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SHEEFRA
~what we play~
Traditional Celtic Music
Sheefra plays Irish and Scottish unwritten traditional classics, specialising in some of the more heart-stirring, grand, contemplative and poignant elements of the repertoire, along with lively jigs and hornpipes and compositions of the great 18th century harper, Turloch O'Carolan.
HARP
Leanne plays a 36-string Dusty Strings Celtic harp, as shown right. They are good instruments, made by good people.
The Irish or Celtic or Folk Harp is one of the oldest instruments in the world. There are pictures of harps being played on the walls of the pyramids of Egypt.
The chief difference between this kind of harp and a modern orchestra harp is the absence of pedals. Orchestra harps have pedals that allow every note can be raised or lowered a half-step with the foot, while playing with both hands. Celtic harps, and older harps in general, do not have these: playing them is like playing piano with no black keys.
They're much lighter and easier to transport than most orchestra harps-- we don't need a moving van, just a minivan.
Dusty Strings harps-- modern Celtic harps in general-- do have sharpening levers, little individual string capos that let you lift any string a half step. This makes it easy to tune up into the keys of G,D,A, and E, as well as C. Playing in the flattened keys is bit more of a hassle.
It is sometimes possible to reach up and quickly change a note with one hand, while playing with the other, in order to hit an accidental, but by and large we play music that grew up with the instrument, and is solidly planted in major, minor, or modal keys.
CONCERTINA
The concertina was invented in Victorian times by the English physicist Charles Wheatstone, for playing chamber music. GB Shaw and Charles Dickens were early champions of the instrument.
Tim plays a Wheatstone Aeola from the 1920s. It is about the size of a canteloupe, made of ebony and black leather, with a clear, distinctive sound, somewhere between pipes, clarinet, and reed organ. Inside, it's beautiful-- it looks like bees made it.
In one of these good, English-made instruments, each individual reed is fitted onto a tuned sounding chamber. If you take the reed out, and just tap the valve on a empty chamber, the little hollow popping sound produced is the correct note. This feature gives the individual notes sounded by the reeds a great deal of force and character. A good concertina has a clean, resonant tone. Like a violin (and unlike all other bellows instruments) a well-maintained concertina sounds better the more you play it.
