Tell you that ...

I began my studies of harp in Buenos Aires in 1962.

Why? In my family no less professional musicians and harpists. It was my mother who chose for my amateur. She likes music littoral of Argentina, polka and chamamé well as the most beautiful music of Paraguay ... and-therefore-the harp.

There were close to home academy Paraguayan harp master orders Armando Ortega, I attended for years.

In 1970 I first came to Spain and I my first three years. I had countless performances that led me to decide definitely ringing in 1976. Since then I am here on the peninsula. I'm Argentine and Spanish birth since 1978.

I touched the harp Creole until 1985 and then I passed definitively pedal harp.

In the Paraguayan harp played with all semitones systems have or might have, to give wider harmonic. I even invented my own system: much more refined than the "key", with much better sound than "tacos" and more agile than the current "levers" that the Latin American producers did not apply or did not know at that time.

It was a parallel to the existing pitch, allowing play two or three semitones at once (essential in modern harmony) alterations in eighth ..., pressing the strings and the guitar, very agile in handling and above all , tuned and with good sound, in deference to the other.

(Video).mov (home recording: Joachim Eichler-Brunete (Madrid) Spain-1985)

It was not enough for me.

And I still had more "inventions" ... But, the reality is that the system was invented by Sebastian Erard. There was no getting around it.

I thought the instruments join the South American folklore as they are today, the piano, guitar, accordion, etc., Why not the harp? Why keep playing an instrument of the Middle Ages? Y. ..? the rest of the music, what?

What I seemed important is keeping South American performance technique that has evolved in its hundred-year history, with more freedom, not subject to the rigors and other European scholars. He solved the basis of my personal project: "play the pedal harp with South American art." The change was hard, long ... but not impossible. I felt very comfortable because my hands are large differences in distance between strings, depending on the eighth, in the end, it was pure anecdote. The string tension was not after a time problem. Pedals: an open door to the music.

The theme of the "nail" was fundamental in his right hand, yes (including pinky), in the left hand, not-except the thumb which is like a sixth finger of his right hand, that the fingers on the hand left sound very bad in the pedal harp.

Therefore, it was possible to broaden the repertoire arpístico-folk through pedals South American

-Obviously-and, also, it was possible to extend the usual repertoire of pedal harp, thanks to the South American art. And ... to what I do as a musician and harpist, in recent years.

In 1974, while in Buenos Aires, I was invited to a meeting and was told that it was not necessary to take the harp because there would be a. His owner, who never knew his name, had amplified his Paraguayan harp with a "pick-up" home-but very well done, and it sounded really good. Since then, whenever I touched the harp amplified and added also a permanent effect: first "phaser" later, "chorus". I never went back to play the acoustic harp except trials.

The purpose of this website was, in origin. share with any interested / to these experiences we have with the harp, with the systems and techniques, resources and music, especially music, but did not find much interest so I leave the site as another example, of which there

-Surely-heaps.

Finally I wanted to state that I have had bad experience with any "professor of harp" that said something like "there recording tricks" in some works, for ... This simply is not true and the product of ignorance: the harp has always been recorded live and direct.

I remain at your disposal.

 

 

                                                                                                            DANIEL JORDAN