Earlier this year the Historical Harp Society of Ireland acquired an interesting harp, made by James McFall in Belfast.
I don’t know the exact date of manufacture, but it must be between about 1900 and 1950. We know that McFall adverised the availability of harps withe wire strings as well as the more usual gut-strung revival instruments.
Today was the (delayed) St Andrews day graduations in the University of St Andrews. The university requested half an hour of bellringing before and after all three ceremonies plus the chapel service – a total of seven 30 minute sessions! Continue reading Graduation ringing
10 years ago today, on 26th November 2004, I started the website http://earlygaelicharp.info
Thankyou to everyone who has helped and followed the project over that time!
I have made a copule of tuning keys recently.
Last night one of my gold strings popped. It was the f below na comhluighe, one of the original strings I put on the harp when it was brand new in 2007, half-hard 18 carat gold from Blundells in London.
Seeing as one of the higher gold strings had gone, I have taken the chance to redo the stringing and tuning. I took off the two gold strings above the one that went, and replaced all three with silver (the upper na comhluighe with one of my own dust-strings). And I tuned the harp to a new pitch standard of approximately A495/370.
Ealasaid has made a website to show some of her montage artworks: ealasaidgilfillan.com
Some of the illustrations for my Tarbh CD are there, as well as a great selection of different images. Have a look!
Today we cycled over to Cupar for various bits & bobs. On the way home this afternoon at about sunset time, the mist was rising on the fields -the air was very still and humid, and the grass and leaves were all encased in droplets of water.
Here’s a quick film of Da Mihi Manum, based on Lady Margaret Weymss’ version from 1640s Fife:
On Saturday in the Wighton Centre, we were talking about Rory Dall Morrison, the blind harper of Dunvegan in the 1690s. So today I went back to my PDF Rory Dall tune list, and added in all the tunes for his songs. I was also bolder in moving more of the tunes and one of the song airs into the ‘misattribution’ section.
I have not been playing the harp because I have been working on the virtual ANS instead. For my very first experiment (which I put here the other day) I did everything on-screen , sampling the sound of the harp and distorting it rather crudely into a drone and some chime-like sounds.
But one of the things that attracted me to this instrument in the first place was the idea of tactile, hands-on shaping of the sonorities. Continue reading why
