Pitch Bending amped harmonica with a handheld expression pedal
Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2025 4:21 am
Coincidental Timing with Brendan's Midi Pitch Bender,
I've been working on some handheld experiments for changing the pitch of amped harmonica:
Here's a quick demo video:
https://youtu.be/oQarDqO116U
The most straightforward way to do this is to use something like a digitech whammy or other pitch shifting pedal, but I wanted something I could hold in my hand for more fine grained control than my foot.
While in the middle of that I came across a "digital whammy bar" meant for guitar, but as you can see in the video it works just fine for harmonica as well. In the video I have it set to be able to bend a whole tone down and a perfect fourth up. This thing, while working well for both the guitar and the harmonica gives me confidence to continue building my handheld expression controllers for pedals that take expression input.
What I need now is to design and print some good way to mount the things to my mic.
In a similar vein...
I've also started building my own handheld momentary switches to add pedals like pitch shifters or octave pedals or harmonizers into the chain only when the button is pushed. These will make for some cool effect opportunities when I get them working as I expect. Once I get something worth showing I'll post it here. I already made a working "poor man's" version of the Digitech "Hammer On" Pedal using a cheap Donner Octaver pedal and a momentary switch, so I know I'm on the right track.
I've been working on some handheld experiments for changing the pitch of amped harmonica:
Here's a quick demo video:
https://youtu.be/oQarDqO116U
The most straightforward way to do this is to use something like a digitech whammy or other pitch shifting pedal, but I wanted something I could hold in my hand for more fine grained control than my foot.
While in the middle of that I came across a "digital whammy bar" meant for guitar, but as you can see in the video it works just fine for harmonica as well. In the video I have it set to be able to bend a whole tone down and a perfect fourth up. This thing, while working well for both the guitar and the harmonica gives me confidence to continue building my handheld expression controllers for pedals that take expression input.
What I need now is to design and print some good way to mount the things to my mic.
In a similar vein...
I've also started building my own handheld momentary switches to add pedals like pitch shifters or octave pedals or harmonizers into the chain only when the button is pushed. These will make for some cool effect opportunities when I get them working as I expect. Once I get something worth showing I'll post it here. I already made a working "poor man's" version of the Digitech "Hammer On" Pedal using a cheap Donner Octaver pedal and a momentary switch, so I know I'm on the right track.