[Harp-L] Re: Modes, keys and positions

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"geoff atkins" wrote:
<Let's take at random say Gershwin's "Summer time".
<In what position is it best played, on which harp?

"Best played" to my mind means "played with the fewest possible number of bends or overblows, especially on big melody notes that everybody is going to hear loud and clear."  

Since nobody's mentioned it so far, let's note that Natural Minor harps (and other non-standard tunings) were made to solve problems just like this.  "Summertime" lays out very nicely on an NM tuning in second position--hardly any bends required, and those easy ones.  Most harp players know second position pretty well, so the soloing should be easy too (unless the player has developed bad habits like always ALWAYS putting a bend on the draw 3 hole, whether or not the piece demands it.)

For standard tuning, I played a solo version of "Summertime" when I was an instructor at one of Jon Gindick's jam camps, and that version was in 3rd position.  It was the first time I'd tried it, but it worked very well. The only difficult note in the melody is the lowest note, which has to be played in this position as a double bend on the draw 3 note.  The original key is A minor, so you'd use a G harp (if you chose to play in the original key). I found this approach to work very well for both melody and solo on this piece.

If you do it in 4th position (A minor on a C harp), the melody lays out without a single bend if you do it starting on blow 8 (which is the highest note in the melody and the first note of the melody).  However, you'll need to do a double bend on the tonic note (A) in the bottom octave every time you play it in that range, which may not be ideal--tough to get the pitch and timbre exactly right on a bend like that, and it's an important note.

In 5th position (A minor on an F harp), the second degree of the scale is missing in the second octave, where you really need it in the second section of the melody.  (The lowest note of the melody doesn't exist in the bottom octave, so you have to play it in the second octave.)  The only way to get it on a standard tuning is to overblow the note.  If you can't do that, a very simple solution is to use a country-tuned harp, where the note is built-in. 

Since we've come back to non-standard tunings, let me repeat that at SPAH 2009, I noted that most of the pros in attendance were using a wide range of tunings, many more radical than the slight variations on standard Richter represented by Country, Melody Maker, NM, Dorian Minor, etc. (the ones I use).  Some of Brendan Power's wild-ass tunings are downright scary to a traditional ol' boy like me.  But most players will find that the Richter-oriented non-standard tunings solve a lot of problems that are much more difficult to play on a standard tuning.  That's why the pros use them, of course--they want to get the job done with a minimum of fussing. Steve Baker played a murderously effective reggae tune on a Natural Minor at SPAH, and as I said to Steve immediately afterwards, reggae on the Natural Minor sounds so good that it's a wonder it's not illegal.  The fact that the same basic playing techniques work on both standard and non-standard tunings makes transition to the Richter-based non-standard tunings easy.  I'd be surprised if anyone with a good grasp of first and second position on a standard tuning couldn't find their way around a Natural Minor easily within a month of picking the thing up.

And of course, you can always use a chromatic harp, where you just find the notes and play them.  In my opinion, ballads like "Summertime" are justification enough for learning to play chromatic harp.  Chromatics just tear it up on ballads.  If you want to see them cry, play a ballad on the chromatic.

Regards, Richard Hunter





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