Re: [Harp-L] chrom tuning

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

The harmonica has a problem that does not exist with the piano: binary note pairs. Every note is either a blow or a draw note. Pairs create even numbers, while the seven-note scale gives us an odd number to fit with the pairs.

The piano allows you to simultaneously play any combination of notes you can reach with your fingers (and sometimes elbow, nose, etc.) while the harmonica, despite its "harmony" derived name, can only combine blow notes with blow notes or draw notes or draw notes (at least most of the time, but air recirculation is a pretty limited device).

As a result, the harmonica forces a tuning designer to make choices:

If you don't duplicate scale notes or add non-scale notes, you guarantee shifting note placement from octave to octave, either by having a note be a blow note in one octave and a draw note in the next (spiral tuning) or by shifting in relation to its opposite-breath partner (as in the third octave of standard diatonic tuning).

If you want the blow notes to present the tonic chord of the key throughout its range, you assign three notes of the scale as blow notes and the remaining four as draw notes, guaranteeing the odd/even mismatch I indicated at the top of this post. You also guarantee that two neighboring draw notes will create a dissonance and will disrupt the breathing sequence required to play a scale.

You can tune to a scale with an even number of degrees, such as the whole tone scale or even the chromatic scale. In both cases you don't have usable triad chords, and with chromatic scale tunings (as in the Hohner Polyphonia series) you have to move large distances between common intervals, making clean and accurate playing very difficult. You can add  non-scale notes as in bebop tuning or duplicated scale notes as in the A minor tuning I favor (see below).

Do you value the ability to play chords? 
Do you value the ability to play octaves? 
Do you value consistency in whether a note is always a blow or always a draw from octave to octave? Do any neighboring same-breath notes create dissonant intervals? 
Do you value a consistent result when you change breath in a given hole? 
Do you value a consistent series of repeated actions when you play the underlying scale of the instrument?

No tuning will score on all points on the checklist.

Paddy fails on a few counts. It does not eliminate the blow/draw shift at Hole 7 or the break in the breathing sequence between Draw 6 and Draw 7 or the resulting dissonance. It introduces new inconsistency in that in the first octave G is a draw note while in the remaining two octaves it's a blow note. The opposite is true of A, which is a blow note in the first octave and a draw note in the remaining two octaves. it also introduces a new dissonance between Blow 3 (A) and Blow 6 (G). Paddy is not a thoroughgoing and consistent redesign; it's just a useful patch-up and was designed to be one.

Speaking specifically about chromatic tuning, I've tried augmented aka whole tone tuning (mainly because of my association with Daniel). I find it intriguing, but not enough to give up on solo tuning. My own tweak to solo tuning is to tune the blow notes C E G A instead of C E G C (that's the A minor tuning I refer to above). This gives me a extra chord to play with (A minor) and alternate ways to play many passages. It also means that every time you play a blow note and then a draw note, the pitch goes up.

True, the piano has no duplicated pitches. But most woodwinds do - many notes have several alternate fingerings that players find useful depending on context (i.e., what note comes before and after?).


 
Winslow

________________________________
 From: Music Cal <macaroni9999@xxxxxxxxx>
To: harp-L list <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2014 9:58 AM
Subject: [Harp-L] chrom tuning
 

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