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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Why harmonica reeds go out of tune
Why harmonica reeds go out of tune
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
1070 posts
May 30, 2012
9:31 PM
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Inspired by and carried from the Reeds by the numbers thread:
Why reeds go out of tune
And BBQ Bob, I couldn't find your Web site, lemme know where you want me to link to. I linked to your Facebook page.
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David
Elk River Harmonicas
Elk River Harmonicas on Facebook
"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard
"Also, drinking homemade beer." - David Payne
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Todd Parrott
937 posts
May 30, 2012
9:47 PM
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Very cool. Every harp player should read this.
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STME58
192 posts
May 30, 2012
10:06 PM
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Nice Article David,
I have been thinking a bit about age or precipitation hardening with respect to reed life. Those cracks you mention tend to happen along grain boundries.The grains form when some of the alloying elements or impuritys come out of solution as the metal cools and hardens. This can continue at room temperature for months or years with the grain structure changing in a way that makes the metal harder. It occured to me that if a reed has a long rest time between playing, it just might recover some of its strength lost to fatigue damage, if a crack has not yet started to propogate. I will do a literature search on this but I was wondering if anyone has noticed that harps last longer (in hours played, not years sitting on the shelf) if you rotate them and let them sit a few weeks in between periods of playing?
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
1071 posts
May 30, 2012
10:34 PM
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Maybe. My harps are usually in rotation, with the exception of my C B-radical, which I've carried in my pocket every day for two years. I literally cannot remember the last time I replaced a reed on one of my own harmonicas. It may have been three or four years ago. My oddball key harps last forever. I bought my F# back in 2002.
Having said that, I probably jinxed myself and they'll all go out tomorrow.
And a WONDERFUL illustration Steve.
And if BBQ Bob is reading, I meant only respect when I called you a prophet. No other word in the English language, I deemed, could represent your relationship to playing softly... ;)
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David
Elk River Harmonicas
Elk River Harmonicas on Facebook
"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard
"Also, drinking homemade beer." - David Payne
Last Edited by on May 30, 2012 10:38 PM
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GMaj7
37 posts
May 31, 2012
7:56 AM
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What a great post & article.
I remember my old trumpet teacher used to make me play long sustained notes in crescendo to train my ear, muscle memory, develop tone & control.. etc.. A few minutes with a chromatic tuner and you could save more money on harps than you could make in months of gigs...
Thx Dave.. Still trying to catch you being wrong on something.. !! One day you'll slip (Smile)
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Greg Jones
16:23 Custom Harmonicas
greg@1623customharmonicas.com
1623customharmonicas.com
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barbequebob
1915 posts
May 31, 2012
10:31 AM
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Dave, the site is down for the time being and I'll let you know when it gets back up again. I wouldn't call myself a prophet at all about this and I came to learn this the hard way, which often times, for a lot of players, that may the only way they learn, and more than a few, unfortunately, are going to be far too hard headed to ever learn.
I can tell you that when I started out, I was blowing them out quite frequently, many lasting not more than 2 months, and like the average player, I would NEVER admit to playing too hard, ever even thinking I was playing too hard, and the whole 9 yards that goes with it, until I hung with Big Walter Horton, and he used to say it was all in the wind, but I never quite knew what he really meant by that, as I thought it meant be like a freaking hurricane on acid, until one day, a friend of mine from NYC had come up to see him at the now long defunct Speakeasy in Cambridge, MA, asked him after his night was through, how he played the intro on his cover of LW's Can't Hold On Much Longer that he recorded on his Alligator LP.
Now this story I've posted more than a few times here, but I think it bears repeating because it was a moment that TOTALLY changed what I did one hundred fold and a lesson I never forgot.
BW had all of his harps packed up for the night, and he was normally kind of shy and if he didn't know you, he'd never tell you anything, but since he knew me, he figured my friend was an OK guy, and so I handed him my harp, which was a key of A Marine Band, which were the harps he always used (and there was NO SUCH THING as custom diatonic harps back then), and whereas most players played full bore force, he barely put much air into the harp and ther it was, minus the light distortion from the recording, in all of its glory (and most of the time, he'd NEVER show anyone the exact thing he'd be doing), and oncer I got home, I praticed that immediately, and so too I was able to reproduce it, and from there, I went back to EVERYTHING I had in the house and that was the big secret, and you could name every harp player in the world, using MUCH less breath force, I was able to reproduce much of what I'd heard, so this opened doors, and harps began to last a helluva lot longer. A real lesson from a real master.
Gmaj7, your post reminds me of the things I went thru with a vocal coach and everything you post there applies to harp in more ways than one.
Players who are teaching themselves how to play tend to have the most problems with breath control.
