20-10-2008 Last Night's Fun

click more info for more info.....
I'm trying to learn all the tunes from Noel Hill's 1988 album 'The Irish Concertina' to get a better understanding of what's possible playing chording style on the harmonica. Most people play single note style for Irish music, but I love the rhythm of the chords and it's just a lovely and chunky way of playing....try it.
It's played on a Hohner Special 20 in the key of G. The recordings I have were strangely in G flat, so I used a program called Transcribe! to alter the pitch to be able to learn it more easily.
As usual, Noel plays it about 25% faster.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• theloveboxquartet
• theloveboxquartet2
• irish
• harmonica
• solo
• reel
• Noel
• Hill
• acoustic
• last
• nights
• fun

[theloveboxquartet]

When I said 25% I probably meant 50%!

[honeydawg]

Very nice... I'll have to find that recording! Do you simply use the stock compromised tuning on SP20's, or do you retune them in any way?

[theloveboxquartet]

Hi, I don't retune them from the original richter pattern other than to get the reeds to the right note. I experiment a bit with the different techniques for improving the harmonicas themselves...like embossing, arcing and gapping, but my attempts are far from perfect and I'm using old harmonicas which doesn't help.

I like Special 20's because the mouthpiece is flat and protruding (sticking out), shame the MS system has the reedplates protruding instead, as they are cheaper to service cheers

[tookatookatoo]

Joel, you can get replacement reedplates for the Special 20's too. Try Harmonicas Direct, he stocks them. £12.95 per pair. Great playing as ever.