Re: [Harp-L] Calling all double reed platers (Tremolo/Octave, etc) for The Inaugural Old Gnarly Cup

[David Payne <dmatthew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Winslow, I've never been a stickler for rules, especially when I'm making them. Hochlandsklange's are fine with me. Anything with double reeds, regardless, is OK. 
I'm sure we'll have something next year. I know we have at least one entry for sure in the gnarly, Steve Williams, the guy in the clip below. He, in fact, will be playing a Seydel Hochlandsklange in the West Virginia State Harmonica Championship tommorrow as well as this B/F double sided Bell Metal Reed Echo that his dad, a fine tremolo player in his day, gave him the other day. His dad bought it back in the 60s and never played it, because, as he said "I don't care for those keys." 

Here's another sound sample, it's the Hochlandklange being used for something besides what the manufacturer had in mind. I wouldn't mind if Seydel wanted to post a link to that on their site, I think it shows the underrated versatility of this instrument, it can do a lot more than it gets credit for, I think. Steve's even doing a Bill Monroe tag at the end on the thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bddeqQ8Ew_4

I sold Steve that Hochlandsklange about a year ago and he calls it his "Big H" and loves it. That song linked to above, Walking In My Sleep, has a quick C chord in it, Steve's H-Klange is the only double reed he has that has that note on it. He just has to skip it on his other tremolos.

I've got a Hochlandsklange that I play around on sometimes. It's fully valved. If I remember my rusty German correctly, Hochlandsklange is German for "tone of the mountains," and it's certainly a good fit for our Appalachians.... 
Steve and I both played a Hochslandsklange at our Texas Roadhouse gig. First, he played Walking in My Sleep on the H-Klange and I backed him on guitar. At the end of the show, we had an entirely different crowd, so we did it again, this time he was on the fiddle, I was backing him on the 48 chord and playing breaks on the Hochlandsklange. 


Dave
________________________
www.elkriverharmonicas.com 


----- Original Message ----
From: Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Harp L Harp L <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 12:56:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Calling all double reed platers (Tremolo/Octave, etc) for The Inaugural Old Gnarly Cup

Dave - 

Sounds wonderful and I'm glad to see double reed harps getting some attention in the land of green money (lots of tremolo in Canada, Europe, Asia, but very little in the USA).

That gnarly cup sounds like one of a kind. Will you award it again next year?

Will the Seydel Hochlandsklänge qualify? For those unfamiliar, this is a double reed harp that uses the second bank of reeds to play harmony notes instead of tremolo or octaves. It includes all sorts of wide harmony intervals and additional chords that you don't get on a regular diatonic.

For the tuning layout, see Page 34 at:

http://www.seydel1847.de/WebRoot/Seydel/Shops/Seydel/Images/downloads/SEYDEL_Katalog09.pdf

For sound samples, check out:

http://www.seydel1847.de/epages/Seydel.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/Seydel/Products/23400

Winslow

Winslow Yerxa

Author, Harmonica For Dummies ISBN 978-0-470-33729-5

--- On Fri, 7/24/09, David Payne <dmatthew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello Double reeders, this year at the Elk River Harmonicas contest, we are starting a special tremolo contest as part of the Mid-Ohio Valley Harmonica Championship, which is noon, Sept. 19, at the Belleville Homecoming Grounds in Belleville, West Virginia, which is on West Virginia 68 between Ravenswood and Parkerburg. The prize is the Old Gnarly Cup, a unique trophy, which is made from an gnarly old Valencia Tremolo harmonica from the 1910s probably on an American Chestnut base. The base is pretty gnarly, it's mostly gnarly knots, is not perfectly square, but despite all that, looks nice. The winner gets the gnarly cup and a custom tremolo. 

<snip>




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