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History of Natural Minor tuning?

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2021 4:41 pm
by IaNerd
Q1: Who is the creator of the NM tuning?

Q2: What was the first NM harp in regular production?

Re: History of Natural Minor tuning?

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2021 9:59 pm
by triona
Q2: I presume maybe it was Tombo with the model "Minor Boy" - the predecessor of the later "Lee Oskar". The first ones I had were in 1981 or 1982, when the first importer of Tombo harmonicas appeared on the German market. In Japan they might have been available even earlier, and in the US maybee too. As far as I remenber Hohner came up with this quite some time later. Afaik Tombo / Lee Oskar is the market leader with natural minor and harmonic minor harmonicas in all 12 keys each up till nowadays .


Q1: Actually I do not know. At least I do not know how you meant your question.

The natural minor key itself and its scales and chords is a very old "invention". It is known since a long time before harmonica instruments even were existing in Europe. It has been very common in Europe already since the 16th century. The begin of the Major-Minor-system is dated about the 17th and 18th century, when it gradually replaced the medieval modal system (DE "Kirchentonarten" = EN "church modes" / "ecclesiastical modes"). Harmonic Minor has been used in Eastern music (Hijaz / Arabic even earlier, as well as Melodic Minor and others in Indian ragas.

See for more:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_scale
I gave the link to the German wiki as well because the English wiki does not contain as much information about the history of the tonal systems as the German does. On the other side the EN wiki is containing more informations than the DE about the history of the usage of the different minor scales in different musical traditions all over the world. At least both wikis are complementing each other contentually.


dear greetings
triona