Beginner's Guide To Harps - Dusty Strings

Lever Harps vs. Pedal Harps

The harps we make are commonly referred to as Celtic harps, folk harps or lever harps, and they are different from the much larger pedal harps you see played in orchestras. Pedal harps have complex mechanisms that allow for quick key changes or accidentals by engaging foot pedals, which is often a necessary function for orchestral playing, and they tend to be quite a bit larger, heavier and more expensive than lever harps.

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What are the levers for?

A sharping lever is a small mechanism that raises the pitch of an individual string by a half step. If you have a harp with no levers, you can easily play music in a single key (C major, for example), which is like having only the white notes on a piano. To play in a different key, you'd need to grab your tuning wrench and re-tune several strings. Levers give you more versatility by allowing you to change keys without re-tuning. If your harp is tuned in C, you can flip all of the F levers to make them F sharps, which puts you in the key of G major. If you want to go back to C, you just flip the levers back down again.

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What kind of music can you play on a lever harp?

The sky is the limit! We have heard everything from Celtic tunes to music from other folk traditions, classical, jazz, hymns, pop songs, original compositions, improvisations, and therapeutic music. If your goal is to play in an orchestra, you can start on a lever harp, but will likely need a pedal harp later on to play certain complex pieces of classical repertoire. Aside from that, a lever harp will let you do pretty much anything you can dream up!

Harp Sizes

Lever harps range in sizes from tiny harps that you can hold in your lap or wear on a strap to harps that are taller than a person. We make a range of sizes in the middle - between 26 and 36 strings. At 39" tall, a 26-string harp can sit on the floor and be a child's harp, or it can be raised up on legs to a good height for an adult. A 36-string harp at 54" tall has a fuller sound and more notes in the bass range, but is also more expensive and heavier to lift. It is just as easy for a beginner to learn on our large harps as it is on the small ones.