Hello! We are continuing our focus on orchestration, with participants working on larger-scale projects for the remainder of the month. This week we'll talk a bit about using the harp.

Mastering MuseScore

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MuseScore Café

This week in the MuseScore Café with Marc Sabatella, we look at writing for harp (particularly pedal harp). We'll discuss the unique design of the instrument and the use of pedal diagrams, some special considerations regarding written durations, and other aspects of notating music for harp such as writing on the grand staff, cross-staff notation, glissandi, and harmonics.

Tip of the Week

When writing for harp, it is useful to show diagrams giving the pedal positions and where they must be changed over the course of a piece. MuseScore Studio 4 provides a very convenient feature for working with these. In this video post, I show you how to add both pictorial and text-based harp pedal diagrams to a score.

Musicianship

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Music Master Class

This week in the Music Master Class with Marc Sabatella, we check out orchestration projects submitted by Gold-level members.

In Theory

The harp is a beautiful instrument that is well-suited for a number of different types of passages, but writing for it presents some interesting challenges due to its unique design. In this video post, I discuss some techniques for planning pedal changes to simplify life for the harpist and to allow glissandi (normally a scale-like effect) to produce arpeggios (a more chordal effect).