[Harp-L] Re: Seydel Alternate Tuned Harps

["Michael Timler" <mail@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 12:01:06 -0800 (PST)
> From: "jazmaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmf273@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Harp-L] Seydel Alternate Tuned Harps
> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
> Message-ID: <20051222200106.24180.qmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> I was looking at some of the alternate tunings available on Seydel's
> website and have some
> questions
>
> 1) What is the "Eddie Clarke" Tuning?   I couldn't find the layout or a
> description on the Seydel
> website.


In fact, you made me aware of a big mistake here.
This tuning isn't a Diatonic tuning at all.
It's left from an early state of draft of the webshop, where I inserted just
a keyword I had in mind to create a virtual altered harmonica.
I simply forgot to remove it, and now it's even in the sales sheets !

That's how mistakes happen and I am glad, that you made me aware of that.
How stultifying !

Eddie Clarke is a tuning that refers to Chromatics:
'A Dublin resident originally from Virginia, County Cavan, Clarke pioneered
the system of playing a C Chromatic from the higher-pitched reed C sharp
reed plate, which allowed him to use the instrument's slide to play snappy
triplet ornaments. On his recordings Eddie generally played in second
position and held the slide in with his thumb, releasing it briefly for the
triplets. So he's most often playing in G# or related modal scales on a C
harmonica. In his duets with Clare fiddler Joe Ryan, he matched Ryan's style
so closely that it's hard to separate the sound of the two instruments'

Let me tell you, how Seydel came to the point to offer alternate tunings at
all.
It was simply caused by the requests of the players. It was NOT looking to
Pat Missings Altered States and saying: 'Well this guy has done a great job,
let's pick that up.'
It happened years ago. More and more dealers showed up and asked for altered
tunings (which may be the merit of Pat, by the way !!!!), and for the Seydel
people it was more or less a favour to do it. As time went by, there was a
whole collection of altered harmonica tunings and those, that repeated most
were the basis of the altered tunings we decided to take as 'our' altered
tuning standard offer during summer 2005.
With other words: We just offer what the demand was. And I was responsible
for the naming, that is.
Decision was to offer 14 different altered tunings. So I setup 14 dummies in
the draft of an early version of our shop.
You may say, that I didn't work it out, and that's correct. As some of you
already experienced, some of the tunings are not even shown in a tuning
table (I corrected that this morning for the C-versions at least.)
Imagine, we needed only 10 weeks from the first decision how to start the
online business until we went public. Everybody involved in ebusiness knows,
that this a very short time compared to what you have to prepare in the
background, if you blow up your offer to more than thousand articles and 
variations meanwhile.
No harmonica manufacturer in the worlds does what we actually do, and there
are many more features that are planed. There are so many many more things
to be done in our infrastructure here than simply setup a website, it's a
whole revolution in making and distributing harmonicas. To be perfect at
this state of devolopment we are in at the moment is impossible.
Furthermore, please imagine, that all this is done by 15 people only!
http://www.seydel1847.de/epages/Seydel.storefront/?ObjectID=5893&Locale=en_GB

However, we are proud to do it and I must say, that there are very few
problems occuring at the moment, comparatively.
The delays are tolerable and the mistakes are not too big, though the
pre-Christmas business took us quite along.

I have a suggestion:
Seydel is able to do almost every altered tuning in Diatonics.
If I simply remove this unlucky 'Eddie Clarke '-tuning, we have one ordering
number left in our ordering system.
If you Harp-L cracks out there would suggest another altered tuning that is
missing in our line up to now, I could rename the 'Eddie Clarke' into the
new one and the players have another tuning available to a cheaper price.
Cheaper therefore, because making a single custom tuned harmonica is more
expensive than to establish a line of equal tuned ones.

How about that ?

Waitin for your suggestions !

Yours
Michael Timler
michael.timler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.seydel1847.com