Re: [Harp-L] Re: Starting new players on an alternate tuning

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Coble wrote:
<To me, it makes more sense having all the diatonic notes for a particular major <scale  available naturally (without bending) than worrying about the breath reversal <from one octave to the next. It is no more of a problem than on the "standard" <German Tuning where the direction of breath changes abruptly at hole 7 in order to <keep the major I chord going unbroken all the way up the harp. 

This is all true where single note playing is concerned, and I agree that a spiral tuning offers a lot in that regard.  However, the Richter tuning and its variations (natural minor, country tuned, paddy richter, dorian minor, melody maker, etc., etc.) offer the player a lot of big chord voicings over a 3-octave range, and I don't see how you get that out of a spiral tuning. And because these variations in the Richter layout are conceptually very similar (meaning that the root, 3rd, 5th, etc. are generally found in the same location on all of them), the time it takes to learn each variation is relatively low (compared to mastering something as radically different as a spiral tuning).  But I'm really kind of conservative when it comes to tunings; Brendan Power's or James Conway's setups, to take two players whose work I admire, are WAY out there compared to the stuff I use.  (And we haven't even discussed alternative tunings for chromatic harp, like David Fairweather's new setups...) 

As with any tuning (and life in general), you give something up for everything you get.  The question isn't "which tuning scheme is the best?"; the question is "what can a particular tuning scheme do easily that's difficult or impossible to do on the others?"

Regards, Richard Hunter
 

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