The Instrumentalists Thread

[Tessar]

Oh my God, oh my God!!!! It's mine!!! I got the harp!!

She is going to take it to the manufacturer to have him give it a once over and he will personally pack it for shipment to me on the 14th, and a week or so after that I should have my harp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

29 strings, fully levered, and the brand I've been wanting. HUZZAH!!!!!!!

[Varnafindë]

Great news, Tessar!

[Earniel]

Just what you wanted? Heh, sounds almost too good to be true. Are you sure the person sending it over isn't named Annatar by any chance? Maybe Sauron gave jewellery a miss this time and went for musical instruments.

[Tessar]

If this harp turns me into a shadow bound to the will of Sauron, I am definitely demanding a full refund.

I'm nervous about purchasing without playing first, but it's the one I've been pining for AND it turns out both of the stores within driving distance of me no longer carry harps in stock so outside of someone in town selling a harp (which happens never....) there really is not a chance for me to play before buying.


I got some more information in it too, and figured out why it's so inexpensive. The story is that the harp was actually purchased by a boss who played harp, then that boss bought a much larger harp. The boss found out the lady's daughter plays harp and gifted the harp to her. Now the daughter has a larger harp and is going to college, so the mom is selling the smaller harp. It looks like it has been on eBay since April 2nd, so I'm lucky no one else snatched it up! Sadly the market for harps is very small though, so I've seen awesome harps that have just been sitting and waiting to sell on eBay for months and months. It doesn't surprise me no one else has bought it, but I'm glad I found it before someone else did.

[Earniel]

Well, if only Gollum had asked for a refund... the story might have been very short.

But the moments fiery letters appear on the harp, RUN!

[Rían]

Oh, that is wonderful, Tessar!!!! I'm so jealous - I'd love a harp like that!

Can't wait to hear the report when it comes in

[Tessar]

Rian, any harp playing lately?

I'm trying to set up some lessons over the December break. I'd hope to get in 4 or 5 lessons... I don't think I'll go back to my first teacher because, although she was lovely, she was very nervous and her frantic energy was a bit much for me. I love an energetic teacher, but not when it's because they're socially awkward... So I found a different teacher in town, and I think this one might be a good bet because she has a degree in music education and a masters in harp performance. So hopefully I'll set something up!

In the meanwhile, I've gotten a bit better at doing "arpeggio runs" where I keep a steady stream of arpeggios going while I'm playing the melody, rather than just strumming the chords or playing the arpeggios very slowly.

Currently trying to arrange "In The Bleak Mid-Winter," for my friend to sing. Just for funsies.



I am SO SLOW at harp sight reading, though!!! So I've just been analyzing pieces to figure out what the root of the chords is, and then I just play the melody and make up the arrangement below it. It's terrible... I should really do some work on sight reading on the harp, but eh... If I want to play through something note-for-note I just sit down at the piano and do it (because I'm a decent sight-player at piano), then use the chord structures I figured out to do it on the harp.

[Rían]

I just played for a few minutes today because of the wonderful new app that I found that will help me so much in figuring out the notes of pieces that I hear and like, and it was so nice. It's been so long because of (again!) all the stupid medical issues we're having - the latest being the almost 4 months long now battle with my daughter's rare nerve pain condition that started with a simple stress fracture in her foot and went into this stupid rare and very painful nerve condition (CRPS, or RDS) and we've had to get the poor thing multiple shots in the spine and other surgical procedures blah blah blah I hate this I need some music ...

Anyway of course my stupid A string was popped AGAIN (it's my moodiest string) and I didn't feel like pulling out the stringing stuff so I just worked around it a bit and it was nice. But the really cool thing is that I got to use my new amazing app on the piece that I really want to learn, and it's AMAZING!!!!

I'm going to copy my post from the happy thread here so that the instrumentalists can see it.

ps - I love "In the Bleak Mid-Winter"!! Id like to hear what you come up with. Also, I wouldn't worry about harp sight-reading too much - I like just playing the melody and then figuring out my own arrangement below it.

[Rían]

I am soooooo excited - I just found a free app for something that I've wanted for years and that costs over $200 for the special piece of equipment. And now it's a free app for my iPod!!!!!!!!!!!!!


!!!!!!!!!!


It's called Tempo Slo Mo and it takes music from your ipod or from other sources and will slow down the tempo without changing the pitch!!!!!! I like to take pieces I hear and learn them and then play around with them and rearrange them to how I like it. Of course, the hard part is figuring them out without music (I'm talking harp pieces, which are often very fast and two-handed) - you have to just play over and over and OVER and work on the melody line, then the harmony, then the base line, then any filler notes, etc. etc. And it's time-consuming for a non-professional, non-"natural" player like myself (but so worth it!)

A few years ago, I wondered if there was a player that would do this for you, and sure enough, I found a little MP-3 player in a harp catalogue that did just this. Only drawback - it was $200 (and it was another piece of equipment to keep track of and fill with batteries). I just couldn't justify paying that much money for something like that, so I sadly put it on the back burner. But tonight, as I was waiting for my son's wrestling practice to finish up, I played one of my absolute favorite harp pieces and wished for the millionth time that I could figure it out. I googled the basic idea when I got home, and lo and behold - it's a free app!!!!!!

