What do you think of when you think of harp music? Probably little angels playing them while sitting on white fluffy clouds. Or maybe musicians in powdered wigs, in the old-timey court of some royal. Maybe even Bugs Bunny. But you probably don’t think immediately think heavy metal. But that might all be about to change. Thanks to the folks at Boing Boing, we’ve discovered the musical styling of harpist Emily Hopkins. And she just went hardcore with her harp playing. In fact, she’s playing a heavy metal harp.
In her latest video, Hopkins takes her harp playing to a new level. She takes the heaviest distortion pedal that’s out there on the market and then puts it on her harp. And it sounds pretty badass, we must say. Although, rather weird too, but in an awesome way? You can check out the results of her musical experiment right here:
To accomplish this, Hopkins got herself an Electrofoods Nepenthes. The Nepenthes is named for “a genus of otherworldly carnivorous pitcher plants – known to feast on animals as large as rats.” How metal is that? In the notes for her video, she said, “finding a good overdrive or fuzz pedal to use with the harp is difficult because the harp is so resonant. And every harp is different.” Instead of heavenly, this harp music sounds like something that would greet Pinhead upon his reaching the gates of Hell. So naturally, we’re big fans.
Emily Hopkins
Emily Hopkins has a ton of other cool harp videos on her channel. Classic gamers especially will take delight in many of these, as she has harp covers of music from a ton of old-school video games. There’s Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario Galaxy, Final Fantasy, and a whole lot more. To hear these and others, be sure to head on over to the Emily Hopkins YouTube channel.
