PowerBender Versus EdHarmonica

[rishio]

Thanks Brendan,

I wouldn’t even be playing harmonica if I didn’t stumble onto your website, learn about alternative tuning, and order a powerbender harp from you.

The reason I settled on Equal Temperment Paddy Extended* is because I started playing harmonica (first musical instrument really) at 40 and due to limited time available to me, I wanted something that was intuitive and approachable, designed around the pentatonic scale (which gives me the most music bang for my buck globally, and great for improvising), and flexible enough that it could scale for my lifetime (I didn’t want a baby tuning just for beginners). Basically, I really didn’t think I could get good enough at Richter Tuning as fast as I wanted, so I cheated. It’s not the best tuning for everyone and has it’s tradeoffs, but it’s ideal for what I want - and for better or worse - that’s what I’m invested in.

Look forward to your future inventions - especially with chromatic meeting diatonic. It feels like you are close to something big.

*I hope you don’t mind that I’m calling it Jam Tuning. Have no doubt that I’m not taking ownership or doing something business related with it. I just like the name for myself and will always reference where it came from. FYI, I belive Richard Sleigh messed with it in the early days too, but probably after you.

Thanks for the clip Rishio. It's great that you're happily playing ED Tuning still!

It is an excellent layout, for sure. As stated before, I made some harps in the 90s in the same tuning, but starting on a different note. In key of C it would be:

CD. EG. AB. CD. EG. AB. CD. EG. AB. CD.

(ED Tuning is the same, except starting on AB below the initial CD.) Originally I called this tuning 'Paddy-Richter Extended', but have more recently switched to the name 'Power-Hexatonic'.

AFAIK I was the first person to record with this tuning, in the track "Tom's Tune" on my 2004 album TRADISH. It's Track 9 on this link:

https://www.brendan-power.com/Tradish.php

If there's an earlier recording using my layout or the ED Tuning version, I'd love to hear it!

Like any harmonica tuning, it has plusses and minuses, but it's mostly on the plus side

[Brendan]

"FYI, I believe Richard Sleigh messed with it in the early days too, but probably after you."

Not sure about that, but I know Richard made some harps that repeated the bottom octave of Richter:

CD. EG. GB. CD. EG. GB. CD. EG. GB. CD

I asked him to make me one in the early 90s, which I called "The Slayer". I later retuned all the repeated G blow notes to A, which turned it into a repetition of the bottom octave of Paddy-Richter. Actually that's how my first version of the tuning we're talking about in this thread (whatever its name!) came about

[rishio]

Yes, you are right, he didn’t switch the blow G to A. I forgot about that. That was the one I was initially interested in playing around with, but decided triple bends on the 6th and 9th draw holes might make it too difficult, and double blow/draw notes everywhere was not ideal.