[Harp-L] High-tech tool helps harmonica players hit right notes

[randy singer <randy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

High-tech tool helps harmonica players hit right notes
By Brad Kava
Mercury News
The harmonica is the world's most commonly sold instrument, but it is  
as rare to find someone who plays it well as it is to find someone  
who has never tried one.

The reason it is so tough to master is that players can't see what  
they are doing. Unlike a guitar, saxophone, clarinet or trumpet, the  
forming -- or bending -- of the notes comes from deep in the throat.

Along comes Joel Trunick's ``Bendometer,'' a computer program that  
shows players what notes they are hitting. Trunick has put it on the  
Web at www.harpsoft .com as ``donationware,'' allowing players to pay  
the yearly fee they think the program is worth.

Blow or suck the harmonica in front of your computer's microphone,  
and it shows what note you are hitting, right or wrong.

It will also help transcribe the notes played on your favorite discs.

The program was a hobby for Trunick, 37, who writes insurance  
programs for IBM in Austin. He was given a harmonica as a present  
when he was 21, and later made a video game using notes from it to  
trigger a gun, similar to the video game ``Asteroids.'' The goal was  
to make you hit the right notes, so you could destroy the enemies,  
while creating a song.

He posted it on the Web and was disappointed that it got only one or  
two hits a month.

But then -- eureka! -- he saw it in a different way. What about using  
the program as a tool to help harmonica players learn to find the  
notes they can't see?

He put that on the Web and 2,500 people are now using it, most  
donating $10 to $50 a year.

``I wanted it to be affordable for people in Third World countries or  
young students,'' said the father of three. ``And I didn't want to  
make it shareware because I wanted to know if it had a value to  
people.''

Jason Ricci, who uses the program to check his playing, says, ``It's  
the best way to learn to bend notes and hit them accurately.''

Trunick tells subscribers that he'll use the money to take his son  
Joshua, 7, skiing -- but he hasn't had a chance to do that yet.

So far, he's bought his wife, Suzanne, some dinners to make up for  
the months of spare time he invested writing the program.