[Harp-L] Successful retuning experiment

["Steve Shaw" <moorcot@xxxxxxx>]

I've always been reluctant to stray away from the standard diatonic tuning, 
except for the one-reed alteration of Paddy Richter, but I took a look at 
Jean Sabot's website this morning 
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jsabot/accueilan.htm (I thought I'd better - the 
great man is in Cornwall this week and I'm meeting him for a few tunes on 
Thursday...).  I spent the next three hours retuning a G Lee Oskar to Jean's 
"Major tuning - Ionian mode" and I now have a "low D" harp that is superior 
in some ways for Irish tunes to a standard low D.  Starting from the A note 
at the bottom end, the harp has two and a half full octaves in the key of D 
- no missing 6th note in the low octave, no missing 7th in the highest 
octave.  There is simply nothing new to learn with regard to blow-draw 
patterns - the pattern is the same as with the standard tuning.  I was 
playing tunes straight away with no problem whatsoever.

The only change I made to his recommendation was to substitute an F sharp 
for his hole 10 D, which is duplicated anyway.  The big drawback to his 
retuning is that it's a lot of work, most reeds needing to be retuned by a 
tone or a semitone.  When I needed to lower the pitch of the reeds I applied 
a small blob of Araldite Rapid (epoxy glue) to the free end which I filed to 
suit once it had hardened (I used my small rotary drill mostly).  Made a few 
clumsy mistakes, but nothing irreversible - the glue scrapes off if needs 
be.  Accidentally got the odd smear of glue where it shouldn't have gone 
once or twice as well, but though it came off OK it's definitely best to 
avoid this!  My vision for close work is rubbish these days and I really 
ought to address this.  The harp worked really well first time once I'd 
adjusted the fine-tuning, and I can see me doing the same to some low F 
plates to give me a low C harp.

I don't know whether a set of major diatonic G plates was the best selection 
for this exercise, but it's what I had lying around and I'm very pleased 
with the outcome.

Steve


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