harp ornamentation

Ornamentation is an intrinsic part of traditional music in Scotland but it’s not always taught to harp players in the way that other traditional instrumentalists such as pipers and fiddlers learn it. The harp is also a fairly universal instrument and players may have learned to play harp in another genre or style and are interested in learning how to play in a traditional style, rather than just playing traditional tunes in the same way they play other things.

The harp tradition is a broken one in Scotland. In other words we have no direct link to historical players and there was a considerable amount of time passed before the instrument was revived. Harp was a high art instrumet of the day and as such harpers never wrote their music down, that was something that was acceptable for amateur players but not for the professionals. So we don't know exactly how the old harpers performed, what their lower hands dd (the harp was played on the left shoulder so left hand would be a misleading term here), or how their performances sounded. But we do have clues and snippets and snatches of information which various researchers have worked on.

Two important sources for techniques especially are Edward Bunting's manuscripts and the Robert ap Huw manuscript, although both require some interpretation and work on the part of the researcher and player today. There are techniques originating from these manuscripts that work very well in ornamenting traditional tunes, and which incidentally are also useful in whatever genre of music you might want to play. They also work on all different sorts of harps from lever harp or clarsach, wire-strung, bray, and pedal harp too. They can be played with fingernails, as would have been the case historically, or with finger pads as they often are today, and indeed some players in the 18th century were also using pads rather than nails. I would encourage players of any style on any type of harp to experiment with these techniques and explore the sounds they produce. Ornamentation is something I have been fascinated to explore for many years now, as seen in the book I produced in 2012 called Key Techniques for Harp, and I am currently working on a 7 part video series on techniques for ornamentation. These are free to watch. The first one is at the head of this page and future episodes will be posted on my YouTube channel weekly. You can download an accompanying PDF of supporting materials either for free (or a donation) for episode 1, or for a small charge (episodes 2-7).