Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

I recently retuned a Richter major harmonica to double harmonic scale. With that kind of tuning, I get a very exotic middle eastern sound somehow similar to Lee Oskar Minor Harmonic, but with more bright major-ish chords. With that kind of tuning, I can easily play Misirlou (theme from Pulp Fiction, which is originally middle eastern folk song). I can also play arab music and flamenco music.

Here's a chart of my modified A major harp. If you compare it to orignal layout, you can see that some draw reeds must be lowered of one semitone.
Blow |A |C#|E |A |C#|E|A |C#|E|A
Draw|Bb|E |G#|Bb|D |F|G#|Bb|D|F

Edit: Here are two a videos showing what it can do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6cL2_tN7S8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8huE7evuSPk

Thanks for sharing.
Looks very interesting and worth a try.
Quite easy to retune, just the B down to Bb and the F# down to F, at least 5 reeds altogether.
I like mideastern music and flamenco etc.


dear greetings
triona

Yes, exactly 5 draw reeds. I might post a video showing what that kind of tuning can do.

Looks really interesting!

You might want to consider retuning 2 draw two semitones down, from E to D, as the E is already represented at 3 blow, and it would make the chord on the draw notes more consistent, Bb7 ( Bb | D | F | G# ).

I really had to look up this tuning, I found this on http://musicianshangout.com/Music/Theor ... /776?key=A

A Double Harmonic (A-Bb-C#-D-E-F-G#)

Scale Name A Double Harmonic
Modal Group Name Double Harmonic
Mode Sequence 1
Degrees 1-b2-3-4-5-b6-7
Note Names A-Bb-C#-D-E-F-G#
Note Count 7
Other Names

Bhairav Thaat
Byzantine Major Gypsy
Hitzazkiar
Hungarian Folk
Mela Mayamalavagaula
Raga Paraj

Cheers,
Karl

Thank you for your feedback! Yes, that would make sense. It would be something similar to the transformation applied to convert to paddy richter, but on 2 draw instead of 3 blow.

I just added a video in my original post.

Here's another video showing that kind of tuning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8huE7ev ... e=youtu.be