Re: [Harp-L] chrom tuning

[Vern <jevern@xxxxxxx>]

The fact that blow and draw produce different notes in the scale makes the chromatic harmonica very different from the piano.  Blow-only bass harmonicas duplicate the piano-keyboard layout and require 12 holes for each octave. 

Solo tuning arises from the desire to:

Make the blow-draw pattern of all octaves the same...as they are on a piano.
Diatonic C scale requires no button-pushes…emulating other C instruments.
Make the tonic blow chord.
Play octaves and some other double-stops.

These design constraints make solo tuning inevitable. 

The enharmonics can be used to avoid breath-direction reversals in fast runs or to insert reversals to facilitate breathing. For example, I use B# and E#  exclusively throughout the (melodic minor?) tune Miserlou  (See Dick Dale).



The value that you place on these advantages and on the disadvantages that you name determine your feelings about solo tuning. If your aim is to pack the maximum number of octaves into a given number of holes, then you’ll favor an alternate tuning that has no redundancies.

Vern


On May 13, 2014, at 9:58 AM, Music Cal <macaroni9999@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> For those of you that think that one tuning is as good as the next I ask
> you this: Would you tune a piano like the solo-tuned chromatic harmonica?
> This would mean repeated pitches, which sometimes appear a few piano keys
> down stream from the others, and in addition, rather than always increasing
> in pitch as one goes from left to right across the keyboard, sometimes the
> pitches would descend.
> 
> Really? ... Really?
> 
> Daniel