One of the most common questions I get from beginner to intermediate harpists is, should you tune your harp in C or E flat?

It’s something you’ve probably seen people talk about online, but you might not know what it means or which option you should use.

Whether you should tune your harp in C or E flat is not a one-size-fits-all answer.

It depends on your harp and where you are in your harp journey.

So today I’m going to explain what tuning in C and E flat means so that actually makes sense, which tuning is right for you, and how to tune your harp into both of these keys.

Understanding what it means

First things first — tuning in C or E flat only applies to lever harps. If you play the pedal harp, you have to tune in C flat (I’ll explain that at the end).

With that out of the way, let’s talk about what tuning in C or E flat even means.

And to do that, we’re going to start with just a little music theory.

Try this on your lever harp: play a string with the lever down, and then raise the lever and play it again.

The pitch of that string will go up by an amount called a semitone.

This means that the notes you have available to play on your lever harp include the notes the strings were tuned to, and the notes one semitone higher on strings that have levers.

So, let’s talk about what notes those are - because it doesn’t include every single possible note.

The notes in the western music alphabet are named after the letters A to G.

These basic forms of the notes when it’s just the letters are called “naturals”.

So we could call these A natural, B natural, etc.

When a natural note is raised by a semitone, like with a lever, it becomes a sharp version of that note, which is notated with the number sign or hashtag symbol.

We can call these A sharp, B sharp, C sharp, and so on.

BUT, these natural notes can also be LOWERED by a semitone, and when they are, they’re called flats and are written with the squashed lowercase B symbol.

A flat, B flat, etc.

This is important because on the lever harp, we cannot lower pitches from where they are tuned.

We can only raise them.

So if we want any flats, we have to tune them that way first, and then they can be raised to natural (and we’ll no longer be able to raise those strings into sharps).

But that ends up being okay, because some strings are much more commonly played sharp than flat, and vice versa.

For example, I’m unlikely to need a B sharp, so if I tune that string to B flat and then can play it as either B flat or B natural with the lever up, I’m not going to be missing out on a note I’m likely to need later.

Ok, but what do C and E flat have to do with any of this?

Well, to oversimplify a little bit, C and E flat are two of many “keys” that western music uses.

A key for us harpists basically means what configuration of sharps or flats and naturals we set our strings in.

This is important because if we play the right strings in the wrong key, it’s going to sound weird and wrong.

If you want to see what I mean, play a song you know with the correct levers set.

Then put random levers up and down and play it again - it probably sounds pretty funky!

So now let’s bring it back to the keys of C major and E flat major, and what they have to do with tuning.

The key of C major contains only naturals. That means you would tune every string on your harp to the natural version of that note.

The key of E flat major contains three flats: E flat, A flat, and B flat, and all the other notes are naturals.

A harp tuned in the key of E flat would have the E, A and B strings tuned lower to the flat version of those notes, and all the other strings would be tuned as naturals.

Which one should you use

I’m going to show you how to do that in just a moment, but first let’s figure out which key is right for you and your harp.

This mostly comes down to how many levers your harp has.

If you have no levers, tune in C.

If only have levers on F and/or C strings, you should tune in C as well.

If you have a full set of levers, you can choose if you want to tune in C or E flat.

E flat is the standard tuning for fully levered harps, because it gives you access to the most common sharp and flat notes without needing to retune.

If you’re playing songs in a lot of different keys (which means there are sharps or flats in the key signature of the song), E flat is probably the right choice for you.

But, if you’re just starting to play the harp, it’s ok to tune in C for now.

Most beginner material is in C, so you can play in C tuning for a long time before running into a flat that needs the other tuning.

I often start new students in C just because there’s SO much to learn when you’re new to the harp, that trying to learn about flats and keys and all this music theory stuff can be pretty overwhelming at the beginning, and it’s not really necessary right away.

So if you feel like all of this is going over your head, go ahead and tune in C because it’s easier.

When you’ve been playing a bit longer, and you’re starting to run into songs that have flats in them, you’re probably going to want to switch to the E flat tuning then.

But until then, tuning your harp in C is not going to damage your harp or your strings.

How to tune in your key of choice

Now let’s get to how to tune a lever harp in the keys of C and E flat.

Let’s start with some basic tuning rules that are true regardless of which key you’re using:

First, make sure that all your levers are disengaged and not touching their string. For most harps that means they’ll be in the lowered position.

Secondly, you need to know whether you’re tuning a note to natural or flat.

When you tune, natural notes will show up on the tuner with no symbol beside them.

Flat notes will show up with the flat symbol (the squashed lower case b) beside them.

Whichever key you choose, make sure each note shows up with the correct symbol or lack of symbol for that string!

The tuner can a show a string being in tune to a pitch that doesn’t belong in the key.

So if you play an E flat, and you tune it so it shows up green and the line is in the middle, it’s a beautiful, in tune E flat, but if you were trying to tune in C which needs an E natural, then when you go play, it’s not going to sound right.

If your harp sounds funky after you tune it, a flat symbol where there shouldn’t be one might be why.

So! If you are tuning in the key of C, just tune each string so its letter shows up with no symbol.

This means they’re all natural.

If you’re tuning in E flat, tune all your E, A, and B strings flat so the flat symbol shows up on the tuner.

If they’re showing up with no symbol, keep tuning down and loosening the string until the tuner shows the symbol.

Now those strings will play E flat, A flat, and B flat when the lever is down. If you put the lever up, they’ll go back to E natural, A natural, and B natural.

You’ll tune the rest of the strings as naturals with no symbol like you would in the key of C.

Something to make note of is that this also means that if you’re playing a song in the key of C, so there are no sharps or flats in the key signature at the beginning of the line, you need to make sure the levers on your E A and B strings are raised back up to natural, or things are going to sound weird.

If you have a piece where you need an E flat, A flat, and/or B flat, put the levers on those strings in the lowered position.

Now lastly, for the pedal harpists wondering about C flat, here’s what you do.

Put your pedals in the top slot, and then when you tune you’ll want to make sure every string shows up with the flat symbol, with a couple exceptions:

The C strings which will show up as B natural, and the F strings will show up as E natural.

Don’t be like me when I got my first pedal harp and forget and break a string because you thought the string still needed to be higher to be a natural instead of a flat.

I know this was a long postbut I hope it was helpful if you’ve been wondering about this topic!

If you want to try playing in different keys, you can check out my Fundamental Exercises for the Harp e-books with scales, chords, and arpeggios in a variety of keys ranging from beginner to advanced.

Cheers,

Samantha