Re: [Harp-L] Positions a misnomer and harp Jargon

[marcus@xxxxxxxx]

Thank you! I'm just starting out on the harp, with enough theory background to have been confused by the "position" terminology. It makes enough sense now so that my little engineer's mind doesn't have to reject it outright. 
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-----Original Message-----
From: David Michelsen Tuition <dmharpman@xxxxxxxxx>
Sender: harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:18:27 
To: John F. Potts<hvyj@xxxxxxx>
Cc: harp-l harp-l<harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [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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