The Trouble With Lap Harps
I was putting the baby down for a nap today when I heard Brahms’s Lullaby coming from the other side of the door. When it finished the door cracked open and a tiny little nose poked in and hissed “Mooom? Is it working?”
I nodded and motioned for her to close the door quietly, within moments of the door clicking shut I heard it again. Only the first 30 notes since that’s all the music she has for her lap harp.
The lap harp I had moved to a very, very high shelf over a year ago in respect of my sanity, only to have it reappear in her hands yesterday, out of tune and novel, just as any toy becomes after it goes missing for several months.
Yaaaay lap harp, welcome back into my life. *deflated fanfare.*
She spent a solid three hours playing a very sad rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle” as I tried to think about who could at least tune the thing so it didn’t sound like a depressing death march rather than a nursery rhyme. I was a dancer, musical ability is not really my thing. My husband played the piano but our piano is woefully out of tune as well so that wouldn’t help us much.
Guess what guys? There’s an app for that!
I spent the morning plucking away, tuning and tweaking the strings on her lap harp with my smartphone and free tuning app absolutely sure it would make me a hero among moms. (To be perfectly honest I felt pretty accomplished myself.)
Sad Twinkle Twinkle is a thing of the past, however every activity I have performed from this morning on has come with a soundtrack provided by Addie and her lap harp. “Hey mom, whatcha dooin’? Do you think ‘Clementine’ would be a good song for you to brush your teeth to?”
“Hey mom! I have the perfect song for you to make lunch to!”
“HEY MOM! You want peace and quiet? LET ME PLAY YOU A LULLABY!”
The kid is musical, there’s no denying that, but as I sat beside my football watching husband while the big one plucked out and sang along to church hymns and the little one pushed around her singing alphabet ball…my eyes started to vibrate.
“SSHHHH! EVERYTHING SHHH!”
Everything did shhh for a moment and I in those few moments of silence I vowed bodily harm or a drum kit upon anyone who may decide to gift one of my children a recorder as a toy.
What is with lap harps? How do you tune it with out breaking the ferakin’ strings? I can’t tune ours and none of the local music stores will touch it. I am totally impressed that you could tune yours. Ours is so out of tune my son fortunately won’t touch it. We did get him a drum kit for Christmas and it is crazy loud but way less annoying than his more shrill instruments.
If I break a string now it’s totally your fault.
Maybe it’s the climate? I know it doesn’t take a very big tweak to change a string one or two notes, the app I downloaded is called DaTuner Lite and it works like a darn charm.
It’s payback lady! Remember when Addie was at my house and found the harmonica I had so carefully hidden? Then she and my offspring played with it for daaaaaayyyyys? I feel an amazing sense of justice in the universe. Sigh.