Re: [Harp-L] Echo harps - a few corrections

[David Payne <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Vern, you are a scholar and a gentleman. You can sure as hell dish it out, but you can also get "Verned" yourself and take it with such poise and grace. 
   
  Winslow, 
  I'm with you on the Richter definition, that a Richter harmonica is the harmonica that Herr (Anton, Joseph, Johann, whichever one of those three Richters actually did it) Richter brought down from the craggy, cloud-vieled summit of Mt. Sinai, but I have to admit the term Richter has been loosely used over the years. What went through my head when I read the post was that it would be impossible to tune a tremolo Richter by its very defition, which I think is sort of like what you were saying.
   
  For cultural enlightenment of newbies... Richter (we're not absoluely sure his first name) pretty much invented the harmonica. There were harps before, but they were more like blow pitchpipes attached to one another. Richter came along and invented the sandwich style with two reedplates attached to a comb, and also the tuning most diatonic harmonicas have. I find it fascinating that this guy invented this thing about 175 years ago give or take a decade or two, and it has changed little, yet been amazingly versitle despite its limitations.
  I admit, though, the part about him inventing atop Mt. Sinai is undocumented.
   
   
  Dave
  _________________________________
  Dave Payne Sr. 
  Elk River Harmonicas
  www.elkriverharmonicas.com
  

Vern Smith <jevern@xxxxxxx> wrote:
  ----- Original Message ----- 
From: Winslow Yerxa
To: Mary Cooper ; Harp-L ; Vern Smith
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Echo harps - a few corrections


> I have to disagree with a couple of Vern's statements about Echo harps.

I stand corrected! It has been a long time since I have owned a double-reed 
harp. Although I qualified my statement with "probably", I should have made 
no statement at all.

> Richter is a type of construction, not a tuning.

Isn't "Richter tuning" a commonly-used term? Is there another name for 
the usual diatonic tuning with no "fa" and "la" in the low octave to 
facilitate the draw dominant chord?

> Also, playing music that uses a diatonic scale does not of necessity limit 
> the tunes to being simple. Some fairly intricate diatonic music is played 
> both on tremolo harmonicas and on similarly tuned diatonic accordions.

All of the previous discussion was about the number of scale degrees, not 
the timing. I certainly agree that timing can be intricate.

Vern 


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