Joystrings Music Joystrings Harp, Instructions & Care Manual, Page: 11 / 14

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Page 11
Writing your own music Writing your own music Writing your own music Writing your own music
If you can hum or whistle a tune, you can write your own music for the
Joystrings Harp! All you need is paper and pencil, and a little time.
The right size of paper
The Joystrings Harp is designed to hold sheet music that is 11 inches tall and 12
inches wide. Most printers will be happy to cut paper to that size for you, or you
can do it yourself. You can get “B-size” paper (11 x 17 inches) at most office
supplies stores and cut 5 inches off the length. Or, you can get scrapbook paper
(12 x 12 inches) at scrapbooking stores and cut 1 inch off the height. If the range
of your tune (from lowest to highest note) is 18 strings or less, the tune may fit on
letter-size paper (11 x 8.5 inches), which will also fit in the Joystrings Harp.
Start with a pencil (and an eraser!)
Writing music is a “trial and error” process, so work in pencil and have an eraser
handy! Start by plucking strings until you find the one that matches the first note of
your tune. Make a pencil mark under that string neat the top of the page. Now
whistle of hum the tune and find the next note, and mark that a bit lower down the
page. Keep putting one note after another until you reach the end of your tune!
When you’ve written your whole tune in pencil, play it through and listen
carefully. Does everything sound right? If you hear a wrong note, mark the
right note beside it.
When all the corrections have been marked, take the paper out of the harp and
erase the wrong notes. Now look at the overall layout. If you ran out of space
near the end of the page, and your pencil marks got a bit crowded there as a
result, this is your opportunity to move your pencil marks up or down the page
to even out the spacing.
After making those adjustments in pencil, put the paper back in the harp and
check again that everything is correct. If it is, you’re ready to go over your pencil
marks with a pen. Then after waiting for the ink to dry, you can erase all the
pencil marks and your new piece of music for the Joystrings Harp is finished.