[Harp-L] Danny Boy harmony on diatonic



I've been asked to play a duet with another wind instrument on Danny Boy.
Instead of just doubling the lead, I would like to play harmony.  While I
think a knowledgeable person would chart the chords and look for harmony
notes there, a little fooling around and I realized mainly playing double
stops (adjacent) pretty much does the trick - i.e. for harmony, just play a
hole to the left of the melody in 1st pos.

Here's what I have so far (numbers in parentheses are the hole numbers of
the double stops with + meaning blow and nothing meaning draw, " meaning
whole step bend)

(23) +(34) (34) +(45)
(34) +(45) (56) +(56) +(45) (34) +(34) (2"3")
+(34) +(45) (45) +(56)
(56) +(56) +(45) +(34) +(45) (34)
<repeat 1st 2 lines>
(23) +(34) (34) +(45)
(45) +(45) (34) +(34) (34) +(34)

+(56) (56) (57)* +(67)
(57*) (57)* (56) +(56) (56) +(56) +(45) +(34)
Etc

Two comments:  You can play this harmoniously by yourself using double
stops.  I am sure that is no surprise to most people on the list.  Or if you
want to play just harmony, try the hole to the left of the melody, with a
few exceptions.  In the example above, obviously the 3" needs special
attention, and I can't play (2"3") as a double stop, but basically I am
indicating playing the 2" as a harmony note at that point.  A Paddy Richter
doesn't help since the lowered +3 screws up the harmony line, unless you
want to do an Addams Family version.

The other exception is in the ascending sol-la-ti-do of the second section.
Here when you go to the 7 draw - marked with a (*) above - you cannot play
the adjacent 6 draw, but if you stick on the 5 draw for harmony (three hole
split) it is sweet.  To tell you the truth, I might be slipping into a 4
hole split (47) at that point, but that's just fine too (I'm sure there is a
theory reason for that).

Anyway, I found this interesting, and thought I would see what you all
thought.  In particular, when you find you are going to the 7 draw maybe a
5/7 or 4/7 split sounds really good.  Not sure I've heard that discussed a
lot here before.  So this might be something fun to play with if you haven't
done it before.

Fred S





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