James Girton questions re: Overblows



James Girton asks:

* Did Levy say anything in his video about where the concept of overblowing
* came from?  Did he invent it?  It seems like such a bizarre concept and
* such an amazing coincidence that it just _happens_ to fill in the "extra
* notes" that are missing from the diatonic harmonica.  Maybe they were
* actually designed to do it...

Howard Levy claims, (and properly so), to be the first person to use the
overblow musically to play chromatically on any 10 hole harmonica.
He says that after playing the piano for a long time, he took up the
harmonica and somehow he just knew the notes were in there.  (It sounds like
divine inspiration to me.) He began to do the "overblow" in 1969 and has
become a master mechanic of harmonicas to boot.

As far as whether the Richter tuned 10 hole harp was designed to do this.
I don't think Herr Richter was thinking of anything but cold hard CASH when
he put this tuning together.  He wanted an instrument for the masses.
Inexpensive.  One which would play the popular two chord music of the massses.
A nice C chord anywhere you blew and a nice G chord in the bottom draw holes.
(That's why he compromised the full scale in the lower register.)  As for why
he turned around the tuning on the upper register so that the draws are lower
than the blows.  He did that for economy.  It would have taken one more
hole to continue the scale the same way as the "solo tuned" 12 hole harps.

He probably didn't know that you could "bend" notes let alone "overblow" them.

The invention of the harmonica is a chronicled in the "Harp Handbook".  It
is fascinating that a boy's toy (Buschmann) inspired a musician and businessman
(Richter) to re-design it for function and economy.  Which inspired a
manufacturing genius (Hohner) to mass produce the instrument and export it
to America.  Where it touched the lives of the common man in post-civil war
America and was affordable by the newly freed slaves so they could add their
African music influence to the create moaning bends of "the blues".  And
that after more than 50 years, a kid from Chicago, (Levy), would find
the "other half of bending" by overblowing the low notes and overdrawing
the higher notes.  What a long strange trip it's been!!!

When I explain this history of the harmonica to my beginner classes, I use
the word "Serendipity".  The harmonica is much more than the inventor foresaw
because of the discoveries of an unlikely group of people driven by many
disconnected events.  An improbable success, smiling smugly at us from
behind the glass counters of nearly every music store in the world.

love to talk harps,


dick....

--

Dick Anderson  CCMO New Matls Engineering        Telnet                 229-3110
Hewlett Packard                                  Direct Dial      1-303-229-3110
3404 E Harmony Road                              HPDESK     dick_anderson@hp4000
Fort Collins Colorado 80525                      mail anderson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx




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