Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

I don't have any harps in Extended Paddy, and I haven't thought much about them for a long time. Your post made me think though, and it made me want to take up your challenge :) One thing I hadn't considered before was the possibilities for minor play in 3rd position, Dm on a C harp. One nice proper...

@Bendan: Well, for tunings with lots of chords the spiral is hard to avoid :) @IaNerd: It's not so much additive as selective. Pressing just Slider 'a' raises half the notes, pressing also Slider 'b' raises the other half, except for the B. A person accustomed to a slider that raises every note half...

Another option would be to replace the high B with a Bb: C Eb G C Eb G Bb D G B D F Ab C This forces you to bend the C to get the B so it might not work for all kinds of playing. There are some advantages thugh: 1. You can use the scale for natural minor as well, making the instrument more versatile...

Of course it depends on what music you intend to play. I think I prefer your first options over the spiral, and out of those the version with a C at 7D, but it's not clear cut. Considering the spiral is lacking the C in the bottom octave, hole 1 feels a bit redundant. For melodies to go that far dow...

A spiral tuned harp has all the standard triad chords in its key, three major chords and three minor chords. Thus, it covers the major chords of one quadrant of the circle of fifths plus their minor parallels, one fourth of all the common chords. The following tuning for Brendan Power's twin chromat...

WOW! I played the sound clips on the Eric Chafer page you linked, and ... just wow. I never thought of augmented as a tuning for high speed playing, but clearly it's possible. Do you have any idea why such a skilled player would quit? It makes you wonder how good he is with those other instruments ...

... I don't want to say too much before anything is released , because unanticipated problems can always crop up and detail what seems a dead cert. But the improved harps I've been creating include the TwinHarmonica series, both chromatic and diatonic based. ... Based on a new concept altogether, m...

I've played around with diminished and augmented on my midiharp, but I never had either tuning in a chromatic reed harmonica. By the way, when you said above the the forths and fifths are the only equally tempered intervals that sound good to you, I think you miss the octave ;) I don't know if peopl...

By the way: Are there any drawbacks to setting the blow reeds to a non-zero gap?

I tried an AsiaBend at HarpMeet and liked it, so I've been keeping an eye out to see when they'll be back in stock, so updates are nice:D