Re: [Harp-L] Really excited about my diminished harp!

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"John Kerkhoven" wrote:

<Speaking of alternate tunings, many moons ago Richard Hunter posted how 
<to make a Dorian minor harp out of a minor and major harp. To wit:

<"Use an A natural minor.  Take out the blow plate, and put in a blow
<plate from a standard D harp.  Done.

<The harp now is in A minor dorian when played in second position.  In
<first position, it's D mixolydian."

<Yesterday I finally tried this.... Very cool.

Tunings like the Dorian minor, Natural Minor, and Country tuning are 
easy to make and use, and they're really not very radical in terms of 
how the notes are laid out--the same scale degrees are in the same 
places, they're just altered scale degrees compared to standard Richter 
tuning.

I saw a lot of fairly radical alternate tunings at this year's SPAH, 
ranging from James Conway's diatonic drone harp setup to a chromatic set 
up to play a major +6 chord all the way up and down.  Such radical 
tunings demand a lot more from the player to understand the real 
potential of the tuning, but the sound is the evidence that it works. 
And obviously it does.

I also heard sneers from various people at SPAH about Natural Minor 
tunings and so on. Whatever, man.  The audience doesn't know what tuning 
you're using.  The audience doesn't know which of Joni Mitchell's 
50-plus guitar tunings she's using on a given song, either.  They only 
know whether it sounds good.

But I generally think I don't need to spend a lot of time defending 
alternate tunings anymore.  They're everywhere.

Regards, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com
harmonica blog on http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp
Latest mp3s always at http://broadjam.com/rhunter