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| Moderated by: Richard Hefner |
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| Cross Harp - Harmonica - Other Instruments - ezFolk Forums | |||||||||||||||
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rvjimzhr Approved
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I have been tinkering off and on over the years with a chromatic harmonica but am very much a rank beginner still. I've been watching a group of country/bluegrass jammers which includes one harmonica player. I told him I was interested in learning to play. He told me that he rues the day he learned a 'straight' harp. He says the cross harp is the way to go. He says it's confusing to learn cross and much easier to play the straight. BUT he says learn cross and you won't have to mess with bending on a straight. I want to play country and bluegrass and want to try one harp to see if I can learn it and like it soooooo he suggested a Lee Oskar Melody Maker in D key. If I like it and want to continue, get more Lee Oskars in A, C, E and G. So I have ordered the Melody Maker in D and am waiting patiently for its arrival. I'm starting to have second thoughts and am tempted to go buy a straight harp while I wait but I am resisting the urge. I am interested in any thoughts that others have about my situation. Thanks! Jim
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Richard Hefner Administrator 
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Hi Jim, Your friend gave you excellent advice! Many people start out by learning "straight harp" and are frustrated by its limitations, so then they learn "cross harp" and find that there are limitations there too. What the Lee Oskar Melody Maker does is completely eliminates the need to learn "straight harp" at all (which is pretty useless anyway) and go straight to playing cross harp. It takes it an important step further as well by eliminating most of the difficulty with cross harp by substituting 3 notes that enable you to play most melodies because those notes fit into the major scale of the key you're playing in. The only advice I would have given different than your friend is that I would have recommended you start out with a Melody Maker in the key of G, mostly because that's what I use in the ezFolk tutorials and you could have played along with me on those. I've recently added 3 simple video tabs for the MM on this page... http://www.ezfolk.com/harp/index.html I wrote a much more detailed explanation about the Melody Maker harp that you can find on this page... http://www.ezfolk.com/harp/intro/intro.html Pay special attention to the diagram at the bottom of that page that shows the difference between the Melody Maker in the key of G and the standard diatonic in the key of C -- there are only 3 notes that are different! That means that as you're learning to play the Melody Maker you're learning to play cross harp except for those 3 notes. What that does is that it makes it simple to play cross harp on a standard harmonica, so if you want to play a blues tune in the key of G you can just pick up a standard diatonic in the key of C and play it without any problem -- you'll already know the basic note positions since there are only 3 different notes. This is a tremendous advantage over learning straight harp then trying to learning cross harp. As anyone who's done it can tell you, it's frustrating because all of the notes are layed out differently. I think the reluctance of people to try the Melody Maker is because there is no instruction for it (other than the small amount on ezFolk). All of the books, DVDs, etc. are for standard diatonic harps. That's understandable up to a point, but keep in mind that once you learn the basic techniques and are familiar with the layout of the notes, you won't be limited by books or DVDs or any of that. It becomes natural like singing or talking to just play what you want to play without depending on written music or numbers or anything else. Does that make sense?
____________________ Richard Hefner Webmaster, ezFolk.com MP3 Page: http://www.ezfolk.com/audio/richardhefner Running Blog: http://old-runner.com |
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rvjimzhr Approved
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Thanks Richard for your reply! It all makes perfect sense. My MM should ship by Monday and I will play with it some and then if I am sure I have the determination to stick with 'cross', I will go ahead and order a G harp also. It's killing me not to just go out and pick up an inexpensive straight harp to fiddle around with and practice playing in 2nd position but now I know that that would be a bad idea so I will wait. I will enjoy following this forum as I try and learn to play. Thanks for all your help. Jim
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Richard Hefner Administrator
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Jim, You SHOULD go get a standard diatonic 10-hole harp and start learning cross harp. It's not a bad idea at all because what you learn playing cross harp will help you with the Melody Maker (and vice versa) since the note layout is the same. Since most of the instruction you'll find (books, videos, Internet) will use a C harp be sure that's what you get. Just be sure to stay away from the straight harp playing (a complete waste of time), so as you're playing the C harp you'll be learning to play cross harp in the key of G. Once you get your G Melody Maker you'll see that it's almost identical to the standard C diatonic. You don't have to play the Melody Maker exclusively -- each of these will complement the other -- and all of the playing techniques you learn as you're learning cross harp will transfer over to the Melody Maker.
____________________ Richard Hefner Webmaster, ezFolk.com MP3 Page: http://www.ezfolk.com/audio/richardhefner Running Blog: http://old-runner.com |
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Jim Yates Approved 
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Richard, I'm surprised to hear you say that learning straight harp is "a complete waste of time". I started out on cross harp, since I was learning from Sonny Terry records back in the sixties, but have since found that for less bluesy songs like Faded Love or More Pretty Girls Than One or Guy Clark's Old Time Feeling or Turlough O'Carolin's Blind Mary, straight harp seems to work better and sounds great. I also play Hoagy Carmichael's Rockin' Chair using straight harp. I still love the sound of cross harp and play it most of the time, but don't stick to it exclusively. I must admit, I haven't yet tried a Melody Maker.
____________________ Jim http://www.myspace.com/jimyates http://www.myspace.com/kirbyandyates http://www.myspace.com/kirbyyatesmazurek |
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| ezFolk Forums > Other Instruments > Harmonica > Cross Harp | |
