Re: [Harp-L] Bizarre tunings for diddley music

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rob - 

These both look like cool solutions. Perfectly achievable starting with
a solo-tuned instrument in C.

The chords are not totally weird, either, aside from a few "avoid"
combinations.

On the first tuning, your blow notes give you C major (but avoid the
C#). You also have C# diminished (or A7 without the A) if you avoid the
C-natural. In the draw notes you have a chord that can be D major,
Dmajor6, B minor, or B minor 7. Chordally this tuning favors D more
than G because you have a complete D major chord but not a full G chord
(though you do have fragments).

The second tuning has D7 in the blow chord while in the draw you have
Eminor6, or C#m7b5 (half-diminished), but again no complete G chord.
Again, these chords are serviceable for D major, D mixolydian, and E
dorian more than they are for G.

Winslow

--- Rob Harper <harperrob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> This may just be crazy talk, but...
> 
> Over the last year or so I've been playing a lot of English and Irish
> (amongst others) traditional music, which is played mostly in the
> keys
> of D or G (or related modes).  So far I have been using Paddy Richter
> tuned diatonic harps, which are great, but I am finding that there
> are
> a load of tunes I want to play where both a C and a C# would be
> useful, and my technique is not good enough to get decent bends --
> particularly not at the speeds I often need.
> 
> Anyway, I've been thinking of a couple of possible tunings to help me
> out:
> 
> 1)  Solo tuned C, but with the F# instead of F and one of the
> adjacent
> C's sharpened to a C#:
>  C  E  G  C  C# E  G  C C# E
>  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10
>  D  F# A  B  D  F# A  B  D  F#
> 
> 2)  Completely weird, with the 1, 5  and 9 holes containing C on the
> blow and C# on the draw, with the other notes spread between:
>  C  D  F# A  C  D  F# A  C  D
>  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10
>  C# E  G  B  C#  E  D  B  C# E
> 
> Of course, either tuning would play havoc with any chords, but I want
> to play melody only and these should provide all the notes I want.
> I'm planning on taking a spare old harp and doing unspeakable
> retunings on it soon to see how things work out.  However, I have a
> couple of questions...
> 
> 1)  Does anyone out there have any experience of tunings like these,
> or trying to solve the same problem?
> 
> 2)  I can do basic maintenance and retuning, but it ain't pretty, so
> if this looks good from experiments I may get someone more
> experienced
> to put one of these together for me.  I see Seydel offer to do custom
> tunings from the factory.  I like Seydel harps, so does anyone have
> experience of using this service?  How's the cost and the end result?
> 
> Thanks,
> Rob
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