[Harp-L] Choice of 'Harps' for Scottish & Irish tunes

["Aongus MacCana" <amaccana@xxxxxxxxxx>]

?Better men than me have answered this already, but if you do a trawl
through the ?bible?: O?Neill?s 1001 tunes you will see that the majority of
tunes in the book are in the key of D ? closely followed by G ? or in their
associated minors. The rest ? particularly those tunes of Scottish origin
are in A.

The ?Answer to the Maiden?s Prayer? (figuratively speaking) as far as Irish
Trad is concerned would seem to be Seydel?s new Sampler in G and D. 

However I have found that my weapon of choice in a vigorous session is a G
chromatic ? Seydel or Hohner Super Chromonica.

I was excited to take delivery of my new Seydel Sampler, but slightly
disappointed to find that I find it easier in the heat of battle to look for
the C# on my G chromatic and play D tunes in ?second position? (if you can
call it that on a chromatic).

Brendan Power who is sort of ?the Sean Maguire of the Harmonica in Irish
music? recommends using both G & D chromatics for Irish Trad gigs and has
even posted an instructional YouTube video demonstrating ?in flight?
switching of chromatics.

Now that Seydel have produced the G/D Sampler with stainless steel reeds I
am hopeful that they may soon offer a G chromatic with stainless steel reeds
? maybe even in G/F# instead of G/G#. I am not quite ready to take out a
second mortgage to buy a Saxony just yet and anyway I think that it only
comes in C.

Beannachtaí

Aongus Mac Cana