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Harmonica information
Here's a great site for harmonica information: http://www.ianchadwick.com/essays/harmonicas.htm
Early Harmonicas
This article is a short piece taken from Wikopedia.
The harmonica first appeared in Vienna, where harmonicas with chambers were sold before 1824 (see also Anton Reinlein and Anton Haeckl). Richter tuning was in use nearly from the beginning. In Germany, Mr. Meisel of Geschichte des Akkordeonbaus in Klingenthal, Schwarzmeisel and Langhammer, bought a harmonica with chambers (Kanzellen) at the Exhibition in Braunschweig in 1824. He and Langhammer in Graslitz copied the instruments; by 1827 they had produced hundreds of harmonicas. Many others followed in Germany and also nearby in what would later become Czechoslovakia. In 1829, Johann Wilhelm Rudolph Glier also began making harmonicas.
In 1830, Christan Messner, a cloth maker and weaver from Trossingen, copied a harmonica his neighbour had brought from Vienna. He had such success that eventually his brother and some relatives also started to make harmonicas. From 1840 onwards, his nephew Christian Weiss was also involved in the business. By 1855, there were at least three harmonica-making businesses: C. A. Seydel Söhne, Christian Messner & Co., and Württ. Harmonikafabrik Ch. WEISS. Currently, only C.A. Seydel is still in business.
Owing to competition between the harmonica factories in Trossingen and Klingenthal, machines were invented to punch the covers for the reeds. In 1857, Matthias Hohner, a clockmaker from Trossingen, started producing harmonicas, eventually to become the first person to mass-produce them. He used a mass-produced wooden comb that he had made by machine-cutting firms. By 1868, he began supplying the United States. By the 1920s, the diatonic harmonica had largely reached its modern form. Other types followed soon thereafter, including the various tremolo and octave harmonicas.
By the late 19th century, harmonica production was a big business, having evolved into mass-production. New designs were still developed in the 20th century, including the chromatic harmonica, first made by Hohner in 1924, the bass harmonica, and the chord harmonica. In the 21st century, radical new designs are still being introduced into the market, such as the Suzuki Overdrive and Hohner XB-40.
Diatonic harmonicas were designed primarily for the playing of German and other European folk music and have succeeded well in those styles. Over time the basic design and tuning proved adaptable to other types of music such as the blues, country, old-time and more. The harmonica was a success almost from the very start of production, and while the centre of the harmonica business has shifted from Germany, the output of the various harmonica manufacturers is still very high. Major companies are now found in Germany (Seydel, Hohner - once the dominant manufacturer in the world), Japan (Suzuki, Tombo, Yamaha), China (Huang, Leo Shi, Suzuki, Hohner) and Brasil (Hering). Recently, responding to increasingly demanding performance techniques, the market for high quality instruments has grown.
Shortly after Hohner began manufacturing harmonicas in 1857, he shipped some to relatives who had emigrated to the United States. Its music rapidly became popular, and the country became an enormous market for Hohner's goods. President Abraham Lincoln carried a harmonica in his pocket,[7] and harmonicas provided solace to soldiers on both the Union and Confederate sides of the American Civil War. Frontiersmen Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid played the instrument, and it became a fixture of the American musical landscape.
The first recordings of harmonicas were made in the U.S. in the 1920s. These recordings are 'race-records', intended for the black market of the southern states with solo recordings by DeFord Bailey, duo recordings with a guitarist Hammie Nixon, Walter Horton, Sonny Terry, as well as hillbilly styles recorded for white audiences, by Frank Hutchison, Gwen Foster and several other musicians. There are also recordings featuring the harmonica in jug bands, of which the Memphis Jug Band is the most famous. But the harmonica still represented a toy instrument in those years and was associated with the poor. It is also during those years that musicians started experimenting with new techniques such as tongue-blocking, hand effects and the most important innovation of all, the 2nd position, or cross-harp.
The harmonica's versatility brought it to the attention of classical music during the 1930s. American Larry Adler was one of the first harmonica players to perform major works written for the instrument by the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin.
The harmonica first appeared in Vienna, where harmonicas with chambers were sold before 1824 (see also Anton Reinlein and Anton Haeckl). Richter tuning was in use nearly from the beginning. In Germany, Mr. Meisel of Geschichte des Akkordeonbaus in Klingenthal, Schwarzmeisel and Langhammer, bought a harmonica with chambers (Kanzellen) at the Exhibition in Braunschweig in 1824. He and Langhammer in Graslitz copied the instruments; by 1827 they had produced hundreds of harmonicas. Many others followed in Germany and also nearby in what would later become Czechoslovakia. In 1829, Johann Wilhelm Rudolph Glier also began making harmonicas.
In 1830, Christan Messner, a cloth maker and weaver from Trossingen, copied a harmonica his neighbour had brought from Vienna. He had such success that eventually his brother and some relatives also started to make harmonicas. From 1840 onwards, his nephew Christian Weiss was also involved in the business. By 1855, there were at least three harmonica-making businesses: C. A. Seydel Söhne, Christian Messner & Co., and Württ. Harmonikafabrik Ch. WEISS. Currently, only C.A. Seydel is still in business.
