knit•er•a•cy |'nitərəsē, 'nitrə-|

You bet. The bottom five strings on my Witcher lap harp (it has 24 strings) are silver. A few months ago, I broke two of them at once because I wasn't being careful, and so finally I have emailed Ann Heymann about some replacement strings. I've ordered the full set of five bottom strings, and they were shipped yesterday, hoorah!

When I first heard about the practise of putting silver strings on wirestrung harps, I scoffed. There are various references in Irish and Scottish poetry and balladry to harps being strung with gold and/or silver, but most of my teachers at the time (ten plus years ago now) were hard-line fans of brass harp strings, and only one of them (Ann) was really experimenting with strings made of precious metals. Lots of people were using twisted or catlined brass strings; I remember Bill Taylor once had me braid my hair into a catline to explain catlines to a class full of beginning wire harp students at either an Amherst Early Music gathering or the Edinburgh Harp Festival, and recent correspondence with Paul Dooley (who's probably making my next harp, ohyeah!) indicates that there are still plenty of reasons to use wound strings (he'd like to put them on the bass of my new harp).

Anyway, I'd never even thought of putting silver strings on my Witcher, although I'd complained from time to time about the thuddiness of those bottom strings. When my friend (and a former student who has progressed far beyond needing me for a teacher) Beth had a single silver string delivered to me shortly after her first trip to see me and my family in England, I was blown away. First of all, I figured it must have cost a mint to get a silver string for my harp. And then there was what happened when I put the string on. Suddenly, the lower "C" on my harp didn't sound sour anymore; it sounded like music! I was blown away, and last summer at Scoil na gClairseach I got four more strings from Ann herself. Suddenly I was excited about my small harp again. It's always been a beautiful instrument, but the moment I heard the way those five silver strings sounded, all I wanted to do was play that harp. Yum.

So since February, I've been dealing with the brass strings I had to put back onto the Witcher to replace the two silver strings. They'll be here in a couple of weeks!

New Community: wireharp

Yes, I know there'a already a harp community, but wire harp discussion tends to be, er. Different. ;-)

So if you're intersted, hop on over there. I don't know how busy it will be, but it's another part of my quest to get more involved with the harp world.