Double String Debate

[Biagio]

For a harp this size I guess it does not matter much if it is square or “flared”. Most people want more volume in the bass so it is wider in that area, and narrower at the top so you can reach the strings up there.

Yeah, there’s not much written now about wound strings since it gets pretty techie. You have to go back to early editions of the Folk Harp Journal or discussions among pedal harp technicians. Here’s a very brief summary (pardon the math but that’s unavoidable).

We use Taylor’s formula which states that

Tension = Linear Mass x (2xLengthxFrequency)squared

We also know from Liszt that a vibrating string has the clearest overtones when it is at “1.5 steps below breaking point” – which translates to 70% of tensile strength. Most lever harps will not drop %TS below 20% in the bass and in fact most keep it over that.

All well and good for monofilament strings but what do we do when those lower ones must be either very long, or heavier or both at those lower frequencies? Well, we wind them around a core; which may be nylon, FC, steel, bronze, fiber, or some combination (I’ve never heard of gut core though I guess it’s possible). Now stand by for the nerdy stuff.

Natch, different materials have different physical properties the most relevant being density and tensile strength; we also look at hardness and elasticity to get the desired tone.

Let’s assume a metal core with fiber bedding. Steel has great strength so we might use that, but it will be thin so we might use a bronze wrap in the lowest strings. Hard, which might mean a somewhat harsh tone compared to a softer wrap (nylon). Bronze core with nylon wrap will produce a softer tone but bronze has a lower tensile strength than steel.

Fiber core is quite strong compared to nylon core, and with higher density (similar to gut) but it is more elastic, so if we use that we might choose a silver wrap to get a tone closer to gut in the higher registers.

In the lower mid we’re into an intermediate zone, trying to balance tension versus tensile strength. That’s where you might find nylon core nylon wrap, or transition from nylon to gut or FC (which are denser than nylon).

When the designer sits down he or she will try to balance all of these to get the desired tone and feel. That’s where experience comes into play, there is no magic way to decide what to use.

Biagio

[Elettaria]

Thank you! I am at my partner’s for the weekend, with no laptop, so I can’t look at the spreadsheets until Monday. I had just figured out how to use them for KF and wound nylon strings, too. So I’m reading up instead, and will attack the stringing charts on Monday, now that I have a good conversion chart for nylon to KF (the Fisher one).

One thing I’ve realised is that I’ll need to have G as my lowest note, not F, unless I went to increase all the string lengths and make it all a bit taller. I’ll play with sketches next week as well. Does anyone have strong feelings on G vs F for the bottom note on an unlevered double strung harp? G is very common, which is hopeful.

[Elettaria]

And I’ll figure out a soundbox shape with less of a flare so there’s the 5cm on either side. Reading the other threads here has shown the an quite a few people saying they definitely appreciate the parallel rows of strings.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Elettaria.

[Biagio]

Well…Here’s my opinion for what it’s worth. If you tune primarily in the flat keys – F Bb Eb etc. – then you might want the lowest bass to be an F. If contrary wise in the sharps, choose C G or sometimes A. Why G or A? Well, G is a perfect 5th to C, and A is C’s harmonic minor.

If you want that low one to be a G but keep the length short, I suggest looking at steel core fiber bedding and nylon wrap.

Incidentally, it’s worth while expanding a bit on that %TS thing. A vibrating string approximates a sine wave. [“Approximates”, because no matter how good our technique it always moves in an ellipse as well. Which is why our teachers emphasize plucking straight back, not to the side.] The nodes (or harmonic points) are in principle stationary but if the string is quite loose (low %TS) they will move around. That makes the tone muddy – audio buffs call it “wow and flutter”, the technical term is “inharmonicity.”

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Biagio.

[wil-weten]

Hi Elettaria, I think that for a small harp of 65 cm long now matter which material you choose a harp with alow G as lowest note would sound better than a low F. This is for all the reasons Biagio mentioned above. A higher lowest note would mean that all notes above would have a less extreme low tension, so would sound livelier and ‘cleaner’.
A lot of (American) sheet music for lap harps has a low G as lowest note.

I would not use a string with a steel core for such a harp. I’ve never heard a harp where the transition between the gut/nylon/KF strings and a steel core string wasn’t obvious. For such a small harp I would either chose for be a KF or perhaps a nylon wound bass strings.

