From: Philhar~ol.com Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 12:37:30 -0500 Subject: Re: Which notes to read?/long
Hi Tracy: You asks the question about relating musical staff to the harmonica. IN brief: where is middle C? Is it Blow 1 or Blow 4? The short answer is Blow 1 (except for the 64 chrom). If this is so, why show middle C on Blow 4? The 2nd short answer is "ease of reading." (See Winslow's post for more info on the theory vs. pragmatic aspects.)
The difference between the books depends on what kind of music is being played. Most Mel Bay books are designed to play melodies on holes 4-7 or above. If they were to render middle C where it actually falls, they would have to use leger lines. Leger lines are the extra lines that go above the five line treble staff (when you run out of lines & spaces). (Cross harp is often written in key of G, as per C harp.)
Reality check: So what? The author uses Blow 4 as middle C because if all his tunes fall within an octave, then all the notes willl fall within the five lines of the treble staff. This is done because most harp books don't believe there are any usable notes in the low octave, even for straight harp songs, because bends are required to create those "missing" notes F & A.
I recently saw a book (same as its older edition but with CD added) that showed an entire song written in the bass clef only because the notes used the bottom octave (holes 1-3). This is probably the dumbest thing I've ever seen in any music book or harmonica book! I've been playing piano for decades, so I can read the bass clef. But rendering a song in the bass clef (to be played on a treble instrument) is simply stupid and cruel.
Anyone with a little bit of common sense ( and a basic understading of music) would know to simply render the music on the treble clef with the 8va an octave higher than written> and if that is too obtuse, simply put a note on the page: "For this song, we will use Blow 1 as middle C for ease of reading."
I think Mike probably covered some of this stuff, but it deserves to be repeated.
1. Reading on the harmonica is not very difficult. 2. Anyone who can read tablature can read music. (When you see a 3v in your tab you have to know where to play that on your harp by feel, you can't "see" it like most other instruemnts, you have to "know " where it. 3. Anyone who can count to seven can read music: ABCDEFGA . 4. The harmonica is a transposing instrument, so reading in the key of C will take anyone very far, just switch harps to change keys. 5. The first step is to find where the notes are on your harmonica: CEG CEG CEG C (there are no spaces on the harp, but with a space between the "ceg" you can see that the pattern repeats. 6. Learn where these notes are on staff and the harp: C=Blow 1 or 4; E=2 or 5, G= 3 or 6 (also draw 2). These notes are all blow notes. That takes care of half the notes. 7. If the note is not a C or an E or a G, it is a DRAW note anywhere on the harp. 8. The five staff lines: are EGBDF; spaces FACE (filll in blanks below: space below first line is D, so "inside and outside" the staff spaces are D FACE G. 9. The middle C is "outside" and "below" the staff and looks like it has a spear through it. 10. Flats lower the pitch; sharps <#> raise it = a half step. (The distance between frets on guitar; keys on piano is a half step. 11. Those things that look like fractions are like speedometers/tachs; 4/4 tells you it has 4 beats, each worth a quarter note. Even if you don't "read" music you can still use the "note values" to figure out the relative speed and duration of each note. 12. SO take 2 weeks. So what if it takes you five weeks?. It's sure a lot easier than the internet and getting on the Harp List and you've already done that.. 13. Others books of interest, all short and with lots of pictures: Learning to Read Music by Robert Lilienfeld (Barnes & Noble) Learn to Read Music by Howard Shanet (Simon & Shuster) The Basic Guide to How to Read Music by Helen Cooper (Perigee Books) 14. Reading music is basically no different than touch typing. When a person sits at a computer keyboard, he does not think, "Hmmmm, I guess I will now type the letter A, and then the letter N and then the letter D. He does it in an almost automatic fashion. 15. Like I said earlier, if you can read tab, anything is possible. 16. Sure, it's easy for me. I learned piano in the 4th grade. We also had some of it in school. I always thought everybody could read music. It never seemed like any exotic skill to me. Now, algebra, chemistry, physics--I can barely spell them, and thank god I only have to teach it when I sub in high schools. 17. By the way, reading music is not only good for classical music. If you can read music you might be able "learn" a song faster than by listening to the CD 100 times. 18. Sure, not every "cool" song is available in music notation; but even fewer are available on tablature! 19. Remember, the first step of learning is confusion. 20. Also, you don't have learn all this stuff in 2 hours, 2 weeks; everyone has a different style of learning and some of us understand this stuff faster or longer, depending on our background and host of other influence. 21. I've never heard any musician say that learning to read music was the worst thing he ever did.
