Holiday Tunes - Chordomonica

Compilation of traditional Christmas carols and Chanukah songs played on the now-rare Chordomonica, a harmonica which offers six chords through the use of two buttons. While this is a limited selection of chords, these are among the most commonly useful ones, and enable the player to beautifully perform a large number of familiar tunes: Stephen Foster, Carols, and various other old favorites. (It is not ideal for blues and such.)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Christmas
• Chanukah
• Dan LeMaire-Bauch
• Dan Bauch
• harmonica

[RoryHoffmanMusic]

These are fun instruments. I just had one made for me by Seydel. It's a re-tuned chromatic basically, so it doesn't have 2 buttons. However, I customized the tuning of the harmonica so that by tongue blocking I can get way more than 4 chords. My tuning is G6, C6, D7, D6. So, on the G6 for example I can get GMaj, Emin, and of course g6/emin7. C6 gives me Amin CMaj, Amin7. I went for the D6 instead of the diminished chord so I could have a Bmin instead, which I find more useful.

[freereeder]

Thanks for the details. I have also thought of different tunings. For instance, you could lower the blow hole 4 and 10 one step, giving you a Idominant7, a chord that I do miss having. And you could convert the dim7 to a II dominant 7, another very useful chord. Furthermore, you don't have to tune all octaves the same, and so on. Quite a few possibilities, if youi think them out. But tongue blocking makes it trickier to play, of course. I don't really plan to be a Chordomonica specialist!

[freereeder]

Many thanks. Incidentally, it was the chord on "Shineth" in "Little town of Bethlehem" that first got me interested in harmony and theory, many long years ago. It should be a III7 , which, unfortunately is not available on the Chordomonica!.

[MeTheUnfamous]

Hey, I just posted audio of my version of Begin the Beguine, which I did totally with harmonicas, including the custom Seydel I had mentioned. I was using my other channel when I made that comment, but the Begin the Beguine is in this channel. You might enjoy it. Now I'm thinking about having 2 more made, and designing some sort of holder that will hold all 3 of them, at which point, I'd be able to play almost any song that would come to mind I'd think.

[edonmusic]

Nice video Dan. I must get to a meeting soon. Been missing you guys.

Don Hayek