Yup, John - I'm a harpist but in a bit of a time crunch at the moment. The described effect certainly IS possible and quite easy to accomplish; when the pedals sit in their neutral (fully up, or technically: fully flattened) position, there is no contact between the strings and the <two> sets of tuning discs, each of which have (in turn) TWO pins, one on either side of the string. When the pedal is depressed into the 'natural' or middle position, carefully: the first set of discs rotates, engaging the pins on either side of the string; depress the pedal again into its lowest or sharped position and the second set of discs and ITS sets of pins engage the string. Stopping once, stopping twice. So much for the mechanics; the string is - as with any chordophone: shortened and the pitch raised.
Now - in practice: of course it's possible to micro-tone any pitch between a string's flat and sharp positions: done carefully (and if the harp is well-regulated) there's no buzz - but the harpist CAN deliberately create a buzz EVEN while slowly altering the pitch from (say) fully flatted to natural. Microtones, you name it: you can do it. With or without buzz; it's all in the foot. Because: there is a graduated alteration of the string's length produced by the TURNING of the discs, not an abrupt pitch change; it's how the instrument works. A good harpist slips pedals quickly so as to lessen the potential portamento - and does so (usually) while the string is NOT ringing - or the harpist will deliberately do just the opposite, so as to produce a portamento effect, if called for. Matter of fact, Harpo Marx (with whose technique I have more than a little familiarity!) actually created a pedal 'trill' effect that was unique to the instrument but has since become fairly standard. The effect was rendered simply by rapid half-step pedal alteration; it's kinda funny, too because it's a hands-free effect....you're looking at the harpist, the string is sounded, and then the foot takes over and the trill is committed without fingers on strings. Done slowly, ya hear the interceding tones; done quickly and the persistence of hearing (my term) makes you think you're hearing a clean 1/2-step trill. Done badly: buzz buzz buzzzzzzzzz......... Les Marsden (209) 966-6988 Cell: (559) 708-6027 (Emergency only) 7145 Snyder Creek Road Mariposa, CA 95338-9641 Founding Music Director and Conductor, The Mariposa Symphony Orchestra Music and Mariposa? Ahhhhh, Paradise!!! Mariposa County Planning Commissioner, District 5 Past President, The Economic Development Corporation of Mariposa County http://arts-mariposa.org/symphony.html Marsden Marx Pages: http://tinyurl.com/ygpj7og ----- Original Message ----- From: John Howell To: finale@shsu.edu Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010 3:35 PM Subject: Re: [Finale] OT: harp notation At 10:30 PM +0100 1/2/10, SN jef chippewa wrote: >anyone have the sequenza handy and can cross-ref? > >-- > >ok, i thought that there was a salzedo-sanctioned notaton for this. > >the composer has said to block the pedal at natural(^) or >natural(v), but if i understood chris right, these would produce two >different pitches, either b or nat but never sharp? this means that >there is a "breaking point" in the gliss where it shifts to the >upper or lower note, correct? Stop and think for a moment about how a harp operate. The pedals operate 2 sets of fretting stops (and I'm sure there's a technical term for them) that either do or do not fret the strings at the natural and sharp levels. The "buzz" you're after is the string vibrating against that stop when it isn't firmly in either position. Therefore I see no way that you could have all 3 string pitches at once. You could have Bb/B natural or you could have B natural/B#. But it isn't as simple as producing two different pitches, because neither pitch would be clean and obvious, since they're both produced by the same string. But yes, it would be a combined sound along with the buzz. >i am thinking -- in fact proposing -- that using a 1/4 sharp or 1/4 >flat (maybe plus the Z-buzz symbol) would make sense as the standard >notation that should be used for this. There are no quarter-steps possible on a harp, at least without hand-fretting a single string, and I don't know whether that's even possible. The basic mechanics don't allow it. So harpists are not only not used to seeing such notation, I doubt that they'd know how to interpret it. The question seems to be which effect is more important to you: the buzz of the string against the frets, or sounding 2 pitches at once? For the latter, it would be more normal to use 2 adjacent strings. Are there no harpists on this list? There are at least 2 on the SibeliusList. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