Edit: To complicate things: If you would choose a F as a lowest note, and use the most logical interval of a fifth, the lowest note of the higher sounding row would be a C, which is the note that I would prefer to be the lowest one of that row. So, perhaps, if the low F would be too floppy, it may be worth calculating through whether leaving out one or two of the top strings would help in order to give the rest of the strings a bit of a better tension.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by wil-weten.

[Elettaria]

I think I’ve ended up being confusing again! So:

1. This is going to be an unlevered harp, without space for levers on the frame, and in fact without bridge pins. This also means that the total height of the harp is closer to the string lengths than it would be if it had bridge pins, Wil, so don’t read as much into the 65cm height. Which will change a cm or so if I make the soundbox square at both ends, which the current sketch doesn’t but I may well revert to.

It won’t be tuned in sharp or flat keys, it’ll be in C, and with all the faff of retuning a double stung, it will most likely stay in C. (I do have a 12 string lyre with guitar tuners, if I want something quick and easy to retune.) Keeping to a purely diatonic range will be part of the challenge! I’m not thinking about accidentals as much as I am thinking about modes here, and looking at medieval music in particular. G still gives me the mixolydian, and the dominant chord for the dorian.

The reason I fancied the F was because that gives you the subdominant chord for C major, and also generally the lower the better with ranges. But after messing around with charts, I’m realising that it’s going to sound a lot better with a G, and it sounds like that’ll be perfectly OK for repertoire as well. Also a lot of this is about avoiding tinkliness, and I’m realising that a marginally higher range with a better sound will probably be less tinkly, plus the joy of a double strung is that it doesn’t force your right hand too high up like a small single strung does.

I’m more likely to adapt other music than to play from lap harp books, at least judging from the books I’ve seen, which seemed to be heavy on the Christmas carols and such, and generally a bit on the scarce side in the UK. But if they tend to go down to a G, that’s a good sign. I’ve been chatting to Carolyn Deal, who has oodles of free double strung tutorial videos up on YouTube, and she is very keen on the double strung Brittany and Eve, which of course both go down to a G. I may get some Skype lessons with her as well.

2. I’m probably abandoning the idea of having each side strung differently. Too much faff, harder to do on a significantly lower tension harp let alone sounding good, I have no idea how well I’d get on with it visually (Carolyn says she basically plays the right hand by feel, but a few people here have said that with a double with parallel strings rather than the Stoney End design, they can see the right side surprisingly well). But I might keep a few alternative string designs in reserve and make sure I have eyelets and the holes in the lowest tuning pins big enough for wound strings, just in case I end up restringing it down the line.

What I’m trying to work out at the moment, and without my string charts here to stare at, is how the Waring supposedly sounds pretty decent despite its short lengths and low tension. It’s still the one I am looking at the most, because of the size and weight, which would be low even if it had a wooden soundbox. I’m guessing that I will be OK adapting to a fairly low-tensioned harp as long as the feel is fairly consistent through the range.

[wil-weten]

Even if your strings would have a longer sounding lenght of approx. 5 cm, then 65 plus 5 would only be 70 cm, which is still rather short.

By the way, I am just 7 cm longer than you are, and I started on a old 22 string Camac and it was much too short for me. I had to put in on a very thick cushion in front of me. Of course, I could never comfortably play a lap harp in my lap. So I sat behind it, preferably with legs crossed, but otherwise with the harp on a chair in front of me.
Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bm_aChbR4w you find a tall man playing such a harp in his lap. It must give him a back ache, I think.

So, while I do understand your need of a lightweight harp, I am not sure why you think you need a harp with a very short length.

If your lowest string will be a G, I think you will be tempted to play pieces in G, even if you don’t use sheet music a lot.

Do I understand correctly that now you consider to have both rows the same strings?

I won’t tease you again, I promise, but would a Lewis Creek harp of 23 string harp of 76,2 cm and 2,5 kg still be too heavy?
http://www.lewiscreek.net/lc_hg_eagle.htm

There is also ‘Jessie ultra light harp with 27 string harp of 2,7 kg and 79 cm: http://www.detroubadourharpen.nl/The_Bards_Harps/Lewis_Creek.html.

The Dutch harp shop the Detroubadourharpen.nl sells Lewis Creek harps. Not cheap, buth Lewis Creek is a reputable harp builder.
Here you can see Carolyn Nobles unpack and play her new Jessie harp for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8zpxCtw590&t=286s

And these 17 and 19 strings look great: http://www.silverspearinstruments.co.uk/Harps.aspx?Id=4 but I would prefer to have a bit more strings.

