Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

I suggest ask here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/8073929 ... ?ref=share

Thanks Joshua, just saw this! I'm especially interested in any instrument that can bend notes, and have been inspired to try and advance the state of controllable note bending on harmonica by those which use it a lot - such as the dobro, erhu, and various Indian instruments. So I was fascinated to c...

Ah, thanks for the reminder

This is digressing a bit from the main topic of this thread, but anyway... Pat, I was having a look at your Double Leading Tone tuning posted above: Blow: C# E G B Draw: D F# A C# It could be adapted to: Blow C E G B C E G B Draw D F# A C# D F# A C# Forgive my ignorance, but have you posted this tun...

Good question, Pat! In all the tunings above, the most the basic scale allows are draw bends of 1 semitone. It's nice to be able to optionally bend them to two semitones. In some cases it would be great to be able to lower them further, to three semitones - which is possible with HFS, except that th...

An interesting alternative approach to the Half-Flat Slide would be to flip it! That is, instead of lowering the slide-in blow reed and making the slide-in draw the same as the scale note, do the opposite: make the slide-in blow the same as the scale blow note, but lower the slide-in draw below it b...

I've known about the TurboSlide method of getting these extra bends for years and used it occasionally, but the idea of partially retuning a chromatic to get the effect only came to me a few days ago. Whether on Half-Flat Slide chromatic or TurboSlide diatonic, it opens up a lot of beautiful new ben...

Good question Edvin... The magnet-induced pitch lowering on the blow reeds from the TurboSlide is less precise than the lowered blow tones you get by detuning the blow slider notes on a chromatic. The magnet-induced blow bends can vary in pitch a bit depending on how hard you blow. This can in turn ...

Bending notes is one of the most iconic and beautiful sounds of the diatonic harmonica. Soulful note bends are what give the harp that characteristic 'blues wail'; they also add important extra chromatic pitches missing in the primary scale. However, the amount you can bend a note is limited by the ...

David: I made your new Diminished-Sixth Modular Reed Harmonica, and it's in the post. What I found unusual was that all the blow notes are higher than the draws. I assumed you wanted a blow bend version, but reading your last post here I'm wondering if that's what you intended? Regarding pitch bends...