Would this be a good tuning to start out with? I've been playing for a short time and am still working on controlling bends. I realize this is a necessity for this tuning and hope to be there soon. There seems to be positive feedback from skilled players but reluctance to switch due to time spent learning the Richter tuning and not wanting to start over so to speak. From what I have read it seems like a shorter path. So my question is for you folks with experience since mine is limited.
Knowing what you know now would you suggest the Power Bender route?
I would suggest that you have other things to worry about than experiment with alternate tunings. You can learn how to deal with alternate tunings, but you have other basic skills that would probably be beneficial to learn.
Hmmm... Joe L makes it sound like "experimenting with alternate tunings" is a little suspect, and could even be bad for your health. Remember, Richter was an alternate tuning once...
Of course I have an angle here, but I'd say it is probably easier to get used to any harp tuning when you're a new player than when your brain pathways have been hard wired after a long time using Richter. It's a lot harder to unlearn established habits - hence the 'old dog new tricks' adage.
One thing in the PowerBender's favour is that it's simpler. There is no tricky change of breath direction at hole 7 to learn, and no blow bends or overdraws either - just sweet juicy draw bends all the way to hole 10. Here's Mike Stevens jamming on the Powerbender with David Lindley:
I insist that if you go for alt. tunings, you MUST try all the basic variants. Namely: - richter logic - spiral logic (circular, truechromatic - in fact, if you play one - you can play any spiral tuning...) - fixed interval logic (diminished, augmented) - solo logic (it sucks on the diatonic, but if you learn it - you'll have a huge advantage with the chromatic) - hybrid logic (powerbender is a mix of richter, circular, and fixed interval logic)
and when you try those, you'll have a very clear idea of what you need. Also: if you try powerbender, ask yourself, what octave you like the best: - if you like the 1st octave, you'll feel comfortable with richter logic - if you like the middle octave, you'll LOVE truechromatic (holes 5-8 are identical) - if you like the top octave, you should try diminished or augmented.
Brendan - I was merely suggesting that the OP might have some other basic thing to worry about first. Ultimately, I doubt I will change any minds on this.
Personally, I'd say go for it. There are harmonica traditions elsewhere in the world (I'm thinking mainly China and SEA) where solo layout is THE layout, and is what everyone uses. I suppose it's because solo layout works well for the type of music that most people in those areas want to play, and so it's what's most common. Here in the USA (and I think western Europe too), the richter is "king", because Blues is what influences most harp playing.
However, from what I know of the Powerbender layout (I have yet to try it), it seems like a really logical and great layout for playing a mix of musical styles. From Blues through rock, bebop, jazz, reggae, etc. If you listen to Brendan's music, you can see why he invented and chooses to use this layout. So if that's the kind of musician you want to be, I'd say just start down that road right now. Learning to bend will not be any different if you learn it on a powerbender versus a richter, so that's a non-issue. The main issue will be that you won't have to "unlearn" richter movements later on if you decide to switch.
A compromise might be to keep using richter harps, but just stick to the low holes (which I believe are kept the same layout in the Powerbender).Practice your bending and intonation, etc. Then, when you feel comfortable down there, and you start thinking about moving up to the top of the harp, then you buy a powerbender and get on with it.
That's the way I wish I had done it myself... ---------- == I S A A C ==
I prefer to think of it as forward thinking but yes cart before the horse if you like. I really enjoy playing and don't see myself stopping anytime soon. I am a practical guy and as I mentioned above what I have read basically says the PB tuning is easier which got me reading more. I have received great advice on here in the past so I thought I'd ask for more and see if that was a good avenue to take.
Jim, PB tuning is the first alternate one I've read about but I will do some reading on those thanks. To me it's all new and interesting. Hope I don't sound too much like TNFrank here...
Hey Jim, what is it you don't like about the solo tuning for diatonic?
I was looking at the solist pro solo tuned as a new harp and tuning to try. I figured as long as I'm comfortable overblowing, I shouldn't have any trouble with it, especially since, on a richter tuned harp, I spend most of my time in the middle octave.
Hey MEK, since posting my reply earlier this morning, I've made myself a Powerbender out of an old D harp I had laying around,and I must say that after playing on it for about an hour, I LOVE it. I'm still wrapping my richter-trained brain around the middle octave, but i'm able to get sounds out of this harp that I never thought I could get with my meager skill-set. I'd now double heartily endorse this harp, for beginners and advanced players alike. You should definitely go for it!
