Re: [Harp-L] explain positions to beginner

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

My Book Harmonica For Dummies takes you through six of the positions on a diatonic harmonica and briefly mentions the default mode for each of these positions. However, instead of explaining the details, I give you playing examples to explore that position on harmonica.

For more detailed information on modes, try these websites:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(music)#Modern 
(The modern modes is the section that's most relevant for your purposes.The idea of modes goes back to the ancient Greeks, but it's changed a lot over the centuries.)

I'm looking for other sites. All of them state the first concept - that you take the same group of notes and make any one of them the tonal center. So you can have as many different modes as you have notes in the scale. 

However, none of the sites I've found so far gives the reason -- why you'd bother to explore different modes. The reason is that when you take a scale and center it in a different place, you actually get a different scale - same ingredients, different dish. 

This happens because not all neighboring notes in the scale are the same distance from each other. Some are only a semitone apart, others are a whole tone (two semitones) apart. As a result, if you start on any scale degree and walk up or down a given number of steps, you'll get different results depending on where you start.

In the C major scale, most neighboring notes are a whole tone (two semitones) apart. However, E and F are only one semitone apart. The same is true for B and C. 

So let's say you start on C, call that 1, and count up 1 - 2 - 3 to E (C-D-E). You'd be counting up a total distance of four semitones (two semitones from C to D, and two more from D to E).

When you count three notes up the letter names of the scale, the *interval* - the distance between those letter names - is called a *third*.

Now try the same thing starting on D. Count up 1-2-3 and you go D - E - F. So from D up to F is also a third. But now let's count the semitones: D to E is two semitones, but E to F is only one semitone. So the third from D to F is one semitone smaller than the third from C up to E.

So you have two different thirds, a larger, or *major third* that spans four semitones, and a smaller, or *minor third* that spans three semitones.

When you talk about major chords and minor chords, or major and minor scales or keys, it's the size of the third in the scale that determines whether it's major or minor.

However, all intervals come in different sizes, or *qualities*. Because of the irregular pattern of whole tones and semitones among the letter names of the scale, any time you center a scale around a different note, you get a different set of interval qualities relative to that note. Those different intervals give the scale a different flavor, with each one having its own unique character. 

I'm leaving out a huge amount of detail to get the essential point of modes across.

Winslow

Winslow Yerxa
President, SPAH, the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica
Producer, the Harmonica Collective
Author, Harmonica For Dummies, ISBN 978-0-470-33729-5
            Harmonica Basics For Dummies, ASIN B005KIYPFS
            Blues Harmonica For Dummies, ISBN 978-1-1182-5269-7
Resident Expert, bluesharmonica.com
Instructor, Jazzschool Community Music School