Owing to competition between the harmonica factories in Trossingen and Klingenthal, machines were invented to punch the covers for the reeds. In 1857, Matthias Hohner, a clockmaker from Trossingen, started producing harmonicas, eventually to become the first person to mass-produce them. He used a mass-produced wooden comb that he had made by machine-cutting firms. By 1868, he began supplying the United States. By the 1920s, the diatonic harmonica had largely reached its modern form. Other types followed soon thereafter, including the various tremolo and octave harmonicas.
By the late 19th century, harmonica production was a big business, having evolved into mass-production. New designs were still developed in the 20th century, including the chromatic harmonica, first made by Hohner in 1924, the bass harmonica, and the chord harmonica. In the 21st century, radical new designs are still being introduced into the market, such as the Suzuki Overdrive and Hohner XB-40.
Diatonic harmonicas were designed primarily for the playing of German and other European folk music and have succeeded well in those styles. Over time the basic design and tuning proved adaptable to other types of music such as the blues, country, old-time and more. The harmonica was a success almost from the very start of production, and while the centre of the harmonica business has shifted from Germany, the output of the various harmonica manufacturers is still very high. Major companies are now found in Germany (Seydel, Hohner - once the dominant manufacturer in the world), Japan (Suzuki, Tombo, Yamaha), China (Huang, Leo Shi, Suzuki, Hohner) and Brasil (Hering). Recently, responding to increasingly demanding performance techniques, the market for high quality instruments has grown.
Shortly after Hohner began manufacturing harmonicas in 1857, he shipped some to relatives who had emigrated to the United States. Its music rapidly became popular, and the country became an enormous market for Hohner's goods. President Abraham Lincoln carried a harmonica in his pocket,[7] and harmonicas provided solace to soldiers on both the Union and Confederate sides of the American Civil War. Frontiersmen Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid played the instrument, and it became a fixture of the American musical landscape.
The first recordings of harmonicas were made in the U.S. in the 1920s. These recordings are 'race-records', intended for the black market of the southern states with solo recordings by DeFord Bailey, duo recordings with a guitarist Hammie Nixon, Walter Horton, Sonny Terry, as well as hillbilly styles recorded for white audiences, by Frank Hutchison, Gwen Foster and several other musicians. There are also recordings featuring the harmonica in jug bands, of which the Memphis Jug Band is the most famous. But the harmonica still represented a toy instrument in those years and was associated with the poor. It is also during those years that musicians started experimenting with new techniques such as tongue-blocking, hand effects and the most important innovation of all, the 2nd position, or cross-harp.
The harmonica's versatility brought it to the attention of classical music during the 1930s. American Larry Adler was one of the first harmonica players to perform major works written for the instrument by the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin.
The Hering Harmonica
I copied this article directly from this website: http://www.brazilmax.com/. It provides a great description of a harmonica that you might never have heard of.
Hering Harmonicas: Building a Better Harmonica in Brazil
by Bryan McCann
Blumenau, Santa Catarina - Ilberto Manke leans into his work, filing microscopic brass shavings from a set of virgin harmonic reeds. Manke is a tuner at the Hering harmonica factory in this small city in southern Brazil. Pumping a pedal beneath his wooden work table, he summons a jet of air that rises from a hose through a set of standardized reeds, producing a sweet hum.
When he takes a new reedplate û one-half of the guts of a harmonica - fresh from the assembly line and places it on top of the standardized reeds, the clash is cacophonous. With a few rasps of his file, Mr. Manke brings a muddy A-flat up to concert A, shimmering at precisely 440hz. The rest of the reeds seem to follow obediently, rising to harmony under the tutelage of his file. In less than a minute, the whole room reverberates with the celestial swell of a well-tuned harmonica.
Manke seems to know a thing or two about tuning, although he is relatively new to the job. He has been with Hering only since 1960 - fellow tuner Osmar Setter has been at it since 1958. Together, the pair tunes most of the 30,000 harmonicas Hering produces every month.
Manke and Setter are typical of the workers at Hering, who employ artisanal skills honed by generations of their German forebears. The factory itself - a cavernous wood and plaster shed that looks more like a Bavarian ski lodge than an industrial plant - underlines the continuity. The production end of the harmonica business here has changed surprisingly little since Alredo Hering founded the business in 1923. More of the stamping and cutting of the instrumentÆs basic anatomy is now given over to heavy machinery, but the close work that turns a pile of parts into a resonating marvel is still done by practiced hands trained through rigorous apprenticeship.
The marketing end of the business, meanwhile, has changed dramatically.
