[Harp-L] Positions a misnomer and harp Jargon



The term 'position' is a misnomer. In traditional 'muso' speak the term position generally is given to indicate where one is on a fingerboard or fretboard. It is more accurate to give the key of the music and the key and tuning of the harmonica which one uses to play it on.

That said it is a bit of terminology that we are saddled with and all of the above all of the time can be a bit of a mouthful. Though I see nothing wrong with using the degrees of the chromatic scale as a description. It allows you to describe what's happening with out being bogged down in the minutia of a given key. As a composer I'll often think about the intervals needed in a melody line and then look at the color tone of a key and that key's structures of harmonization as a secondary consideration. This may be because I'm a harp player I think melody first, if I thought piano instead of harp my thought might be more centered on inherent harmonization and on keys before intervals.

Where the term breaks down is that a circle of fifths, when going clockwise, would most usefully and traditionally, give major keys only but with a second layer showing each major keys relative minor. In this way you have two circles of fifths, one inside the other. With the major keys on the outer one and their relative minor keys on the inner one.

This is only really useful if you use a diatonic with the technique required to play it chromatically. As most folk either don't have, or choose to use, this level of technique. We tend to use the positions to describe an approach to using a set of altered modes. Which is to say on a C harp the third position tends to become D Minor or an 'altered D Blues*' because it's built on playing the C scale from D to D. To this we tend to impose a D blues scale, giving us an A flat, to give us the flat fifth required for a D blues scale. To this the second and sixth degrees of the scale, an E and a B, though for D minor it would more properly be a B flat. However if you listen to a lot of players who use third position, or D minor / D Blues on a C Richter tuned harp, you will often hear the B natural voiced in passing in the second octave.

No matter how much, the fact of, this rouge B natural may be 'wrong' according to music theory, it has none the less become a part of the color tonality of 'third position'. As a community, I like to think that, we generally know that when we speak of positions we are talking about the key or root note to each position. This key note is the prime tone to a number of intervalic systems that we can apply.

So in this way when using a C harp when we say "we played in third position", we could be playing from a scale base of: D Major, D Minor, D Major pentatonic, D Minor pentatonic, D Blues etc. So each position is a lose description for a raft of interval systems that project from the root note of the position. The theoretical view of this can become a bit 'cloudy' if you try and pin each position down to only one interval system for each position. As in theory it would be better if the interval system used was the same for each position, as in all majors or all minors but we don't work in a theoretical world and the 'position' system is our tradition for trying to describe what it is that we tend to do. Whilst it is an imperfect and flawed system it is somewhat more useful than no system at all. It describes what we try to do in our imperfect and flawed way in our imperfect and flawed world. It is a set of lose generalities. If we recognize its short-comings and understand its imperfections, we can still take what is useful from it.

All that said my students do tend to use real music, all-be-it with tab, and the notes to a tune is the notes. A rose by any other name etc. Just lets not be too hasty to reject a system which does have many useful aspects in addition to its many imperfections. As if we do that we reject something that is a usable model in favor of no model at all. By so doing we run the risk of causing new and interesting types of confusion, that not all of us would appreciate.

I think this longstanding area of debate will run for a while for a while yet.
David


On 29/03/2011 08:45, John F. Potts wrote:
"I hate term "position". I prefer to term "key"..."

Anyway, he has forbidden me to speak in terms of "positions" when discussing which harmonica i should use for a particular tune. He considers it important that i use proper music terminology instead of harmonica shorthand. He also expects me to speak in terms of note names rather than degrees of the scale, but he's not as strict about that.

Btw, Boris, don't you ever use 5th position (E minor on a C harp)?

JP


-- D Priestley AKA Dr Midnight. England's first harmonica Guru.



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