all right I've had several requests to explain how to play the instrument or possibly make a how-to video so this is my little how-to video on how to play the plucked sultry or lap harp as is commonly called it's called a lap part because it's laid out exactly like a standard harp every note is going to be every string as one note and it's going to be tuned diatonically and we'll get a little more into that further on in the video what that means this is you can find these for sale used a lot of places you can also find them new they go under the name of melody harp or music maker harp they're all the same instrument this one is a little older and was made in Eastern Europe and this word means little cute bird or quail something along those lines I play this instrument in this society for creative anachronism or SCA we do medieval reenactment and I really wanted to play but I didn't have a period instrument so I got this off Craigslist for ten dollars put new strings on it cleaned it up and it has a very beautiful tone even for being just a cheap children's toy is what it's intended for instruments like this have been around since the Middle Ages or even earlier it's very basic idea just sound box with strings stretched again across it so I wouldn't recommend spending a lot of money on one of these in particular compared to the melody maker music maker they're the exact same thing sometimes you'll see these on eBay for $100 and people will say extremely rare or whatever but unless you just really like this particular image I'd recommend just getting a cheaper newer one we'll probably be in better condition as I said this has one string per diet note and it's tuned diatonically my particular instrument i have tuned into key of c and let me get my picks on and the reason I use picks well let me just show you since we're on the subject is it is extremely quiet without the picks if you're just sitting at home and playing for yourself that's fine but if you want to play for a crowd or for recording even it's very helpful to have picks and I'll go more into picks later on in the video right now I want to focus on the tuning so that is AC major scale if you know music I've got my keyboard here to kind of help out so that's the scale I just played so the way that a scale is set up a standard diatonic scale and C is not going to it's going to be only white notes on a piano the easiest way to think about it is like on a piano because of the layout so it's going to be whole whole half whole whole whole half and we call these half steps because there's not a black note in between so that's the layout and this particular instrument is intended to be tuned from G to G two octaves so there's three octaves an octave is going to be so it's going to be eight notes apart a scale is seven notes and then you add that next one it's going to be eight notes apart on this particular instrument like I said it's going to be G to G so those three octaves that's the range you have not a very big range when you look at it compared to a whole piano anyway so if I play the instrument from top to bottom its starts on G but it's not in in the key of G so if I play that doesn't really sound like a standard scale but if you do play from C to C that is your standard scale I like it set up like this because if I play a song in the key of C I have a little room about half an octave above and half an octave below to get some of those extra notes when the melody goes high or if I want to put some embellishment down below some harmonies on this how I've set this up is it is even though this is small for a plucked sultry I've put some markers on my instrument these red and blue dots to help me orient myself like I said this is very similar to a harp so I have set it up like a harp and your typical harp you'll if you look at a harp will have some red and blue strings so the red notes are the C strings so when I was playing my scale I was going between those and the blue notes are your F and that helps a lot some people don't use markers when they play these more power to them I found it very difficult to keep myself oriented and I feel like this is a pretty subtle way to help keep straight what you're playing without having to put all the notes down now when I very first started playing I did make a little cheat code where I just slid a strip of paper underneath the strings and lined it up so this will tell me what all the notes are but that's not very good-looking and I don't really want to have that crutch ultimately but I think that these few notes I personally feel okay with that I think it makes it a lot easier to play an interesting thing about where these markers are placed is we talked about the scale having these notes where there's not a black note in between if you go to a dot and then string below it that's going to be your half steps in both in all these cases it doesn't sound that pretty to play them together but that's that's kind of an interesting thing to think about when you're playing a song and whether you're playing half steps or whole steps so all the strings are going to be a whole step unless it's below this dot that is if you have it tuned in the key of C like I do and marked in this way so um a lot of people ask how do how to play certain songs on the instrument I have a background in piano and I know how to read music and so I really just read standard music on this instrument typically for example I did a video of the song and Moroso and here's the music I have and it's just standard notation it starts on D and I don't think I have enough room to really put both of these and get them in the video but I just play along just play along with the notes because I know see so that's D right above it and then I'm just walking up of course that takes some time to learn where the notes are but that's the case with any instrument as instruments go though it's very easy it's a very good beginner instrument and it's a very easy transition very easy transition from piano the only thing is you will get frustrated if you have notes that are outside the key because you will not be able to play them so if I wanted to play one of these black notes I just couldn't do it unless I retune to the instrument what you can do but you can't switch back and forth easily within a song and where did I want to go from there speaking of tuning so I when I bought this I bought it used it did not come with a tuning wrench I think a lot of them do come if you buy them new I think they come with tuning wrenches I bought a little autoharp tuning wrench for mine and these pins are what they call zither pins so Auto harps use these hammer dulcimers use these any sort of wrench that would work for those will also work on this instrument I recommend this one just because it was very cheap it was three dollars I think and does the job just fine I would not recommend getting a piano wrench of wrench intended for tuning piano pins because those are actually a different size and it won't work on this instrument and for tuning the notes you can get a piano or another instrument and just see if they match