Re: diatonics and song keys

[hippo@xxxxxxxxxx (Hugh Messenger)]

At  9:39 9/15/94 -0500, Bill Long wrote:
>WARNING: ANOTHER POST ABOUT HARMONICA KEYS FOLLOWS

The World Needs It!


Anyway, all I wanted to say was ... this reminded me of when I saw Charly
Musslewhite about five years ago, at the 100 Club in London.  I got there
real early and was there while he warmed up.  We got to talking about keys,
positions and the like.  I was at that stage where I was trying to work out
fourth and fifth positions ... I asked him "how many keys can you play on
one harp".  So he gets the band to play a basic 1-4-5 shuffle and starts a
nice little blues riff.  Then he started cycling through his harps, one by
one, playing exactly the same riff in the same key.  He went through eight
harps before tripping up.

Now ... what was the point of all this?  Oh yes, that's right ... there
wasn't one.  Just an example of how a good player uses a diatonic as an
almost fully chromatic instrument.

   -- hugh