[Harp-L] The Marche d'Aincourt Challenge

[Laurent Vigouroux]

Hello all

 

Most of you probably remember well the Ode to Joy challenge. It consisted in playing the Ode to Joy starting on the 3 draw.

The goal was to see if the 3” could sound good enough in this melody and the conclusion was that nobody on the list could produce a record where the 3” didn’t clash at least a little. 

 

In the meantime I’ve pursued the path of playing chromatically and I’ve been finally convinced that we could produce good sounding melodies incorporating bends.

 

The Ode to Joy (starting on 3 draw) keeps on being a real challenge as the 3” is the only bent note among natural notes. But I really think it doesn’t reflect the reality of the chromatic playing with a diatonic harp. Some modern players do propose interesting and good sounding chromatic stuff. The bent notes can actually be interesting to shape an expressive sound, without compromising the tuning accuracy and the tone.


Thus I’ve thought of proposing another challenge, with a theme relying on several bent notes in the lower part of the harp.

 

And here it is, the Marche d’Aincourt Challenge, based on a theme composed and played by Jérôme Peyrelevade.

http://www.planetharmonica.com/en/marche-daincourt-challenge/

 

The goal of the challenge is to promote chromatic playing with a diatonic harp … and to have fun together!

We’ve funded the challenge with some interesting prizes (I think). The most valuable one being a Brodur Harp.

 

Hope we’ll have some interesting submissions.

As usual, comments are more than welcome.

 

Happy Harpin’


Laurent