Twelve-hole slide harp with 3 PowerChrom octaves, 14 chords, and easy diatonic and octaves play

Anything apart from the two mainstream default harmonicas (Solo-tuned fully-valved chromatic, and un-valved Richter 10-hole diatonic). Alternate tunings, different construction, new functionality, interesting old designs, wishful-thinking... whatever!
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IaNerd
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Twelve-hole slide harp with 3 PowerChrom octaves, 14 chords, and easy diatonic and octaves play

Post by IaNerd » Wed Sep 20, 2017 5:23 pm

NAME: Not yet sure. Thinking about “Goldschmidt/Sowards Gen. 3 with PowerChrom octaves”

BASIC CONCEPT:
In the original “Goldschmidt/Sowards” tuning, I distributed the twelve semitones of an octave among three banks/layers of reeds, and among four channels/holes of the harp. There were no missing semitones and no repeated semitones.

In this version, I use three full octaves of PowerChrom-Plus tuning in the Slide Out layers. The PowerChrom octave eliminates the G#/Ab tone, because it is RELATIVELY less used in Western music than the accidentals F#/Gb and C#/Db. Observe the PowerChrom octave's characteristic repeat of the supertonic note.

WHEN/HOW: September of 2017. I have not yet have one made.

LAYOUT/DETAILS:

Thinking in terms of the harp having four banks/layers of reeds, I will show this specific example:

Layer for Slide-In Blow: The four PowerChrom accidentals C#, D#, F# and A#, repeated twice.

Layer for Slide-In Draw: One half (i.e. either upper or lower reeds) of Spiral/Circular/Zirkular/Helical tuning. In this example, we have: C – E – G – B – D – F – A, repeat.

Layer for the Slide-Out Blow: The Dm7 chord, repeated to the left and right as needed.

Layer for the Slide-Out Draw: The Em7 chord, repeated to the left and right as needed.

The Slide-Out layers have the following built-in chords (not diagrammed here, for brevity):
Slide-Out Blow: Dmin7 (or F6), Dmin, Fmaj.
Slide-Out Draw: Emin7 (or G6), Emin, Gmaj.

Observe how all the draw notes can be bent by one semitone. This makes playing NEARLY chromatically (and in the minor hexatonic blues scale in G) possible with or without the use of the slider notes.

Also, because the octave has been shortened from five channels long to only four channels (relative to my G/S Gen.2 tuning), playing in octaves is far easier.



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IaNerd
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Re: Twelve-hole slide harp with 3 PowerChromatic octaves, 14 chords, and easy diatonic and octaves play

Post by IaNerd » Mon Nov 27, 2017 8:35 pm

In another (related) topic, Brendan pointed out that the chords to the right side of this harp are too high in pitch to be very useful.

I believe I have solved this problem. Part of the solution is his suggestion to use side-by-side Big Sixes, so that the "chord layer" doesn't become too high in pitch towards the right end of the harp. And so I offer this:

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