[Harp-L] legato

[Music Cal]

It is often said that one of the quirks of the harmonica (I play chrom
only) is that for some pitch transitions, in particular ones involving a
change in breath direction, playing legato is difficult.

Questions: To what extent can this deficit be overcome or masked? What have
you done (besides pitch layout changes) to overcome or mask this limitation?

Thanks,
Daniel

[phil...@aol.com]

The famous Doug Tate, former SPAH president, used to say the trick to faking legato on the harmonica to make the "smooth" or easy notes rougher so all notes are equally rough. That way the "easy" notes don't stand out from the changed breath notes.

He is the guy who invented the Renaissance chromatic harmonica and was quite adept at playing classical pieces. He also wrote a couple of books about repairing and playing harmonica. I heard him speak several times at SPAH, so I con't know if this tip was in his books or not.

Obviously there is no easy solution unless you count changing the musical piece to a key that lies better the harmonica for THAT piece. I don't recall whether he ever suggested this, but he could have. Transposing was no big deal for him.

Hope this helps,
Phil Lloyd

[David Fairweather]

Another approach to the issue of legato is to adopt an altered tuning that
minimizes changes of breath. The "LeGato" Chromatic is a pentatonic
tuning which lets you change breath direction pretty much whenever you WANT
to as opposed to when the harp layout dictates you HAVE to. It has other
advantages and disadvantages as any altered tuning is bound to have. But
it is my preferred chromatic tuning and if you heard me playing any
chromatic at SPAH 2014, you were hearing the LeGato Chromatic. If you
want to try one, you can order one from Seydel's configurator.

[The Iceman]

I enjoy creating legato lines by following through with my breath in each direction, which makes for long tones.

[Music Cal]

Hi David

Thanks for the response. Don't take it personally but I have no interest in
switching to the legato tuning. However, since I have not looked at the
legato pitch layout in detail, and since I am curious type, would you tell
me a bit more about the pitch layout. In particular could you answer this
question about the pitch layout: Of all the transitions between two notes
what fraction can be done without a breath change? What is that fraction
for the solo pitch layout?

Daniel

[David Fairweather]

Daniel asked:

"Of all the transitions between two notes
what fraction can be done without a breath change? What is that fraction
for the solo pitch layout?"

I'm not in the mood to do math right now. Let's just say every note in the
chromatic scale can be played either as blow or draw except Bb, B, Eb & E. Bb
& Eb are strictly blow. B & E are strictly draw.

All these features are well discussed on Slidemeister. No need to repeat
them here. Just look up "Fourkey" or "LeGato" over there and you'll find
all the information you need.

[Roger Myerson]

If I counted correctly, a chromatic with standard Solo tuning has 4
notes that are only blows, 6 notes that are only draws, and 2 notes that
can be played either way. So if you pick two randomly sampled notes,
the probability that they can be played in the same breath direction in
Solo tuning is (4*5/11+6*7/11+2)/12 = 63.6%.

In a chromatic with with Legato tuning, 2 notes are only blows, 2 notes
are only draws, and 8 notes can be played either way. So if you pick
two randomly sampled notes, the probability that they can be played in
the same breath direction in Legato tuning is (2*9/11+2*9/11+8)/12 = 93.4%.

Of course you don't really want to talk about random pairs of notes.
Smooth transitions between notes that are close together may be
particularly important. Some calculations about those can be found at
http://www.slidemeister.com/forums/index.php?topic=3132.330
-Roger

/From/: David Fairweather, on 12 Aug 2014

--
Roger B. Myerson, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Economics, University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
Phone: 773-834-9071, Fax: 773-702-8490
http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/

[Music Cal]

Roger

Thanks for the calculation!

So with Legato 93% of all transitions require a choice to be made between
the two ways in which the transition can be played. It would be interesting
to measure/estimate the time spent making this choice (including context
switching) so that the fraction of time spent making this choice (say for
eighth note phrases) at varying tempos could be estimated. At what tempo
is 50% of one's time spent making such choices during improvisation?

Daniel


On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 9:39 PM, Roger Myerson <rmye...@uchicago.edu>
wrote:

[Richard Hunter]

Music Cal wrote:
<So with Legato 93% of all transitions require a choice to be made between
<the two ways in which the transition can be played. It would be interesting
<to measure/estimate the time spent making this choice (including context
<switching) so that the fraction of time spent making this choice (say for
<eighth note phrases) at varying tempos could be estimated. At what tempo
<is 50% of one's time spent making such choices during improvisation?

May I suggest that the time spent making that calculation would be far better spent learning to improvise?

Regards, Richard Hunter