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Comparison of three tunings in the context of playing blues

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:53 pm
by IaNerd
MAIN IDEA: To compare three tunings in the context of playing blues.

DETAILS:

This analysis comes with its own set of rules/constraints/assumptions/caveats. All analyses do. If a person wants to look at things in a different way, they certainly may do so and I for one would be happy to learn from another perspective.

1. In this study, I will NOT take into consideration overblows, valves, sliders, Xtra reeds, magnets, relativity, force fields or ectoplasm. All of those factors plus many others will be discussed in a later topic entitled "The One True Harmonica".

2. Facts are facts. How we evaluate--or place value or meaning on those facts--gets subjective in a heartbeat.

3. I am not much of a harmonica player, much less a performer. Please, please, please do not be tempted to judge ANY tuning by how well I would play it. Such a test would automatically result in a "false negative" result, because I can make ANY tuning sound like crap. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

4. I mean no disrespect to any player, tuning designer, tuning, or style of music. My purpose here is to try to encourage thought and light, not heat.

5. There is no #5.

6. The following analysis is fairly complex. Despite my best effort, I think it's likely that some of you will find factual errors. Please pm me and I'll try to make it right as soon as I can.

7. "BSN" will mean Blues Scale Notes, i.e. the minor hexatonic blues scale. In G this would be: G -- Bb -- C -- C# -- D -- F -- G.


Okay, here it goes (diagram corrected and refined on October 1 and again on October 2, 2017):

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