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From: Pat Missin
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 18:16:45 +0100
Subject: Re: augmented triad tuned chromatic

Winslow Yerxa writes:

>I built one of these out of a Koch 980 in 1971, thinking that to learn
>this you only need to learn 4 key positions. Later, Richard Hunter
>published a similar idea (where the harp is tuned to the complete
>whole-tone scale, not just the augmented triad). He proposed it to
>Toots Thielemans, and Toots said he didn't think it would necessarily be
>any better than solo tuning - you'd gain some things, but you'd lose
>things, too."


Richard Hunter writes:

>plug by noting that it is included in my book "Jazz Harp"; perhaps someone
>else -- even me -- can do so?). I will add to Winslow's comments the
>previously unpublished fact that the person who originally proposed the
>whole-tone tuning to me was 1976 European Solo Diatonic Harmonica champion
>Chris Turner.

Just for the record (and in light of the recent copyright thread), the
augented tuning chrom was patented in 1978 by Capper and Capper (UK pat#
2009999), again (!)in 1983 by J. Okumoto (UK pat# 2120442) and again (!!) in
1992 by Magic Dick and P. Beauregard (US pat# 5166461). Similar ideas are
also covered in a 1991 patent (UK pat #2259802), but Dr. John Yeadon.
Interestingly, he credits his inspiration to Olivier Messiaen's "Modes of
Limited Transposition", mentioned recently on harp-l by Wim, whilst
discussing his use of the augmented tuning.

The wholetone set-up was patented in 1950 by H.M. Stevenson (US pat
#2511302) and several reworkings of it were included In Dr. Yeadon's 1991
patent. It has also been mentioned in Harmonica Happenings (Winter 1980-81,
but I don't have a copy) and recently in HarpOz (this variation involves a
slide that raises each tone by a fourth). This set-uo was explored by James
MacKenzie, with his all-blow, twin-slide chrom (US pat# 3674910), but he
finally settled on the following sequence: C Eb F G Bb, which could be used
on the standard single-slide chrom in a variety of ways, such as

BLOW SLIDE IN C# E F# G# B C#
BLOW SLIDE OUT C Eb F G Bb C
HOLE NUMBER 1 2 3 4 5 6 etc.
DRAW SLIDE IN D F G A C D
DRAW SLIDE OUT D# F# G# A# C# D#

This has several "choice notes", a fairly consistent breathing pattern in
several keys, a variety of intervals for double stops - and different
arrangements of it would give you a different ranmge of possibilites. For
some reason, this was missed out of my collection of tunings. It will be
included in the next update along with several of it's variations.

While I'm here, I'd like to add a couple more comments on the subject of
crediting one's sources. I got a mention in the small print (and a verbal
thank-you on the CD) of Tom Ball's recent book about Sonny Terry's harp
style. This was to acknowledge my contributions to the book, which consisted
of an opinion about Henry Whitter's possible influence on Sonny's playing,
as well as sending him a tape of a student's private lesson with Sonny (a
copy of a copy of a copy tha has been circulating amongst harp-freaks for a
while now). Of course, I appreciated Tom's thanks (although I passed on the
tape and my opinions in the spirit of comraderie and sharing of knowledge -
not to see my name in print ;-)), but I feel I should publicly thank my
friend Bob Shatkin for passing the tape on to me and for providing feedback
on my Whitter/Terry hypothesis. Bob would like to thank Steve Guyger and Joe
Filisko for sharing the tape with him. Steve and Joe would probably like to
thank someone too (I think David Flack might have been a link in the chain,
as well), but I'll leave that to them. This could go on for a very long
time........!!


Pat Missin - pa~lobalnet.co.uk

"...my music's a lot better than it sounds!" (with apologies to Mark Twain)
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