Question 1258: Violin or harp? (and why…)
I don’t know much about the harp. I’ve known two people in my life who played harp, and both of them were gifted. That being said, I’m picking violin. For one thing, I find its use in Western classical music beautiful, passionate, and haunting. But the violin is also used in country, jazz, blues, folk, Americana, and rock and roll, even if it’s called a “fiddle” in some of those genres. And a player can’t pick up a harp and dance around a stage but definitely can with a violin/fiddle.
Violin at approximately 1:4 scale.
Because of the violin’s versatility, I wrote a classical violinist turned blues fiddle player into the Neverending Saga. =)
After enduring my little brother in his childhood years learning to play the violin, you can forgive my experienced bias towards the harp, even though I have never met anyone who has played it.
In terms of professional studio or live recordings that are not in a lossy format such as mpeg mp3, etc., like rather say properly recorded and mastered to vinyl or CD, I would choose the violin.
I love reading people’s stories about playing recorders or having kids who play or played recorders. I missed that entire experience somehow, perhaps the advantage of changing schools a lot as a military brat. I did get to torment my parents when I took piano lessons, however. =)