[Harp-L] Re: Wave

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I checked out Konstantin's recording of "Wave" on Youtube.  Konstantin is obviously a talented musician with a lot of skill, especially considering how long he's been playing.  There's this wave of teens and early twentysomethings playing overblows with remarkable ease now; I guess the generation that's roughly Howard Levy's age had a lot more old habits to overcome to become fluent overblowers than these kids do.  The next generation of harp players is taking overblowing for granted, the way players in my generation took bending for granted, and it's taking them about as long to learn it.

One thing all these players have in common is that they haven't solved the fundamental problem that goes with chromatic playing on the diatonic: a lot of notes really stick out in terms of pitch and timbre, and not in a good way.  You can hear the player's intentions with these notes, but the laws of physics are getting in the way, and those laws dictate that two tones produced using different physical techniques will not sound the same. I'm very sensitive now to the sound of a not-quite-in-tune bend or overblow where a deep vibrato is used to mask the fundamental pitch. I heard it from Howard twenty years ago, and I'm hearing it in player after player now.  

This is a problem for me because of my expectations, I suppose.  The kids who are doing this stuff have different expectations, apparently--they don't expect all the notes to sound the same.  We'll see in the next decade or so  whether the general audience follows suit.

Regards, Richard hunter

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