As an aside, I used the Blu-Tak retuning method for most of the retuning, except for draw 9 and 10. This works because all the reeds that need retuning are to be lowered except the draw 9 and 10 which are raised. It took me about 40 minutes to retune my harp. I have experience retuning, but I'm no pro. I actually first learned of the Blue-tak method from a Harp-l post Brandon himself had made some time back. He confirmed for me that the method lasts long when he was in Phoenix last year and taught a workshop with Chris (RIP) that I attended. I've only recently tried it myself, and have only done one other harp with Blu-Tak (I made Bb richter into a natural minor), and I love this method. There's a small learning hurdle, mainly associated with judging how much of the stuff to use (only a SMALL amount), and then getting your dexterity in line to place the blobs on the reeds, but you figure this out pretty fast. The major appeal is that it is instantly reversible, so it lets you try out any new tuning you want immediately. I imagine you could also use it modify intonation to go from, for example, an equal temperament to a just temperament to see if you like that better. ---------- == I S A A C ==
If my daughters were to ask me for a harmonica, without a doubt, I would buy them a powerbender. My daughters are grade-school age and have taken to music class (piano plus dabbling with a few other instruments, but nothing serious)
Yes, there are many "alternate" tunings but to say you need to try them all is rubbish. For every job there is a tool and for every tool there is a job. The off-the-shelf Richter tuning is clearly not the best jack-of-all-trades tuning out there. Powerbender probably is.
I think either of my daughters would find it easier to express themselves through the harmonica if they started off with a Powerbender from day one. I wonder if they would find it easier to pick up a Richter-tuned harp after having started with a Powerbender? I think they would find RT limiting.
That may not be the best choice for everyone; you can't buy one at any music store around here, nor can you find very many Powerbender-specific youtube videos out there. But in my kids' case, that wouldn't matter.
Cart before the horse? Great analogy - we use automobiles nowadays... ----------
Last Edited by on Apr 16, 2011 6:01 PM
I started playing richter. Played it for almost 3 years. Then PB tuning showed up. After trying it, I decided that it is indeed much easier to play. I transitioned immediately because I didn't want to 'lose' any time anymore on the richter tuning.
Solo tuning has double notes, an inverted last note in each octave, and needs many, many overbends.
A harmonica costs 60-70 EUR max (seydel configurator for brass models) - so YES, you can try all major tuning types. If you don't try - you'll never know.
In contrast with harmonicas: a professional violin bow would be from 300EUR and more...
I think Powerbender is great tuning to start. Better, than Richter, IMO ---------- Excuse my bad English. Click on my photo or my username for my music.
There is something called a Janko keyboard. It was invented about a hundred years ago. It's a different layout for the piano that is supposed to be much easier and more intuitive to play. No one plays it, supposedly, because all the piano teachers know how to play a regular piano, not a Janko, and they have an investment in the old system.
That said, it's much easier to buy an alternative tuning for a harmonica than a piano. The big question for me would be can you get enough learning material to learn it. All tunings are basically a trade off between chords, soloing and space. Personally, I've only played Richter, Solo and Natural Minor (and a little messing around with a chromatic). I suppose if you think that's the way you want to go long term you might want to switch now, but if you envision yourself playing multiple tunings down the road I'd spend the time to get the rudiments down on the harp with more material around first. I'd suggest being at least at the point where you are really playing listening to what notes you want to play instead of thinking in terms of hole numbers before you start mixing tunings.
That said, there are better players than me in this thread who are suggesting otherwise. :)
The Janko keyboard makes way more sense as far as playing goes. The standard keyboard may be easier to understand the layout and it's a great tool for learning music theory, but the Janko keyboard has some real advantages imho. The standard keyboard is arbitrarily based around the C major scale, and because of the layout every single key and scale is played differently. A piano player must learn all to play 12 major and minor keys(not to mention all the diferent variations of minor scales), which means they must learn a different pattern for every single key/scale. Then they must become fluent at playing in all these different keys. Not too mention they need to learn to form all the different chords in every key.
