harpdog123 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:30 pm
Is this G? (A/B C/D E/F# G/A A/B) That's how is labeled on Seydel's website. What other keys do you use or do you play everything on one harmonica?
While waiting for a response from Brendan, here are my 2 cents on the topic.
What I like to do when faced with these kinds of questions is to:
1. Grade the different keys on a harp that I know
2. Draw a part of the circle of fifths and mark the keys
3. Copy the pattern of my grades, shift it around and see how different sets of harps cover the keys I want
I've never played PowerChromatic on a real harmonica, and since bending isn't the same on a DM48 the first part of my procedure is just my best guess based my experience with similar tunings in diatonics. To illustrate what I mean, say we come up with some grading. Assuming the slide raises notes one half step, with the notes you describe the major keys of Eb, C, G and D look really nice, and the key of A looks fairly good too. Their minor parallels seem about as good.
We then get a pattern like this
where ++ means very good and + means OK. There are 12 keys, and to make sure that each key plays very well on at least some harmonica, it turns out that we need four of them. If you already have one in G, the additional keys of E, Bb and Db would cover all the keys:
Code: Select all
G E Bb Db Total
Db ++ ++
Ab ++ ++
Eb ++ ++ + ++++++
Bb ++ ++
F ++ ++
C ++ ++ + +++++
G ++ ++
D ++ ++
A + ++ ++ +++++
E ++ ++
B ++ ++
F# + ++ ++ +++++
In each column, I've shifted the pattern of grades to correspond to the key at its head. The keys of C, A, F# and Eb stand out, as they work very well on two harmonicas and OK on yet another. If you don't care so much about playing in the keys of F#, Db or Ab, you could throw out the one in Db and make do with three harps. The instruments are after all chromatic, and the keys will be playable still.
*
Another option with three harps would be to "spread them evenly" over the circle of fifths, i.e. to have one every 4th key. This would look like this:
Code: Select all
G B Eb Total
Db + +
Ab ++ ++
Eb ++ ++ ++++
Bb ++ ++
F + +
C ++ ++
G ++ ++ ++++
D ++ ++
A + +
E ++ ++
B ++ ++ ++++
F# ++ ++
Still fairly good coverage!
As I said though, my experience with chromatic harps in this tuning is non-existent. I encourage you to grade the keys on your one harp first, to see which ones are your favourites, and then make a similar table, if you haven't already done so.
If you think some of the keys would make the harp too high or too low, this could be remedied by shifting the whole pattern to start on some other note in the scale. For some discussion on shifting, see my final post of the following thread:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=317#p1947
Edit: Added the part after the *