal harps can cover over six octaves and usually have 46 or 47 strings, while lever harps generally range from 34 to 38 strings (though this varies—I’ve seen some with less and some with more) and cover about four octaves. The major difference between these two types, though, is how you change keys. On a lever harp, there are usually sharping levers on each string (hence the name) so you can play either sharps or naturals. If you push the lever upwards, it shortens the sounding length of the string and raises the pitch. So if I want to change my F to an F-sharp in the middle of a song, I have to reach up and flip the lever. (This drives me bonkers when I want to learn a song that has a key change in the middle.) With pedal harps, there are metal discs at the top of the strings which are connected to the pedals. If you press the pedals, the discs can be moved up or down to shorten or lengthen the sounding length to play sharps, naturals, or flats. Obviously, pedal harps are a lot better for changing keys on the fly. So if you’re thinking about taking up harp, think about the kind of music you’ll want to play—it’s something I wish I’d considered a little more carefully when I started.

To add even more confusion, there are also the divisions of acoustic harps, electric harps, and harps capable of creating both sounds. There still seems to be a lot of experimentation going on with the electric versions, although Deborah Henson-Conant is pretty well known for her use of the Camac Electroharp.

Pedal players, feel free to jump in and correct me on anything in this post if I've said anything glaringly wrong.

A brief insight

I can never seem to make up my mind about Joanna Newsom. I feel like I should be rooting for her because she's a female songwriter who plays the harp instead of guitar or piano. She's obviously a talented musician (look at those fingers go) and she seems like an interesting person.

So, every so often I get stern with myself and decide that I'm really going to listen to her music and give it a fair chance this time. But I never get more than a minute or so into a song before giving up. I once saw an iTunes reviewer describe her singing as sounding exactly like Lisa Simpson, and I have to admit the comparison is an apt one. Her lyrics might be good, but it becomes irrelevant because the sound prevents me from really concentrating on them. So I turn the song off and vow I will never listen to her again. But something always keeps me coming back, which in this case was lucky, because a few days ago I ran across this live performance of "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie":



Quite honestly, I love this video. Her voice seems to have been toned down somehow. The childlike quality of it now seems endearing rather than irritating, and the breaks and cracks sound like they come from emotion rather than lack of skill. And since I'm not distracted by her singing, I can actually focus on her playing and listen to the words, which manage to be both quirky and poignant at the same time.

I still don't plan on listening to Joanna full-time, simply because her voice just isn't my cup of tea, but I still respect what she's doing. She certainly has her own style and isn't afraid to pursue it, and that's something to be admired.

Introduction

I've been a musician ever since I was a kid. I play harp now, but it wasn't my first instrument. I started taking lessons from a classical flutist when I was ten and kept up with it for several years. However, I wouldn't say I'm classically trained, as I can't sight read for beans. Truth be told, I don't even know what key I'm playing in most of the time. (I flip levers up and down until it sounds right.)

I discovered Celtic harp entirely by accident. I heard of a teacher in the area and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I ended up loving it partly because it's just a beautiful instrument and partly because of the teaching method. My struggles with reading sheet music played a large part in my eventually dropping the flute, but in the Irish tradition, whether it's harp, tinwhistle, pipes, what have you - you learn by ear, and for whatever reason, that works best for me.

I'm finishing up college this year and can no longer afford lessons, so I'm embarking on the exciting (and somewhat frightening) prospect of teaching myself. This blog will be, in part, a record of my progress. It's probably going to be harp-focused much of the time, but I hope it won't be limited to that. Most of what I currently play is Irish trad, but it's not all I listen to - not by a long shot. I'm interested in all kinds of stuff. It makes me very happy when someone asks me, "So what kind of music does (insert artist here) play?" and I can't come up with an easy definition.

I'm fascinated by musicians who aren't afraid to experiment and mix up genres, even in the cases where it's clear the experiment didn't quite work, and I'd like to do something similar. I feel like I've reached the limit of what I can do with jigs and reels. Not that I don't still enjoy playing them, but I want to do something different. I've been playing for about five years, but I still feel like a beginner in the sense that I'm only just starting to comprehend the range of things you can do with this instrument.

So you can expect grumblings about arrangements that won't cooperate with me, videos of musicians or performances that I find inspiring, drooling over harps that I covet and cannot afford, my thoughts on discussions posted on other musicians' blogs or message boards... and anything else I can come up with! I'm writing this mostly for myself, but if anyone's reading, I hope you get something interesting out of it - and comments and suggestions are always welcome.