A Harp Played with a Heavy Distortion Pedal

You’ve had the thought exper­i­ment in your head. What would hap­pen if you run a harp through a heavy dis­tor­tion ped­al? Now you can see how it all plays out. Emi­ly Hop­kins has been play­ing the harp for over 20 years and has recent­ly tak­en to exper­i­ment­ing with harp dis­tor­tion. Above, you can watch her exper­i­ment with the Nepenthes by Elec­tro­foods, the heav­i­est dis­tor­tion ped­al she could find. Oth­er ped­al dis­tor­tion exper­i­ments can be found here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Brief His­to­ry of Gui­tar Dis­tor­tion: From Ear­ly Exper­i­ments to Hap­py Acci­dents to Clas­sic Effects Ped­als

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

Visu­al­iz­ing Bach: Alexan­der Chen’s Impos­si­ble Harp

Pink Floyd Songs Played Splen­did­ly on a Harp Gui­tar: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here” & More