Subject: Re: [Harp-L] History of harp tuning; Chrom Tuning

[JON KIP <jon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On the chromatic harmonica, the idea of using "repeatable patterns" of 'fingerings' (for Slim's understandable  lack of a better word) just doesn't occur to me. I think of the notes I want to have come out and the brain and fingers take over. Adding thinking about patterns at any time, is just counter-productive for me and useless, at least on the chromatic instrument.

Of course, I'm new at this stuff, only ten years in, on an instrument that, like other Real Instruments, takes at least 18.5 years to perfect (look it up),  and only recently noticed that there are numbers on the cover plates....they seem to be in numerical order....One of my students has been referring to the notes by what I assume is those numbers, so sooner or later I'll have to learn which hole number, blow or draw, is which note....he also puts the numbers and arrows under the written notes on the music.... I'm not sure what's up with that, but he doesn't always write the correct numbers, or arrows, so has to constantly decide between what his ears are telling him and what his eyes are telling him.....unfortunately at this point, his eyes are in charge.


I do enjoy someone's take on color-coding the keys of a retuned piano....or even using braille-like dots,  perhaps I misread it 

I am, though, impressed and amazed at how some people can go from one instrument to a different tuning on another same-sized instrument... that's just weird to me...I have enough trouble going to a different keyed chromatic harmonica, so I don't. When, after years of Alto sax playing, I had to play tenor, all the wrong notes came out.

go figure.


jon kip
http://jonkip.com

player of music, mostly written by dead people and played on a toy that everybody's Uncle except my nephew's has the good sense to keep safely out of sight in a drawer.