swing jammin' on chromatic

["Brian Sentance" <Brian.Sentance@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All:

We'll I'm challenging myself again and signed up for another try at the 'slow pitch swing jam'
class offered by our local 'movable music school'. (Classes in guitar, voice, ukulele etc., people
sign up and they pick someone to host for 8 weeks with a big jam/pot luck at the end)

I did it once before but only had diatonics and an 'A' Hering Charlie Musslewhite chrom which seemed
overwhelmingly confusing in this key so I often ended playing first or second position on the short harps.

The difference this time is I bought an electric key board for my daughter and a Brendan Power CX-12 in 'C'
(Suzuki plates, blues tuned) for me.

The class consists of about 8 guitar players (it's turning into an Guild guitar love fest, these people
are as nutty as harp players!) and me on harp. The standard warmup is a chording, swing rhythm walk up
from Cm7 to Bm7-flat5 where all the chords are in minor-seventh, major-seventh, seventh or minor seventh 
flat five. My task was to do arpeggios over the chords. Slight freak-out!

Until I got home and at the keyboard and started to map out the situation. I stole some staff paper from
my other violin playing daughter and after setting out all the key signatures I was getting a bit concerned
with the growing number of sharps. But this keyboard has a chord dictionary option so you can select say 'E' 
and 'm7' and it will display all the notes and piano keys on a led-display. Much to my suprise and relief
after mapping all the chords out I discovered that the various minors,majors,sevenths and flat fives cancel
ALL the sharps and flats leaving you with no button work on a C chromatic AND if you then map out the holes
and breathing for the arpeggios as you step up the scale it forms some neat patterns:

C M7 - 3 blows, 1 draw
D m7 - 1 draw,  3 blows
E m7 - 2 blows, 2 draws
F m7 - 2 draws, 2 blows ...etc. (may not be 100% accurate from memory, but you get the idea)

Now this is cool! Like Rainbow Jimmy was saying earlier, I'm seeing the notes more now and playing
more from the 'big' picture. (Not quite a Howard yet, with a full piano keyboard in my mouth, but it's 
a small step.) And I'm sure this is going to tranfer well to diatonic.

lefty.