[Harp-L] re: Observations

["Jonathan R. Ross" <jross38@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>1) My great-uncle was born with perfect pitch.
>This allowed him to earn his living tuning vibraphones.
>In the meantime, it was impossable for him to listen to music.

That's too bad.  Fortunately, you don't need perfect pitch to tune
musical instruments, though it can certainly help.  Also, you don't need
perfect pitch to be able to tell if a not is out of tune relative to
others.  I can't say how useful perfect pitch is musically, but I can
say that relative pitch is very useful in almost all musical
applications.

>3) As it is (virtualy) impossable to read them, while actualy playing, 
>what purpose, other than tableture, do the numbers serve?

I'm guessing that there are several possible answers.  The obvious, is
none.  The other obvious one is that they tell you witch side of the
instrument is up and witch is down (however you want to label it).  A
less obvious one, perhaps, is that they give the companies something
else to stamp on the cover and thus make the cover look fancier than if
it was just plain.  All that said, the tablature part should not be
taken for granted or underestimated--the numbers give an easy reference
for tab, which was probably quite important to sales when the most
easily found instructionals were packaged with the harp itself.

>4) If "German major tuning" refers to the more or less traditional
layout 
>on a Richter system diatonic harmonica 
>( and I always thought that Richter was a Bohemian as opposed to a
German) 
>should we now call the "Melody Maker" (Trade Mark)
>Danish major tuning?

As I came up with the term "German major" tuning, I'll explain my
thought process with regards to that.  This is often called "Richter"
tuning, but in fact the "Richter" lay-out didn't traditionally mean the
tuning of the instrument in particular, but rather the design and
construction of the instrument.  Thus, a Richter diatonic was one with
blow reeds on the top plate, draw reeds on the bottom plate, a simple
comb in-between and cover-plates on both sides.  Other systems included
the Knittlinger system (also called "Concert" or "Full-concert") which
is now mostly found in octave harps like Hohner's Auto-Valve or Seydel's
Concerto (actually, most chromatics could be thought of this way, if one
ignores the slider) and the Weiner system, which most tremolos and many
octaves use.  There are a few newer designs as well, of course (what the
hell an XB-40 should be called in regards to the above, for instance, I
have no idea).

Thus, I disliked the term "Richter tuning" as it really didn't mean what
most people used it to mean.  Indeed, no mater what tuning you use, all
Marine Bands, Lee Oskars and so forth can be called "Richter"
harmonicas.  Thus, I wanted a more accurate name for the most commonly
used tuning on the harmonica.  I am also interested in accordions and
concertinae, and early on I noticed that the overwhelming majority of
the diatonic versions of these use the same basic tuning layout as the
diatonic harmonicas (including most Richter, Knittlinger and Weiner
harmonicas).  All of these instruments originated primarily in central
Europe, often in areas where German was the primary cultural language or
where German was the language of the elite.  And, most of the
instruments tended to be associated with German origins rather than
other nations (thus, the Anglo-German concertina--note as well, that in
England and the US at this time, "German" was a bit of a catch-all for
central Europe, as there was not yet a separate nation-state called
"Germany").  Thus, I wanted a name that could be used regardless of the
specific instrument and would cover all of these: Richter harmonica,
Knittlinger harmonica, Weiner harmonica, bandoneon, Anglo concertina,
Chemnitzer concertina, melodeon, the various diatonic accordions, etc...
To me, the thing that seemed most similar was that the tuning arrived on
the seen at about the same time in all these instruments, and all were
invented in central Europe in what then would have been thought of as
"German" places, so I decided that "German major diatonic" tuning made
sense, as it tied all of these things together: the commonality of the
tuning scheme; the common time and place of origin of the various
instruments which use the scheme; the recognition that the tuning scheme
is independent of the particular instrument in question, ie, it's the
same scheme whether on a Richter harmonica or a bandoneon.

As for "Melody Maker", Lee named that, and I think it would sell better
than "Danish major" tuning.  Besides which, he was living in the US when
he invented it, so maybe "Danish-American major" would be more accurate.



 oo    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
()()   & Snuffy, too:)
`--'