For new readers, sometimes when I don’t have anything substantial in mind for a post, I just put up a list or similar. It appeals to some strange part of my brain, and it also means I don’t STOP WRITING ALTOGETHER, which would be bad.
So here we have some things harps can do that pianos can’t! Because I am a harp player, and oftentimes the proficiencies of our instrument are ignored in favour of talking about the things pianos do better. Boo to that! Here we go:
* Glissandos. The gimme. Somewhat difficult on a piano, probably the most basic special technique for a harpist.
* Slap-bass. Some of the percussive effects you hear in, for example, this piece are not things you can do on a piano.
* Pitch-bending. A little bit less common. But if you lift the lever up just right while playing a note on a Celtic harp, you are, again, going to make a sound a piano can’t reproduce.
* Harmonics. One of the biggest downsides to a piano, IMHO.
* Big Chords. When’s the last time you played a twelfth on a piano? Honestly.
* Long ascending/descending runs. More than five notes in a row on a piano and you’re going to run out of fingers, which necessitates some pretty fancy action to stop a perceptible break happening between parts of the run. A harpist can keep going indefinitely without lifting their hand from the string, by crossovers/crossunders.
* If so inclined, a harp player can play a big chord with one hand and have the other play a part in between the top and bottom notes that the first hand is playing. This is completely impossible for pianists.
* Good posture. It’s easy to hunch when playing the piano. But when playing the harp, it’s leaning back on you! Keeps you very conscious of how you sit.
I am sure there are many more I am forgetting! This is just what I can think of off the top of my head, because harps are awesome like that.
Ahh, thanks for this! I love to read impressions of instruments that I know little about, especially when written by somebody who’s passionate about it. I’m particularly inspired by the “big chord with little notes within the chord” aspect, which had never occurred to me.
But then, my experiences with harps haven’t gone beyond Harpo Marx.
A number of years ago a teacher of mine and I co-arranged a piece that included a riff where we did that. I actually have the sheet music for it, but I can’t play it because I don’t have a harp and, as I said in the post, it’s impossible on piano. It’s very sad.