[wil-weten]

To complicate things even more, here https://www.folkharp.com/33-19-26-string you find a list of 139 items of lap harp sheet music. I know you don’t plan to use sheet music a lot, but you may still like to have a look at it…

[Elettaria]

I have an Ardival Kilcoy that a friend lent me sitting around, and that’s only 56cm high, so yep, I’m used to playing harps that small!

I really can’t afford those harps, I’m afraid. Also I quite fancy a double, so that I can get a more usable harp that’s still very small. If I had more money I’d ask Jon of Silver Spear about whether he could turn one of those harps into a double, but I’m broke and he’s got a waiting list. I tried a County Kerry harp, which is around that size and weight (though I think it may have been heavier than they claaimed, it was maple for starters), and it was too big and heavy for me. Significantly. The whole thing was sitting too far up for me, and that was having it sitting between my legs while sitting up in bed, not on my lap.

Yes, I’m planning to have the same strings on both rows now.

[wil-weten]

You’ve done great research, Elettaria! I hope you will go on sharing your ideas and experiences with us. I really enjoy following your adventurous journey to your double harp.

[Elettaria]

Oh, I’ll use music, but I’m not importing lots of small books of music at huge cost from the US. I’ll be working with what I can get hold of here. So far I’ve been going through a few books of music and seeing how they’d adapt for a double strung harp of the range I’m looking at.

I think it’ll be left in C, yes. G gives me the dominant chord for C major, the tonic for G mixolydian, and A as the tonic for A natural minor and the dominant for D dorian. I’ve stuck with a C tuning for wire harp as well, though sadly I’m currently unable to play that for disability reasons.

[Biagio]

About that low G….looks like the choices are nylon/nylon, FC or steel/fiber/nylon. (vibrating length 23.20″). N/N at .032/.015 would be fairly fat compared to the next string up; S/F/N would be only slightly larger as the preceding one, or the same.

For that I come up with steel core 0.016″ 8 fibers nylon wrap 0.01″. FC would be OK at 1.27mm. SFN has the better %TS.

Choices, choices, choices, huh?

So experiment with those three choices and variations and see what you like; it IS a learning experience after all.

Note to Wil: metal core just increases the density and makes it only a little stiffer with a good fiber bedding. The combination gets the same tone and feel as N/N, but with a smaller diameter and higher %TS.

Have fun!
Biagio

[Elettaria]

Also the lengths I’m talking about using are the same as some very popular small harps, such as the Musicmakers Limerick and the Stoney End Brittany (if I put G on the bottom note). Am I missing something?

[wil-weten]

@Biagio, on both my harps I once changed my metal wound strings around a metal core for metal wound strings around a fibre core and was pretty happy with that (as I hated the large difference in sound between the gut strings and the metal strings). With metal around fibre, the difference between the bass and melody strings was not so large. Later on I put KF-strings to bridge the difference in sound between the gut strings and the wire strings and was happy with that. (And my supplier of wire around a fibre core retired).
I never heard on the same harp the difference with wire around wire and nylon around nylon, so I dare not say something about that. I only heard the significant difference in bass strings on the 34 Dusty Strings Boulevard (with wire bass strings) and 34 Dusty Ravenna (with nylon wounded bassstrings), not in real life but on recordings that were made in the same room. These two Dusty models look a lot alike (though I read that the Boulevard was built a bit sturdier because of the heavier tension of the strings), but to my ears, their bass strings (and their melody strings, but that’s another matter) sound quite different.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by wil-weten.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by wil-weten.

[wil-weten]

“Also the lengths I’m talking about using are the same as some very popular small harps, such as the Musicmakers Limerick and the Stoney End Brittany (if I put G on the bottom note). Am I missing something?”

Now I wonder whether we are talking about the same G now that you’ve left out the lower range on one of the two rows.

The Limerick and Brittany have a G below middle C. Is that the G you are talking about? In that case, I wonder why you would need wounded strings.

If you thought of going lower than a full octave below middle C the idea of wounded strings is far more relevant. But as you plan to play in C, I would have the C a full octave below middle C as the lowest string (instead of going even further to the G below that). And I would be inclined to use KF strings for the whole range.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by wil-weten.

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