Unusual autoharp technique

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 01:58 PM

Here is a photozither with a map of the chords at the bottom

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 01:59 PM

look, its like removing the fret from a banjo the result is a fretless banjo,it is no longer aa5 string fretted banjo.
remove the bars from an auto harp, it is not an auto harp,its something else,and in this particular case it sounds like the inside of a piano that has been stood under a shower

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 02:25 PM

The bars were not removed. It is a zither.

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 02:29 PM

Autoharp is the trade name of Oscar Schmidt

In American law only, and not in most people's usage anywhere. Probably more instruments were made and labelled as "autoharps" by other manufacturers in the decades before Schmidt registered the word than Schmidt themselves ever made. I'm certainly not about to stop calling my instrument an autoharp on Schmidt's say-so (it was made around 1900 and has a label saying "Müller's Autoharp").

I very much doubt if Schmidt's legalistic marketing chicanery had any force at all in South Africa in the 1940s. Tyson's band could call their instruments whatever they wanted, and we pretty much have to follow them if we want to make sense when talking about their music.

(And if Schmidt don't like it they can get stuffed. This proprietorial attitude to the English language really puts me off ever wanting to own one of their instruments - at least, not without scraping their logos off and putting a Hohner or Yamaha decal on it instead).

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 02:31 PM

Maybe a left handed zither or a reversed photo but it is a zither. I owned one just like this years ago. Four chords on the long side tuned in C - F - G - Am. The chords were strummed with a my left thumb and the melody was played with my right thumb and index fingers.

Don

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 03:34 PM

Muller's Auto Harp has an interesting chord set up. ABCDEFGHIJKL

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 03:36 PM

I'd like one of these: The circle of fifths is right on the instrument

Muller Auto Harp

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: M.Ted
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 03:45 PM

Good Soldier Shweik--No need to apologize--I actually have some sense of your musical tastes because I've read your posts over the years and listened to things of yours that you have posted in various places--I also know that you are inclined to listen to things in order to figure out what they're about, rather than strictly for entertainment--so we're good--


As for you, MthGM--check this One person rap with pencils, then try to do it yourself. If you have trouble recreating the sound (particularly that repeating snap sound), it's because you haven't mastered the technique for producing the sound--

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: M.Ted
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 03:55 PM

Incidentally, the performer is known as Lyric AKA Lyrical God, the piece is called "Let this Beat Ride", the technique is called Penboxing, and he is from South Philly--

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: PHJim
Date: 14 Dec 09 - 12:31 PM

The photo posted by Guesthg is commonly called a guitar zither. It was one of those instruments, like the ukelin that never really caught on. I have one hanging on the wall in my back room which I tuned up when I first got it, but never really used much. It's been hanging on the wall for about fifteen years now. It comes down only to be dusted. Mine was made by the Oscar Schmidt company.

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Dec 09 - 01:59 PM

As for you, MthGM--check this One person rap with pencils, then try to do it yourself. If you have trouble recreating the sound (particularly that repeating snap sound), it's because you haven't mastered the technique for producing the sound--

Ted - I didn't say it wasn't a technique; but it's a pencil-tap technique, & doing it on top of a piano would still be a pencil-tap technique, NOT a piano technique, wouldn't it?????

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Dec 09 - 05:08 PM

You can hit a cymbal or a snare, or a tom or a cowbell with the same drumsticks, and you'd be playing either the cymbal, the snare, the tom, or the cowbell, not the drumsticks. You don't play the pick, you play the guitar with the pick. And "penboxing" is a technique for using pencils to play rhythms on a desk or tabletop.

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Dec 09 - 06:55 PM

I really think this has more to with the prepared piano, and John Cage, than anything else. I have, rest assured, made note of your feelings in my little book, next to my list of Mudcatters who play the ukulele.

Here is something from Mr. Cage that you probably won't like at all, but it fits in with the discussion, owing to the fact that a piano is pounded on--Water Walk

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Dec 09 - 08:53 PM

Ted - I am glad, I think, to have seen that. But would you think the moments [2 I think] where he plays a single chord on the piano constitute 'piano technique'?

(Interested that you, like me, are a compulsive list keeper. I have an online file for the purpose [soccer goalkeepers, one of which I was in my youth, is one of mine: it includes Pope John-Paul ii, A Conan Doyle, Che Guevara, all 3 Tenors {Carreras completed amateur forms for Barcelona}, et al]. I have not contribd to thread on topic as it is in the past; but I *used* to play uke-banjo years ago b4 I acquired a proper banjo, so u might wish to add me to that list. Or not? Up 2U.)

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 Dec 09 - 07:48 AM

As per "technique", it does, most definitely. If you have ever played a composed piece that required that featured a stab or hit in your part, you know how hard it is to get that single sound exactly right--as a trumpet player, I agonized over the penultimate sound in this piece Sleigh Ride , which also features the sound of a whip crack, played on the slapstick--if it doesn't come at exactly the right time, and if it doesn't sound like a whip crack, the piece is dead, so technique is everything--

Subject: RE: Unusual autoharp technique
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 Dec 09 - 07:48 AM

Oh, and you made the "list"--