Selecting Correct Strings When Changing Harp Strings

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Jesse Sparhawk on behalf of Expert Village. I can be reached at myspace.com/jessesparhawk for any questions. In this segment, we will be covering string changing. So inevitably, with harp ownership and playing, you are going to get into this situation where if you take a closer look right where my fingers are, I hope that you are able to discern these little frayed spots on these strings, which in this case, are made of cow intestine. I hope that does not offend anyone. These strings are on their way out. Now before this situation gets somewhat severe, which it is, these strings were installed in the factory. It’s totally okay, like for example, on a string like this one, like with tiny almost imperceptible fray of string tendons to clip it with a nail clipper, to clip little fray spots, very gently just off of the string, just to remove little frays. But in this case, these two strings are ready to go, as we would like to say in the harp world, they are ready to go. The first thing that we want to do is determine what strings these are. As I have covered in prior segments, all the red strings on the harp are Cs. All the black or very dark blue strings on the harp are Fs. The way that we determine what string this is you have to keep in mind, for string ordering, that when you are ordering a string from any dealer, either you can find online that sell strings, is that ask about ‘Oh, I have this certain harp’ - you have to make sure should I get nylon strings, should I get gut strings, you are always going to have wire strings at the base. Keep in mind, that when ordering the string, the octave of the string is actually from E to F, E to F, E to F, E to F, E to an imaginary F, that actually is not on the harp, and this F up to the E, that isn’t actually on the harp. So in fact that this is, where my hand is first octave, second octave from E to F, third octave from E to F, fourth octave from E to F, fifth octave from E to F and sixth octave with these wires. In this case, first, both the strings in question, our culprits today, are in the second octave. What I’m going to do right now is address second octave B putting my tuning key back here on the proper peg and letting the string loose. You can clip the string off or you can just unravel it. Remove the key, which is sometimes a challenge and pull the string out. Now if you can see, this harp, which is actually a really great design element. The manufacturer provides you with these small dowels that you actually can wrap the string around. Often times though, with classical harp, you will in fact wrap these string end around another large piece of a lower and thicker string, just a short little piece of string. Because I need this little piece of wood to wrap the new string around, just do this here. Next, we will deal with replacing the string. "