Ditch the Buzz: How to Get a Clean Sound When Placing Your Fingers on the Harp
All right my friends, if you can’t seem to replace back onto a vibrating string without buzzing, this post is for you.
Welcome or welcome back to the harp studio, I’m Samantha, and I’ve been teaching people how to play the harp for more than ten years. And today I’m going to show you how to get a nice clean sound when getting back onto the strings.
What is "Buzzing"?
When I say buzzing, that’s kind of the word we use to describe the noise that can happen when one of your fingers touches a string that’s vibrating.
This can happen in a lot of different situations, but today I’m going to focus specifically on replacing a finger onto a string that you’ve already played and is still vibrating. We want to go from that distracting buzz to a clean sound.
The Simple Fix
The good news is that it’s quite simple to get this sound. All you need to do is:
Place quickly and firmly.
Control the angle of your finger.
Even better news is that you can do all that by just changing one thing about how you approach the string.
If you try to get straight onto the string from a closed hand position, it’s very hard to control that. In harp terms, that's very far away. It’s like trying to score a bullseye on a dart board from 30 ft away.
But, if you hold your finger right beside the string, just hovering 1 cm away, it’s like getting the bullseye standing 1 foot away from the board. You can basically just reach out and grab it.
The Power of Ready Position
This position is called ready position, and from here, placing confidently is easy because it’s so close it’s hard to miss. You can also prepare the direction and angle you want to approach from in advance, so everything is under your control.
A Note on Perfection: There’s always going to be a tiny bit of sound when you touch a vibrating string no matter what you do, but you’re the only one who will hear it because you’re the closest to the instrument, so don’t drive yourself crazy trying to get rid of 100% of sound.
Taking It a Step Further: Connected Sound
But if you do want to take things a step further and get a nice smooth, connected sound, you can time your placement so that instead of placing and then playing in two separate actions, you do it in one smooth motion.
If you’re repeating one string, I like to think of it like scooping soup out of a pot with a ladle. You just get in there and get your soup; you don’t stop and wait when the ladle hits the surface.
If you have a connecting fingering where you’re coming back onto the same notes, get into ready position just before the second placement. Then, try to place at the same time you play the note that connects the two groups. This way, any noise or cutting off the sound will be hidden by the note that gets played.
The ready position is a huge game changer that not only helps with buzzing, but can also really speed up your playing. Check out this video to learn more about how to use it to your advantage!
Keep it up — and happy harping! 🎵
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