The first signs of fall are everywhere here in Ontario: changing leaves, apple trees laden with fruit, cool brisk evenings. Soon wedding season will be giving way to teaching season for many of us. Although as we all know, there’s nothing quite like one of those late-fall outdoor gigs – numb fingers and toes, music fluttering in the chilly wind, layers of sweaters. Good things to keep on hand: fingerless gloves, dressy coats and sweaters, and a good thick padded case for your harp. And don’t forget to stock up on all those back-to-lessons essentials: dictation books, extra copies of method and exercise books, pencils, stickers, receipt booklet, and that all-important new daytimer (hopefully to mark down all those pre-booked gigs for next year!)
1:13 p.m.: Harp Blog technical glitch fixed. I never knew this could happen in WordPress, but after going through all the Harp Blog posts attempting to fix an apparently random formatting glitch, it became clear that the Harp Blog had been hacked (!). Aside from putting some very inappropriate links at the bottom of one of my old posts (from over a year ago), it also put junk spam code in every post on the site (all of which have been either deleted or cleaned up), arbitrarily reset the categories for about 90% of the HarpBlog posts and messed up the formatting on a handful of them as well. So this afternoon I got to go through the whole site editing and re-categorizing everything. You should now be able to find free print music, pictures of harps, events announcements, beginner tips and so on using the categories again. Hoping this is just a one-time freak security glitch! (Grr.) And yes – the first thing I did after fixing everything was change my password.
If all your other strings can be tuned normally (suggesting there is nothing wrong with either the tuner or the harp itself), then it might be that you have a couple of pegs that are slipping. Usually the most common cause of strings not keeping their tuning is that the pegs have become loose. This can sometimes be caused by sudden heat or humidity changes, or just simple wear and tear. The easiest fix is usually to just carefully push the pegs back in so that they have a firm fit again. Use caution when doing this, so as not to wrench the peg or damage the harp. If this doesn’t work, you might want to talk to your nearest luthier and get them to have a look at it.
If you’re having trouble getting in contact with the people who originally sold you your harp, you could try contacting the Harplist or the Harpmaker’s list, someone on there might be able to help you out:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Harplist
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/harpmakers
Good luck!
I am new to playing the harp and the only problem I have is tuning A and B notes on my HEather Harp(22 strings). It is three octaves and I assume the way it goes is C3,D3,E3,F3,G3,A4,B4,C4,D4,E4,F4,G4,A5,B5,C5,D5,E5,F5,G5,A6,B6,C6. I have a Seiko electronic tuner and it works fine and I have no problem tuning anything except the A and B notes. For instance, if I am tuning the A4 string, as I tighten it, the tone will go from F3 to G3, then suddenly jump to C4. No matter how small my adjustments are, this is what happens and happens with only the A and B notes. Any suggestions? I would contact the company who sold it to me, but there is not a contact on their web site(celticrenaissance.com). Any help would be greatly appreciated.