[Harp-L] My Comparative Tab Pages (Caution Mad Scientist at Play!)

[David Fairweather <dmf273@xxxxxxxxx>]

Over on Slidemeister I've been sharing my current experiments with comparative tab webpages.

On my website, I've got Sonny Rollins "Pentup  House" tabbed out for Solo Chromatic, Diminished Chromatic, Wholetone Augmented Chromatic,  LeGato Chromatic and C Diatonic (#4 overblow skills required!)

I actually own all those different tuned harmonicas (and more),  and thanks to my personal system of colored notes tab, featured on these pages alongwith standard notation and standard tab, I can actually read along and play the melody at tempo on all these harps  (except for the diatonic,  my #4 overblow skills aren't that good - I would love to know if any of you overblowers have more success with this tune.)   It's kind of like paint-by-numbers,  but it does let me compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of all these tunings.


I've also got "The Girl From Ipanema" tabbed out for Solo Chromatic, Dimi, Wholetone and LeGato (sorry no Diatonic on this one yet.)   And to make things even more fun,  "Ipanema" features the computer generated "Virtual Singer" which does text-to-voice on the lyric and is quite amusing.

You will need the free Myriad Plug-In installed before any of this will work on your computer.   You can get the plug-in here 

http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/mmplugin.htm

It's completely free, safe, spam-free and comes from the good folks at Myriad-Online who have been incredibly responsive to the peculiar needs of harmonica players.

Once you've got the Plug-in installed,  I invite you to visit

http://www.bebopradio.com/juke.htm     for "Ipanema"  and

http://www.bebopradio.com/pentuphouse.htm     for "Pentup House".


Decide which tuning you want and then look for the tiny grey menu button that says FULL.   Click it and the score will open up.   It will still look kind of small until you click the Magnifying Glass icon and slide the slider around until you've got the notes at a comfortable viewing size.   Then click the dark right facing triangle to start play.   On "Ipanema" you can toggle the SING button to turn off the voice.   You'll also find menu buttons to adjust the tempo and you can even print the score if you want to study the tab offline.

This may sound like a bit of work, but believe me its worth it!  These scores were created with Myriad-Online's "Harmony Assistant" which is very harmonica friendly.   Let me know what you think!   I'm getting some great perspective on the relative strengths and weaknesses of all these different tunings.