Re: Dialing in that " Tone " Thang

["Bob Maglinte" <bbqbob917@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

- ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pat Missin" <pat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2004 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: Dialing in that " Tone " Thang


>
> Mark Crowley wrote:
> >
> >tha'ts sounding interesting- i had kept all that stuff Pat wrote in case
it
> >came in useful for when (if) I got better - I was sure it was all for
pros -
>
> I'm not sure that everybody really needs to know all the technical
> fine details of tuning and temperament, but I think that all players
> should at least have such some idea that there are different ways to
> fine tune a harmonica and that this has a noticeable effect on the way
> the instrument sounds. I've heard lots of stories from people who
> bought an electronic tuner, retuned all their harps so that each reed
> read was "in perfect tune", then wondered why all their harps sounded
> funny afterwards and couldn't figure out what they had done wrong.
>
> I think that knowing the difference between just and tempered is at
> least as important as knowing the difference between crystal and
> ceramic elements, solid state and tube amps, etc.
>
>  -- Pat.

Hi,
I wholeheartedly agree with Pat on this! As a more traditional blues player,
12ET bugs the living hell out of me when playing in this genre, especially
since I do use double stops (which is basically a chord partial) and full
chording, and so I much prefer the sound of just intonation for that, and
all the diatonic harps that the older masters like both Walters and both
Sonny Boys, Butterfield, etc. used prior to the mid 70's were all tuned this
way (which is the way the Hering 1923 Vintage Harps are presently tuned).
For OTHER genres, that's an entirely different ball game altogehter. When I
first bought an electronic tuner in 1980, I went thru this exact same thing
Pat states here, but on the other hand, like many players, I wasn't aware of
the tuning schemes being used for particular reasons until about 2 years
later, and Hohner was extremely secretive about this information. Clearly
there is much better information out now in regards to all of the tuning
stuff, and Pat's site has tons of helpful info in this regard. I do play a
bit of guitar, so I am well aware of how changing the way a guitar is tuned
changes the instrument's tone and feel and what can be accomplished on it,
and so this applies to harmonicas as well. I still have an old issue of
SPAH's Harmonica Happenings with a Tommy Morgan interview where he mentioned
that he often went to the recording studio with as amnay as 5 complete sets
of the entire Hohner harp catolog, each in different pitch standards, and
that once he had to have an entire set of harps tuned to A448 because he was
working with a pianist who had such an unusually heavy touch that all his
instruments had to be tuned that way so that when the piano was played, it
would come out in concert pitch of A440, and so Tommy did the same thing,
and A448 is pretty high, at least to my ears. I remember in the miud to late
80's getting some Marine Bands in the key of D that were as high as A446,
believe it or not!

Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
MP3's: http://music.mp3lizard.com/barbequebob/