I’ve got a friend who is looking to take up irish music on harmonica. I’m trying to help him decide what instrument to get (being that I’m on the inside) and we’re having a bit of trouble deciding. I’ve made myself very familiar with SteveShaw’s website concerning irish music on a diatonic, and I’ve done a lot of research into irish on a chromatic, as well. The way it’s going, if he were to do the chromatic, it would be a B/C, where the slide lowers the pitch by a half-step. A bit like a B/C melodeon, I suppose. I like chromatic for the ornaments and for the flexibility, but diatonic doesn’t seem like a bad choice either.
So if any of you harmonica-ists out there have an opinion, we’d love to hear it.
Though I play diatonic harmonicas most of the time I have done a bit of thinking about chromatics. I can send you a bit of info/opinions off-list if you like (it’s too long-winded to post here) if you send me a private message.
In a nutshell: if your friend is a consummate master of the chromatic, by which I mean he can play in any key with equal felicity, then by all means get a B/C harp. Brand-wise you will find your options extremely limited in that key-combination. Several of the best players of ITM on chromatic use harps with the slide reversed, i.e. when you push the button in the note goes down a semitone instead of up (this is what you describe - I assume you knew you were describing a reverse-slide setup). Of course, you can just buy a harmonica in any key and turn the slide over yourself, but you won’t end up with keys that you can then take along to a session and join in with. Ideally you would need a C#/D harp and/or an F#/G harp. The lower pitch in each case is the “button-in” key. A fair few of the “top” chrom players use the reverse-slide setup, e.g. Eddie Clarke, Mick Kinsella, Jean Sabot and a guy called Don Wessels http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/wessels Don uses a Hohner chrom tuned to G (slide out)/F# (slide in) throughout his CD. Your friend should take a look at Brendan Power’s website http://www.brendan-power.com for other ideas - he’s full of 'em, though if you buy one of his (superb) harps it’ll set you back a tidy sum!
Back to my twenty quid cheapos…
Steve
Hi!
My 64 year old father has been faking his way with Scandinavian tunes and songs on harmonica all his life.
I got him this a few years ago:
He managed to get a few tunes down very quickly but still gave it up in the end. I guess ITM wasn’t his kind of music.
/MarcusR