HAPPY ACCIDENTS: the Law of Unintended (Good) Consequences
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 9:13 am
We all know the story of how Richter tuning, created by a German in the 19th Century to play oom-pah music on the harmonica in 1st position, turned out to be magically wonderful for playing wailing , soulful Blues music when the harp was played in the 'wrong' key.
2nd Position blues harp was born, and the instrument was transformed! What amazing serendipity! It's as if an alien beast was lurking inside the little instrument the Germans innocently created for their pure folk melodies, that only got discovered after Afro-Americans picked it up and found a way to make those reeds bend and howl.
We owe a lot to the first unknown player or players who hit upon this startling capability, and then developed it into a style and a sound that has sold millions of records - and billions of harmonicas. Every one of us today is following in their footsteps.
And even so, after harmonica players had been bending notes for many decades, it wasn't till the seminal study by Australian Robert Johnston in the 1980s that we actually grasped the true weirdness of what goes on when we bend. It turned out the note we thought was making the bent note wasn't - it was the other reed of opposite breath! Utterly bizarre, and truly magical.
Overbending was yet another alien beast lurking inside the humble diatonic harmonica, that stayed hidden for much longer. Will Scarlett was the first to reveal it systematically in the 1970s, and left recordings to prove it, but he didn't have the ability to customise his harps to the level required for reliable overblow playing and gave up in frustration. (Will moved on to invent the X-Reed harmonica - but that's another story...)
It was the confluence of great harp techs like Joe Filisko and the musical genius of Howard Levy that finally unlocked this second genie from its bottle. Using overbending, Howard and his followers are taking the basic un-valved Richter diatonic to even further degrees of separation from its origins in 19th century Germany.
What would Herr Richter and his fellow German harmonica creators make of it all, I wonder? Once they got over the shock I'm sure they'd be pleased as punch to see the little instrument they shaped making so many undreamed-of new sounds.
In my own small way I've had some similar happy accidents: unintended good consequences from new tunings or designs I've created that only revealed themselves after some time. More later...
2nd Position blues harp was born, and the instrument was transformed! What amazing serendipity! It's as if an alien beast was lurking inside the little instrument the Germans innocently created for their pure folk melodies, that only got discovered after Afro-Americans picked it up and found a way to make those reeds bend and howl.
We owe a lot to the first unknown player or players who hit upon this startling capability, and then developed it into a style and a sound that has sold millions of records - and billions of harmonicas. Every one of us today is following in their footsteps.
And even so, after harmonica players had been bending notes for many decades, it wasn't till the seminal study by Australian Robert Johnston in the 1980s that we actually grasped the true weirdness of what goes on when we bend. It turned out the note we thought was making the bent note wasn't - it was the other reed of opposite breath! Utterly bizarre, and truly magical.
Overbending was yet another alien beast lurking inside the humble diatonic harmonica, that stayed hidden for much longer. Will Scarlett was the first to reveal it systematically in the 1970s, and left recordings to prove it, but he didn't have the ability to customise his harps to the level required for reliable overblow playing and gave up in frustration. (Will moved on to invent the X-Reed harmonica - but that's another story...)
It was the confluence of great harp techs like Joe Filisko and the musical genius of Howard Levy that finally unlocked this second genie from its bottle. Using overbending, Howard and his followers are taking the basic un-valved Richter diatonic to even further degrees of separation from its origins in 19th century Germany.
What would Herr Richter and his fellow German harmonica creators make of it all, I wonder? Once they got over the shock I'm sure they'd be pleased as punch to see the little instrument they shaped making so many undreamed-of new sounds.
In my own small way I've had some similar happy accidents: unintended good consequences from new tunings or designs I've created that only revealed themselves after some time. More later...