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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Manji Natural Minor Harps
Manji Natural Minor Harps
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Gnarly
1582 posts
Jan 01, 2016
9:00 AM
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First, the good news . . . the Manji is now available in a Natural Minor tuning. Ron has them--
Now the bad news. The Japanese have manufactured these with a tuning configuration that differs from the standard on draw holes 6 and 10. Put one way, it's tuned to 1st position.
I retuned a handful for customers, and Ron's stock are also retuned. It's not hard, just have to raise draw 6 and 10 a half step.
Brandon Bailey was demoing them at NAMM and the anomaly never came up, so it can't be that big a deal--but if you don't retune them, there's no draw bend on hole 6. I would think that would be a big deal, it's the other "danger bend", hole 4 being the most common. I refer to it as such since it is such an easy way to demonstrate your "badness" LOL.
Put another way, the half step between draw 6 and 7 isn't there unless you retune it! And I do, AFAIK you can request this work to be done either after you purchase it from a US vendor (Ron being one), or by requesting that the vendor take care of it (Ron being the only one at this point).
Did I mention Rockin' Ron yet?
Happy New Year, try something different this year!
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Piro39
83 posts
Jan 01, 2016
9:44 AM
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I brought this matter to Rock'n Ron attention about 6 months ago. The layout in the 6,7 & 10 hole draw was different than Lee Oscar's Natural minor tuning and Lee understood to label this tuning in 2nd position. To match Lee Oscar tuning one must tune the Manji Natural Minor 6 & 10 draw hole up a half step and the 7 hole draw down one half a step. Gnarly didn't mention the 7 hole draw. I find Natural Minor tuned harps are very useful for expanding one's musical palette for example on a tune in B flat major play a G minor (labeled in 2nd position) harp. G is the relative minor of B flat. All the notes and modes are there. Also playing in first position give you all the notes of the blues scale. D natural minor harp labeled in 2nd postion give you the G blues scale in first position which is a fourth away from the way it is labeled on a Lee Oscar. I hope Suzuki changes this and off course one can easily make their own natural minor tuning from what ever model they choose, it's not very difficult if you know how to tune reeds.
Last Edited by Piro39 on Jan 01, 2016 9:46 AM
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Gnarly
1583 posts
Jan 01, 2016
1:11 PM
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I have not been tuning 7 draw down, and am not aware of a discrepancy on that hole.
Let's use a C harp for our example. To make it minor, we tune the 3rds flat--so instead of C E G, the blows are C Eb G.
Draw goes D G B D F A B D F A. You tune the thirds flat, so it becomes D G Bb D F A Bb D F A.
On the Cm Manji, they further flat the A notes, so it's D G Bb D F Ab Bb D F Ab.
What am I missing?
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Piro39
85 posts
Jan 01, 2016
5:07 PM
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Gnarly I looked at the manji nat minor tuning diagram for the key of C and the 7 draw is labeled B. It should say B flat. This was a typo on Suzuki's part because all the other keys are correctly labeled on the 7 draw. These little typos can create great confusion.
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Gnarly
1584 posts
Jan 01, 2016
11:00 PM
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Oh yeah, those charts are terrible, completely inaccurate.
I wish I spoke Japanese . . .
My information would be useful to them!
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