I am to be taking part in a production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat in November; I can hold a tune and I play harmonica by ear (no jokes please), but have never learned to read music.
Among other bits, I will be singing the solo parts in the song One more angel in Heaven, which is no problem, but I also want to put a harmonica solo in the bridge.
The producer tells me the tune is in F Major (which means almost precisely nothing to me), what key harmonica (blues harp, not chromatic) do I need in order to be in tune?
I had simply assumed that I would need one in F, but I have reason to suspect that it may not be all that simple.
I am not familiar specifically with the harmonica but if it produces the tone of the F Major scale and the tune is in F Major, then you will have all the notes necessary to solo over any chords created by that scale. Will you be improvising or putting the solo together beforehand? Congratulations and if you tell me where the Kingdom of Butter is, perhaps I’ll come see the show.
According to Hohner, the blues harp gives you the natural notes of the scale without any sharps and flats.
So you cannot always transpose.
I’ll be preparing the solo, but I need to actually buy the right harmonica; I one in C and another in E, plus a chromatic one (with which you do get all the sharps and flats, but you have to press a button on the end and it’s really hard to get the hang of) that I never really got along with.
Well, I guess according to what you quote Hohner you need an F-harp.
You could play in C and be mostly right, but you’re going to have to skip over every seventh notes (B- Ti in the C-scale) because it is a half-step too sharp in the C scale. Your E-harp will most likely do you no good.
In theory, the chromatic harp allows you to play in any key. You’ll probably do well by yourself to learn the F-scale on it. Don’t know how much time you’ve got though.
I am not familiar with that song, but you have multiple options.
One is to play a major-scale solo on an F major harp, as KidC and JS suggest. This is correct in theory but may or may not be the sound you want.
If you want more of a blues sound, you would want to play a minor pentatonic blues scale even though the key is written as major. In a nutshell, that means you need an Ab major harp, which will allow you to play F minor, which includes the F pentatonic scale (used for blues).
(If a blues harp is straight diatonic as Hohner says then it won’t include the flatted 5th, which is the “blue” note added to a pentatonic scale. This would be the B (Cb) for an F min or Ab maj blues scale, but is not in the key of Ab major. Sorry if this is hard to follow.)
I’m not a harp player but this site looks pretty good and might help answer your question better. It says
That implies that you might want a Bb harp and use this technique to play in the key of F.
Best thing would be to find someone with a lot of harps and play F, Bb, and Ab ones against that tune and see if it’s the sound you want. I imagine that stores don’t allow you to try harps for health reasons.
Music stores usually have a little bellows device so that you can listen to the general tone of a harmonica before purchasing, but you can’t really play them on it.
Check out Lee Oscar brand harps (leeoskar.com) – they make harps in different arrangements of notes (‘tunings’). One called the Melody Maker may be more to your liking – it has more of the notes in a major scale reachable than standard diatonic harps. I have one and it does indeed sound different.
While it’s true that for sanitary reasons, stores will not allow you to try out harps, many have a bellows-like device that blows both in and out – it would let you get some idea of the note arrangements.
For an orchestral piece, I suspect that playing straight harp might be best - “position 2” or “cross harp” techniques are used in pop, to produce a “blues scale” with flatted notes as indicated above.
Sometimes I think I’m the only straight harp player left on the planet. One thing you MAY be intersted in if you are using an F harmonica - traditionally, diatonic harps are made with the lowest key being G, meaning that an F harp is “dog whistle” range - too high, in my opinion. HOWEVER, Lee Oskar makes a “Low F” (and a “High G” for the people that LIKE dog whistles). I like playing in folk position key of D chords on guitar, capoed on the third fret to take it up to F, with that low F harmonica.
Another thing you might just make SURE of - harmonica, like guitar and piano, is a “C” instrument. That is, the note scored as a “C” for it is actually a “C”. Some instruments, like horns, are Bb instruments which play a Bb pitch when playing a scored C. A orchestral piece actually has to be scored in different keys to have these instruments play together. I believe that the key associated with a piece is always given as the key played by the C instruments, but you might double check what the producer meant.
(I also am going to be in a production of Joseph this November! I’m the pianist for the show).
While CookingWithGas is right about the Ab scale giving more of the F “blues scale,” it won’t work quite right with that song.
With the Bb harmonica, you’ll get the flat 7, but also retain the 6th tone of the scale (while the Ab harmonica would have dropped that note a half step). That’ll help you keep that country feel to the song.
Also, the chord changes to Bb somewhere in there (the chord, not the key), and an Ab harp will make it really hard to play with that because of the Db note in that scale as opposed to just a plain D in the Bb scale (that’s that same 6th tone of the scale).
:smack: Oh damn my complete lack of musical knowledge!; none of these terms mean much to me at all and I’ve just looked at the range of harmonicas available in the Lee Oskar range:
Lee Oskar Harp Bb Major
Lee Oskar Harp Bb Minor
Lee Oskar Harp Bb nat Minor
Which one? Which one?
I will have to learn this, but it’s not going to happen overnight.
Well I’ve been enlightened a bit on harmonica’s by the post’s proceeding my first and I’m gonna have to second Eonwe’s advice given what he/she(?) says about the tune. If the song is country you’ll want to the 6th. And there is nothing worse than a bluesy solo where it’s not apropos to the song. BTW check this place out - the message board looks pretty well populated as well - http://www.harmonicalessons.com/index.html
Which one?