[Harp-L] Spiral (Circular Tuned) Harps

["eskeene@xxxxxxxx" <eskeene@xxxxxxxx>]

I am glad to see people advocating and building the Circular or Spiral tuned harps! I'm a former fiddle player, and I play Irish music on the chromatic, and although I began playing blues on a Marine Band in the '60's, I found the Richter Scale so frustrating for American fiddle tunes and Bluegrass that I more or less abandoned it. Then came the "Zirk" (the German abbreviation for Circular, stamped on the side of each harp) , and my life has changed (this is starting to sound like an infomercial). The key naming is pretty confusing, but I think of it in terms of modes (without bends); the key is named for the "five" (or dominant) of your straight diatonic major scale  and gives you a Mixolydian scale (with a flatted seventh) which (when you bend the 3rd degree) gives you the standard blues scale. If you figure backwards from the dominant, you get a diatonic (or Ionian) scale with all the notes, and a good draw bend on the important scale tones (including "Do"), and if you move up one note, you get a good Lydian mode (which is actually used quite a bit in Appalachian fiddle music) and the ability to play some good figures over the II chord that shows up in so many tunes. Probably haven't contributed much to clarity, but that's how I think of it. Zirks Rule! -emily
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