5 pedals??

This seriously broke my brain. I thought every note had a separate string.

Pianists: we use pedals Harpists: introducing manual transmissions

Used to think harps were the easiest instrument because i only see them pluck the strings, now seeing this, i feel respect for all harpists

suddenly driving a car seems like child's play

Organ players: time to make an entrance..

The harp just went from I’ll never be able to play it to I’m scared to even try

I didn't even know a Harp had pedals. I love learning new things

Yap and my respect for harpists just went through the roof. That's genuinely seriously impressive.

This is actually brilliant. I'm dumbfounded by harp technique and this offers a bit of an explanation.

sudden key change horror - i can only imagine.

The fact that this instrument is so complex and theres people who develop such a level of skill with the harp is astounding

Meanwhile us organists- Kid hold my beer😂😂😂

"brain.exe has stopped working"

I am an amateur pianist. My daughter is learning the harp. It's a fascinating and very beautiful instrument. She's still playing a lever harp, but her teacher is a professional concert pedal harp player, and my daughter will likely transition to pedal harp within the next couple years. One thing about playing the harp is that you have to control the humidity in your room very rigorously and tune your harp very frequently. Tuning harps is not trivial. When you play 1 C, 5 other C strings resonate, and if you're using a digital tuner, the tuner will not necessarily correctly isolate which note is being played. For me, it's easiest to isolate each string while tuning by stuffing foam wedges in between them so only 1 string can vibrate, and I tune the strings one-by-one. Professional harpists tune their instruments at least once per day. Stravinsky famously said something like "harpists spend 90% of their lives tuning their harps and 10% of their lives playing out of tune". Having a good humidifier for winter + dehumidifier for summer with a digital hygrometer definitely helps keep the instrument in tune longer, but keeping it perfectly in tune still requires a lot of work! In any case, regarding pedals, I went to an incredible concert a few months ago by a professional pedal harpist, and it blew my mind how she had to change pedal positioning in one portion of a piece with 2 feet in between every single note she played. She was basically playing at a vivace tempo and switching pedal positions in between 32nd notes or at least 16th notes in rapid succession. It was akin to playing a trill on the piano with the feet while simultaneously playing rapidly with the fingers. It was visually mind-blowing to witness this in a performance.

Organists: Hold my beer

This short made me respect harpists more than any other instrument player

Dang! That's harder than driving stickshift!

This has been a milestone in my musical journey. This is the first time I immediately said "oh that makes sense" instead of being confused until I googled it.

the harp girl is so pretty

Dude I just think about the instrument engineers !!! How accurate and brilliant are they!