Brendan Power & Alternative Harmonicas Forum

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Thanks Rishio for your in-depth comparison of the two tunings, ED/PaddyExtended and PowerBender. As stated elsewhere I have explored both going back quite a few years, and and have recorded albums with each.

As with all harmonica tunings, they each have their pluses and minuses. You make some good logical points in favour of the former, which I certainly wouldn't argue with! However, with music, logic is not everything...

On the consistency of octaves: this can be a double-edged sword, in my experience. Certainly, as you say, you have the familiarity from octave to octave, which means it will be easy to repeat the same licks and phrases throughout the harp. This can be seen as a plus, as it clearly is for you! However over time it could also lead to monotony in your sound - both for you and the listener. That's because favourite licks and patterns will inevitably repeat themselves over and over in all three octaves. That's the whole idea, I guess!

With the Richter/PowerBender division of the harp into three distinct octaves, each one has a flavour of its own, with different strengths and weaknesses. Sure it means that each octave is a world of its own that needs learning and exploring, but it also means licks will come out differently in the three octaves. That will (also inevitably) give a more variable sound output than with a tuning which is the same in all three octaves.

It's a subjective choice whether that's good or bad. I talked about this with Howard Levy once, and he genuinely likes the three quite different octave layouts in Richter.

But it doesn't have to be a binary choice between one tuning or another. By converting your entire harp collection exclusively to ED/PaddyExtended, you seem to have decided it needs to be - but one could argue that approach is unnecessarily self-limiting. Personally I like to use several different harmonica types and tunings depending on the circumstances and style of music. However I know many players find that too confusing.

Again, it's subjective, as anything to do with music will be! Would love to hear what you're playing on your new harps sometime

This is an interesting discussion, but with music, words only go part of the way - musical examples can be more viscerally effective in making a point.

As noted earlier, I like to use several harmonica tunings/types and choose between them depending on their effectiveness in different situations or musical styles. Even within a style, I find certain tunings will work better than others depending on the piece of music.

For example, in my 2016 album PufnSaw (http://www.brendan-power.com/PufNSaw.php) with Old Timey fiddler Jane Rothfield, I used a mix of PaddyExtended, PaddySolo, Solo, PowerChromatic and PowerBender. For all the tunes we recorded I tried various tunings/harps till I found the one that fit the best. Here are some examples:

On "Cumberland Gap", Paddy-Richter Extended/EdHarmonica in x-reed format worked best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmYC2cO8n8s

But on another Old Timey classic "Over the Waterfall", I found a Solo-tuned x-reed harp was better suited:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DGHG4lBCTI

On Jane's "Cute Little Tune", half-valved slide PowerChromatic was the one for the job:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l3POdY0SMw

I honestly couldn't have played all those tunes with the fluidity/bends/precision I was after with just one harmonica type or tuning, whatever it was. Unfortunately there is no perfect harmonica tuning! Either you choose just one and live with it, good and bad, for the sake of simplicity - or you keep a few tunings handy to suit particular styles/pieces. Swings and roundabouts, different strokes for different folks. I know which side of the fence I'm on, but also that it's a minority choice: the vast majority will prefer the single-tuning approach. If you're going to choose just one harmonica tuning, PaddyExtended is a nice option for all the reasons rishio describes.

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Well said rishio. Just three harps, huh? You win hands down on that count, without a doubt! And what you say about delving deep into just one tuning makes good sense - it's certainly worked for Howard Levy.

I look forward to hearing some tracks from you when you're ready to share

Brendan wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 4:08 pm ... there is no perfect harmonica tuning! Either you choose just one and live with it, good and bad, for the sake of simplicity - or you keep a few tunings handy to suit particular styles/pieces. ... I know which side of the fence I'm on, but also that it's a minority choice: the vast majority will prefer the single-tuning approach.

I find myself too on the same side of the fence like Brendan. But I have found out as well, that my choices eventually often turned out to be a minority choice.

I surely will try this ED tuning within the next time. Sounds quite interesting what you have written, and could be that I like it too. But I am quite sure that it never will be the only one I like to play.

