Tuning the A & D Strings of a Harp

Video Transcript

"Hi! I am Jesse Sparhawk. We are continuing to tune the harp. I can be reached at www.myspace.com/jessesparhawk. When we’ve reached as close to perfection as my hearing can comprehend. With harp, especially when you are playing in ensembles, you’re better off erring on the side of being slightly higher than you might need to be than lower, because the relationship with other instruments is just better to be slightly sharp than flat. We have got this first perfect fifth between A and E tuned. The next thing you want to tune is the perfect fifth between that same A and one string down from the E, that we have just tuned, which is A and D. So first thing we are doing, perfect fifth, that’s tuned. Now a perfect fourth, just A to D. You can keep going back to check all the other strings that you have done already just to make sure that you have got them right. That sounds pretty good. We’ll continue, instead of now changing the thumb string that we’re going to be tuning, we change the third finger’s string down by one. So we doing perfect fifth, perfect fourth, and another perfect fifth. Except this time, we keep our thumb on the D to get the middle G in tune, which is one string above this blue F. The E and G, GG all sounding pretty good. I do not know who could have tuned this before we started. Then the next thing after the G and the D, skipping to one string down with the thumb again to G and C, so this red string above middle C. We have that perfect fourth in tune and now instead of doing anymore perfect fourths or perfect fifths, we are going to continue with an octave. We are getting this octave, the C octave, in tune, which is basically a middle C octave. I’m going from the middle C, to my fourth finger here to the C above, an octave above, 8 strings apart. Now we have got this octave in tune. We go to a perfect fourth, again, but this time above that low C that you have just tuned to the F. Everything sounding pretty good. You can even go back very quickly. I’ll just give a little review of what I have done. Perfect fifth, perfect fourth, perfect fifth, perfect fourth and octave, another perfect fourth and then to our last perfect fourth. Now this brings up an interesting issue with the folk harp, which is that you can tune it prior to, depending on what piece you are playing, there are alternate tunings for harp. In this case this harp is actually tuned to F major scale, which would mean I can play F to F and I have the F major scale rather than lifting any of these levers, which actually raise each string a semi-tone, a half step. In other words, imagine on a keyboard the black key above middle C and then the black key above middle C, except that every string has the capability of being raised a half step. Even the E, which for anyone that is familiar with piano, or the keyboard, the white keys of E and F don’t have a black key in between them because E and F are what are known as enharmonic. When I raise E sharp, I get F. They are the same note. If you notice that I am plucking both the middle E and F. I am getting the same tone."