[Harp-L] Super Streamliner

[Winslow Yerxa]

No, I didn't modify his tuning and he didn't modify mine.
Rather each of us started from (I think) the same idea and, unknown to the other, came up with almost the same tuning. As I understand it, mine came first.
The idea was this: Make the bendable low draw notes and the bendable high blow notes both be the same chord instead of different chords. So you're sort of combining high straight harp and low cross harp in the same harp, in the same key as regards those chords - hence my name for it, Combination Tuning.
The only difference between the tunings was that: 

-- I left Draw 7 alone, so that you'd have a major 7th (the third of the major V chord). However, that meant that Draw 6 and Draw 7 were only a semitone apart - which I thought could be used in various cool ways, even if it required some caution.
-- Jimmy tuned Draw 7 up to the tonic note, so that Blow 7 and Draw 7 were the same note, eliminating the major 7th in the scale but making things overall more familiar and less error proof, while also giving a "drone" tone on both blow and draw, similar to the Draw 2/Blow 3 drone in standard tuning. Now that was available in two places, an octave apart.

When I went to the Buckeye festival circa 1998 or '99, Jimmy gave a late-night solo concert as he sometimes did, playing solo guitar with harp in a rack. At a certain point, Allen Holmes came up to me and started giving me a quizzical look and asking me if I recognized something about what Jimmy was doing. I was mystified at his behavior until Jimmy came up to me and present me with the harp he'd been playing, while offering me apologies and obsequies. All this was due to the fact that he'd discovered that the tuning he'd come up with had nearly duplicated mine. I was't in the last offended by this, and was kind of honored myself that he would give this consideration.

I'd never really done much of anything with my own combination tuning, although occasionally I would hear from players who'd had it built from the Altered States compendium and really liked it. But when I started playing Jimmy's version, I found that it fit really well with some of the Canadian traditional tunes I'd been playing at the time, and I used it (building it in some additional keys), mostly in what amounted to first position in the lower holes and 12th position in the higher holes, on tunes like Maple Sugar (which led me to give the tuning that name, as Jimmy hadn't mentioned a name for it to me) and Reel de Mademoiselle Adeline and Le rêve du queteux Tremblay, although I did use it on second position on another fiddle tune I've never recorded. Maybe I should revisit that tune.
BTW, on Maple Sugar (I gave a link elsewhere in this thread) I did use that Draw 7 drone note. But in the B part of the tune, which changes to the key of the V chord, I needed that major 7th note and had to play an overblow for it.
W~
Winslow Yerxa

    On Friday, September 19, 2025 at 07:52:33 AM PDT, Gary Lehmann <gnarlyheman at xxxxx> wrote:  
 
 So you modified the tuning for your purposes?Inquiring harp players want to know.G
On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 9:10 AM Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa at xxxxx> wrote:

News to me. Jimmy never told me it had a name when he gave me the harp, so i called it Maple Sugar tuning, as I used it to play that tune, and then used it for other trad tunes as well.

Winslow Yerxa

    On Thursday, September 18, 2025 at 01:39:12 PM PDT, Gary Lehmann <gnarlyheman at xxxxx> wrote:  
 
 Pat Missin emailed me back, confirming that this is the right name, and
that Jimmy and Winslow came up with it independently.
Thanks all!
Gary
PS Still haven't made one, but I surely will.
G