Diario de Tepintzin

The musician's name is Agatsuma Hiromitsu. I just heard his piece "Fun" on pagan radio and had to look him up. I like this sample better because it's just him and he's awesome:

"Amoroso", played on a gothic harp:

http://www.asni.net/amoroso!.wav

To answer your question, yes, that is one single instrument. I've been mentioning bray strings; they're the vibrating strings providing the drone sound. The hurdy-gurdy gets its distinctive, bagpipe-like sound from them. The medievals thought it was great and so do I. During my abortive attempt to learn to play guitar, I found I liked the noise of strings buzzing against the frets, even though I later found out it was considered an "error" in playing.

Screw that! Bray strings have been described by musician Melissa the Loud (look her up) as the reason they didn't need electric guitars in the middle ages. Apparently even though gothic harps don't have loud voices due to their narrow soundboxes, they can be heard over other instruments because of the bray strings. Of course, if a harp's competition is a lute, that's not hard.

As some of you many know, the Irish government plans to build a motorway right across the hill of Tara. This is a largely unrehearsed demonstration against this archaeological and historical outrage, 30 harpers playing "Brian Boru's March". (Off topic, I am enchanted by the bright blue pedal harp.)



URLs are posted at the end of the video. Save Tara!

A selection from a recitation of Gilgamesh, accompanied by a reproduction of the beautiful bulls-head "Lyre of Ur". As everyone knows, I'm obsessed with antique musical instruments and this is the great-grandmama of them all.

http://www.recorderhomepage.net/crumhorn.html

Krumhorn pieces! They're actually classified as being in the woodwind family.

http://www.jaliscoharp.com

Free online mariachi harp lessons.