Re: [Harp-L] Re: Diatonic Sounds on a Chromatic ("I was Banned")

[David Payne <dmatthew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's my take on the slidemeister thing. I have never subscribed to the belief of each type of harmonica being its own separate entity. They are all harmonicas, chromatic, diatonic, tremolo, chord and I play them all -minus a bass, which I don't have, with equal enthusiasm. It would be like somebody playing alto saxophone refusing to talk about tenor saxophones. That's really how I see it. And, my originally being a strictly diatonic player from age 5 to age 32 has made me a far different chromatic player than I would have been otherwise.

A.J. has nailed me a time or two, but I always understood the justness his motivations. On the flip side of that, there's been some times were I was flatout making references to Richter note placement, but gave the disclaimer "I am talking about Richter Chromatics of course" and he was OK with talk about the Richter octaves and other double stops in that manner.
Here is the deal: there is a pervasive dynamic at play here, besides the fact it's his forum and he can do whatever he wants with it, he has to deal with. Even though such division and exclusion is against the very fiber of my love of all harmonicas, and I run my forum the exact opposite way, I agree and support in general what he does. The chromatic used to be more popular than the diatonic among serious players at least, and in the last few decades, the diatonic has usurped it. Chromatic players otherwise really don't have a place where they can freely exchange with one another without being bogged down by diatonic discussion. There are just so many diatonic players out there. The chromatic harmonica needs for him to do what he does. Slidemeister fulfills a real need for a place for them to discuss what they do. There needs to be places like this for different harmonicas, and there aren't, that's the main reason I started up the chord harmonica
 board and the tremolo/octave board on the Elk River Harmonicas forum a while back. As far as I know, there isn't such a forum for bass harmonica players. Somebody ought to start one. If I were a bass player, I would. We need to be talking about everything, to keep everything alive and there are a million places to talk about diatonics. That's why A.J. runs his ship the way he does.

Dave