[Harp-L] Into the Minefield: The Impact of Comb Material Composition on Harmonica Tone

[meagher@xxxxx]

Dear Harp-L, 

 

              Long time no speak! I've been on this list for about 30 years
now, but I haven't been super active recently. (For those who know me, I had
a kid during COVID, moved to Colorado, and now I'm a full-time student in
the Masters of Science in Recording Arts program at CU Denver, Go Lynx. I
still play Dude Harps, which I love - shoutout to Steve Grimm if he's out
there - and own more vintage amps and microphones than I'm willing to let my
wife know about, many from our man Christopher Richards, shoutout to Chris.)


 

              My program at CU Denver requires a research project for
graduation, and it is with some trepidation that I realized that there has
never truly been a methodologically rigorous double-blind study on whether
humans - either laypersons or experienced harmonica players - can detect
differences in harmonica tone due to differences in comb materials. I am
contemplating conducting such a study, and I think it would have to happen
where there is already a concentration of experienced harmonica players.
which probably means SPAH. I'd probably want to rent a room and a fairly
high quality receiver/amplifier for playback so that every test subject
hears the tones in the exact same listening space with the exact same
acoustics, etc. 

 

              At a high level, I guess I'm asking whether SPAH attendees
would be willing to spend maybe 10 minutes (or even 5) participating in the
study. I don't have a big budget but I suppose I could incent people
somehow, although I fear that for statistical significance I'd need an n
that's quite large, potentially making compensation an expensive
proposition. If that's the case, I might have to restrict it to just two
comb materials - wood and plastic - rather than wood, plastic, and metal. 

 

              Anywho, I don't wish to revisit the epic flame wars of the
late 90s and early aughts, but I did think that maybe it would be fun if we
could definitively resolve this longstanding question. If you want to reply
off-list with any thoughts, suggestions, or just ad hominem, hit me up  at
meagher at xxxxx <mailto:meagher at xxxxx>  or evan.meagher at xxxxx
<mailto:evan.meagher at xxxxx> . I think it would be cool to get AN
answer, irrespective of what answer it happens to be. Happy to discuss the
proposed methodology, which gets super complex if we rely on a player to
produce more sophisticated tones than a simple bellows, since you have to
try to make the player ignorant of what kind of comb he or she is playing,
which means attempting to mask differences in weight, texture, smell, etc. 

 

 

Evan Meagher 

 

p.s. I've also proposed a second part of the study that won't be human
perception but rather will use measurement microphones to see whether there
are quantifiable differences in frequencies produced by different combs.