[Harp-L] Re: new diatonic tuning for chromatic play with chords

[Roger Myerson <myerson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jim:
Like you, I feel no urge to switch from fourkey tuning to this twokey 
tuning with chords.  I have come to appreciate fourkey tuning as an 
intuitive versatile instrument for melodic play, and the lack of good 
simple chords did not bother me at all.  But I sensed that many people 
feel that chords are an important part of what a harmonica should 
provide.  I was trying to prove that it was impossible have the melodic 
power of fourkey tuning with chords.  But instead of proving this 
impossibility, I found this twokey tuning with chords!

Among the four keys of a fourkey harp, I like best to play in the two 
keys that have 5 notes of one breath direction and only 2 in the other 
(C and A in a C-G-D-A fourkey).  With pentatonic fourkey tuning, I find 
that melodies often run up and down with unchanging breath direction, 
and that makes it easier to sound good!  But the two keys of this twokey 
harp each have 4/3 divisions on breath direction.  So going from four 
keys to two keys is certainly a cost, and the change here is essentially 
eliminating the two keys that I liked best.
I was able to design a fourkey that has a major chord in the nice 4th 
position key (A in a C-G-D-A fourkey).  But it only has that one chord, 
no alternative minor chord.
http://www.slidemeister.com/forums/index.php?topic=1205.msg62359

Now let me say something about where I put the tonics.  A 10-hole 
harmonica with 5-hole octaves certainly can feel narrow.  You have a 
range of only two octaves and it's easy to start and then find yourself 
wanting to play off of one side or the other.  In this environment, 
where you place the tonic of your major keys can be important.  The old 
convention is that the tonic of the major key should be the low note on 
the harmonica.  But how many tunes start on a low tonic and then just go 
up higher.  "Do-a-deer" is the only such tune that I can think of!  Most 
songs that stay in a key do not just wander in one octave between two 
tonics, instead the tune usually wanders above and below a tonic note 
around which it will finally come to rest.  So I thought it desirable to 
have at lest one of the major tonic-to-tonic octaves be somewhere in the 
middle of the instrument when I have only two octaves.  So the design 
that I suggested for a C-G chord twokey has the G major tonic-to-tonic 
octave well centered, and the A minor tonic-to-tonic octave is also 
centered, placing the C major tonic-to-tonic octave rather high in the 
instrument.  The fourkey harp that I have been playing for the past two 
years has G major, A minor, and C major placed exactly this way in the 
instrument, and I have found it very convenient for playing most tunes 
that I know in at least one of those keys.  The key on my harp (D) that 
has a tonics at the high and low end of the instrument is the key for 
which I most often find difficulties staying within its 2-octave range. 
 But of course this depends on what I have been trying to play, and 
others who play more kinds of music might see it differently.
-Roger

On 6/2/2011 10:42 AM, Jim Hanks wrote:
> Roger,
>
> Intriguing idea, but having just gotten started with the fourkey layout,
> I think this layout would drive me nuts. The fourkey is different
> enough, but at least with the "draw note always higher than blow note"
> it is "consistent" in a way that helps get the layout in my mind. Maybe
> "muscle memory" would take over but especially if I was trying to play
> your "twokey" and fourkey, I think I would get hopelessly lost.
>
> Another advantage of fourkey (in my opinion) is that the "C" root is
> typically in either hole 1 or 2 giving more notes in the "C" scale.
> Having the root note in blow 5 would be weird for me. You could slide
> your layout to the right (and without your hole 1 fix) like this:
>
> BLOW C E F# G# A C E F# G# A
> DRAW D D# F G B D D# F G B
>
> but then you lose one of your G chords.
>
> I dunno. Having those two chords doesn't seem to outweigh the downsides
> enough for me to switch from fourkey.
>
> Jim
>
> Roger Myerson wrote:
> > BLOW D F# G# A C E F# G# A C
> > DRAW E F G B D D# F G B D
> >
> > I think that this is new. Have you seen this tuning or anything like
> > it before?