[Harp-L] Reedles MIDI accordions - why not harmonicas?

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

The subject of a reedless MIDI harmonica that is breath-sensitive and could be played in any range or tuning has come up many times on the list over the years, with reference's to Walt Miller's Millioniser or to the uncompleted work of Ron Schille, who seems to have vanished.

However, this is old news in the accordion world. I've witnessed accordion players onstage using a squeezebox pretty much as a MIDI "execution interface" much as you would a keyboard, but also using it to get a sound like that of a reall accordion. Roland makes a whole line of electronic reedless accordions, complete with the accordion equivalent of alternate tunings.

Now a guy in Windsor, Ontario is doing the same thing for diatonic accordions, which are tuned almost exactly like diatonic harmonicas:

http://www.johnsaccordionservice.com/

It raises for me the question of why nobody is adapting this existing technology to harmonicas.

Winslow

Winslow Yerxa

Author, Harmonica For Dummies ISBN 978-0-470-33729-5