Any tips on playing harmonica reggae?
Hey Winslow,
Wonder if you have some tips on playing harmonica accompanyment or solo, I have a friend who plays ONLY that and I'd like to find some nice parts for the harmonica on it. can you share some insight on the chord structure or general structure of this type of genre perhaps so it would be easier to "navigate" through random songs? or any other tip would probably help:)
Thanks
Awesome :) Thanks
Hey Winslow!
I stumbled in something called "Easy 3rd Do it!" tuning that seydel offers when purchasing new harmonicas, but I got some old ones that I wanna experiment on and retune them. trouble is, I don't quite understand the chart I was hoping you could help me figure it out, this is for a G harmonica;
I don't understand what the numbers mean, I know the pitch G/A/C/E and so forth, but what does 3, 4, 5 or 6 mean exactly?
Thanks in advance, looking forward for your reply
I think it refers to the octave of the note as it relates to piano keys. I'll be interested to see if my memory is still there.
C4 is Middle C. C5 is C above middle C, and so on.
Oh I get it... so it has nothing to do with Just Intonation/Compromise Tuning/Solo Tuning right? It can be either?
You're talking about three competely different concepts.
C5, C6, etc. is simply about how high or low an individual C (or any other note) is, or which octave it's located in. (In this system, the lowest note in each octave is the C. For instance, you'd have C4, D4, etc., up to B4, and then move on to C5, D5, etc.)
Note layout is the term I use to refer to what notes are in which holes and which ones are blow or draw. For instance, Solo tuning is the note layout used in most chromatic harmonicas. I avoid using the term "tuning" in this context because that term can also refer to temperament.
Intonation or temperament is the fine tuning of each note up or down by tiny amounts to make either chord notes or scale notes sound better - and the two often conflict, which is why we have just intonation (best for chords), equal temperament (best for pure melody) and the various compromise temperaments.
The diagram you sent is a note layout that also specifies which octave the notes lie in, but says nothing about temperament, which you can choose.
I think this is right (?) which could be handy for chording accompaniment. In reggea the accent of the rhythm is on the 2 and 3 of a four beat bar. That's what gives it that hmm chugga chugga sound. one TWO THREE four. one TWO THREE four.
Hope that helps.
First, let me make the disclaimer that I'm far from a reggae expert.
What I do know, though, is that it tends to use chords, both major and minor, that mostly belong to a single major scale. For instance, a song might use A minor, D minor, and E mnor, all belonging to the C major scale.
Reggae does not have a single dominating song form like blues has in the 12-bar form.
Standard major harmonicas have two major chords (such as C and G), one 3-note minor chord (D minor on a C-harp) and fragments of others (for E minor you have E and G, and also G and B of the E-G-B minor chord, while for the A minor chord (A-C-E) you have C and E together as blow notes).
For minor tunes or tunes with a lot of minor chords, natural minor chords might be useful.
The other major aspect would be to study the rhythms used in reggae, both by listening and by dialog with reggae musicians.