Stevelegh
550 posts
Jul 14, 2012
11:42 AM
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Hey everyone.
For my birthday, I was given a PowerBender harp with accompanying instruction book. It is awesome. I recommend everyone try one. The upper end stuff is completely intuitive. Another plus to it is when you go back to Richter, you seem to understand holes 7-10 better as rather than playing scales (as I tend to do up there), you've played the riffs on PB and seem to find those new riffs much easier.
I'm happy!
Kind of.
I actually like overblows 1,4,5 and 6. I can set up most harps easily for these just with gapping.
My question is: Is there something in between that with give me Richter on holes 1 through 6 and PB in 7-10? I'd love that on my go to Richters.
On another note:
I have a set of 12 Lee Oskars. I'm going to ask Brendan if he'll do a bulk deal to turn them into Power Benders. In my opinion, Brendan has rendered Richter obsolete in the upper end of the diatonic harmonica.
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REM
208 posts
Jul 14, 2012
12:26 PM
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You could simply keep holes 1- 6 tuned to standard richter, and then tune holes 7- 10 to their powerbender equivalent. The 6 overblow would become unnecessary as you could get the same note by simply playing the half step draw bend on hole 7, but there's no reason you couldn't still use the 6 overblow if you still wanted to for some reason.
I've actually considered tuning a harp like this for awhile now, but I haven't gotten around to it, nor have I decided on which harp I'm okay sacrificing for this particular experiment.
Last Edited by on Jul 14, 2012 6:29 PM
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Noodles
111 posts
Jul 14, 2012
6:10 PM
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You could simply keep holes 1- 6 tuned to standard richter, and then tune holes 7- 10 to their powerbender equivalent.
Wouldn’t mixing the two wreak havoc on your octaves?
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REM
209 posts
Jul 14, 2012
6:27 PM
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Actually you still have quite a few octaves available, including all the most commonly used octaves on the richter tuning.
Here is what the tuning would look like in C:
C E G C E G A C E A
D G B D F A B D G C
I won't point them all out, but as you can see, there are quite a few possible octaves.
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Noodles
112 posts
Jul 14, 2012
6:43 PM
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Here's my counts for octaves. I may have missed one somewhere
Richter 12 octaves
PowerBender 7 octaves
Mixed (Yours) 9 octaves
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REM
210 posts
Jul 14, 2012
7:07 PM
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So, as you can see, the mix of the two tunings doesn't "wreak havoc" on the ability to play octaves. In fact the hybrid of the two tunings has more available octaves than the straight up powerbender tuning, as you showed.
EDIT: I just counted, and the powerbender tuning actually has 8 possible octaves.
Last Edited by on Jul 14, 2012 7:18 PM
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Noodles
113 posts
Jul 14, 2012
7:19 PM
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I wonder if Brendan P. has already tried something like this?
Last Edited by on Jul 15, 2012 7:28 AM
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Brendan Power
233 posts
Jul 15, 2012
2:01 AM
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Hi Noodles, indeed I have :-) I call it PowerDraw tuning, and I introduced it at SPAH 2010 (in the same seminar as the PowerBender). I gave some harps away there in PowerDraw to various people, including Joe Filisko.
I presented PowerDraw as an alternative to PowerBender at SPAH for exactly the reason Stevelegh puts forward: It's a way for Blues tongue-blockers to keep most of their familiar octave playing but get the sexy draw bends of the PowerBender in the upper octave. Joe Filisko showed it to one of his regular Chicago harp classes last year.
PowerDraw is an inversion of a tuning I used for a lot of years called PowerBlow (it's simply "Power Tuning" if you look it up on Pat Missin's site).
I have a page on my website for both these tunings, as well as options to order them from me if you want (there is a good deal for Harpmaster PowerDraw in A):
http://www.brendan-power.com/POWERBLOW%20and%20POWERDRAW.htm
You can read the detailed description of them I presented at SPAH 2010 here:
http://www.brendan-power.com/images/PowerDraw%20&%20PowerBlowPromo.pdf
Last Edited by on Jul 15, 2012 2:05 AM
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Stevelegh
552 posts
Jul 15, 2012
6:51 AM
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Awesome!
Brendan, I'll be in touch tomorrow about a Manji Powerdraw in C.
What's the turnaround time?
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Brendan Power
237 posts
Jul 15, 2012
12:04 PM
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@Stevelegh: I can post it by Thursday.
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Stevelegh
554 posts
Jul 15, 2012
2:15 PM
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I'll be in touch in the morning.
Might be a D harp.
Or a C and a D.
Depends on the bank balance and possibility of divorce. Ha!
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