It works so well!!!! I can't wait to pull out my harp tomorrow and give it a try. And it even has really handy controls - you can set a start and stop position if you only want to deal with a certain part at a time, and you can even set loop positions so it continuously plays a section over and over without you having to push a button. Obviously, it had input from a musician.

Anyway, I know there's a lot of musicians on this board, so I wanted to share it, and I thought why not just make it a general thread for great apps.

***************

additional info - OK, I tried it out today (that post was written last night) and it works SO WELL!!!!!!! Unbelievable - I wish I had had it years ago. But I guess it was good training for my ear to do it the old way, and when I made mistakes, they sometimes led me to a better arrangement But I wanted to add that you MUST get two of the additional features (99 cents each and SO worth it) - the pitch feature, which lets you step up/down the pitch in half-step increments to change keys, and the playlist feature, which lets you save your pieces that you're working on along with all the markers you put in and the speed settings and the pitch setting.

I started working on the opening sequence of that piece that is so lovely (when Grainne Hambly performed it at the Sylvia Woods' Harp Center concert, the room was dead silent when she stopped - no one wanted to break the atmosphere by clapping - it was really extraordinary) and I found the first note and played it, but the second note needed to have the string sharped, so I threw a lever. Then the third note needed to have the string sharped, so I threw another lever. Then the fourth note needed to have the string sharped, so I threw another lever. I prefer to not have to sharp strings, both because I'm lazy and because I think it takes away just a tiny bit of sound quality, so I remembered the pitch feature and pitched it up a few steps, and lo and behold, I found a key that sounds great AND HAS NO LEVERS!!! (I keep my harp tuned to 2 flats) SO much nicer to just sit down and play. I'm really energized to play my harp again and learn this piece. The only depressing part is that I wish I had a few more strings in the bass section Only 3 more strings would be SOOOOOO helpful. Part of this piece is this lovely B played very low by itself, and I have to play it higher, and it just isn't the same Oh well, I'll just have to remind myself how incredibly lucky I am to even have my own harp!

[Tessar]

Rian, that is so cool!! Thanks for the tip! Loving this new app.

[Earniel]

I recently bought a Celtic Harp CD and am quite liking it. But it made me wonder, how are our Entmoot harpists? Still playing?

[Rían]

I've been playing for the last week now and loving it! I've had so much awful medical stuff and have been so exhausted that I haven't played for at least a year, but I decided that I needed to just "force" myself to play, because every time I play, I love it. It's just getting started sometimes when you're exhausted after a long day that's hard.

I've been working on an arrangement of "Pretty Little Horses" these last few days. I had bought an arrangement and loved the intro, but didn't like the rest of the arrangement, so I'm keeping the intro and then just making my own arrangement after that. I'm also getting the other pieces I knew back up to speed.

I really need to find some good music-notating software, because I had some really nice arrangements but didn't write them down, and now I've forgotten them It's just such a pain to write them down by hand, but I could do it on a keyboard. I started to do it on Garageband on the Mac; I need to try that again.

So yes, still playing, and LOVING it! Once I get my tired bod over to the harp, I end up playing for an hour or more, and I just love it. And I haven't had a string pop for awhile, which is nice - I hate changing strings! However, with the recent weather changes ... *crosses her fingers*

I was talking to a lady on another discussion board, and she named her cello. I think it was Edward or Edmund; can't remember. I'll have to see if I can come up with a good name - maybe Finrod?

What is your CD?

[Varnafindë]

Finrod should be a good name for a music-maker

[Rían]

Whoops - I actually meant Fingon! I always loved that picture of him going to save his friend Maedhros, and among the essentials for the trip was ... his harp!


*swats Eärniel back* Get away from my man!

[Earniel]

Girl, you've got your Elven hotties mixed up! You and me were squabbling about Túor, remember? You had beef about Finrod with SGH and about Fingon with... with... can't remember who, really. BoB, maybe. Clearly, you're an elf-hog, RÃ*an.

And you ain't gettin' Túor! Mine!

But it's nice to see you still, or rather again, at harp playing. I think it can do wonders to make you temporarily forget about all the bleak stuff in your life.

Lin, elvish for 'song' would be a good name too. Could save you a lot of trouble if ever your husband hears you have been 'playing' with a someone named Finrod all day!

The CD I have is just named 'Celtic Harp'. I suspect there's a number of CD's with similar names but mine comes with a nice mix of traditional and instrumental music, and newer tunes with singing. One of my favourites 'The Bonny Light Horseman' has the halmarks of a period piece because it starts with the lines 'Napoleon Bonaparte, you're the cause of my woe'. For some reason I thought that was rather cute.

[Rían]

Wow! I really AM mixed up! That's right, it was TUOR that you were trying to take away from me! My half-elvenness requires both a human and an elf, so I need both Tuor and Fingon (Finrod was only to tease SGH; I never really loved him )

I love that Napolean line - that's so funny!

[Alec]

I play trumpet and Piano. I was wondering if anyone else does???