Which 10 hole diatonic Harmonica key for this song ?
I was trying to figure which key harmonica to use to try playing
the song 'A Thousand Suns ' by the Guru Ganesha Band.
I think the C#/Db Harp, or would you recommend
a different key ?
Thank you for your time
Steven Barta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYylcHszrM
BTW, I just purchased your new edition of 'Blues Harmonica for Dummies ' - Pinted and Kindle edition.
I had one of the older versions and then I saw that it had been updated this year.
Thank you for your time
Steven Barta
Pretty song. A fairly typical I-V-vi-IV chord structure (Think a lot of country ballads, like, possibly, "Whiskey Lullaby.") D-flat major. A very popular key for singers and choral arrangements, perhaps because the piano player can just play all of the black keys and sound right. I'll leave the harp analysis to Winslow, but it would seem with a Db/C# diatonic in first position, most notes would work. If playing a Gb/F# diatonic in second position, you might want country tuning to get that C-natural 3rd for the V chord. BTW, nice video. Looks as if it was filmed out in the Joshua Tree area in California. If these folks are US-based, what do we need to do to get the band, plus vocalist Paloma Devi, together with Aki Kumar?
Yes, it's in Db major. Both the chord progression and the melody are entirly within that scale. (Pretty song!)
A Db harmonica would give you access to the melody notes and two full chords, Db (the I chord) and Ab (the V chord) and fragments of Gb (the IV) chord and Bb minor (the vi) chord.
If you wanted to improvise over the chord progression, a Db harp would give you a scale with no avoid-notes.
However, a Gb (aka F#) harp could play the main melody in second position and sound more fluid than first position on a Db harp. But there's a flat 7th in the scale (full Draw 2 bend, Draw 5 and Draw 9), which might sound wrong in the context of the song and would likely need to be avoided. A country-tuned F# would give you the best if both worlds.
Thanks re the book, by the way, though the new edition is mostly a cosmetic refresh.
Can you supply a link to the song so I don't have to go hunting for it?