Philippe Clement has been building chromatic harps of various designs since 1993 and reporting about them regularly in this column since 1995. Most of his harps were strung with wire and have been sold to professional harpists in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan. In the current issue Philippe is presenting one of the harps which he drove across the Continent to his exhibitor's booth at the Monterey (CA) Conference in July. Apart from the technical description of his harp, the reader will find in this article an interview of Kyle Wohlmut, of the Lazarus Harps group, who was at HarpCon 2000 and who took Philippe's wire strung chromatic harp for a "test drive."
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As most regular readers of Ringing Strings probably know by now Chromatic harps are instruments permanently tuned in the key of C major and can be played in any key without the assistance of pedals or levers, just the same way a piano, a guitar and most string instruments can. Chromatic harps are now beginning to gain acceptance among the folk harping community, judging from the greater number of major harp makers who exhibited one at the ISFHC Conference in July 2000. Most of the chromatic harps exhibited at HarpCon 2000 however were nylon strung cross strung harps. At the Conference at least one professional harpist performed on a cross strung chromatic harp, Harper Tasche, who played Bach, among other things, on a harp made by Mark Blessley and there was a small workshop, or gathering of chromatic harp players near the end of the Conference.

In-line chromatic harp (detail)

In previous Ringing Strings issues I have presented to the readers of this column various chromatic harp that I have built; among which my latest design called : "in-line Chromatic harp". In these harps all strings are parallel, in contrast with cross strung harps where two rows of strings are intersecting each other half way. On a single rank "in-line chromatic harp", strings are disposed very much the same way they are on a regular diatonic folk harp, except for the fact that a player will find 12 strings to the octave instead of 7. All 7 naturals are equidistant and sharps are fitted in between in a distribution which is reminiscent of a keyboard . The fingering sequence of a progression is the conventional 1234-4321 as opposed to "non- consecutive" (1324, for instance, when the reaching of a sharp in the case of the cross strung chromatic harp. In my previous submission (FHJ No 107, Spring 2000), I have argued that on wire strung harps (or any harp to be played with finger-nails) the in-line chromatic harp design presents several advantages over other types of chromatic harps; chiefly that it is straight forward to play and that musicians coming from the diatonic wire harp could adjust to these harps in no time.

The harp that I am presenting today is my third in-line chromatic harp, yet because it is a double harp of a new design it is still a prototype that will be subject to extensive modifications in the future. It was built essentially as a show case for the July 2000 ISFHC Conference, and aimed at generating feedback from the folk harping community with respect to chromatic harps in general, "in-line," as well as double chromatic harp designs. Participants at the Conference did not disappoint me. This harp drew a considerable amount of attention, perhaps more than what I would have expected from a mostly diatonic-lever-nylon-fingerpad-plucking oriented crowd. I was pleasantly surprised to find that even nylon folk harp professional old timers would stop at my booth, sit behind the double in-line harp and try to slide their finger-pads in between 5 /16" spaced strings. Their curiosity towards this instrument, which in most cases seemed to me deeper than just idle politeness was most rewarding. Their questions and comments too were interesting. Many visitors would find the number of strings (61) and the two parallel rows overwhelming, some would lament on the absence of red "Cs" and blue "Fs" string coding. Some liked the sober satin black finish of the instrument, some found it un-harp like, etc.

Whereas most visitors would stop at my booth out of curiosity a smaller number of genuinely "interested" musicians sat behind this instrument and gave it a try. Among them, of course, were players of the wire harp who because they use finger-nails on their own instrument, could relate immediately to this harp. The most encouraging feedback I received was from wire harpists whose musical ambitions were set beyond the diatonic harp's repertoire. Kyle Wohlmut, a professional "RockJazzCelticWireharp" performer was among them and I was delighted to be able to obtain the following interview with him. In the following paragraphs I will describe the design of the "double in-line harp" and I will let Kyle Wohlmut speak to the musical merits and the drawbacks of such a design.

This harp is a double harp, or I should say almost a double harp since one row (left) features three chromatic octaves (37 strings) and the other one features two octaves (24 strings). This seems like a bizarre choice, perhaps. The reason for this design was to limit the number of strings to 61 instead of 74 and save on "tuning time" (which is a significant factor with these harps). Incidentally, I am not the first maker to build asymmetrical double harps, the history of multi-course harps is paved with such examples.

