Last week, Jakez and I went to London for a MIDI harp day at the Royal Academy of Music. Together with composer Dominic Murcott, Jakez presented the harp to harpists in the morning, and the afternoon session was held from the composer's perspective.
A MIDI harp is not the same as an electric harp. An electric harp uses electricity to amplify the sound of a harp. It can have a sound box and also function as an acoustic harp (like Camac's Big Blue concert electric harp), or it can have a solid body and only sound when amplified, like an electric guitar or some of Camac's other electric harps. You can put the sound through effects pedals and distort it, add reverb or similar, but your core sound is that of a plucked string, that is, of a harp.
A Big Blue harp with an acoustic sound box, but also a pickup on each string so the sound may be amplified.
A solid-body electric lever harp, that only sounds when the amplification is switched on.
A
MIDI harp also uses electricity, but additionally has a relationship
with a computer. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface.
When you pluck the string of a MIDI harp, instead of the sound going
directly into an amplifier and simply being made louder, the plucked
string emits frequencies, which are picked up and interpreted by the
inbuilt computer (the MIDI converter) in the harp. The converter sends
the MIDI characteristics of the played note to the inbuilt synthesizer
(a sound module, in other words). If you prefer, instead of the
internal synthesizer you can use an external laptop, a synthesizer, an
external sound module known as an expander, or any kind of electronic
equipment that can be connected to the instrument via MIDI. Whatever
equipment you direct the MIDI signal to, it will produce the result.
This could be a sound - harp piano, violin, saxophone, percussion,
electric guitar, full choir - or it could trigger events, such as
activating an effect, start recording a loop, switching on a light, or
playing a video. The possibilities are endless.