baroque harmonica and power chord harmonica

[triona]

Coming from this I would like to report some old ideas of mine:

Slide-in One Fourth Up (or Down)

I am experimenting with this idea since several years. Since its arrival in 2016 I play the Seydel Sampler. This is a double-diatonic with a slider to interchange between 2 keys. It is substantially the same as Brendan's discontinued Irish Session Harp (ISH). Meanwhile I play the Seydel Sampler and the ISH in several default key combinations.

The 2 keys are just layouted one fourth / fifth apart. This allows to change between two diatonic keys without changing the harmonica, only by a push of the slider. Usually this is thought to change the key between the tunes of a set or between two parts of a tune (e.g. AABBAACA or alike). Therefore Seydel is furnishing the Sampler with a slide lock to avoid unintended change of keys while playing a tune. Brendan omitted the slide spring completely on the ISH for the same reason.

But since I began using the slide frequently while playing the tune to get nice forth/fifths jumps and trills and alike, I removed the slide lock on all of my Samplers and attached a snare to the slider of the ISH, where I could hook in a finger to move it out suddenly when I want to pull it out and push it in and out ... frequently.

I found out that this is fitting especially to baroque and renaissance style music. Here is a little improvised tune with my Sampler D and A mixolydian. Both of those keys contain exactly the same notes. (I am sorry for the poor sound quality. It is recorded live with a smartphone out of the audience from quite a far distance, in a festival tent where there was much talking and laughing among the audience.)

Triona - Fantasie Barock Teil 2
Klingenthal, Mundharmonika Live, 22.09.2019
https://soundcloud.com/triona-966519605 ... rock-teil2


And the next step following this idea was leading to a entirely different outcome. I took a Sampler in standard tuning D+A and removed the slider entirely and replaced it by a normal mouthpiece of a chromatic. This allows to play straight power chords provided by the fifths/forths i each hole. Brendan has heard me playing this monster of volume in Klingenthal. Maybe he can remember. I played it with the band - without any amplification. If you play it with broad tongue block (octave split or more) you hear the power chord sounding by 4 reeds or more. If I play it for more than half an hour my head is ringing and spinning.

The downside: This setup allows only chordal playing. Single notes can not be played. I tried to heal this by using a nonslider mouthpiece instead of the standard chromatic mouthpiece. I intended to get the choice either to play a single note by using only one hole or to play the power chord by using the 2 holes above each other in order to change fluently between power chords and solo playing like on a guitar.

But this did not work as I had intended. It allows to play single notes indeed. But the split up air stream through 2 of the holes of the nonslider mouthpiece is far to weak to bring the power chord to full sound like it does with the chromatic mouthpiece. So I put this project on hiatus.


dear greetings
triona

[Brendan]

Thanks for the sound clip and interesting ideas, Triona. That power-chord harp sounds fun!

There is a way to make a slider that plays just one hole or both holes. It can be used to play single notes and an octave or, in your case, single notes and a fifth down.

A classic 270-type slider has a series of holes in a zigzag pattern, 12 holes on each row. If you make the top row with all sequential holes (24), that row will always play whether the slide is out or in. The bottom row will block the notes with slide out, and open them with slide in. That's when you get the power chord!

These sliders are not commercially available, but they can be made from existing sliders. The simplest way is by drilling the extra holes, then making them bigger with filing.

[triona]

No wonder that just you appreciate the idea of a Power Chord Harmonica.


This is the slider of my Sampler which I had removed:



I think it is pretty much the same design as on the old Hohner 270. And it is fitting exactly to my Sampler from which I had removed it. (And it can easily be flipped around to change from fifth down to fourth up without further efforts.) Are the holes on the bottom picture correctly the way you meant? The red marks show where I suppose the additional holes have to come to. Did I understand this allright?


Btw, if anyone should mix it up: The soundfile "Fantasie Barock" is not played with the Power Chord Harmonica. It is played with a fully equipped Sampler with default slider, retuned to D + A mixolydian.


dear greetings
triona

[Brendan]

That's correct Triona!

Assuming of course that the primary scale (eg. C) in on the top reedplate, and the 4th down secondary scale (F) is on the lower reedplate. If the reedplates are reversed, so should the slider be.

This kind of slider could easily be made at the factory with laser cutting - but since it doesn't yet exist, you can use drilling or milling to make one out of a standard slider.

I look forward to hearing how it comes out