{"id":3690,"date":"2016-01-27T20:17:34","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T20:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harpblog.info\/?p=3690"},"modified":"2017-07-02T21:06:22","modified_gmt":"2017-07-02T21:06:22","slug":"the-story-of-the-dhc-blue-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/en\/news\/the-story-of-the-dhc-blue-light\/","title":{"rendered":"The story of the DHC Blue Light"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DHC<\/a>

DHC Blue Light 32, special red True Fire finish<\/p><\/div>\n

The DHC Blue Light<\/a> is our\u00a0collaboration with strap-on-harp-legend\u00a0Deborah Henson-Conant<\/a>. Made of super-light, mega-strong carbon fibre, it weighs just 5.5kg, and comes in 32- or 36-string models. Even Deborah herself couldn’t get a back-up model immediately\u00a0because of the length of the waiting list.<\/p>\n

Ingeniously, Camac collaborated with bicycle manufacturers to make it happen. Deborah began working with Jo\u00ebl Garnier in the early 1990s, while she was on the hunt for a lever harp she could harness to her body and move about on stage with.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had wanted a harness harp for years”, Deborah explains. “Some harp makers built quick prototypes (such as John Hoare of Pilgrim<\/a>), but finally I got a small Rubarth lap harp, covered it with red-and-silver contact paper, put a pickup in it, made a rudimentary harness for it, took it on tour and played it for Jo\u00ebl.\u00a0 He said, \u201cAh, Deborah, now I see what you mean,\u201d and the next time I saw him (it seemed like 4-6 months later, but was maybe more), he handed me the prototype of the Baby Blue<\/a>. I still have that very first prototype!<\/p>\n

I built a new harness (the prototype for what we\u2019re all using now), and a friend modified the harp (which was wood, so fairly easy to modify) so it could attach to a Bogen camera tripod as a stand. I started touring with it, wrote orchestral pieces for it, and learned about amplification. For a while I always shipped the harp in a bicycle box, as it fit perfectly and I could often get it on a plane free that way.<\/p>\n

The culmination of the Baby Blue was \u201cInvention & Alchemy,\u201d when I got to really show what the instrument could do both as a solo instrument, and as a feature with orchestra.\u00a0 The end of the era came soon after at the Arles harp festival, when I came without my Baby Blue and played a modern model.<\/p>\n

Technical improvements had made the model so heavy that it was too much to wear, even for me, someone pretty big and used to it. It was painfully (literally) clear that that model had no future commercially as a harness harp. This animated Jakez and me to sit down and talk about the future of the instrument. It seemed like the idea was either going to die and I\u2019d be one of a few people left in the world playing the original model, or the next model needed to be revolutionarily different.<\/p>\n

Jakez decided to go ahead with the expense and time investment of a completely new model, and asked me for input on what changes we needed.\u00a0 That investment was huge on many levels. There was no way to know that this investment would pay off financially; I don\u2019t think there was a huge interest in harnessable harps at that point, although there is now! In retrospect, I\u2019m awed at the leap he took, both financially and creatively.<\/p>\n

Jakez tells me that I had been going on at him for so long to work with bicycle manufacturers (to develop a harp with a truly light, carbon fibre frame), that finally he did. It wasn\u2019t as simple as copying their manufacturing processes, however. The main problem in designing a lighter harness harp was the cost of producing a mould for the body of the harp. This cost was prohibitive, because mould-making\u00a0is designed either for companies who don\u2019t care about costs (competition bicycles), or those who count on big quantities (mass production). As a harp maker, Camac was neither of these. Another technical problem we faced was that the harp needed wooden parts (for the tuning pins and levers, for example) inserted inside the carbon fibre skin of the body, which does not happen with bicycles because they only have foam.<\/p>\n

In the end, the idea of a mould was dropped entirely, and Camac chose to produce the harps the same way cycle manufacturers produce their prototypes: by hand, one by one. The inside parts are produced in the Camac workshops, the foam parts and wooden inserts are cut out, the bodies are assembled and then the harps are covered with a special\u00a0carbon fibre skin, using a vacuum system.<\/p>\n

The new carbon fibre harp was a huge success for me from the moment I put it on. I remember that moment! Jakez and I noticed that it was as if my body and my hands had just been waiting for this instrument.\u00a0 The low C string (just 2 more strings than I\u2019d had before) was revolutionary in terms of my playing – it suddenly gave me a range and heft I hadn\u2019t realized was missing – and suddenly this was a hugely viable solo instrument.<\/p>\n

That was a magical moment. Not because something \u201cunusual\u201d happened, but because, after years of working with Joel and Jakez on the harp, suddenly everything clicked into place.\u00a0 We\u2019d reached the true beginning of this instrument.<\/p>\n

\"DeborahThe DHC Blue Light trumps the Baby Blue in pretty much every way. The sound is more even, it\u2019s nearly half the weight, with more strings, and visually it seems to really capture the imagination of the harp-playing audience.\u00a0 Everything just seems to have \u2018clicked\u2019 with this model, from what I can tell. \u00a0It is the instrument I dreamed of, what I see as THE\u00a0crossover instrument of the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jakez adds:<\/em> \u201cI think there is an additional reason why more people want a DHC Blue Light. For more than a decade now, harpists have been watching what Deborah does with this\u00a0harp. Most of the younger generation don\u2019t even know that there was a time when portable harps did not exist, and for them,\u00a0it’s a normal\u00a0facet of the contemporary instrument. Step by step, the harp made a big step.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re working with Deborah Henson-Conant again at the beginning of March, as part of the Cardiff Camac Harp Weekend. Deborah is the inspiration behind our best-selling DHC Blue Light electric harp. Want to know how it all began? Read on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[552],"tags":[813,794,825,804,826],"class_list":["post-3690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-artists","tag-atelier","tag-company","tag-electro","tag-jazz-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"The story of the DHC Blue Light - Camac Harps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/en\/news\/the-story-of-the-dhc-blue-light\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The story of the DHC Blue Light - Camac Harps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We're working with Deborah Henson-Conant again at the beginning of March, as part of the Cardiff Camac Harp Weekend. 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