Re: [Harp-L] Diminished-Tuned Harp Advice?

[ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Seydel offers the LF# diminished as one of the off the shelf diminished tunings (for 10 hole harps only, I think). I have ordered and played the LF# 12 hole blues soloist from Seydel and it does give you a nice lower and good enough higher end range. A lot of diminished players use that key (first blow hole is a LF#). That's what I would recommend for starters...

You will notice that with the dimished tuning you lose some range (it takes 5 holes to cover an octave) - so if you like the higher range better, you should probably get a higher tuned harp. I would not go higher than middle "C" on the first hole - but that's just a personal preference.




A.C.


-----Original Message-----
From: Mojo Red [mailto:harplicks@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:07 PM
To: 'Harp-L'
Subject: [Harp-L] Diminished-Tuned Harp Advice?

Hi gang, After reading Brendan Power's great article on dimisnished tuned diatonic harps the other day, I decided I wanted to get one to fool around with. Brendan's article showed a 12-hole dimisnished tuning pattern as his example, and I thought that would be a great way for me to start as the larger harp offers a bit more range. Anyway, I decided to get one from Seydel, since I know they offer custom-tuned harps, and so I dug out some old gig money (the Xmas money is gone) and am planning to order myself a dimisnished tuned Blues Solist Pro 12 from Seydel. Fine. Well, now I need to decide which key to get. I immediately thought of the key of C, since it's so "central" to music, but C harps can get a little squeaky in the second and third octaves, and since the point of the diminished harp is that it allows you to play (relatively easily) in any key, I thought maybe a lower key would be better... say a G harp. (I love the tonal range of the G harp), and spend a lot of time playing on G diatonic harps. I'm planning to get a little bit jazzier in my playing with this harp. Can any of you guys who work with diminished tuned harps offer me advice on which might be the best key to get? Thanks! Harpin' in Colorado, --Ken M. _______________________________________________ Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l