Eleven Pipers Piping...and a harp

I am now, finally, the owner of a harp. While owning the musical instrument that I intend to haul across the United States is undoubtedly, important, having a harp means so much more than that to me. In order to demonstrate how much this means to me I'm going to tell you a story. When I was a little girl my mother would read a book to me called Gwinna, written by Barbara Berger. It's about a young girl with wings who hears the sound of a harp in the wind; she begs her father to build her a harp, however he's not able to build one for her.  One day her parents are turned into stone by an old crone, luckily, a Griffen helps her to fly to a magical mountain where a beautiful young tree donates herself for the wood of a harp. The Griffen turns into an old man who is also a skilled Luthier (someone who builds harps). From that small harp comes the sound that is able to free her parents and obviously, allows her to fulfill her dreams.

That was a terrible rendition of one of my favorite, childhood stories. Seriously it's way more complex than that, and worth reading to your own children someday. Anyway, I LOVED this story as a child and from the time I was about five, I begged my mother to buy me a harp. Because we didn't know of any harp teachers in the area, that dream did not become a reality until I was 15 years old and met a harp teacher at church; however, even then I never owned a harp, we merely rented one.

Therefore my current status as harp owner is awesome! It's a small lap harp made by William Rees Harps and it's what is called a fullsicle; it has 26 six strings and full levers. For those of you who aren't harp junkies like myself, there are two different kinds of harps: pedal harps and lever harps. Pedal harps have a pedal for each key. Depressing a pedal causes all the corresponding strings of that key to become sharp, moving the pedal up flats the strings. Pedal harps usually have at least 40-47 strings and are used for classical music. Lever harps on the other hand, have levers over every single string (or occasionally only the C or F strings), and when you intend to sharp a string you lift up the lever and it causes the string to move up a half-step (if you need flats you usually have to retune the harp to a different key). Because of this, lever harps range from 22 to 40 strings and are the harp of choice for Celtic and folk harpers, since they are much smaller and easier to transport. So when I say that the harp has full levers it means that there are levers over each key, allowing me to play a much bigger range of music.

Anyway, beyond practicing my music for the group and tuning the harp constantly (harps have to be tuned 2-3 times a day when they're new) a few small things have progressed for the group. I talked to my grandmother the other day about costumes, apparently she was also a part of renaissance fairs when she was younger. (Ren fairs must therefore be in my blood. I'm taking this as a good sign for our chances of getting accepted as performers). She told me about the different costumes for different classes and it seems as though we might have to change a few things about our costumes; I didn't realize how many restrictions they put on what you could wear. Everything needs to be completely authentic, right down to the type of fabric you use.

Other than that, things are sort of on hold right now for the holidays. Once we all regroup in Utah we'll be able to practice as a group and get started on our demo CD. I will try to post a video of me playing the harp sometime soon...or at least a recording or something, no judging my harp skills though if I do. I'm still getting back into the groove of playing; hopefully the groove returns in full-force soon--Pepper.