Re: [Harp-L] Re: Jerome's post on Special Tuning Questions

["Luke Keefner" <lkeefner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't know why everyone doesn't just use melody maker tuning for 2nd 
position stuff. It's all right there where you need it. I could never play 
any of the stuff  I wanted to play before I discovered this tuning. I think 
some people are "purists" and think that altered tunings are cheating. 
Thanks for mentioning Mickey and Fingers Taylor today. Both are huge 
inspirations for me.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "martin oldsberg" <martinoldsberg@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:15 PM
Subject: [Harp-L] Re: Jerome's post on Special Tuning Questions


Steve Baker wrote about country tuning (CT):
"I've been using this tuning regularly for nearly 25 years and don't 
understand why it
isn't far more popular than is."

For me there is a very short and simple reply to this: MONEY.
CT in 2 pos is truly a great alternative to slightly sour OB´s on 5D -- or 
those forced octave leaps people use to avoid them. But in order to take 
full advantage of CT you have to have one more set of harps. That costs. 
Especially if you find it hard going to keep the first set in playable 
condition.
If blues is your basic idiom pos 1, 2 and 3 goes a long way; and I´m not 
sure that the raised 5th is welcome there, so they cannot really replace 
standard tuning.
I own two or three CT tuned harps and I´m a bit bewildered why I don´t use 
them more, but it could be some perverse notion of Richter puritanism (if 
that´s what it is). So instead of grabbing a CT I tend to go for alternative 
positions -- which may have its secondary advantages in forcing you to avoid 
your most tiresome clichées.
But in some cases, "Misty" is one, it´s hard getting around that it was 
written for a country tuned harmonica. Erroll was a pioneer in that field. 
(Although this lady plays an impressively clean version of it on straight 
harp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHxfdfeiEf8)

Cheers,
Martin



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