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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Playing Harp At 10,830 Feet MSL
Playing Harp At 10,830 Feet MSL
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TheATL
12 posts
Mar 23, 2012
10:04 PM
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Hi All,
Today I had an interesting experience. I am out skiing in Utah, and of course I had my harp with me. So while I was sitting on the lift, I pulled out the harp and began to practice. Wow did it behave differently than it did in Atlanta (1200 ft MSL). First, the harp blows *much* more easily than in Atlanta. In fact, it takes almost no air at all (which is a good thing, because if it took a lot of air I would have passed out). Second, the reeds seem to keep vibrating a *lot* longer than in Atlanta. Third, the tone seems much bigger above ten thousand feet.
I am going to try to embed an audio file I made while I was at the top of the Snowbird Ski Area Little Cloud Lift at 10,830 feet. I will apologize in advance for a) being out of breath - it was way up there, b) the wind noise (hey - it was on top of a mountain), c) not being a very good harp player (I am working on that one - I have only been playing for two months), and d) perhaps not being able to make this audio link work on the first try - we will see what happens.
I wonder if anyone else has experienced this, or whether I am just making this up.
The harp is a Hohner Special 20 in 'G'. The tune is just a practice diddy I built up based on an exercise that Harvey Burman (Harvey Harps) taught me while I was visiting NOLA (thanks Harvey!!).
While I am at it, thanks Adam!
Let's see if the audio link works...
I thought I would try a link to a Google Map too - what the hell. If the technology crashes and burns, I will make another post with a straight link to the audio file.
View Harmonica in a larger map
Brad
Last Edited by on Mar 23, 2012 10:05 PM
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nacoran
5443 posts
Mar 24, 2012
9:29 AM
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Cool!
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Nate
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STME58
103 posts
Mar 24, 2012
2:00 PM
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This seems consistant with what little I know of the physics of altitude. Not only will the harp reeds respond differntly in thin air but so will your ear drums. The entire effect you experienced may not come across on the recording. The wide open space may have made a difference as well as the altitude.
As an example of the differnce altitude makes, the speed of sound is about 760 MPH at sea level and drops to 735MPH at 10,000 feet.
Thanks for sharing your observation.
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electricwitness
26 posts
Mar 24, 2012
11:01 PM
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I live in Utah and saw Bill Magee at a local music fest in Cedar City, Utah. Bill's poor harmonica player barely got through 1 or 2 songs the whole set. He just couldn't catch his breath! I was bummed. Bill still put on a great show.
Anyway thanks for the observations.
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electricwitness.com
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