Non-Chromatic Chromatic?
Wed, 08/28/2013 - 10:59
I have a customer at the music store I work at who is having a lot of difficulty getting started on chromatic harmonica. He is mainly a tremolo harmonica player, and recently purchased a 64 Chromonica. He seems to be having trouble figuring out the tuning of the instrument and is wondering if there are any harmonicas that will play a chromatic scale without bending that is NOT a traditional chromatic. I can only order Hohners at the store where I work, and I see they make an orchestra harmonica called the Chromatica, but I can't find too much info on it. Any advice on how to help this customer would be appreciated. Thanks
The Chromatica/Polyphonia models (they used to come in several sizes and ranges) have one semitone per hole.
For instance, Hole 1 might be C, Hole 2 might be C#, Hole 3 might be D, and so on.
Some models were all blow notes, others would give you the same note on both blow and draw.
This arrangement gives you a complete chromatic scale without a slide, and lets you slide from one note to another through the chromatic scale, but makes some things difficult:
-- Moving cleanly from one note to another without sounding the intervening chromatic notes is hard, so players and arrangers simply incorporated that "glissando" characteristic when the instrument was used, thereby relegating it to a specialty role.
-- Moving to a note more than one or two holes away is a necessity, but because notes are spaced so far apart, it's hard to land accurately on the target note (hence all the glissando sliding between notes - you can hear when you arrive at the target).
I think your customer would be better served by getting some orientation, and maybe a good chart of where the notes are on the chromatic harmonica; for instance:
http://archive.harmonicasessions.com/feb05/chromatic.pdf
http://archive.harmonicasessions.com/feb05/ChromaticTab.pdf
http://archive.harmonicasessions.com/aug05/chromatic.pdf