#Diatonic vs chromatic harmonica how to#

They also play sometimes in third position (D on a C harmonica, for example), using the D minor chord in Holes 4-5-6 as the home base, and also sometimes in firswt position (C on a C harmonica). Players tend to use second position (playing in a key five steps up from the labeled key, as in C -D -E -F -G = 1-2-3-4-5) most of the time.

In this case that would be Bb (Draw 3 bent down one semitone), Db (draw 1 or 4 bent down 1 semitone) and F natural, which is built into the instrument. Rather, you mainly use that C harmonica to play in G (this is known as second position), where the notes of the G chord are all available as draw notes in the first four holes, and can be bent down in pitch to create the blue notes used in that key. Getting back to your question about Eb and F# on a C diatonic. Meanwhile, the diatonic tends to be the preferred harmonica by most blues players, many of whom will use chromatic a few times in the course of a performance to introduce some variety. That tends to be the province of jazz musicians. But few blues harmonica players have taken it all the way into playing in all keys. It's also been used in mainstream blues to play in its labeled key, and in second position. The chromatic wasn't introduced into blues until the early 1950s in Chicago, when Little Walter one saw one in a music store, bought it, and proceeded to create a new style based on the inhaled D minor chord. The diatonic can make sounds that can't really be duplicated on the chromatic.

So the diatonic harmonica actually played a part in forming the sound of the blues during the 1920s, and the music to some extent is shaped around the sound of the diatonic harmonica. It was intriduced in 1910, was relatively expensive, and was sold mainly in cities to people who could afford them. And in the early days, the chromatric harmonica didn't even exist. Early blues often was made on homemade cigar-box guitars, jugs, and even washtub basses. Rather, they're notes that are most often embedded in other, larger note sets that we think of as scales.īlues iintially developed as largely rural southern music made by poor black folks that didn't have much money, and a five-cent diatonic harmonica was something available and affordable at the beginning of the twentieth century. The blues scale is a sort of a fictional scale, and is really just a way of connecting the three so-called blue notes, the flat third, fifth, and seventh.īut those notes aren't used al the time. You don't say which blues scale contains those notes. That you are aware of these flatted pitches in the blues scale (e.g., as you note, Eb and Gb/F# in the C major scale) indicates that you know some music theory, which you'll find gives you a real leg up as you start this journey. But very soon, if you follow David's lessons, you'll learn about basic bends, which give you that Bb and Db, i.e., flatting the 3rd and 5th steps of the G major scale, on a C harp.

#Diatonic vs chromatic harmonica how to#

And while real experts (of which there are few, and they've taken years, if not decades, to learn how to do it) can play just about any note on any key of diatonic harmonica through 'bending' and 'overblowing' (which causes the reeds to sound pitches they aren't necessarily designed to play normally), with a C diatonic, you'll most likely start playing blues in the key of G, using the harp for what's known as 'second position.' And there are lots of blues you can play just with the straight blows and draws in the C major scale that work for blues in G. Winslow will clarify (and knows more than most of us would if we worked on this for 1,000 years), but in the meantime: Both diatonic and chromatic harp get used for blues, but they are very different animals in both sound and technique. Zahavi1: Welcome to the wonderful world of harmonica, and of the blues, and of the great place where the two meet! You're really going to enjoy the learning journey.