[Harp-L] Serendipty Strikes: Happy Accidentals!

[Brendan Power]

The dominant harmonica sound today is the blues note-bending style on the
10-hole diatonic. It's probably the happiest accident in musical instrument
history that the Mundharmonika, created by German craftsmen and tuned to
play oom-pah music, when it got into the hands of African Americans who
played it in the 'wrong' key and coaxed wailing notes out of it that would
have turned Herr Richter in his grave, turned out to be so perfect for the
Blues.

 

Unintended Consequences can often be negative, even fatal. In the case of
the 10-hole harp it was the opposite, and how lucky we are that it was so! 

 

On a more modest level, I recently experienced a similar epiphany. I
discovered that the AsiaBend, a harmonica I invented to be an all-draw,
all-bending instrument to coax maximum soul out of diatonic modal melodies,
turned out to have a hidden secret. Because it is un-valved and all the
x-reeds are set with zero gap, I discovered that it can be overblown on
every hole to give full chromatic scales. 

 

It's not quite on the level of the beautifully bizarre Richter/Blues
connection but it's still superbly serendipitous - and gives the AsiaBend
lots of happy accidentals J Here's how it sounds and works:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TdkBflwKPg

 

Brendan

 <http://www.brendan-power.com/> www.brendan-power.com

 <http://www.youtube.com/BrendanPowerMusic>
www.YouTube.com/BrendanPowerMusic