Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

The Covid 19 home lockdown situation has led to many international musical collaborations, and this is one! Sandy and I have known of each other for many years, but never met in person. We started chatting online recently, and decided to put this piece together. Sandy did the arrangement and made th...

Of course!

The AsiaBend is a demanding harmonica to make well, because it has a slider and no valves. These are both areas where air loss can occur, so there must be close tolerances everywhere else. It works best with embossing, to ensure clean tone and easy bends. I wasn't happy with the performance of the s...

Hi Edvin: close, but the slide in notes are actually: D³G³ A³B³. I found the doubled G was handier in practice.

As others have said here, the Lucky 13 PowerChromatic in G can easily be played in D. In fact, that's my favourite position. It is similar to the low octave cross harp on a Richter diatonic in that your tonic, third and fifth are all bendable draw notes. But the good news is this pattern repeats in ...

Glad you like it Triona. Tijn is using a standard G chromatic harmonica. It gives you draw Am and blow G chords, which are perfect for the reel. I'm playing a G Slide-Diatonic in Paddy-Solo tuning. Solo tuned G scale starts on hole 5 (as with a normal chrom), but the lower octave needs only 3 holes ...

I'm glad you're enjoying PowerChromatic tuning. At present, the Seydel version is the only out-of-the box chromatic available. However with reasonable skills you can make one out of any brand of chromatic.

Thanks Triona, interesting stuff

Here's the video on how to trigger MIDI sounds with your standard harmonica and mic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO3Q_rN0tcs

You can get these thin pieces of shim from the magnetic security tags used by shops to prevent theft. Open the plastic casing and you will find one inside.