Tonight Jane and I went to an event organised by CARE, which included music led by Graham Kendrick. He was supported by a lady called Natasha on 5 string electric violin and a chap called Jason, who mainly played a harp guitar.
A harp guitar is like a regular guitar except it adds extra strings that, like a harp, don’t run over a fretboard. Jason’s instruments had 6 bass strings, 6 regular strings and, since it is a 23 stringed instrument, that must have been 11 high strings. I spoke to him in the interval and it turns out the bass strings are tuned a tone apart and have levers to adjust the pitch by a semitone, so you can have a selection of six notes out of an octave, and the regular guitar portion was in DADGAD tuning. I didn’t pick up the tuning of the high strings other than it related to A and that came into play for the final song.
It also turned out that, as I suspected when I watched him play, I’ve seen him before. Quarter of a century ago, Jason Carter led a little fusion group called Ragatal, who put out one album featuring Steve Lawson on bass. Jane and I went to a concert they put on in North London and we also picked up a copy of the album, which we still enjoy. It was a pleasure to hear him again and on such a fantastic instrument.
