Dull string on my brass-strung harp

Trad Strings
1

Hey all,

The lowest F on my Dreamsinger Bard developed an odd overtone a couple of weeks ago. On my teacher’s advice, I detuned the offending string and brought it back up to pitch. That got rid of the overtone, but now the string sounds very dull compared to the strings around it.

I should note that that particular string has always sounded a bit dull, but now it’s substantially worse.

The interesting thing is, this harp is companion-strung (i.e., you use one length of wire to make two adjacent strings by running it from one tuning peg, down through one string hole, and up through another to the adjacent peg. The maker’s theory is that this reduces breakage, and I must say that I’ve had far fewer strings break than others I know who have this brand of harp but who have tried switching to using toggles). The E that is this F’s companion string sounds just fine…so whatever the problem is, it’s occurring somewhere between the underside of the soundboard and the F tuning pin.

If this were a nylon-strung harp, or if the E were having similar problems, I’d take this as a sign that the string isn’t long for this world (and that may yet be the case). That said, I’m wondering if part of the problem isn’t due to the vestiges of paint marker left on that particular string (I originally used paint markers to color the Cs and Fs, but switched to Sharpies, as the paint markers left a heavy coating on the string. The paint marker has long since worn off the other strings, but since this one is so long, there’s still quite a bit of it near the top and the bottom of the string). Does this sound likely to anyone? If so, can you think of a safe and easy way to remove paint marker from brass? (for example, could I just wash it with a damp cloth?). Or can you think of anything else I should try before I just give in and change the string?

Redwolf

2

I’d start with the paint theory first off, as it does make sense. As to what you should use as a removal agent, I suppose it depends on what kind of paint it is. If it’s a water-based acrylic, you’ll probably need to use water, a cloth, and mucho patience.

I’ve taken the liberty of contacting Chiffmember ceadach to help you, if you’ll forgive my presumption. He’s very reliable and expert on this stuff and can be trusted to know what he’s talking about, having been a builder and player of wire harps for years and is still at it. :slight_smile:

3

Hi Redwolf,
Anyone brave and crazy enough to take up this instrument I am willing to help out! They are almost as bad as uillleann pipes!

Nano is right. Paint is bad. The less stuff you can get away with having on your strings the better. Very fine steel wool is a great thing to use for getting junk off your strings. I clean my strings with steel wool about monthly given the amount I play (i.e. lots). Keeps the corrosion and oils that are on your fingers from eating the strings. Take care with the wool shards as they can damage the finish on your instrument. I pick them off my soundboards with a refrigerator magnet.

For years I have had luck marking my strings with red and blue Sharpies. Since I use the old Irish tuning with two Tenor G’s I color one of them green to help remind me it’s there. Important this to remember when marking strings even with Sharpies: do this as minimally as you can to avoid the ink effect the tone of the string. Doing it only on the side of the strings that you will look at is best (most people this is the left side of the string).

Other possible culprits: as much as I love brass strings they are temperamental. As tough as brass is, a subtle ding or kink can render a string dull. This would occur most offer at the pin or near the grommet or string shoe end. Check those places for any weird small “wobbles” that crop up. That will make a string sound bad and difficult to tune.

The interesting thing is, this harp is companion-strung (i.e., you use one length of wire to make two adjacent strings by running it from one tuning peg, down through one string hole, and up through another to the adjacent peg. The maker’s theory is that this reduces breakage, and I must say that I’ve had far fewer strings break than others I know who have this brand of harp but who have tried switching to using toggles). The E that is this F’s companion string sounds just fine…so whatever the problem is, it’s occurring somewhere between the underside of the soundboard and the F tuning pin.

Now that’s downright weird to me. In my experience this is the complete opposite. Perhaps it is the design of this model of harp or too light a string gauge. With properly toggled strings of the right gauge, string breakage should be fairly rare. On average I have a string breaks every year and a half or so and I average at least a couple hours of practice (or performance) a day. This was the case on my Witcher harps, Kortier harps I’ve used and on the ones I built for myself.

The first harp I made 25 years ago I companion strung. That was the first and last time I did this…strings broke incessantly and they were nearly impossible to cajole into tune. I wound up completely re-stringing all 29 strings on my instrument with toggles and had little problems in this area from that point onward. Companion stringing does work on dulcimers where you can wrap the string around a hitch pin a couple times and then back to the other tuning pins. But on harps there is no way to secure the string inside the soundboard so it it free to slide around a will.

