Celtic Harp Tunings
and the Circle of Fifths

There are several possible Celtic harp tunings, depending on whether or not your harp has sharping levers for every string ("full levers"). In any case, if you're a beginner, you probably have your harp tuned in C major, which means that when all the levers are down, you have a simple C scale running from red string to red string--just like the white keys on the piano. If you don't have any levers, then this is certainly your best choice. There is a lot of music for harp in the key of C, and you can easily transpose into that key if you find something in G or D that you want to play (these are the other most common keys for Celtic music, especially because fiddle players like these keys).

Some Celtic harps have "partial levers", meaning that there are levers on some strings and not on others. If you have levers on just the F and C strings, you can tune in C major and play in G (by putting up the F levers to create F-sharps) and D (with F-sharps and C-sharps). This will take you a long way.

Now, suppose your harp also has levers on the B strings. It would be a waste to tune those strings to B, because raising the levers to create B-sharps will do you no good unless you have all the sharps to play in the key of C-sharp major (see the Circle of Fifths, below). C-sharp major is a rare key, even in advanced piano repertoire, so why would you need it?

Instead, the logical thing to do is tune those B strings as B-flats, which means you can play in the key of F, a much more useful key on the harp.

If you have full levers (levers on every string), you can get the most out of your harp by tuning in E-flat. If you look at the Circle of Fifths, you'll notice that the key of E-flat has B-flat, E-flat and A-flat in it. If you raise one lever at a time, you can move from the key of E-flat, to B-flat, to F, to C, to G, to D, to A, and finally to E. You can see that these choices encompass 7 out of 12 possibilities of keys on the circle! If you started with your 7 keys at C, reading clockwise, you'd end up with none of the useful flat keys, and several extra sharp keys you'd never use.

These Celtic harp tunings are for those with a certain amount of experience under their belts. If you're just beginning to play the harp, by all means tune it in C for now. The world of multiple keys and colorful chords will certainly wait until you know your way around your harp.

P.S. If you live in the UK, you might consider tuning with D-flat, so your circle runs from A-flat major to A major. The principle is still the same.

Back to Music Theory