The Janko keyboard, by comparison, has a pretty ingenious layout. Once you know how to play a major scale in any key, you instantly know how to how to play a major scale in all 12 keys, same thing with the minor keys (and all the different types of minor scales). The patterns are exactly the same in every single key, all you need to do is start on a different note. So if you know how to play some complicated song in C and you decide you want to transpose it to F# all you need to do is start on the F# (or whatever note the transposed version starts on) and play exactly the same thing. Kind of like we harmonica players do when we switch to a different key harp. And on top of that, all the chord shapes are the same for the different keys. So if you know how to play a major chord, you know how to play the major chord in all 12 keys. If you know how to play a dominant seventh chord, you know how to play it in all 12 keys. Same with all the other chords (minor, diminshed, augmented, etc.). So clearly this is a pretty huge advantage over the traditional keyboard layout, and makes learning a lot easier.
When first looking at the Janko keyboard it may seem really confusing in comparison to the standard keyboard, but if you really take a closer look at it and study it, it really is pretty ingenious and makes more sense in a lot of ways. Once you start learning to play it, it really is more intuitive and a lot easier to learn to play than a standard keyboard.
I know I got really offtrack, and this really has nothing to do with the topic of the thread, sorry about that.
Last Edited by on Apr 17, 2011 12:38 PM
@Nacoran: I get what you are trying to say, but I really do think the situation is different for harmonica than for your example of keyboard layouts. The main difference is that there already exists several alternative layouts for harmonica that have become more or less standard for many players. You already mentioned some (Natural Minor, and Solo, which is the same layout as a Chromatic), but to add to that list: Harmonic Minor, Paddy Richter, Melody Maker, Spiral, Diminished, Augmented, etc. These layouts are all used by harmonica players on a regular basis (to greater and lesser degrees). As far as I know, there's no instructional material available AT ALL for most of these.
Yes, most BASIC instruction material is for Richter (Blues, Country, Rock, other western music) or Solo (i.e., instruction for Chromatic harps, or East Asian music). That's a given. But there's two major advantages of the Powerbender tuning in regards to this. 1) Brendan has written an instructional book that, from all accounts, is fantastic. At least as good as the best Richter books. 2) The entire lower end of a PB harp is the SAME as Richter harp, so you can USE RICHTER BOOKS for a lot of the low end stuff. When moving into the middle octave, you just switch 5 draw for 6 blow, and 6 blow for 6 draw, and the licks in any position can be done similarly to richter. One major difference is the octave layout, so doing tongue splits is not at all the same (except for the 1-4 splits), but you can get them and others in the middle and upper octave with various two and three-hole splits. Also, you can now easily achieve some other really interesting sounding split intervals that don't exist on a richter harp, which you can use to imply other types of chord progressions than the I-IV-V. You can still achieve all the same blues trills (just note that -45 trill is now +56 trill) that you do on a Richter, and all the low end chordal vamping stuff is exactly the same.
Also, IMO, once you get past basic techniques like bending, chord rhythms, tongue techniques, articulation, tone, etc. (which are the same for any harp layout), the rest is just muscle memory that comes from practicing scales and stuff until you just "know" where the notes are. For that, it doesn't matter what the layout is, it only matters that you practiced making the scales on that layout. You can (and should) be working with scale charts that have scales in notes or scale degrees rather than JUST tabs. Of course tabs help, but I think it's better to make your own, or to mentally transpose scale degrees to your harp layout,
Couple all that with the fact that most of the pro-level folks seemed to have at least tried it out, and like it, and I don't think it's going away anytime soon. ---------- == I S A A C ==
I'd like to thank everyone for their input. I think I've officially read all I can find with Google on this tuning opinion wise. A common theme on the discussion boards is that it is a better tuning to work with. I'll order the book and an "A" tonight and see how it works out. And if it doesn't only my family will have to suffer listening to me. Besides this retuning thing looks interesting.
Hi all, thanks for the positive feedback on the PowerBender (and for your order, Mike :) It's great to hear players are enjoying it and think it has legs!
However Jim is right: there are lots of great tunings out there and all have their plusses and minuses. The Spiral family of tunings is very logical if you want to squeeze the 7 note major scale into the smallest number of holes possible. You have to accept the reversed breath factor but the brain can be trained for anything with time. It's good to see a bunch of players working with this family of tunings including Jim's own True Chromatic. Can you send us a new video of it Jim? - love to hear how it's being played now after a few years practice.
Solo is great too, really easy for playing melodies in the home and related modes. I use a modified version for Irish music (Paddy Richter bottom octave, Solo above - Paddy Solo :). But the efficiency of pure Solo for playing fast folk melodies was brought home to me when I wrote my book 'Play Irish Music on the Chromatic Harmonica', which is all Solo.
