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 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.
Camac's MIDI harp has a solid soundboard, not a sound box, and so can function as both an electric harp and a MIDI instrument, but not an acoustic harp. If you want to play the MIDI harp, you need amplification.
The MIDI harp's own sound module has more than five hundred sounds. Of these, you can store up to 128 in the harp at any one time. Once stored, you can change between these sounds using a button on the harp's left-hand side. If the stored sounds are enough for what you are doing at the time, it is recommended that you play the harp unconnected to a computer, to avoid interference from programmes designed more for editing than performance.
If you wish to organize and alter the sounds in the inbuilt sound module, or adjust how the harp reacts to your playing, then you need a computer. You can use either Mac or PC, which is connected to the harp via Firewire.
The harp comes with software specially designed for the harp. You install this software onto your computer, connect the harp to it, also connect the harp to an amp so you can hear what you are doing, and then you are ready to programme the sounds and effects you want.
If you want to use external further effects, such as those from an external sound module, or processing a sound while the harpist is playing it so that it changes in some way, you will also need to connect the harp to a computer. The changes that happen can be pre-programmed, so that the harpist may perform alone, or effected in real time by another person at the computer.
The MIDI harp is compatible with any standard MIDI software. Writing for the MIDI harp is like writing for concert pedal harp, plus MIDI. All MIDI effects are possible - such as controlling visual images from the instrument, or using the harp to notate a score directly from playing.