Certain grommets I’ve seen are unkind to wire. The ones Robinson’s harp shop sells are wonderful and well made. Toggles are another matter. Avoid those silly, tiny metal O shaped toggles. Use either cut up bits of a 1/4" hardwood dowels with grooves munched into them with a wire cutter or Z toggles (see this link http://www.kortier.com/subpages/toggles.htm both are easy to make yourself and cheap!

Also tune your strings slowly. Brass and bronze strings require very little movement to affect pitch. String length can be a problem too. Are the other strings in the bass poor? Finally don’t let anyone bully you into trying to put steel strings on your harp as a “cure” for your stringing problems. I’ve had a number of people tell me a number of fallacies about brass wire, most of them are wholly ignorant in this area. Ignore them.

Please let me know if any of this helps. If the problem persists also let me know and we can go from there.

Nano “He’s very reliable and expert on this stuff”
Ceadach: Dude! are you calling me an expert? I thought we were friends?!?! :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Throwing you under the bus has been my pleasure. :wink:

I see your dulcimer is still burning merrily away in the ash-heaps of Hades. :slight_smile:

5

Yes Bro. Nano, the dulcimer yet burns, this too will be the fate of my current perfidious instrument upon it’s replacement’s completion. :devil:
Take care of yourself!

6

Many thanks! I’ll start with cleaning the string, and work from there.

It is a bit interesting how well the companion stringing has worked on this harp. I really didn’t have much faith in the idea, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to try at first, since it was what the maker recommended (we bought this harp unfinished…my husband spent many hours sanding and finishing it, and saved me a good chunk off the purchase price…so we put the first set of strings on it), figuring if I didn’t like it, I could always switch to toggles. So far, there’s been no problem…the companion strings don’t pull each other out of pitch as one might think (I definitely expected they would and was surprised to find that, once the strings were holding pitch, both strings in any given pair were stable), and the only breakage I’ve had came from obvious over-tuning when I first started playing the harp (you know how it is…lose concentration for a minute, forget you’re not tuning your nylon harp and bam! That’s sure a sound that will wake you up! :laughing: ). The biggest problem is that, when you break one string, of course, you break two, so you have two out instead of just one until they decide to stabilize. For that reason, if nothing else, I think I will switch to toggles eventually.

My teacher would surely disown me if I were to try to put steel strings on my harp! (I’m fortunate in having a teacher who plays both lever and wire…wire harp was actually her first instrument, and I suspect will always be her favorite). I may try bronze someday though…I don’t know. I’m not 100% satisfied with the bass on this harp. It’s not bad (well, other than that one F!), but compared to the lovely, ringing tone of the higher strings, I think it’s not as good as it could be.

A funny note on coloring the strings: My husband came home one day, took one look at my hands, and said (in a very worried voice) “are you feeling OK?” I looked down at my hands and, sure enough…there was a purplish stain under each nail (well, other than the pinky, of course). Poor Tony must have thought I was having a heart attack! :laughing:

Thanks again!

Redwolf

7

Hi again Redwolf,

Forgive me any typos…I’m up past my bedtime.

Hope the bad F problem clears up for you. VERY Glad to hear you have a good teacher. Will save you much time figuring out things like damping, ornaments, etc.

I’m glad to hear that you having relatively few problems with companion stringing. A couple of my students have brought their instruments to me thinking there is something horribly wrong with them…only to find the root of the problem being how they were strung.

It dawns on me too, with Dreamsingers have laminated soundboards. (No bad thing in my book) Laminates do tend to grip on to strings better, perhaps as a result of the multiple wood layers exerting more friction on the strings than in a single grain piece of wood. Maybe this is why companion stringing is working for you. And here’s hoping it continues to do so!

Ah yes, discoloured fingertips. One of the great joys of playing wire harp! Cheap and easy Halloween makeup!

The low notes on your harp could be improved in a couple of ways. One is possibly looking into a slight thicker gauge of brass string. More effective would be a different type of wire.( Not steel of course)

As far out as it sounds, the old original low headed Gaelic harps were designed to be string in the bass with gold and silver wire in mind. Check this out Strings of Gold by Ann and Charlie Heymann Since this article was put out even more concrete evidence of this has been found. In instruments like Ann’s Trinity College replica, the denser precious metals seriously improve the short string lengths sound and range to amazing effect. Her little harp’s lowest bass note at a mere 25 inches long can be tuned down to the D a note shy of two octaves below middle C and sounds nicely. (!) :thumbsup:

Sadly most of us can’t afford gold bass strings however. This tells us the the type of material is important in the bass however. Wrapped strings on wire harps are not great solution; they are very hard on nails and sound harsh and nasal in comparison to the plain monofilament strings. In instruments like yours where the bass notes “work” but not well strung in brass, I’ve had success with switching just those poorer notes to phosphor bronze strings of the same gauge (unwrapped like the brass ones). Older Tripplet wire harps had this same issue as have some instruments I’ve owed and built, so it’s not your harp. Phosphor bronze doesn’t work well in the treble (Too bright) but can seriously improve problem bass notes.

