Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

These are fun to make, and can be very useful!

https://youtu.be/cCkGUm5qZvc

Another interesting alternative is to make your own Irish Session Harp from a Low D chromatic. You can keep both keys in Solo Tuning by displacing the D and G scales. This works on both straight and cross tuned chromatics. Here's how it would look: SLIDE OUT: DE. F#G. AB. DC#. DE. F#G. AB. DC#. DE e...

There are several ways of using a single slide harmonica for playing in keys D & G for Irish music. This post could come under the category of "Too Much Information!", but it's something I've thought about a lot - so here are some ideas to mull over: FLIPPED SLIDER SOUND Using a D chrom to play in D...

Recently I posted here about a Richter diatonic harmonica design with staggered reedplates and a front slider. It had 13 bends (compared to 8 on a normal harp), but I hadn't seen how to add the crucial 14th bend on hole 7. I designed the harp between 2016-18. It was very promising but that missing b...

Thanks for your message Roman. There is a historical free reed instrument that uses this principle of shortening the reed to get higher notes: the single-reed pitch pipe. John Cook did an excellent video on it, and actually made one from scratch: https://youtu.be/V_sPcJkstSo From time to time people...

One of my best inventions so far! It has a lot of potential for many different types of harmonicas, I believe. https://youtu.be/0EZn2AKX40I (This invention is shared under a Creative Commons License: MAGNETICALLY ATTRACTIVE REEDPLATE SLIDERS © 2022 by Brendan Power is licensed under Attribution-NonC...

The Overblow-Booster Mk2 is now available as a Parts Kit to retrofit to your own harp. Here's a hands-on instructional video showing how it's done:

https://youtu.be/j-9AM5eahfY

Link to the Ordering page is in the Description.

As often Edvin, you take a single idea and run with it, extrapolating to new applications I hadn't considered. Always surprising and interesting 👍 The rocker arm design shown in my video relies on gravity to hang out of the way in the neutral position. So on conventional diatonic harmonicas it will ...

TECH TUESDAY #2: Rocker Arm Reed Mute

With harmonicas, the Devil is in the Detail - small things matter a lot! This is a prime example: a quirky little gizmo I invented to do a critical reed-muting job on my SlipSlider Mk1 harmonica.

https://youtu.be/ojRZ6oXrCF4

Thanks for your comments, Edvin. Regarding the advantage you described, of being able to shift the Staggered Reedplate slider whilst playing: it's true when compared to the SlipSlider Mk2 (Special 20 version), but in the MK1 and Mk3 SlipSliders I added Teflon spacer plates, which allow the lower dra...