that doesn't sound quite like it's that great okay you can also use an electric clip tuner I use a clip tuner it's a little cumbersome because you have to kind of the only place you have to clip it is on the peg or if your tuner opens up wide enough you can clip it on the whole instrument which is what I typically do I'm not going to do that right now because I've got the camera angle where I like but you can do this this will sense vibrations or you can do one that has a speaker and you can get a app for your phone probably for free so there's lots of options or you can look up on the computer and use a tuner there's lots of different options for tuning the instrument it's a little tedious you want to do very small movements with your wrench when you're tuning because a little movement will make a big difference it can be very frustrating at first because fifteen strings is a lot more than your things a guitar and a guitar because the strings are so much longer and usually the tuning mechanisms are more precise you have a it's a lot less frustrating at first but once you get the hang of it it goes by a lot quicker and so I definitely recommend don't get frustrated by tuning and give up for that reason because it will get quicker and easier alright um another big question I get is on pics so I'll talk a little bit about my finger picks that I use I as I said earlier I strongly recommend using picks because this is a very quiet instrument now if you're just playing it home for yourself for fun or having a child play this instrument you don't really need finger picks but for me in particular making these videos and also playing with my historical reenactment group you can't hear anything unless you've got some sort of pick to make this louder now you can play with a flat pick of course but that's going to be a lot slower and the sort of things that I wanted to play I wanted to have more be able to play a little faster and a little easier I use picks on my thumb index middle and ring finger I don't use one on the pinky I kind of picked this up from harp and if you want to get ideas for how to play pluck psaltery you can look up a lot of advice on how to play harp because like I said the string layouts the same they're not going to use picks but but the string layouts the same some of the patterns and arpeggio are going to be similar but anyway as I was saying I don't use one on the pinky because the pinky the angle that you play it makes it a little difficult for that finger to be very useful it's also much weaker at the angle that you're playing than the other fingers this is something that I picked up from harp like I mentioned is that they typically don't use the pinky for those same reasons is that it's just kind of a weaker finger and it's hard to get in there and be very useful I'm not saying I never will use my pinky but at least at this point I'm haven't used it all so this instrument isn't that big and once you get to places where you might want to use that thinking you're probably running out of instrument so or is it going oh we're talking about pigs so these pics that I use on these three fingers are what's called Alaska pick that's the brand they're Delrin model they're plastic model and they just slide on the fingers and they slide so that on this direction how they're intended to be used is that you slide your finger right down to this edge and I hope you can see that you put your fingernail over that edge now like I said I play piano so I have very short fingernails so I actually slide it down a little further that gives me more pick the strings on this instrument are not that taut so I don't have to worry about as I'm playing that ripping these picks off my fingers and they're they're pretty sturdy they come they come in pretty small sizes they're pretty tight for my thumb I use a standard thumb pick which you would use for banjo or possibly guitar mostly for banjo and which I dabbled in banjo which is why I had this and was used to it this I like this pick for the thumb because as you hold your hand over the instrument your natural position for the thumb to pluck is going to be on the side as opposed to the end like if I put one of these picks on my thumb I'm not really wanting to attack that I have to kind of rotate my hand awkwardly which I suppose you can and and I'm not going to say that this is completely impossible but my preference and since I already had one is to use a thumb pick so that gives you that side angle and that I find to be very useful where else was I going oh the one thing about this is that it is very difficult to find thumb pics aren't that difficult to find but left-handed thumb pigs are difficult and since I play with both hands because I want to do that harmony line it's necessary to have a left thumb pick and this is specified per finger so if you look at this if it's around the thumb very nicely but if I put it on my opposite thumb it doesn't it doesn't really fit and it would fall off if I tried to play like that this particular pick is a thread a thread kelly a slick thick friend Kelly sleeping that's right and the reason I like this one is you can actually they actually do sell left-handed thumb takes it's the same pick it's just a different they do different colors for how hard it is and what hand it is so left ones are green and right-handed ones or white so but that you see fits on my finger much better so so that is why I use this particular brand and I'll put a link some information in the subject about these particular picks because I know a lot of people have questions about these I guess I'm going to say why I use these pics so you get a nice clean sound when you're playing with them since I have played banjo before I have other picks that are not these so if I use like a standard metal banjo pick and they go on this direction so some people think that you're supposed to wear them this way they're not actually designed to be worn that way they're to be worn the other way the downside with this I find is that I feel like I get a lot of string note noise especially with a metal pick and there's that little clunk and it's also not as loud the actual pluck isn't as loud but the string noise is a lot more and with this small quiet instrument I really need that extra volume and I can't afford to have that extra string noise so that's why when I found these Alaska picks they worked out really great because they don't have that same string noise so if I have one of each for example so I don't know if it's obvious to you but to me I feel like the Alaska pick makes a much cleaner noise on this particular instrument and I think it works well so I think that's all I'm going to do for now I'll probably make a second video talking about how to do some harmonies and certain things to make your melody sound a little more interesting than just clunking out a melody and this is probably long enough and you know don't want you to get too bored so I hope this has been informative let me know if you have any other questions and when I make another video I will hopefully answer those questions thank you for watching