I read it, good stuff. One area of development would be to specify the usages of those tunings in musical sense - examples of songs where those are used or where they work well etc.
There was some of that for some tunings like Paddy Richter, but many of the tunings were just introduced pretty briefly and in technical terms. That's of course the "unbiased scientific" method but for players the music explains more.. Anyway I know it would be pretty hard for a single person to go to the depths of playing all those tunings and thus that development would need a joint effort..
I wrote in detail about those tunings that I've used myself or that I can be sure to describe properly based on theoretical knowledge.
Some tunings are virtually a modification of another tuning. For those I didn't go into detail.
I'd appreciate if someone helped to expand and improve this work.
One place where errors are highly possible are tuning layouts in Appendix 1. Please let me know if you encounter them. ---------- Free Harp Learning Center
Looks good, I use what you call Spiral Octave, that's the second octave of the Powerbender--I used to call it Magic Bop, that's what Magic Dick called it (Al Price turned me on to it). Your spiral octave variation is called Classical tuning, I use bebop tuning (lower the hole 4 blow to Bb on a chromatic). I will give more suggestions on that site, thanks for posting!
Very nice. Overblow.com has the most extensive list I've seen, but it's just layout charts and doesn't comment on them. I still wish one of the harp companies would make a cheap set of harps with a handful of the more interesting tunings just so people could hear them and mess around without breaking the bank.
I was thinking even cheaper. Nothing you'd want to play out with, but just enough so you could get an idea of if you wanted to buy a good one... diminished, Power, minor, Spanish, Paddy, maybe a tremolo, a set of 7 or 12 all in one key for easy comparison, for $30-$50 like Piedmonts or Johnsons or Blues Bands. It would probably be better for harps tunings that weren't expected to overblow. I suppose you could sell an upscale version, but I'm thinking about something just to get around the fact that you can't play harps before you buy them, just something to give you a sample.
It might be easier to do it as a software package. If you could take what Overblow.com has and mouse over the notes so you could hear it... maybe even give you a couple hot keys so you could switch through a couple different techniques- chords, octave splits, double stops... I've seen a very basic version for Richter tuning but nothing that you could really use to get an idea of what it would really play like.
Nacoran: How about programmable harp? I think I saw somewhere a specs of a harp that actually produced the sounds in digital format - there were some sensors that monitored the reeds and based on that transferred it in digital form which was then played by some speaker...
With that harp you could program whatever tunings to the holes and switch between them with one click of a mouse.. :)
All I can say is WOW! Now I am more confused than ever. I guess I didn't know how many different tunings that there were! Is your "True Chromatic" for diatonic tuning good for blues? It seems the valved diatonic tuning is better? Does anybody use your tunings that you know of to play professionally? I have downloaded your other PDF about the True Chromatic tuning but it mostly just talks about how to do the chromatic harps. Is some of wht you say in that manual valid for the diatonics too? Please help if you would be so kind. Thanks VT2
For example this song uses "B" truechromatic, half-valved:
TrueChromatic is the same on the chrom and the diatonic. With the diatonic, you have the same logic, only the slide notes become bends and overbends (or valved bends).
Yes, you can play blues on that, especially minor blues. You cannot play "Juke" with the authentic sound - with a new tuning, you lose one thing and get exciting new things in return. For example, you get many new intervals available - 3rds, 5ths, and 7ths.
TrueChromatic for the diatonic is 1 year-old as a tuning. I find it truly amazing that Alex has already mastered it.