The other decent option is silver wire, which is far less expensive than gold and not too much more than brass. It works slightly better the ph. bronze. They have the down side of taking a fairly long time to mature in tone after being installed and be somewhat more prone to break than brass. Bronze is cheaper, matures quickly and is somewhat stronger than brass.

Where to get them…Here’s a link to the Instrument Workshop in Oregon. Welcome fortepiano.com - BlueHost.com Nice people. They supply many pro builders and musicians with any kinds of wire (including yellow brass and ph. bronze for harps) and have no minimum order. By far they have the most reasonable prices I’ve yet encounter for music wire. You can also buy in smaller quantities to try out if something works on your instrument before investing in a whole spool of something. If your interested in silver wire I can send you an email address of a friend of mine.

Again good luck and chime in on your progress with this! Take care,
CM

8

Hey there Redwolf…how goes things with your sullen string??

9

Haven’t been able to do much about it yet. Thought I’d see about finding some steel wool this weekend and give cleaning it a try.

Redwolf

10

Update: Cleaning the paint marker off the string didn’t make much difference, I’m afraid. I think I’m going to go on to plan B, and string the bottom four (C-F) in bronze. I think I’ll switch those four to toggles as well.

Obviously, it will take a while to get the wire, but the harp is playable as is – it doesn’t sound as good as it ought at the very bottom, especially that low F, but I won’t have to lose practice while I’m waiting.

Ceadach, do you have a preference for wooden or wire toggles? I’m thinking the Z toggles look fairly straightforward to make and to use, so I’m leaning in that direction.

Redwolf

11

Ceadach, do you have a preference for wooden or wire toggles? I’m thinking the Z toggles look fairly straightforward to make and to use, so I’m leaning in that direction

Preference? No. Both work effectively and wind up making no difference in sound after the string matures. The methods of wrapping a string around a fixed anchor are almost identical, save the material involved. Some musicians prefer wood toggles if their harps have soundboards of a softer timber that can scar easily (like willow) or simply because wood was the traditional material. I haven’t found this to be the case if the string wrap was properly made in the first place.

I use both and find that with Z toggles the string stabilizes and matures in sound quicker than wood. If the string holes in your sound board are big enough (say 1/4 inch around) Z toogles can be inserted right through the top of the soundboard, eliminating the need to fish the string from the inside of the box.

One thing to consider given where on the instrument you are restringing; I find it much easier to convince the heavier gauges of brass or bronze (.036 and bigger) to wrap around the thicker wood toggles and these strings seem to stable the fastest probably due to their mass. If your harp’s string schedule doesn’t call for these big gauges I go with the Z’s.

12

One handy thing with the Dreamsingers is they have holes in the back, similar to lever harps, so I don’t have to worry about threading things in from the front (though I do have to say that threading in from the back isn’t much easier!) or trying to shake out free-ranging toggles.

They are pretty small string holes, though…again, similar to those on a lever harp. Hopefull that won’t make a difference, if I stick to the same guage.

Redwolf

13

They are pretty small string holes, though…again, similar to those on a lever harp. Hopefull that won’t make a difference, if I stick to the same guage.

Yep do stick with the same gauge as the makers asked for in brass. Bronze being denser and brighter should help those low notes in the same diameters. No problems with existing holes or extra tension on the soundboard and frame that the maker didn’t plan for!

14

Grrr…someone remind me to stay off The Harp Column, please?

I posted this same question there, and, of course, the recommendation was “steel strings and ball ends.” When I mention that, traditionally, wire harps aren’t strung with steel, everybody starts bristling (once again!) about the word “traditional.”

What can I say? A harp with nylon/pedal spacing, strung with steel, and played with the finger pads just ain’t traditional! It may be a very nice harp, the player may be very good at what he or she does, and the music may be quite lovely…nothing wrong with that, and no insult intended! All harps (indeed, all instruments) are capable of making lovely music, and there’s a place out there for hybrids such as that. But no…it’s not a traditional wire-strung harp, and there’s no getting around that, and I’m not going to say it is just to make people feel good.

