Give Me Your Harpmobile, Julia Child...

Matthew and I re-watched Julie & Julia last night. Ooof! Y'all think I could fit my harp in that amazing car?! The summer before my senior year of Chemical Engineering I studied abroad in Paris for a month... It was so magical (as you might imagine). Julia & her husband's apartment in that movie was a place I walked by so regularly while living there. I remember FLIPPING OUT when I saw it in theaters. I quickly grabbed my phone & pulled up a picture of it on my flickr stream to prove it to my friends (who were probably rolling their eyes and actively shushing me... I don't remember, I was too giddy to notice). Anyway... Now my husband and I both have Paris-itis. Like, can we please board a plane and go live in France immediately?! I wonder if Camac is hiring???? Although not my style, I get quite a kick out of their harpes bleues.

Harpwear

I intermittently find myself daydreaming about what amazing dresses I'll wear SOMEDAY when I have gigs as a harpist! A closet full of elegant, flowy gowns for formal occasions... Neon+glittery nail varnish?... Decorative headpieces?... Retro gowns with giant poofy chiffon skirts?... My beat up, old, way too big for me Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt with jeans and Dr. Martens?... It all sounds perfect.

Sara Tyler Harp.. Technician? / Getting to Know You!

Ever since my short trip to Richmond last year to fix my harp's buzzing I haven't been able to stop thinking how awesome it would be to be a harp technician. I felt so tempted to twist and push and pull everything to isolate the problem, but I also felt like I might mess something up so I resisted. Then I found out someone gets to do this, like, as their job?! Hang out with harps all day and take things apart and make harpists' days by repairing their beloved instruments? What could be better?! Apparently that means moving to Chicago and working for Lyon & Healy or something. I wish it were easy for me to do that... I don't want to rule it out, but I don't know if I can go for it anytime in the very near future.



I think something changed in me after seeing Amy get my harp in the back of the giant SUV I rented when we were all done... She's tinier than I am but she just wheeled it out and shoved it up in the SUV all by herself. No fussing or worrying about whether the right parts were supported after putting it in (like I had after loading it at home). I felt less scared of my harp. I think when I first got my harp, it barely felt like it was really mine. I'd been swooning over pictures of it online for months, but it seemed a little impossible that I'd be able to buy one. At first, I was a little scared to move it from room to room, and I was very shy about the pedals. Like, oOoOoOohh, it's this giant, heavy, wooden, stringy, complicated mechanical thing! Beware!



It seems less fragile to me now. I guess that just comes with time. This is still a new instrument to me. A broken string doesn't make me panic anymore. I have no problem wheeling the harp around without assistance. I'm probably still pretty gentle on the strings when I play... but I'm still such a beginner. It's becoming more like a friend than a stranger, if instruments can be friends. It audibly resonates sometimes when we're sitting around talking. I've come to think of it like an animate part of our house. Maybe I'm just crazy and instrument obsessed.

Harp Practice Episode 4 - Bb, F# & pedaling E and C while playing!

Behold! The three songs most frequently heard in our living room lately: Le Bon Petit Roi d'Yvetot, The Keel Row, and Largo! I'm slowly getting better at each one........ I promise, someday I will play well enough to deserve to play this beautiful harp! ^_^ At this point I'm just glad if I remember a song has pedal changes in it before I start plucking... they tend to catch me completely off guard if I don't stay focused. I'm taking October off from lessons and focusing on exercises when I have time to play. We're traveling every weekend and there's simply too much going on for me to devote enough attention to my practicing until things settle down in November. I wish I had a tiny harp I could travel with, ah well! Probably someday!

Le Sigh!

The past few days my harp has been sitting in our guest bedroom with the dust cover on to prevent it from getting gross from our kitchen cabinet sanding and to keep it safe from our cats who are going a bit nuts from being quarantined from half the house while we paint the cabinets. I woke up this morning to find that my darling husband rolled it back to the living room this morning for me while I was sleeping. I also found my 3rd octave C had bitten the dust. Kinda saw this one coming since we took that string off and put it back on, like, twice, trying to isolate/diagnose the buzz. Thank goodness I bought all those replacement strings in Virginia! This'll be another chance for me to practice restringing! The first time this happened it took me maybe 40 minutes because I was trying to follow some knot tying guide and I got all confused... Today I'm shooting for 30!

Bye Bye, Buzz!

Well folks! I'm back from the VA Harp Center! Le buzz a disparu! Grâce à dieu...and also the very kind and knowledgeable Amy and Ivan! Apparently I had some string anchors contacting the back of my soundboard or something that just needed a little twisting. So! I learned something about diagnosing buzzes on the harp! I also scored some replacement string loot (first 3 octaves) as well as my own copy of a fun warm-up book I've been borrowing from my teacher. I'm back home with a harp that doesn't have a mysterious buzz, ready to get back to practicing. I feel like I've seriously slowed down on my progress lately. Work has been so stressful and I haven't been making enough time to practice. I'm promising myself not to get discouraged, just to make a change in my habits and make more time to play! Speaking of making time to play... I better get to it! :)

Totally Buzzed

You guys... There is a buzzing sound coming from my fancy new pedal harp. It's so annoying. I've tried a few things to figure out where the buzz might be coming from. Alas! No luck. It started in my third octave C a couple of weeks ago, and over a week or so it seemed to travel down to the neighboring B and A... but now I only hear it from C. (Whoa, cool story bro -- I know!) Yesterday at my harp lesson, my teacher, her husband and I attempted a few things including loosening, removing, and replacing the string... we tried putting a small piece of fabric between the string and the soundboard... we looked under the base and pressed firmly on everything we could think might be causing it, but the buzz persisted. I'm going to have to rent an SUV (because I don't have a harpmobile - or much need for one - yet) and drive the harp up to Virginia for someone to look at it next week. My engineering mind has me so ready to take this thing apart and figure it all out myself, but I know better than to do anything that might jeopardize my warranty! I would love to learn to be a harp technician, though. What fun it must be to know all the technical ins and outs and be able to perform maintenance yourself! This kind of thinking must be how people get into fixing cars...