Pentatonic tunings

[triona]

Can it be that you have mixed up something with your links?
I can see only 1 video with the orange configurated Seydel harp alone. (I could not hear, if it was the Eb-fourkey or the C-pentabender.) The other harp is missing. And both links lead to the same video. And the video with your friend on the harmonic minor harp is missing as well.


dear greetings
triona

[EdvinW]

For me both of the links work perfectly. The first links to a file that I download and play locally, and the second can be played in my browser.


It's interesting to hear the tunings in action! The double stops in the harmonic minor video work well with the genre!

[triona]

Now I have found the second video too - this one with the Eb-fourkey and the C-Pentabender in comparison. Maybe I did some wrong clicks yesterday , or there was any temporary malfunction in the line.

To my opinion the first try with the Eb-Fourkey sounded more fluently to my ears. On the second try with the C-Pentabender some of the notes (epecially some of the higher ones) sounded to my ears kind of more cramped and squeaky. The third take of your friend with the orange harp sounded kind of different in style, so that I could not compare it so good directly.


Thank you for sharing.

dear greetings
triona

[oldstudent]

Thanks Triona and Edvin for listening.
It is tricky to play the same song on two different tunings. But "cramped and squeaky" may be a fair description of my bending even on a good day! As I remarked earlier, I found at SPAH that people expressed much more interest in pentabender tuning than in fourkey tuning, but my weakness in bending makes me a poor representative for pentabender tuning.

In the past couple of months I have been working on jazz basics, where I need to be able to shift keys easily without getting caught up in bending, and so I have been playing mostly fourkey harmonicas.

[triona]

Then get along with the Fourkey, at least for the next time. If the example of your 2 recordings are representative for your playing, it proves that you sound better on the Fourkey, at least to my ears. Do not listen to what other people say and what they prefer. Play that tuning which is fitting best for your skills.

It might be not a mistake, to learn and practice bending and maybe mastering this one day. But you want to make music now. And you must chose the instruments that serve you best now, with the skills you already have now. Maybe this will change any future day, maybe not. But be glad that you have found a tuning you can play with today. This should not keep you away from learning anything new one day. But all in its proper time.


Have fun with your music.
And try to get better one by one.


dear greetings
triona

[oldstudent]

Thanks so much, Triona. Your kind words and wise advice are much appreciated!

[winslowyerxa]

As long as we're talking about pentatonic tunings, without trying to accomplish anything other than a pentatonic scale, there's the Magic Harp tuning that Pierre Beauregard and Rickard Salwitz patented back in 1993:

EG. AC. DE. GA. CD. EG. AC. DE. GA. CD.

This achieves the objective of having the draw note alway be higher than the blow note, and it delivers a range of nearly four octaves in ten holes. It doesn't always give you a full C major scale with draw bends, let alone much in the way of chromaticity.

But it does deliver something unusual and beautiful: chords voices mostly in fourths (aside from the G-C-E major triad that appears in two places).

I used this to compose and record a piece, Soulagement, that makes use of its unusual sound, which you can hear at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkpZaGISkF4

[oldstudent]

Wow! Thanks for sharing this! I am not sure what kinds of music they had in mind when they designed this Magic Harp tuning, but your Soulagement recording makes me want a Magic Harp too!

[Brendan]

Beautiful Winslow, thanks!

[oldstudent]

This is an old thread, but it's still a good place to let people know that I've been exploring the use of fourkey pentatonic harmonicas for playing classical music. Bach's "Jesu Joy" has been played on other harmonicas, but here it is on a fourkey:
https://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/ima ... su_joy.mp4
One piece that seems almost perfect for the fourkey harp is Grieg's "Morning Mood":
https://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/ima ... ngmood.mp4
To give one more nice example, here is a medley of themes from Bizet's Carmen:
https://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/ima ... _bizet.mp4
Suggestions for other pieces to try would be welcome!