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K Eids I wonder if I could play “Hound Dog” on my water bowl. How to make music’s clearest notes


To get your feet wet as a glass harpist, just get your fingers wet


okay to play it with wet hands! In fact, that’s what you should do: This instru- ment is played by rubbing damp fin- gers across the rims of drinking glass- es that have stems.


T


How does it work? You can’t see it happening, but when wet fingers rub over the rim of a glass, the friction causes vibration, which creates sound waves. The stem increases the ability of the bowl part of each glass to vibrate. Each glass’s sound depends upon its size and shape. Glasses with large bowls will produce deeper tones than those with small ones. Plain stemware with thin rims works quite well. Some glasses naturally have perfect


pitch when empty. Others need to be tuned with water. The more water added, the lower the pitch because liq- uid slows down the vibrations.


History The glass harp, sometimes called the “angelic organ,” has been around for centuries. By the 1800s, there were more than 400 pieces of music written for glass instruments, including works by Beethoven and Mozart. In 1761, Benjamin Franklin invented the


he glass harp is a very unusual musical instrument. You don’t blow it or strum it. It doesn’t have keys or strings. And, it’s


glide more easily over the rims of glasses. You can tune glasses by ear or


match each sound to a note from an- other instrument or an electronic tun- er. To change the pitch of each glass, add or subtract a little water at a time. Now, add more glasses, adjusting their water levels to different notes, and see if you can play a tune. If you have eight identical glasses, increase the water level just a bit in each from left to right until you have the eight basic notes of the scale, or one octave (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti and do).


ANN CAMERON SIEGAL Glass harpist Jamey Turner performs regularly in Old Town Alexandria.


“glass armonica” (the Italian word for harmony is “armonia”), also played with wet fingers but using glass bowls, without stems, mounted sideways on a revolving horizontal rod.


Try it Gather a few plain wineglasses.


(Ask permission first!) You can also find some inexpensive ones at thrift stores or yard sales. Using one hand, rest the “foot” of a


glass on a table. Dampen the fingers of the other hand and hold them out straight, palm down. Lightly run one or more fingers around the rim of the glass. This will take some practice, but once you hear a sound, adjust the pressure of your fingers to keep the note resonating. You don’t need to press hard. Tap water will do, but distilled wa-


ter, which lacks the minerals found in regular tap water, lets your fingers


These glasses are half full


If you want to get a better sense of just how musically wonderful water glasses can sound, ask your parents if you can watch these two videos. (We bet they’ll want to watch with you.) Jamey Turner plays Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in Alexandria: www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4mX6C_qlDc Robert Tiso plays the main theme from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwCR1FpbnhQ


Hear it Jamey Turner, a world-famous glass harpist, plays at local schools and of- ten sets up his instrument at King and Union streets in Old Town Alexandria on Friday and Saturday evenings when he’s not traveling. He uses 60 glasses of different sizes (anchored to a soundboard with rubber bands), but he can play “When the Saints Come Marching In” with only five. — Ann Cameron Siegal


TODAY’S NEWS


KLMNO FRAZZ


WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2010 JEF MALLETT


TODAY: Sunny and hot again


HIGH LOW 96 71


ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL HORAN, 10, EDGEWATER


NATIONAL ZOO


A video image shows Shera with her litter of cubs, born Tuesday.


Zoo welcomes birth of four lion cubs


 Shera, a 5-year-old lion at the National Zoo, gave birth to her first set of cubs Tuesday. The lit- ter of four cubs gives the zoo an- other chance to build a pride of lions, an effort that was set back in May, when Shera’s sister, Naba- biep, gave birth to a male cub that died a few days after birth. Shera’s cubs “symbolize hope for the zoo,” said zoo director Dennis Kelly. It has been many years since the zoo has had the right combi- nation of lions to produce cubs. In the wild, lions live in groups of mostly females and offspring, with a few adult males. The father of Shera’s cubs is 4- year-old Luke, who was also the father of Nababiep’s cub. Naba- biep appears to be pregnant again as well and could give birth within weeks. If all goes well, the cubs will be introduced to the public in the late fall.


Oval Office a fitting venue for Obama’s sober address about the Iraq war’s end speech from C1


news that we are calling it a day. It’s a tricky task, to go on TV and talk about a war we didn’t win, mainly because the in- vasion and occupation of Iraq didn’t fit any of the old definitions of war. Sitting in his newly redecorated digs, Obama displayed the confidently tele- genic delivery style that got him to this desk in the first place. You don’t have to believe a word of it in order to admire the moves, the tone — not unlike Glenn Beck’s calm, cool post-rally analysis of his “Restoring Honor” event on Fox News a day earlier. Calm is the new swagger. Like the brocade on the drapes behind him, Obama’s address was an intricate pattern — in this case, designed to refute certain key criticisms that dog him daily. He reminded Americans just how much the war predates his term, and how much he values those who fought it — and even the man who started it. He firmly warned terrorists but offered the encouraging peace that diplomacy crafts. He men- tioned that his grandfather fought in World War II — a few simple words inter- jected while touting the 9/11-era GI Bill — as a credibly sly way of asserting his own Americanness.


With Obama, a viewer never has to feel uneasy about tripped syllables and ner-


It’s a tricky task, to go on TV and talk about a war we didn’t win.


vous blinking during a presidential ad- dress. But it’s that very same ease that causes such disbelief and even scorn. It’s perhaps too good, too “West Wing” scripty, too lofty while the economic and social muck is too deep. And so an official Obama address has become a fascinating exercise in covering all the bases: em- phatic and sincere appreciation for all that America is, and this strange sense that he must always assert his place in it —the president! Because I was watching the address on NBC, I was jarred, as others may have been, by the announcement of the shows that would immediately follow it: “A Minute to Win It,” now in progress. Followed by “America’s Got Talent.” A minute to win it? Well, not exactly.


Talented America? Obama gave every im- pression that he thinks we can be called that.


stueverh@washpost.com JIM YOUNG/REUTERS MISSION OVER: President Obama declares an end to the Iraq war in an address from the newly refurbished Oval Office.


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