Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

Why not! As you say, Paddy Richter has a lot of advantages, especially for melodic playing, and works well for Blues too. With any tuning, you gain some things and lose others, as you note yourself. It's down to personal choice which factors matter more. The only issue form a learning point of view ...

"Dunovska Horo" is pure PowerChromatic, but "Jig Jazz" and "Sweet Bulgarity" are variations on PC. If you think of PowerChromatic in C, starting on D, the pattern is (blow note to the left, draw at right): DE FG AB CD | DE FG AB CD | DE FG AB CD | In "Jig Jazz" I lower the higher doubled Ds down to ...

The story is that we're in transition to a new valving system. I'm still securing the IP for it; until that's done I can't release it publicly.

This is the best of times and the worst of times for that! The best because there have never been so many options available. The worst because it means the choice can be bewildering.

First, what type of harmonica - have you decided that at least? It would narrow down the options.

A bit of news... After much struggle trying many different approaches over the past few weeks on alternative methods for getting easy overbends on stock harps, I've finally arrived at a good solution. It will be an assembly that players can easily retrofit onto existing harps. I'm just now in the pr...

Reels can sound nice played slowly, but if you want to play with others in a session you need to be capable of playing them fast as well, as that is the norm.

Interested to hear your thoughts Lizzy. April now for mine, B

Wow! Thanks for the links. That guy Larry Howell is some designer/engineer! Fascinating stuff

Actually one area I have been exploring, just for fun, is alternative approaches to damping reeds inside diatonic harmonicas to get pure sounding, loud overbends. My Overblow Booster is one way, inspired my Masaru Hashimoto's design for the Suzuki Overdrive. It encloses the reeds in outer comb chamb...

Since its related, there is some wonderful NEW Swedish and other Scandinavian harmonica music being performed and recorded beautifully by these two guys:

https://youtu.be/lkvTJceApzU