One thing to add in terms of not playing and thinking that metal may "heal" itself, I have serious reservations about that because when breath moisture and layers of dead skin builds up on reeds, they add weight to the reed and if this dries on the reed, it greatly contributes to the problem, and if it dries in the cracks, it only makes things worse.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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nacoran
5763 posts
May 31, 2012
2:41 PM
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I suspect thin and thick reeds fatigue differently, and perhaps counter intuitively, because of the effect you are describing on the yard stick. On a thinner reed the tension on the expanding edge might be less, and the compression on inner edge less severe. If you think of a very thick object, it can't bend as well, and when it does, it snaps.
Also, a couple metals, titanium and steel are the only ones I know about, will not fatigue if you keep them withing a certain number of degrees from straight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit
I'm not sure how exactly you calculate degrees on an object that is bending along it's whole length, but theoretically steel or titanium reeds, played softly enough, could avoid fatigue indefinitely.
Titanium is also used in some memory metals, which have some properties that would be pretty useful in a harmonica, and there is a relatively new class of materials called liquid metals. Right now they are used in golf clubs. They don't have the crystalline structure of other metals which allows them to store and return more energy (like a rubber ball). They might make an interesting choice for reeds. There are ceramic metals too, including a transparent aluminum alloy that is being used in the next generation of bullet resistant glass. It's called Alon. I priced it for a comb, but a piece the appropriate size was about $200 at the time. :) I'd imagine it would be rather brittle compared to other materials, but if it's not, how cool would it be to have transparent reeds on an all transparent harp?
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Nate
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
1077 posts
May 31, 2012
7:08 PM
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In my gig case, there is a harmonica from Magnus made in the 1950s that has plastic reeds. I'm wonder if I'll ever blow it out. I can get awesome tone with it, but it's really stiff to play.
nacoran, one of my hobbies before I got into the harmonica business - back when I had time - was primitive archery. I used to cut trees, split them into staves and then make longbows out of them. Used to shoot a little competition, too. Won 2nd place in the W.Va. championship back in the 1990s. Any little imperfection on a longbow and it'll explode in your hands when you draw it back. Thus, I developed a pretty strong understanding of tension and compression stress on a spring.
I can tell you that thick and thin wood bows behave and fatigue differently. The Native American flatbow, which is wide, but thin, is about the most stable bow you can make. It doesn't have the tendency to break from a defect like a thick medieval English longbow... but a Native American flatbow doesn't have enough ass behind it to send an arrow through a half inch of french chain-mail armor, either.
It's the same idea with reeds.
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David
Elk River Harmonicas
Elk River Harmonicas on Facebook
"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard
"Also, drinking homemade beer." - David Payne
Last Edited by on May 31, 2012 7:14 PM
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nacoran
5767 posts
May 31, 2012
7:27 PM
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I've got some Magnus harps. I really should get them cleaned up. :)
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Nate
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
1087 posts
Jun 01, 2012
12:24 AM
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I wonder if anybody's had reed failure in one of those?
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David
Elk River Harmonicas
Elk River Harmonicas on Facebook
"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard
"Also, drinking homemade beer." - David Payne
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nacoran
5769 posts
Jun 01, 2012
9:21 AM
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Here's a question- like I was saying above pondering about how you calculate the number of degrees something is flexing at a point vs. degrees flexing along it's length- I know there is some science to thinning and thickening the reeds along the length during production. Does that have to do with trying to make the reed flex more fully along it's whole length rather than just in one spot? Same with reed arcing?
I always assumed that had to do with pursuing the overblow, but I imagine it could have a huge effect on reed life too. What does making your reeds perfectly straight do to reed life?
I wonder, with 3D printing becoming more affordable if someone will try printing reeds. Maybe a thin layer of X's printed on the surface of a normal reed would help reinforce the reed, sort of like how plywood is different layers of wood stacked in different layers at different angles.
A more radical solution might be to stop the reed from flexing all together. Design a screw on reed with one of those two sided screws that screw together from either side, only put a VERY small spring on the shaft between the screws. Let the spring do the bending. I think springs, because of their shape, tend to self-regulate their degrees of compression, which means it would be easier to keep steel or titanium under the magical fatigue free threshold. Sort of a get back to the watchmaker roots approach.
Of course, I think I've just come up with an idea that would be more expensive to produce than a high end piano, and there is no guarantee it would even work. I like crazy ideas though. :)
I think we need some time on a super computer to run some models!
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Nate
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
1089 posts
Jun 01, 2012
11:57 AM
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Let me know how that experiment works out, Nate ;)
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David
Elk River Harmonicas
Elk River Harmonicas on Facebook
"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard
"Also, drinking homemade beer." - David Payne
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