My body decided it needed an extra challenge in learning the new way to play Prelude 1 and I now have a ganglion cyst in my right thumb joint. Yeehaw.

All signs point to my harp actually having less tension on it.  Whew.

From http://liutaiomottola.com/formulae/tension.htm
A few things should be apparent from the formula:
1. Everything else being the same, pitch increases as tension increases;
2. Everything else being the same, tension increases as scale length increases;
3. Everything else being the same, tension increases as unit weight increases, thus a heavier gage string will be under greater tension as a lighter one of the same length tuned to the same note;

This is not tension as in how it feels to play - that is referred to as compliance of the string, and that is the subjective "these strings feel tight and are more difficult to play" feeling the musician gets.

Worked on Prelude 1. Again. The good thing is I have it completely memorized with the old finger markings, and it seems to be translating well to my new finger patterns.  I have a feeling, though, that it will be like visiting a foreign country and speaking a different language.  The first couple days it will be fine due to severe concentration on wrapping your head around a different way of communicating. But then the third day will be completely bonkers - your mind can't figure out if you're speaking the new language or your native tongue - and you end up saying things like "s'il vous пожалуйста". 

We'll see how it goes.

Also, I got a tension chart from Bow Brand and their string lengths are almost FOUR INCHES longer than mine (up to 1" in the upper registers).  I'm thinking this will have a severe effect on the amount of ft/lbs pulling on my soundboard.  As well as on my fingers!

I had a revelation tonight that Prelude 1 can be played much more easily and less buzzy using 21 in the LH and 21 in the RH, instead of 2 in the LH and 421 in the RH like it's marked.  This is astonishing and depressing at the same time: astonishing - who the heck is this fingering for and why wasn't it just written 21? depressing - I will have to relearn the entire thing.  Yes, I could just keep playing it the same way, but my brain is already saying, "Yes! This is so much easier," and I can also already play it about a squinty billion times faster.

The stuff I recorded... whenever I recorded last, is not really usable. I think if I can relearn it, I can finally get it recorded.  How many months have I been working on this?