Joystrings Music
Joystrings Music
Joystrings Music
Joystrings Music
Page 7
Now stand the whole harp stand upright on the floor, and adjust the tilt of the top.
There is another black plastic screw that secures the top at the tilt you prefer. We
recommend you tilt the top back at enough of an angle that the harp’s own weight
keeps the harp securely in contact with the four non-slip pads on the stand. If the top
of the stand is too vertical, the harp may bounce up and down as you play loud notes.
If you are playing the harp while sitting down, the setup process just described
should be all that you need to do. But if you are playing while standing up, you
will want to adjust the height of the stand. There is another black plastic screw
that secures the telescoping central stem of the stand. Slacken that screw, pull the
top up to the desired height, and tighten the screw again. If this setting is unable
to make the harp low enough for you, adjust the legs to lower the harp further.
Tuning
Tuning
Tuning
Tuning
All stringed instruments need tuning from time to time. The 25 strings on the
Joystrings harp are each tuned to one of the individual notes (called “semitones”
by musicians) from which all music is composed. To make your harp sound
right, you’ll need to tune each string to the correct sound (or “pitch”).
At the bottom of the harp, each string winds around a peg screwed into the harp’s
wooden frame. To tune a string, put the “tuning key” (a sort of handle)
firmly
on
top of the peg, and turn it
slightly
. Turning the peg to the left (anticlockwise)
tightens the string, which raises the pitch. Turning it to the right (clockwise)
loosens the string, which lowers the pitch.
Unless you’ve just put a new string on
your harp, you never have to turn these pegs very far.
Avoid overtightening any string,
as this can break the string or damage the wooden peg. If a lot of the strings are
overtightened at the same time, that could even bend the entire harp.
How do you know when the pitch is right? There are basically two ways to be
sure the strings are tuned correctly. The first way (called
by ear
) is to compare the
sound of each string with something else that is correctly tuned. If you have a
piano or electronic keyboard, you can compare the sound of each string on the
harp to the corresponding note on the other instrument, and tune until they sound
the same. If you don’t have another instrument, we supply a tuning CD that has
two minutes of steady tone for each of the 25 notes on the harp, plus a play-through
of all 25 notes at the end. You play each track and tune the corresponding harp
string until it sounds the same. There are also websites that generate steady tones
for tuning, and some tuning aids can also generate tuning tones.