Harpninja vs harmonica tunner how to#

If the diatonic harmonica is so great, why doesn’t everybody play it? If you want to go further down this rabbit hole, check out this forum post on alternate tunings, and join the conversation! Diatonic Cons Missing Notes?! And if that’s not enough for you, they’ll make any other custom tuning you want to dream up! Seydel offers a harmonica configurator for many tunings: Harmonica Minor, Will Wilde Rock, Will Wilde Minor, Orchestra, PowerBender, Power Draw, Pentatonic, Paddy Richter, Major Cross, Circular (1st pos.), Circular (2nd pos.), Diminished, Augmented, Bebop Tuning, Four Key, Dorian, EDHarmonica, Country, Easy 3rd / Do It!, and Whole Tone. More recently, Brendan Power developed the PowerBender and PowerDraw tunings, both of which attempt to layout the top 4 holes of the harmonica, in formats more similar to the bottom 6 holes (where the most expressive playing happens in the traditional Blues approach).įor other alternative tunings, Seydel is the best company to order from, but their cheapest offering at the time of this writing is nearly double what you pay for a harmonica like a Lee Oskar or a Special 20. Whether it’s a cowboy by a campfire, or a bluesman in a juke joint, bending is that soulful wailing sound, which mimics the cry of the human voice, and is the sound that made so many of us fall in love with the sound of the harmonica in the first place. Bending notes is a technique which allows the player to change the pitch of a note by changing the shape of the inside of their mouth. The diatonic harmonica is the only harmonica on which you can achieve the most expressive bending of notes. Just randomly blow or draw any set of notes on a diatonic and you’ll be playing lovely sweet chords without even thinking about it (try doing that on guitar or piano!) And just like one of those cheesy ads: “wait – there’s more!”…

Harpninja vs harmonica tunner how to#

Not only are diatonic harmonicas very inexpensive, but (compared to chromatic harmonicas which have a spring-loaded button on the side that moves components inside of the harmonica) the simplicity of design and strength of materials used to construct diatonic harmonicas means that they are the most durable harmonicas, and will often last for years, or even decades! The Ease We Loveīecause the tremolo harmonica requires more air to play, and because the chromatic harmonica requires that you have to learn a ton of music theory, the diatonic harmonica is undoubtedly the easiest harmonica to learn how to play.Īnd because it’s harmonized to a specific key, it’s also difficult to play “wrong” notes, which means it’s easy to start sounding great very quickly. But even professional-level diatonic harmonicas (which are great for beginners too!) are often around $50-$100 bucks.