Mi Contra Fa

Practice

I always come back from Somerset all fired up to practice my instruments more.  But rather than career around willy-nilly and not necessarily get anywhere, I should have a Plan.  Why am I practicing? What do I want to do?

Harp

I need to do some work on my technique, both on wire and gut.  Finger exercises, ap Huw figures, drills for fourth finger strength especially.  Learning the shape of the instruments, being able to 'grab' octaves, fifths, other intervals without looking.  Playing cleanly and confidently.

Refreshing the old repertoire first sounds like a good place to start as far as songs go.

Lyre

Also technique.  Fourth finger strengthening, strumming, using a plectrum.  Agility, possibly ornamentation.

I need to stop talking about recitation and instrument and start doing it. Since I don't have much of a formal fixed repertoire for lyre, that sounds like a good exercise for it.  I should probably start with a carefully-considered, perhaps composed, accompaniment, until I have an idea of what works and what doesn't and can improvise more.

Desired Outcomes

More assured stage presence.  Clean and clear melodies, played with commitment and consistent rhythm (no pausing to hunt and peck for strings).  Accompaniment with a purpose - not wandering, aimless noodling that distracts and worries me (does this sound okay?).

Use recording technology to evaluate performance, get used to making/viewing videos of myself.  In time, I hope I'll be making video tutorials for YouTube, and I should be comfortable with that process before the first one goes up.

Do it.  I've spent so long not-performing, I'm building up anxiety about returning to the stage, and it undermines my stage presence. Practice what I want to perform, then go perform it somewhere confidently.

Confidence, confidence, confidence.  I see a theme here.

Somerset Harp Festival

I went, I saw, I had a good time.  Took a really nifty class on Middle Eastern rhythms, and got a refresher class from Cynthia Cathcart, my wire harp teacher (back when I was taking lessons, Before Children).  I learned a half-dozen ap Huw figures to practice, hurrah!

I'll be proposing some classes for next Somerset, I think.  While the classes are usually interesting, they're also generally geared for people playing 29-36 nylon strings.  Lots of classes on arpeggios and glissandos, on different figures for left-hand chords, on fingering and hand positions for nylon, on "using all your strings," and so on.  My primary instrument (if I can be said to have one, for all the practice I've had recently) is my 19-string wire.  Different technique, different positioning, different approach to arranging.  So much just isn't applicable to me. 

It is always fun to hear the different pro players, and how they excel in different ways.  Main takeaway lesson: Playing lovely, floating music on the harp is not hard.  Playing gripping music, music that demands and commands full attention from the audience, that's harder.  Whether it's rapid melody played absolutely clean and fast, with ringing ornaments that baffle the ear; a slow air with sensitive phrasing that just draws you up and up; a can-do accompaniment that gets out of the way of terrific vocals - it has to be more than just "nice" and "pretty."

Cigar-Box Lyre

The call for class proposals for Fall University has gone out, and I think I want to teach a lyre-playing class.  I know of at least three gentles in Atlantia who have found the lyre on their own; perhaps there are others who would be interested in giving it a try.

Now, to teach lyre playing, you need some lyres.

I asked the folks on the Anglo-Saxon Lyre Group for some advice.  I was getting ready to try and make some resonator-less lyres (boards with hand-holes and strings, essentially), when Master Arden of the East mused that it might be even easier to nail together some wood in the appropriate shape.  Bless him, he even provided notional sizes of the wood needed.  I sure wouldn't have had any idea.

So I have a collection of bits now:

Poplar 1" x 1" x 3' - to be cut into lengths the width of the lyre.  One at the top, one at the bottom, one at around the middle.

Poplar 1/4" x 1.5" x 2' - The sides of the lyre.  Couldn't find any small craft boards that were exactly 1" to match the cross-supports.

Beech (? I have to check) 3mm thick plywood - from a craft store.  Soundboard and back of the instrument.

1/4" x 5/8" rectangular basswood dowel - for bridge.  Grabbed at the last minute in the craft store; I worry the basswood will be too soft.

5/8" round dowel and brass flat-headed screws - possible tailpiece assembly.  The other advice I got was just to put in small escutcheon nails and tie the strings directly to them.

Got sandpaper, polyurethane spray, etc.

Still need: zither tuning pegs, fluorocarbon strings.  (60-80lb, 40lb and 30lb test are decent starting points, apparently).