Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

Yes, valves make the low blow reeds play much more strongly.

When I played in the Riverdance Show in the 1990s I created a whole batch of bizarrely tuned slide harmonicas to enable me to play the music as written. Bill Whelan's score had some very tricky parts that could not be played at tempo on any conventional harmonica, but these altered chroms allowed me...

Thanks for the ruminations on this topic people, interesting and helpful. I was away in India for a while and laid low with Giardiasis since I got back, but am recovering now and getting back to various projects - including this one. I sent off some reedplates for slicing into strips by a couple of ...

Play 10 hole draw on a Richter harp with a very light breath. In fact all the upper-octave draws on Richter work best with a light breath. The tendency for many players is to suck hard on them as they do with the draws in holes 1-6, but that is counter-productive. Alan: the tunes are available digit...

Glad you're enjoying "The Entertainer" lesson Sachlaw, and thanks for the encouragement to do more PC lessons. Will do!

Yes, can do.

Robert: there is a way to input tunings here. Please check this thread on the subject:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20

This is a copy of a post on Modern Blues Harmonica: -------------- Just for the record, there is nothing 'new' about the ED Harmonica tuning. It's simply the bottom end of Paddy Richter or Melody Maker repeated up the harp - except they start the scale on the A instead of the C. The website says 'Pa...

No need to do all that, just use a Hering 5140 slide. And as CrawfordE noted, you could try a slide from one if the Hohner or Koch 10 hole chroms. In fact, just swap in their entire mouthpiece/slider assembly.

I agree! I think harmonica players should adopt it as the preferred notation for our instrument, which comes in all 12 keys. Far more logical and easy to use than standard notes. I wish I'd known about it a long time ago when I lived in London and was doing regular sessions. I made my own cod versio...