Excuse my fantastic level of ignorance here, but why do the exams call for different keys of scale to be performed on the harp? My understanding from those I know why play lever harps is that in order to change key one simply flips the necessary levers over and plays pretty well identically over again, just on higher/lower strings. It's more a case of them figuring out whether to tune naturals that can be raised to sharps or flats that can be raised to naturals, but that's before the exam, not during. Can anyone explain? Thanks.

I suppose it demonstrates a knowledge of the various keys. Knowing which levers to flip is equivalent to knowing different fingering patterns on other instruments (sort of...)

all the scales test - on any instrument - is that you know what notes are in the scale (and how to play them on your instrument, of course). settings the levers correctly requires that you know which notes are in which scale, as there's no generic "major/minor lever pattern" that works for all scales.

I wish I could remember what my lever was tuned to - was it E flat? Anyway, it was the one that gave you the greatest variation of major/minors without having to retune the strings.

Presumably if there was a grading where one of the keys was not included in the (let's say for argument) E flat tuning range, then you'd have to retune it for the test? I don't know if you'd be called on to retune it during...?

Pedal is supposedly easy for scales - it's just a case of remembering where to put each of the seven levers (sharp, neutral or flat), and away you go! Straight up and down one string at a time. However, at grade 3 I'm really struggling to remember what pedal goes where, and it was even worse when I played lever!!!