Grrr.

Redwolf

15

Whoa. Sorry to hear about this Redwolf.

Some people really still need to go soak their heads over this stuff.

I understand your frustration, I run into this all the time. A couple of years ago I was literally yelled at by a classical harpist that I was doing everything “wrong”…in the middle of a show. And just this summer I was accosted by some genius who told me that brass strings couldn’t possibly work on any kind of instrument.

Nano could give you a good idea of what my reaction to such things would have been.

Steel strings with ball ends? Where they confused if you were playing guitar or harp? Steel was Traditional? Where?

What is true that towards the late period of the wire strung harps use (say after the late 18th century) many harps were clearly designed to be strung in the treble in iron wire. But it was soft iron wire, like you find in harpsichords, which is not the same as the steel of today. Has a sound much closer to bronze. And why is clear. Most of the harper had switched to playing with pads by that time. They didn’t change spacing dramatically from instruments built two or three hundred years before.

16

Ceadach/Redwolf-

Slightly OT- Do either of you use phosphor bronze strings? I just did a complete restring of my hammered dulcimer using precut strings (couldn’t afford to buy wire in bulk right now) and the pb strings seemed more prone to breakage than the others.

17

How utterly unprofessional! Unthinkable behavior.

Why? If it was over technique, the harper would have no leg to stand on. But when you have a classical musician who has the misfortune to be saddled with the mistaken notion that the classical way is the bellwether and pinnacle of all, try convincing him or her of that. I know one fellow who, while polite enough, can hardly hide his conviction that traditional music is just a child’s game for pikers and the misinformed. Only recently he found himself corrected on this weird and apparently long-held assumption that a whistle can only play in one octave and in two keys. And all he ever needed to do was ask me (we’ve known each other for years) but instead had to be informed by another classical musician - therefore “trustworthy”, I deduce - who knew better. He confirmed this info with me, and his amazement and near-incredulity knew no bounds. So did mine, but it was leavened by being accustomed to ignorance-fueled notions, the only novelty being that this unaccountable whistle assumption was a new one on me.

I really don’t know, but I shudder to think.

I would place a bet on your response, though: measured. But as to the classical harpist, I have no idea how you’d have fielded that one.

18

What I tend to run into…a lot…is the assumption that a classical musician can play trad equally well. Some can, I’m sure…especially if they’ve done a lot of listening to trad and have a respect for the style…but just playing a jig or a reel using classical technique does not a trad musician make.

That’s how I got into trouble the first time over there. I innocently asked what kinds of music most people there preferred to play, and on what kinds of harps (and I did specify what I meant by “traditional/folk music”). You’d have thought I’d asked how many people preferred vivisecting live kittens to prowling the streets looking for little old ladies to rob!

I think if someone had yelled at me on stage that “you’re doing it all wrong,” I’d yell back “come up here and see if you can do better, then!” I might also point out that harp strings make excellent garottes! :laughing:

Springrobin, I don’t have bronze on my harp now, but I’m going to be trying it soon for the bottom four notes. I know that my teacher uses bronze on some of her harps.

The only thing I can think of is that the stresses on the strings are different on a hammered dulcimer than they are on a harp, but ceadach would really be the best one to address that.

Redwolf

19

Some indeed can and do, and that is because they know and acknowledge where the paths diverge, and play accordingly. As for the rest, the result’s pretty “sexy”, innit? :wink:

Oops. I’d assumed Chad and the other harper (harpist, in this case?) were performing together.

20

There’s an interesting documentary I’ve seen - In the Fiddler’s House - in which Itzhak Perlman attempts to come to terms with playing Klezmer. Basically, he stinks at it - in the same way that classical musicians often stink at Irish trad. Of course, Perlman is astute enough to know he’s bad and out of his element, and shows enormous respect for the Klezmerim as he works on getting rid of his classical accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkmFgQ9fM94

I’d love to see this same sort of thing with our music - Joshua Bell plays ITM, Emmanuel Ax plays ceili accordion. Something to hand to classical musicians and say: Here, watch this. There’s James Galway. But though I’ve heard it said that he remembers his roots in Ulster flute band music, I’ve never heard evidence of that. And his popular identification with “Irish” flute and whistle playing may have done as much harm as good.