As Jim says, if you want to play blues/country/jazz on a normal diatonic Solo is not a great choice. However if you put it in the XB-40 it's transformed into a very sexy, bendable scale along with the logic of the repeated octaves. Hohner should produce a Solo XB-40 if they had any sense; it would open up a whole new market of repressed chromatic players getting their rocks off, at very little cost.
Richter is great too! Look at all the incredible harmonica music in a huge range of styles it has produced in the past 115 years or more! For a 19th century tuning designed to play German oom-pah style it has proved remarkably adaptable, and continues to be in the hands of the modern overblow players with their heavily hand-customized harps.
But there's the rub: to get Richter to do all those jazzy tricks you meed to master very demanding playing techniques on expensive hard-to-get handmade harps. That seems a pity, too elitist to me.
The harmonica started out as a cheap people's instrument that anyone could pick up and sound good on quickly. The PowerBender aims to restore that status for contempotary music by allowing players who can master simple draw bending to get all the main soulful chromatic notes that can only be achieved by overblowing and overdrawing on Richter. Overblowing for full chromaticism is still available on the PowerBender but not required for most playing: you can play a key modulating jazz tune like Sweet Georgia Brown easily with just draw bends. It's an easy comfortable tuning for wailing soulfully in 2nd Position throughout the whole 10 holes; that's what it does best, but plenty of other positions are easy too.
However for pure jazz key modulation using draw bends alone you can't beat Diminished and Augmented. It's great to see that they have their devotees too, and some have produced stunning music with these tunings (eg. France's Eric Chafer on Augmented).
The increasing interest in 'alternate tunings' (the word 'alternate' bugs me because it suggests there is something immutable or innately superior about Richter and Solo, which is not the case - they are just arbitrary choices that became entrenched through commercial expediency) adds to the wonderful richness and diversity of the contemporary harmonica scene.
Something to be celebrated surely, not viewed with suspicion as is sadly the case with many 'traditionalists'. Those old-school Blues diehards should reflect on the fact that bending notes and playing the German Richter Mundharmonica in Second Position was actually a shockingly subersive new approach at the time. Now the 'traditional' Blues Harp style has become ossified, cliche ridden to the core.
The Overblow on Richter school is in danger of becoming similarly orthodox and dogmatic. Alternate tunings are a great way to break away and create something personal and new. Don't be limited just to what's out there, PowerBender included - create your own! It's fun :)
I think I'll make a blog video about tunings and explain/demonstrate some spiral tunings in action.
By the way, I've switched to spiral tunings only 10 months ago...
Some more thoughts on tunings:
1) For me, the biggest feature of alt. tunings is SOUND. You can sound different and outside-the box, and spiral tunings give huge possibilities to experiment with the layout while keeping the logic familiar.
2) As a customiser, I can tell you that among overblows, the easiest to set up are 4OB and 6OB. The most tricky ones (besides 1OB) are 5OB and 7 OD. Now, what do they have in common? Absence of bends. When I began making alt. tunings, I noticed that 5OB is easy to set up on TrueChromatic (even though it's not necessary there - I set it up). Why? On TC, every hole has one draw bend. I don't know how to explain this... but all customisers I've asked have confirmed: 5 & 7 overbends are the most difficult to set up. And they always sound worse (they feel less responsive and "airy" - this is true for all Richter harps that I've seen.). Overdraws are pure hell to set up too (and they are hell to play - compared to overBLOWS.)
3) Food for thought: - most harp players find overblows difficult - stick to 2nd position - play using 1,5 octaves - have to get harmonicas in all keys - because they have at least 12 harps, only SOME of them are really set up well and feel "at home". - with richter you have to learn each technique twice (blow/draw bends, overBLOWS/DRAWS. And the techniques are different.) - all 12 positions are played in a VERY different way. - the only real advantage of Richter is: it's ubiquitous.
4) Don't forget that valves are your friends on the way to chromatic playing. Each tuning can be valved easily.
5) To support the growing community of switchers to alt tunings, I have made a separate subforum with info, tabs and stuff - dedicated to alt. tunings only
6) Right now I'm working on a paper called "Anthology of Harmonica Tunings" that will divide harmonica tunings into logic types, and describe each layout separately.
