Hello,
I am advanced beginner harpist. (1,5 year, but learning fast and practising every day) I would like to ask anybody from experienced sessioners or harpist to help me with opinnion.
I love irish sessions and dance music and when my friends found that I learn playing harp they invited me to play with them during session. In my country there is no experience with harp during sessions and I have no idea how harpist should interract with other. I know, it's quiet instrument and work better in slow tunes and airs, even I am on level to learn some easy jigs and play with them. But I have diffrent problem. My harp has no sharping levers. Because I play most of irish music, my harp is still tuned to G. I can change it simply to D, but after song (only retuning quickly 3 strings) ... but not during tune, so I should have break, when musician change key during set nad I should wait for tune which is in G again.
Another thing is: I have set of Blarney Pilgrim and Merrily Kiss the Qacker's wife which I love to play. I would like to add Road to Lisdoovarna to set a lot... but it's in D. I transposed that even with chords to G and play it with joy if I play alone. But is it polite to other musician? Should I ask them if it's possible to play this last part in my key, because I cant so easily retune it. Again, friends who know me, should have not problem with that, but I am worried about people in session, who are familiar with tune in D.
As I said I have no experience, I am just discovering things which was discovered before. Please, is there any harpist who has experience with sessions. How you do it? How you interract with other musicians? I would like to be polite and don't ruin their sessions, so I search for any information how to do it, before I will go there :-) There is nobody around me personaly who has any experience with harps.