The argument with minimal baggage on travelling is beating for itself. And if you can do all of the music you ever like to play with just only 3 harps, you have all my respect. But I would not like to limit my choice on this minimum for all opportunities where I like to play music. But if I want to travel or even only to go out with merely a small handbag, I always have a long brooding in advance till I can decide which 3 or 4 harps I take with me, depending on what I expect what there might be played on the upcoming opportunity.

Just one time when I visited a festival with Martin's trumpet bands, I took only 1 harp with me - my CX-12 in C. It was the only one of all of my harps which I could play loud enough to keep up with a smaller band of Martin's trumpets (or a brass band) without any electrical amplification. And the key of C is sufficient for these, considering the CX-12 is chromatic anyway.


dear greetings
triona


edit: silly typo corrected

Since the EDharmonica is basically a triple Paddy minus the Richter, it seems the Paddy Richter Lucky 13 would give you two octaves of the EDharmonica tuning with the possibility of a change of pace up top.
Or you could take an A lucky 13, and by a little retuning get a proper EDharmonica layout in C/ Am in two octaves and do whatever you want up top. Double Paddy with Solo or something else up top might be nice, or...

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rishio wrote: ↑Sun Dec 30, 2018 3:48 am FYI, if anyone wants to try ED without messing with tuning, amazon sells them for $30 which is a pretty good deal for the buck (designed by easttop - search edharmonica). I prefer buying reedplates from Seydel.

I recommend this too.
And if I want to save money with just trying any new tuning, I take an old harmonica laying around in some drawer which I do not really play any more and retune it. Those new tunings which I want to play seriously after a first test I buy in high quality.

rishio wrote: ↑Sun Dec 30, 2018 3:48 am I personally like the size of 10 holes and since ED tuning starts on the A below the C, and is slightly more than 3 octaves - I get enough of the low and high to meet my needs musically. Infact, 10 holes feels just about perfect for me.

And considering travelling with small luggage the 10 holes have the advantage, that they fit into any of the current belt bags (i.e. gig bags) or alike, small handbags, side bags of a back pack etc. Very convenient.


dear greetings
triona

Thank you Rishio for the well thought comparison! It has served as nice holiday reading and food for thought

Getting by with few harmonicas is something I can relate to, though my approach is quite different. I generally carry two or three different tunings which I play in a handful of keys and modes. I mostly play by myself, and if I run into someone they'll have to adjust. To me, the different tunings are so helpful to give different feeling to the various songs that this makes up for the lack of keys. But as you regularly play with others, being able to play in any key definitely seems like a more reasonable configuration.

There is one thing that puzzles me though: Why don't you set them up to play diatonically in ALL keys? The G-harp and the A-harp overlap, in that both are capable of playing in keys G and D, while none of the three are capable of playing in keys B or Bb. If you would instead use, for instance, ED-tuned harps in G, Eb and B, you would be able to play not only pentatonic scales in all keys, but full major and minor scales, and even some more exotic scales in some keys.

EDIT: Writing the paragraph above I was confused about how EDharmonicas are labelled: I thought of the diagram at the end of your post showed a G-harp! This means the keys you miss are Eb and E. (I write more about this in a later post!)

Another thing that crosses my mind is that most of the points you make in favour for the ED hold for other tunings as well. To keep ALL the advantages you want, without a doubt the ED is a good choice, but as I'm myself not that a skilled bender I can't help but think how I would solve the problem of playing in all keys with at most three harps. The following is thus not to be taken as criticism to your approach, but rather as an account of some personal thoughts that your post gave rise to.

I have recently started to experiment with repeating variations of the following pattern, found for instance in the PowerChromatic: The above tuning can be played in C, G, D and A (and their respective parallel minor keys) using 1, 0, 1 and 2 bends, respectively. This covers a third of the circle of fifths, so if we accompany the above tuning with harps that use and We can now play in any key with at most 2 bends per octave:

Keys A, Db and F require 2 bends.
Keys C, D, E, F#, Ab and Bb require.
Keys G, B and Eb get by without any bends at all!
(of course we could choose another partition of the circle of fifths if we are not happy with which keys are the most comfortable.)

Also, none of the keys would have their root note as a bent note, which I with my limited bending skills would be troubled by.

One drawback with doing it this way would be that the range on any one harp would go down from over three octaves to two octaves and a fourth. This could be important for some people, but I'm personally not that bothered by it.

Thanks again for the inspiration, and have a happy new year!