the Tuning Fork for Tuning the Harp

Video Transcript

Hi! My name Jesse Sparhawk and on behalf of Expert Village, I am here to give you an introduction on the folk harp. We are going to begin with tuning the folk harp. I can be reached at www.myspace.com/jessesparhawk if you want to get in touch with me for lessons or questions about the harp. How we’ll begin is with this, the tuning fork, which has a standard A-440 tuning. Right now, it is pretty inaudible for you folks until I actually gently apply the end of the tuning fork that isn’t vibrating to the soundboard, which is this flat surface of the harp, and it actually resonates as the string would. That is going to be our guide string or guide tone to tune the entire harp, and we only need that one note to tune the entire harp. So a little basic background on the harp, you will notice wire strings for the base, a much larger number of gut strings in the center, and then nylon strings at the top, which are best for resonating high frequencies, so it is a kind of hybrid of sorts. Also, this harp in particular has a classical tension so it is very similar to pedal harps that you see in symphony orchestra, in that the strings are very rich, strong, and bold instead of nylon for a real folk harp, which is a little softer to play. So again, as on all harps, the string is here, the red strings are Cs. These blue or black strings are Fs. Basically, the middle octave is where we start our tuning. We have our C octave, which is the interval between one C and another eight strings in the center and it’s the F in the octave. So this is your middle octave and this is the first A that we are going to tune, which is C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C just as on a piano. Basically, what you are looking at is the middle octave of the white keys on a piano in these eight strings. You don’t have the black keys on the piano and we will get to that with these mechanisms here, that’s a little later. So the first thing we want to do is to tune this A, which sounds pretty well in tune. Once we have that A tuned we want to tune with this string, the relationship between A and E, a perfect fifth above. We have this tuning key. There is a square peg that the tuning key fits upon. You have to make sure that you have the right peg and you’ll know when you start tuning if something is not changing that you are on the wrong peg, but it is pretty easy to see when you look over the top. We have already tuned that middle A, and we are going a perfect fifth above to this E. Now for someone like myself, I have been doing this for a very longtime, so I can basically tell by ear within reason.

Watch these related videos

• 
  the Tuning Fork for Tuning the Harp

  playlist Views: 3,187

• 
  Deciding in What Scale to Tune a Harp

  playlist Views: 2,162

• 
  Tuning the F & B Strings of a Harp

  playlist Views: 2,006

• 
  Tuning the A & D Strings of a Harp

  playlist Views: 2,195

• 
  Tuning the A & E Strings of a Harp

  playlist Views: 1,414

• 
  Tightening the New String When Changing Harp Strings

  playlist Views: 2,160

Community Members who...

• Favorited this Video
• Rated This Video

Thumbs up or Thumbs down? Be the first to rate this video!

Top Tags