Pedal harp downscale to 1/12 from Canon Creative Park

[ReynoldsSlumber]

This is a downscale of the stock Canon Creative Park harp plans to 54%, which made it 6 3/8" tall, a shade bigger than 1/12 scale. I guess that makes the original plans ~1/6 scale. As the full size plan recommends 300+ gsm photo paper, I used 65# cover (165 gsm) paper, which worked out reasonably well, if anything a bit too thin for the task. Or maybe an art paper of the same weight would hold up better to shaping and gluing.

The harp's 17 strings (a full set on a real harp would be 47) are polyester thread on this smaller model, rather than string as the instructions have it. The string attachment tabs along the top piece get a little tricky at this size and paper thickness. Also, I used a knot through a hole to tie off the end of the thread, as seen in the close-up photo, rather than try to tie it around a flimsy little tab per the instructions.

The model is a little rough around the edges (literally), and I made a hash of the pedals. That said, the look from a couple feet away is decently nice! The inherent elegance of the harp shape along with all those parallel strings really make it.

[ReynoldsSlumber]

Here are better resolution photos:

[Siwi]

Pretty good! I would encourage cutting out the two openings on the body because these are soundholes similar to the f holes on a violin.

[Thumb Dog]

Hi All,

And hi, ReynoldsSlumber. That’s a fine job you did on your Canon Pedal Harp. I hadn’t seen the harp before in the Canon collection, and your reduction of the model to 1/12 scale would make a nice addition to my wife’s doll house. Christmas is on the way.

I only tried playing a pedal harp once in my life and I instantly knew there was no chance of my becoming another Harpo Marx. As a guitar player, I was used to the low E being played by my thumb and the higher strings played by my remaining fingers. In a harp, the right hand thumb plays the highest strings while the fingers play the lower. And as for the left hand, forget it. No frets, just more backward plucking.

I would hold off on cutting any sound holes in the sound board, as a pedal harp has its sound holes in the back of the sound box, as seen in the attached photograph.

Well done on your model, a truly angelic build.

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog

[Siwi]

I meant the back of the sound box as you say. Coming from bowed strings, we don't always know the correct part names for other instruments.


Aside from playing technique, harp music is also rather 'different'. Much solo music is written in the exotic key of C flat major, because this puts the pedals in a setting where the strings resonate most freely (the seven pedals can each be moved independently to sharp, natural, or flat, but these change all of a particular note name at once). Pedalling in advanced repertoire takes as much work as fingering, since the two feet must change the pedal position without looking, in advance of any note changes, whilst plucking notes. Harpists have a grid system of diagrams to show these, but composers have to be aware of how fast it can be done. It is also common for the same pitch to be shown as an 'enharmonic equivalent' using two different combinations of string and pedal, in order to facilitate pedal changes. There were attempts to introduce a fully chromatic harp (Debussy wrote for it) which had extra seperate strings for the 'black keys', but it never caught on.

[ReynoldsSlumber]

Aha, sound holes, that's what those are on the back of the sound box. Thanks for all the info Siwi and Thumb Dog! There are indeed five sound holes running down its length, as seen in Thumb Dog's photo. Cutting those holes would be involved, as there's a internal spine that runs down the middle, two layers of paper plus tabs coming across from the sound board backing that land right in the middle. Had I known before starting, I would've cut back the spine parts accordingly. I still might get out a fresh X-ACTO blade and a black marker and make the holes.

Also, Thumb Dog, in case you didn't see it, there's more about the build in my separate kit review post.

[Thumb Dog]

Hi All,

And hi, ReynoldsSlumber and Siwi. RS, I wouldn’t bother about cutting out the sound holes on your current harp. If you look at pedal harp images on your computer, it’s actually hard to find one that shows the back of the harp. I’d place the harp’s back to the wall and plan for sound holes in your 47 string version.

As for harp music, you usually have to go out of your way to hear it. But for the casual listener, it can often be found in the movie scores written by the great Max Steiner. Steiner composed over 300 movie scores including Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, and Now Voyager. Chances are if you hear the strong presence of a harp in the RKO or Warner Bros movie you are watching, Max Steiner wrote the score. Check out his Wikipedia and IMDB pages here:

Max Steiner - Wikipedia

Max Steiner - IMDb

Austrian by birth, Steiner became a truly great American composer and is regarded by many as the Father of Film Music.

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog

[ReynoldsSlumber]

Fair point TD—when photographing the model, I found that it pretty much wanted to be looked at from one viewpoint. And cool to learn a bit about harp music from your and Siwi's posts.

A couple more thoughts about the model, if I were to do it again: On the pedals, I'd cut out just the top surface graphics, then back that with a couple layers of thick cardstock for depth and darken the edges. Could cut a hole through the wall of the base for each pedal to glue into, for a little extra strength as compared to a butt joint. On the little string tensioner details along the top, I might replace them with wire bits cut with flush cutters, even though it would mean breaking from paper construction. Or maybe it would be easier to skip card modeling and scratchbuild the whole thing from wood, ha!

[Siwi]

If we wanted to get into wire super detailing, one could also add the brass circular rocker arms that alter the string pitch mounted on the top metal plate.