Recent posts have examined the structural and musical attributes of a variety of zithers. They include a few that were derived from the concert zither but little has been said about the parent instrument. It originated through a fusion of Alpine designs and is still used in traditional contexts.
The melody is played with the thumb alone, which nearly always plucks the strings from the same direction. The speed this can attain is seen in a classical work arranged for the same basic ensemble. The use of the left hand to “hammer on” notes seen at the outset of the performance will be discussed further below.
In contrast to the single strings of the concert zither, the hammered dulcimer next to it in the first video has multi-string courses. It is sometimes played by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips (fueling debate about formal nomenclature and classification). This is the basic technique of another far older member of the zither family seen in previous posts; the qanun. It also has multi-string courses and its players wear picks on their index fingers. The important thing to note in the following demonstration is the single targeting of the top string in a course.
The four-note ornament described 45 seconds into it is executed in this manner. The next clip shows the same pattern with an added fifth note. In contrast, here the middle three notes are played with a single downward stroke that plucks all strings in the three courses.
These demos show formidable ability in the rapid unidirectional use of a single digit. There is an obvious (and evolutionary) parallel between the use of a thumb pick on a concert zither and on an autoharp. The way the two index fingers are used on the qanun maps similarly into a two-finger picking style on an autoharp.
The five-note ornament just seen corresponds to the Irish roll discussed in an earlier post about the capacity of the autoharp for the idiomatic ornamentation of Irish dance tunes. There is no established Irish style for executing a roll on it but useful guidance can be taken from other instruments in the traditional line-up. The qanun is not on that list either but nonetheless provides a clear instantiation of this type of roll on a plucked zither.
It may therefore be worth considering whether the technique(s) of its execution can weighed into the crafting of a roll that can be played on an autoharp in a manner that an erudite listener would find convincing by native standards. Although there’s more to it, this entails the crystal-clear delineation of melody and well-articulated ornamentation at often breakneck speed. The ability to pluck individual strings with immaculate accuracy on an autoharp – something it was painstakingly designed to obviate need for – is therefore indispensable.
The following video illustrates a suitable approach to that skill. It is linked directly to a performance in a broader tutorial presentation. The tune ends with mention of need for further polish, as demonstrated in another recording.
Melody has a central position in traditional Irish performance and stands comfortably alone without most of what Jo Ann Smith in the video aptly terms “other stuff…underneath.” However, ornamentation is a fundamental attribute of its idiomatic rendition. So from the perspective of adapting the autoharp to such performance, one particular kind of other stuff does need to be interwoven.
Some Irish ornaments can be played on an autoharp with a single finger and none require more than two (even if eased with a third). For example, a quick single grace note from above — a “cut” — can be played either with a downward slide of one finger across two strings or the successive action of two fingers. A corresponding grace note from below — a “tap” or “tip” — only has the latter option.
The nimble action of the picking hand has a counterpart for the barring hand. A auxiliary notes in a crisp cut or tap need to be silenced immediately after they have been plucked. If played with a lowered chord bar, a rapid shift is necessary to another bar that damps the grace note while permitting the following main note to sound. Half of that motion can be spared by playing the cut or tap with all chord bars raised and careful aim.
This is just one instance of the situation where proximal notes are plucked successively or simultaneously, permitted to sound together for a brief moment, and all but one of them are then muted by lowering a chord bar. This action is generally referred to as “hammering on” and is a common autoharp technique. Nonetheless, I’m uncomfortable with the label given to it.
I first encountered the hammer-on fully 65 years ago in Pete Seeger’s book How to Play the 5-String Banjo and long since internalized the meaning he ascribed to it.
In playing the banjo you can get some notes with your left hand. One method is to fret a string so hard you can hear it. This I call “hammering on.”
This either causes a silent string to begin vibrating or raises the pitch of one that is already sounding, as demonstrated on the concert zither above. It has absolutely nothing to do with damping. Pete’s term took root in the fretted instrument glossary and is often paired with a left-hand method for plucking a lower note that he dubbed “pulling off.”
Both are emulated with the same technique on the autoharp, and are commonly taught on the classical guitar under the shared heading “slurs.” Earlier 5-string banjo tutors use that term specifically to designate the hammer-on and call the pull-off a “snap.” It is in one such definition that a “hammer” made its first appearance in this context. The 1908 edition of Dallas’ Modern School for the Five-String Banjo says the following about it. (This post’s banner image follows the cited text, notating the slur with a straight glissando sign.)
THE SLUR.
(HAMMER SLUR)The Slur is another pretty effect which is attained as follows:— Pick the fourth string open with the right hand and while the string is vibrating let the second finger of the left hand fall sharply, like a hammer on the next note D, two frets higher, which will be produced without the string being struck a second time.
The book’s editor, Herbert J. Ellis, had previously described this effect without analogy to hammering in his own Ellis’s Thorough School for the Five Stringed Banjo, published at an uncertain date in the 1890s.
The Slur indicates that the notes over which it is placed are to be played evenly and connectedly; but in Banjo playing it is produced by the left hand whilst the string is in vibration.
Pull the first note with the right hand; then, whilst it is vibrating put down the required finger of the left hand with sufficient force to produce the next note without the aid of the right hand.
The slur in descending is generally played by snapping.
This means that the Ernest Muller who advertised instruction on “guitar, mendiline, zither, auto-harp…etc” in 1884 (detailed in another earlier post) would likely have used the term slur in the preceding sense. If we posit that he taught the corresponding bar technique to his autoharp students — both to raise and lower the highlighted note — I would likely not be the first to regard slur as an appropriate label for it. We can take this for a test drive with the four and five-note ornaments in the video demos of the qanun above.
They become an Irish roll on an autoharp by playing the initial note with a chord bar down, lifting that bar for the following three notes, and lowering it again when repeating the initial note. As the video snippets show, the middle notes can be played by plucking one string in each course or with a single stroke across all three courses. Depending on the desired rhythmic accentuation, the final note can then either be plucked separately or slurred up from the note below.