[Harp-L] Position Tools (was: Re: 12th position terms)

["Tim Moyer" <wmharps@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

fjm wrote:
> The best circle of 5ths I ever saw was on the blusesite.  It's 
> long gone but I had printed several copies.  I keep one in my 
> gig bag as I slowly incorprate it into my head.  

A couple of years ago I had some time on my hands and a need to 
learn Microsoft Excel (the spreadsheet program), so I wrote the tool 
that I use to chart scales and modes against different harmonica 
tunings in different keys.  It plots notes, scale degrees and 
includes the bends and overbends, very similar to the way the "Scale-
Finder" on Tinus' overblow.com site works (I use a much smaller set 
of tunings, and don't resolve the enharmonic note naming to the 
scale).  

Doing this piece of work was incredibly enlightening, and I don't 
share this to make people want to use my program -- I'm keeping it 
all to myself.  Rather, I suggest that anything you make for 
yourself as a useful tool -- whether it's scrawling the keys and 
positions down on a piece of paper, or making a circle of 
fifths/circle of fourths wheel, or writing a computer program to 
plot scale degrees against a harmonica tuning -- anything is going 
to help you understand these relationships better and enhance your 
understanding of the underlying music theory.  

A sloppy friend of mine once told me regarding learning music, "I 
feel like I'm putting together a million piece jigsaw and every day 
I get another piece in the puzzle.  Sometimes I get a corner or an 
edge piece and a little more of the picture is revealed to me.  But 
there are still hundreds of thousands of pieces left to go."  

-tim