Paying all the notes with a diatonic harmonica ?
Hi !
I'm very new to the harmonica world (I'm a piano player at first). I buyed a Honher c diatonic harmonica that drove me to this great website, thanks to the advises of my local music shop.I wanted to play a simple music I like (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veW6SBcUeSU, without the polyphony of course) on the harmonica and realized that it's not simple as that (no to play clean notes, but figure it out where the notes are). So I wondered, is the diatonic the right choice for me ? Is it possible, with all the advanced techniques to play this simple or whatever melody that are not necessarily blue or rock ? I'm ok if it take time and efforts if I can play these type of melodies at the end.
Thanks in advance for your advises,
Antoine
ps: Sorry for my grammar and stuff, you surely have noticed i'm not an enflish speaker :)
A big thanks for your advises !
I buy myself a Honher Chrometta 12 holes that I tested few hours so far. I found some difficulties in tongue blocking as the holes are much bigger than my diatonic model. I have the impression I have to - I don't know how to explain this - put more tongue out of my mouth to really block two holes with. So I'm less accurate, but I guess it's matter of habits.
Anyway, do the lessons of bluesharmonica still apply for chromatic ?
Thanks again,
Antoine
The Chrometta is not a good harmonica for tongue blocking, I'm sorry to say. The holes are too big! They are much bigger than the holes on most chromatic harmonicas, and even I find it difficult to isolate single holes well on the Chrometta, and I have been playing chromatic harmonica most of my life!
The Chrometta has a sweet tone, but in addition to its hole size, the distance that the slide travels when you push the slide in or let it out is longer than on any other chromatic harmonica. This can slow you down when you try to make quick note changes with the slide.
One way to use more of your tongue for tongue blocking is to use the top surface of your tongue to block instead of using the tip of your tongue. This lets you cover a wide area without pushing your tongue too hard against the harmonica.
The linked piece is in E minor and would lie reasonably well on a G harmonica, rather than on a C. When playing music on the diatonic harmonica, choice of harmonica key to fit the melody is your very first decision.
it's true that even in the key of C major, a C diatonic will not give you all the notes of the basic scale, with F missing in the first octave and B in the last. Both require bends to create the notes. And for notes outside the scale, either bends or overblows are required. And all keys of diatonic will have the same note layout, transposed to that key, and the same missing notes and required technique to created them.
Some player choose to use the diatonic to play music that requires bending and overbending, while others prefer to use the chromatic harmonica. The choice is very poersonal, and even with one person, it may vary according to the music being played.
The disadvantage of using the diatonic, in addition to mastering these techniques of pitch creation, is the ability to deploy them rapidly in complex sequences, and then to make the resulting line musical, when each note has a different timbre due to the different means of production (and even blow notes sound different from draw notes on a diatonic).
The advantage with the diatonic is the urgency and pungency of its sound.
The chromatic harmonica presents no difficulties in producing any note in the chromatic scale and fewer difficulties in putting htem into note sequences. And it has much greater consistency of tonal quality among all the notes. But its overal sound is more polished and less earthy that the diatonic. Again, the qualities of the chromatic or of the diatonic present alternatives that may direct your choice in any particular situation.