Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

Thanks oldstudent. Do you have any musical examples of your tunings in action? That would be nice to hear

Well said rishio. Just three harps, huh? You win hands down on that count, without a doubt! And what you say about delving deep into just one tuning makes good sense - it's certainly worked for Howard Levy.

I look forward to hearing some tracks from you when you're ready to share

This is an interesting discussion, but with music, words only go part of the way - musical examples can be more viscerally effective in making a point. As noted earlier, I like to use several harmonica tunings/types and choose between them depending on their effectiveness in different situations or ...

Thanks Rishio for your in-depth comparison of the two tunings, ED/PaddyExtended and PowerBender. As stated elsewhere I have explored both going back quite a few years, and and have recorded albums with each. As with all harmonica tunings, they each have their pluses and minuses. You make some good l...

I think harple might be inquiring about the notation software rather than the pdf conversion per se? Assuming so, here is the process I used. Since I don't read music, I wanted to input the score by simply playing - rather than laboriously dropping in notes one by one with a mouse, as I've had to do...

Book of drills, as in practice routines... Ha! I hadn't ever thought of that, but it works

Just for fun... It made a striking picture.

A subliminal message could be that playing a harmonica is not as easy as it first seems, it's a sharp and rocky road at times. But that's in the eye of the beholder - I'd be interested in your initial spontaneous impression

It's more than just a new material, but I can't say more about that aspect at this stage. On the material side, I'm still experimenting. Ideally I'd love to use just a single material, one which has a soft surface but is also springy. That's a hard combination to find! For example, Ultrasuede is goo...

It depends what you mean by "tuning". If you mean retuning reeds by a semitone or more to make altered scales, it is better to disassemble and do the retune on the bare reedplates. But for fine tuning, its best to retune whilst assembled - including the mouthpiece and slider. That's became the tunin...

Oldstudent: I agree with Edvin, start a new thread on your Middle Eastern tuning. If you can, please post some recordings by your friend using it, I'd love to hear it in action :-) You define pentatonic tunings as those which contain two pentatonic scales: one on the blow notes and another on the dr...