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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Why are blow notes higher for only holes 7-10?
Why are blow notes higher for only holes 7-10?
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tolga7t
300 posts
Feb 06, 2022
6:26 PM
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Blow-draw pattern reverses after the 6th hole. What is the reason for that?
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SuperBee
7048 posts
Feb 06, 2022
7:51 PM
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it maintains the integrity of the blow chord and the order of the draw notes without having to place adjacent repeated note like on the solo-tuned harps eg moder chromatic for instance. i guess working with only 10 holes its a reasonable approach. on the 12 and 14 hole "standard" tuned harps it gets pretty wild after hole 10. it goes blow 9, draw 10, draw 11, blow 10 etc
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Gnarly
3017 posts
Feb 06, 2022
9:57 PM
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No Breath Reversal
Last Edited by Gnarly on Feb 06, 2022 10:00 PM
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WinslowYerxa
1744 posts
Feb 09, 2022
9:48 AM
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There are 7 notes in the major scale:
C D E G F A B
That's an uneven number.
Blow-draw pairs are even numbers.
So there's a mismatch.
If the harmonica were tuned so that the note always went up from blow to draw, and no notes were added or duplicated, you get this:
BLOW NOTES: C E G | B D F A | C E G
DRAW NOTES: D F A | C E G B | D F A
This is known as spiral tuning. In the second octave (after the | ), the blow notes and the draw notes flip: C E G are first blow notes, then draw notes in the next octave. Then they become blow notes again in the third octave. And the opposite is true for the notes that are draw in the first octave.
Now, whoever came up with standard tuning (and it wasn't Richter, that's a fairy tale; the nucleus of it was already on concertinas in the 1830s) reasoned that the blow notes should be all the same chord, the home chord of the key:
BLOW NOTES: C E G | C E G C | E G C
What to do about the other notes?
Well, in the middle octave (Holes 4-7) everything that wasn't C, E, or G became a draw note:
DRAW NOTES: X X X | D F A B | X X X
Right away, you see what's happening. We have three blow notes (C E G) and *four* draw notes (D F A B). They're going to get out of alignment. In Hole 4, the blow-to-draw move goes up from C to D. In Hole 7 it goes down to B. and in Hole 10, it goes down even more, to A. On 14-hole diatonics, it went down from C to F!
Before the 1880s, The lower and upper octave were tuned various ways (including the Richter brand harmonicas, which don't follow what is often called "Richter tuning" except in the middle octave). But they all have the same problem of having the blow-draw relationship flip at Hole 7.
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Last Edited by WinslowYerxa on Feb 14, 2022 2:49 AM
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nacoran
10394 posts
Feb 12, 2022
11:10 AM
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Winslow, do you know of any hexatonic or octatonic tunings? I know there is a 6 note blues scale... either one would give you an even number of notes for blow/draw.
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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
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SuperBee
7052 posts
Feb 12, 2022
12:30 PM
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There’s any Number of alternate tunings. There’s one I have in seydel solist 12, sometimes called Easy 3rd. I was thinking this was making use of a 6 tone scale but turns out it’s not quite.
The first 2 octaves on a Easy3rd C harp (intended to play in D) use C D E F G A in holes 1-3, and again in 4-6. I don’t know why it doesn’t keep on this way , but it doesn’t. Holes 7-10 appear to use the standard layout of blow/draw C B E D G F C A
I don’t understand why someone decided to include the B in a scheme ostensibly intended to be played in minor tunes but I haven’t given it a lot of thought either. I haven’t played this harp a lot. It’s a 12 hole, low tuned alt tuned harp and just not really up my street. It was in my box of seydel factory failures and didn’t have too much wrong with it so I restored it. I think there’sa YouTube video of Paul Lamb playing one the same though. The song is called SummerTyne, sort of a fantasy based on the Gershwin summertime. Quite something
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WinslowYerxa
1746 posts
Feb 13, 2022
8:22 AM
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@Nacoran
Of course, PentaHarp tuning is hexatonic. The six-note blues scale, such as
A C | D Eb | E G || A C | D Eb | E G || A C | D Eb | E G || A C
Gives consistent blow-draw pairs that repeat the scale every four holes, so you get three octaves of consistent scale layout over slightly more than three octaves.
The one that places two augmented triads a minor third apart is another hexatonic layout, and gives you a complete chromatic scale with only draw bends:
C Eb | E G | G# B || etc.
I like chords, and find tunings based on augmented triads kind of boring for that reason.
I'm sure there are others. You might check out Pat Missin's "Altered States" compendium of altered tunings, which you can download here"
https://www.patmissin.com/tunings/tunings.html
You might also find some in the Magic Harps patent filed by Magic Dick (Richard Salwitz) and Pierre Beauregard in 1993.
----------
Harmonica lessons with one of the world's foremost experts
Check out my blog and other goodies at winslowyerxa.com
Harmonica For Dummies, Second Edition with tons of new stuff
Last Edited by WinslowYerxa on Feb 14, 2022 2:48 AM
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Gnarly
3018 posts
Feb 13, 2022
4:03 PM
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Don’t forget overblow.com
https://overblow.com/?menuid=26
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