There’s been a bit of fuss recently about 5 planets being visible in the morning sky. Here’s the Moon next to Jupiter. I don’t suppose it will be clear enough to do any of the others – or if I can be bothered to get up early enough to take photos
I’ve also added the Moon on its own, and Jupiter, cropped out of the main photo so you can see how big Jupiter is compared to the moon – they’re the same scale.
With the decision made it was time to get some bits needed to complete the initial drawings. I had decided to use 10 sympathetic strings, so needed a couple of sets of these nice tuner mechanisms.
Thanks to Grant Crawford for this photo from the esf session in the Diggers, posted in Facebook. We do look rather serious!
Posted by Grant Crawford on Monday, 18 January 2016
Having owned a three row chromatic nyckelharpa since May 2014, when I collected it from Olle Plahn in Falun, I was having a lot of fun getting to know the instrument.
I knew that at least one other type of nyckelharpa existed, since I had seen Olov Johansson playing one – the kontrabas nyckelharpa. This has a sound that is rather different to the three row harpa, and for me it is attractive.
It would be a bit expensive to buy a kontrabas – it’s not as though I NEED one – but it would also be a lot of fun to build one. So after a bit of research, and some consultation with Kjell Lundvall whom I had met at Halsway 2015, I was able to start planning.
My kontrabas won’t be a copy of either an old one in a museum, or a modern one made by a modern maker (though it will no doubt have a lot of the features of Kjell’s kontrabas instruments). I have several ideas I’d like to try, so it should be a lot of fun seeing if I can make one of these lovely instruments.
