[Harp-L] Finding the correct key of harp to play bluegrass

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From: bob piscura <bpiscura@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] Finding the correct key of harp to play bluegrass
To: "harp-l@harp-l org" <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
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Oh no....more bluegrass harmonica questions. On our northern migration from Florida to 
the mountains of Virginia I came upon a bluegrass station and tried to play along. Well 
having a full octaves of harps with me I was only successful in playing with one song. It 
seemed to be in d. I was able to get the c harp to sound ok playing in third position and 
played the d harp in first position. But the other six songs I was not able to get a harp 
to sound good with the music!!!

Are there any rules to do to find the the correct harp ( like going up four steps to do 
find the the correct cross harp? Are there a few keys that bluerass is performed in?  If 
a banjo is playing in g  What would be a good harp choice?Thanks for the guidance. 
BOB PISCURA
 
 
 
 Because I really like a bluesy sound but still like to get all the notes (without  overblowing) I'm really sold on the "circular" tuned harps. I've got 'em in almost all keys and I think they are a really good solution to the challenges presented playing Bluegrass. They're sold in the "cross" key, so if you want to play bluesy or modal in "A", you buy an "A", and you can play the whole major scale straight (without bends) in "D". As far as what keys Bluegrass is played in, in my musical career, I played fiddle with a lot of Bluegrass bands, and I was never asked to play in  F#, G#, or C#-aside from that, it all depends on whom you're playing with. A lot of Bluegrass banjo tunes were written in "G", but because they like to use a lot of relative minors and circle of fifths type progressions as well as "double-tonic" modal progressions (Salt Creek for an example), getting around them on a Richter tuned harp can be tricky. A lot of "old-time" fiddle tunes (which are often incorrectly called "Bluegrass" when they are actually just oldtime dance tunes) are in A, D, and G. A lot of Bluegrass fiddle tunes (which are more for show than dancing) are in "A" but they also show up in G, E, C, Bb, D, Dm, Am, and F, so fitting them on a harmonica can be less then straightforward. When playing with singers, it really depends on just how high they like to pitch their songs. The really traditional players I played with would pitch songs in Bb, B, and C that more "city style" singers would pitch in G or A.  The general rule in Bluegrass is for the instruments and voices to "cut" as much as possible, which usually means pitching it as high as possible. The big difference between Bluegrass string bands and the country string bands that preceded them is that the Bluegrass bands featured instrumental and vocal solos instead of everyone playing in unison, and the big reason they could do that was because of the introduction of the microphone-until then, everyone had to play as loud as they could at the same time just to have the band heard. BUT even though they had mics (though often only one, omnidirectional mic), the sound systems (and recording studios) of those days were crude by today's standards. Flatt & Scruggs were known for tuning their instruments up by as much as a whole tone just to get more sound out of them, and in the days before electronic tuners, bands would just tune (and keep tuning) to each other (and when they weren't in tune with each other, the engineer would sometimes compensate by adding  a horrendous amount of reverb . In addition, some studios sped up recordings to make the sound more "exciting" or sometimes to make the band sound a little more together. Because of this, a lot of the "classic" (pre-1960) recordings are going to be out-of-tune with most out-of -the box harmonicas.

 

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