My main goal in building this harp was to provide wire harpists with the opportunity to get a hands-on experience of a fully chromatic double harp. Specifically to explore the musical freedom of being able to play in any key without flipping levers or pressing down a pedal and to experience the depth and versatility of a double harp (distributing the melody equally between eight fingers, doubling the melody...make one harp sound like two, etc). On the latter point, my goal was to communicate the fact that contrary to what many believe, a double harp (which allows a wider range of fingering strategies) may be simpler to play than a single rank harp (or at least this is the way it seems to me), and that it always produces a more sophisticated sound.

From the construction standpoint, the main challenge of this instrument was the considerable string pull exerted by 61 metal strings on a smallish folk harp size structure. On this model I chose to build something which would be reminiscent of a folk harp in the Irish tradition, with a bowed wooden pillar. Such design which is reminiscent of the folk harp look was meant to attract Celtic harp minded visitors. However, the "Celtic look" harps (bowed wooden pillar) did not prove to be as strong and stable as the round aluminum column which I had on my previous harps (see FHJ No 107. Spring 2000). Essentially, I believe that on this type of heavily strung instruments, the bowed wooden post is more susceptible to humidity changes and make the tuning less stable than is the case with the metal column type. The second challenge was to build a neck with more than 122 holes, that would not tear itself apart and collapse under string pull. The bridge pin holes in particular were problematic because they are set near the bottom edge of the neck (as is always the case on most chromatic harps) pretty close to one another. I chose to equip the neck with two solid brass face plates which would make it more resistant to bending and would keep bridge pins from tearing the wood. These brass plates were made of 1/8" thick material and ended up being a little heavy; but they did the job. The neck and pillar wood assembly was glued in one piece, that is a 3 oak board band sawed and routered lamination. The base of the instrument was also made of a three board solid wood lamination in which the pillar was mortised. The soundbox was an ordinary three sided box type made of 3/4" maple boards for the sides and 1/4 lamination for the back and was rather shallow, which I expected would work well with an instrument equipped with so may strings.

The soundboard was made of a five ply lamination for strength. It resisted the string pull adequately. However, some limited degree of "bellying" occurred and in the future the two 5/8" hardwood internal braces should be made heavier in the midrange area. The five ply board generated an acceptable tone altogether. A limited amount of noticeable overtones (not uncommon with wire stringing) could perhaps be minimized by making instead a solid wood soundboard with tone woods such as Englemann spruce, sitka spruce, redwood, oxford cedar (cypress) or others. I am not sure how long such a soundboard would last, however. Only experimentation will tell.

The choice of strings was acoustic guitar "wrapped" strings. I have been using these strings for many years now; they generate a tone which is not at all the bell ringing tone of a plain bronze or brass wire, wound guitar strings do not have the same degree of sustain; they sound more focused (with a clearer fundamental, less harmonics), a good deal "warmer" and yet they do not have the "boooming... ooowing... waterey" tone of folk harp nylon strings. Yes they make a wire harp sound like a 61 string acoustic guitar, which is fine with me. Acoustic guitar wound strings are available from most string mail order outfits; they are inexpensive (about $1.00 a string); they are sold as singles; they do not break as easily as brass or bronze strings. The only question for the builder is that since they come in preset lengths (35") and a limited variety of gauges, a harp has to be designed for them.

The double in-line chromatic harp was designed to be an effective "non amplified instrument" and it worked well this way. However, in performance professional harpers nearly always use amplification... therefore a microphone or a pickup or both was on my mind when I built this harp. I chose a GHS internal guitar microphone. These microphones are good quality "gooseneck" type of mics; they are bolted through the side of the instrument (about ½" hole for a 1/4" a female plug) and become a permanent feature of the instrument. The gooseneck is a flexible arm which allows the microphone to be positioned inside the instrument. A microphone such as this one produces a faithful "acoustic" sound in all point comparable to a mic that would be standing outside, next to the instrument. In a way the internal mic is superior because it reduces the amount of parasitic ambient noise. At the show I carried only a small Pignose amplifier that was too weak and generated a dry..ish tone which did not enhance the tone quality of the instrument. Next time I will know better and I will bring a better quality amplifier. My feeling about amplification is that if the hardware is adequate, it allows the player to produce a more subtle fingering, thus enhancing the quality of the performance.

Altogether, this harp which was meant to be experimental was a major learning experience for me. From the comments gathered at Monterey and my own daily practice on it, I now have a clearer picture of what can be done to turn this prototype into a regular harp model. As usual, I will be pleased to field questions from harpists, luthiers, etc.

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