Tagelharpa Ahoy

This week I commissioned the making of a new instrument, which will be made by a local friend. His day-job is in a Ludlow kitchen, but he’s a talented woodworker and all-round maker of things. Of English and German parentage, the latter part of his background is perhaps the reason he’s interested in Norse and Northern European instruments. As a trial last year he made a tagelharpa, and when I heard the sound and saw the photos last month, I knew I had to have one!

The tagelharpa is a Swedish instrument, like a lyre. It typically has three or four strings which are played with a bow. My friend has been using cello strings and a standard bow for his test model. It sounded great. He is pretty modest about his woodworking abilities, but he would easily be able to make these for musician customers – on Etsy, for instance. I’ve been encouraging him, but he’s not quite ready yet.

You can search for tagelharpa on Youtube and find great examples of musicians playing this instrument. It’s a marvellous sound. I still have my “Viking album” half finished, so maybe acquiring this instrument will inspire me to finish the recordings.

In more annoying news, the Krom Lek CD that I found in Oxfam a couple of weeks ago turned out to be such an old CDR it stuck in my car player. I only got it out this morning, after much faffing about. Three years ago or thereabouts, a similar thing happened, and I had to junk the player and buy a second-hand one off eBay. It will be a bit annoying if that has to happen again.

So, not much by way of listening this week. But I am still very much enjoying the Megafaun album, which I highly recommend. Most of my other listening this week has been early Genesis albums on YouTube, which has been rather fab. I’d forgotten what an outstanding album Trespass is – the debut proper of the group. I enjoyed hearing Foxtrot again too. So far, the writing of the Genesis book has been quite fragmented, which is making it rather a poor experience compared with other books I’ve written. But I just don’t seem to have the time at the moment for anything more sustained. However, Easter is coming up…