Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

IaNerd wrote:

"Another possibility is to have the slider transition some of the blow notes to what--in full Richter tuning--would have been their respective blow bends or overblows."

A good idea for those wanting to retain their overblow licks in familiar places on the instrument, but without the struggle of producing actual overblows: just push the slide instead. You could call it an Overblow Emulator!

I write down possible new tunings on my phone, and realise I wrote down some notes and a tuning diagram for this option a couple of years ago when talking with André Coelho about it (he can verify). Here's what I wrote:

OVERBLOW CHROMATIC (17 Jan 22)
A half-valved chromatic with slider notes tuned to emulate overblows and overdraws. It gives the diatonic overblow player a familiar note shifting arrangement (derived from the way notes play in a diatonic) in a chromatic harmonica form, but without having to master overbends.

This is the basic version, where the relevant slider notes rise to the same pitches as overbends in a diatonic. Blow slide notes in bottom two octaves rise to Overblow pitches, Draw slide notes in upper octave rise to Overdraw pitches.

The draw slide notes in bottom two octaves emulate normal Richter draw bends, blow slide notes in top octave emulate Richter blow bends. These mean that the slider 'overblows' and 'overdraws' can bend down to the scale note below. It gives bend enharmonics on lower 6 draws and top 4 blows. Nice sound...

RICHTER
slide in: Eb.Ab. C. Eb. F#. Bb. B. Eb. F#. B
BLOW. C. E. G. C. E. G. C. E. G. C
DRAW. D. G. B. D F. A. B. D. F. A
slide in: C# F# Bb C# E. Ab C#. F. G#. C#

Speaking of "emulators"

This I think was another Suyash Kumar idea, you could have slide-in emulate a slipslider slide left, so all draw reeds in the upper octave now bend.

RICHTER
slide in: G. C. E. G. C. E. G. C. E. G.
BLOW. C. E. G. C. E. G. C. E. G. C
DRAW. D. G. B. D. F. A. B. D. F. A
slide in: D. G. B. D. F. A. B. D. F. A


Though, maybe that would still be too confusing for people with years and years of richter muscle memory built up.

So perhaps combination of the x-reed overblow booster and allowing the draw reeds to still bend would be the easiest to adapt to:

slide in: C. E. G. C. E. G. G. C. D. G <-- gapped to zero
BLOW. C. E. G. C. E. G. C. E. G. C
DRAW. D. G. B. D. F. A. B. D. F. A
slide in: D. G. B. D. F. A. B. D. F. A

It plays like a normal richter, but pressing in the slide allows for easier overblows, and it also allows draw 6 through 10 to bend like the first octave would (I took a liberty on hole 9 to give it more than a quarter tone bend)