Through the 20th century, harmonicas straddled the divide between toys and musical instruments. Hering itself manufactured musical toys through the mid-1990s. Diatonic harmonicas - the small kind, usually with 12 holes and 24 reeds - were inexpensive enough to be nearly disposable, limiting the benefits of careful manufacture. And the market for fine chromatic harmonicas - the large kind, with the spring-operated slide that triggers a second set of reeds - was so small and fragmented that its specific needs were met mostly through after-market customization.
But in the 21st century, a niche market that used to be fragmented is now linked by instantaneous communication. Vigorous online discussions about arcane topics like the physics of reedplate resonance and the optimal glue for replacement valves keep harmonicists in Germany, Japan, the United States, and elsewhere deeply informed about the minutiae of manufacturing.
In Blumenau, globalism drives localism. The more Hering strives to meet the demands of the finicky wired consumer, the more it draws on the cumulative expertise of artisans like Manke and Setter. The result is that the Hering factory, a kind of outpost of 19th century German manufacturing in subtropical Brazil, flourishes for another generation, training a new cohort of apprentices.
Hohner, the German company that is the dominant player today, controlling roughly two-thirds of the world market for serious harmonicas, began churning out the first factory-produced harmonicas in 1857, and became a household name at about the same time as Otto von Bismarck.
Parallel streams of German immigration to the US and to southern Brazil then yielded similar consequences - the local popularization of the harmonica, adapted to new musical styles like the blues and choro, the ragtime-like music practiced with fierce devotion by many Brazilians.
But Alfredo HeringÆs decision to transplant old-world manufacturing techniques to Blumenau gave Brazil something the US never had - a thriving home-grown harmonica factory that maintained the old traditions in the new world.
A generation ago, it seemed like globalization would eliminate this odd survivor. Hohner bought Hering in 1968 but sold it in 1975. Hering struggled through the 1980s, its work force and market share shrinking. In 1993, current owner Alberto Bertolazzi left the SÒo Paulo financial market and bought the company in a speculative venture. ôMy idea was to buy Hering, quickly sell off its shares to international investors interested in the brand name, and return to SÒo Paulo,ö he remembers.
But BertolazziÆs acquisition happened to coincide with the rise of listserves catering to the obsessions of previously splintered subcultures. As he eliminated the toy line and prepared to sell off the company, he found himself bombarded with increasingly specific suggestions for adjustments that might increase air-tightness, resistance to humidity and tuning fidelity - the three challenges that most vex the industry.
A new niche was opening - the possibility of reaching harmonica mavens through pre-market artisanal detail rather than after-market customization. Instead of selling shares, Bertolazzi turned to the older generation of Hering workers and to professional Brazilian players like Ronald da Silva (a.k.a Ronald da Gaita), and they began tinkering. The retro-model 1923 Vintage - a 12-hole diatonic with a wooden body and brass screws that would be instantly familiar to a 19th-century German - grew out of such experiments. So does the Stan Harper 56, a 14-hole, 56-reed chromatic harmonica that is the new pride and joy among HeringÆs artisans.
The instrument draws on local materials and the factoryÆs wellspring of artisanal lore. The body of the Stan Harper is made of sustainably-harvested Amazonian hardwood. Its new, low-profile mouthpiece eliminates wasted breath and improves response. And thick brass reedplates produce greater resonance.
None of these details have stopped serious harmonicists from indulging an elemental urge to become one with the instrument by adjusting its innards.
JosÚ Staneck of Rio de Janeiro, for example, switched from a 12-hole chromatic to the Stan Harper as soon as it became available. In his estimation, ôThis instrument is amazing. I barely did anything to it.ö Meaning all he did was: take apart the harmonica and, using a curved jewelerÆs awl, carefully bend each reed to the exact height suited to his playing style. Then he cut 14 holes in a piece of scotch tape, exactly matching the outline of the mouthpiece, and inserted it between the mouthpiece and the reedplates, in pursuit of perfect air-tightness. Then he nestled a slim cone of aluminum around the spring, to prevent it from bruising the wooden body during trills.
But these fanatical alterations are entirely in tune with the spirit of the factory in Blumenau. On StaneckÆs current wish list is a Stan Harper with a slightly higher pitch, with A tuned to 442hz, as is common in many orchestral settings. He knows that, with professionals like Manke and Setter on the job, Hering is precisely attuned to his needs.
Hering products on Amazon.com
Visit Hering Harmonicas in Blumenau, Santa Catarina
The folks at Hering are extremely friendly and happy to receive visitors to the administrative house, where they have a small display about Hering history, including old models, etc. The people there can talk about the various aspects of production. They do not normally offer tours of the adjacent factory building itself, both for safety and proprietary reasons.
Hering Harmonicas
Rua Ari Barroso, 685
Salto do Norte
Blumenau, SC
Telephone: + (55-47) 3338-0299
Hering USA (in English)
Bryan McCann is the author of Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil and Director of the Brazilian Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is also an amateur harmonica player.
Find Brazilian music on Amazon.com.
Listen to BrazilMax Radio
Talk about Brazilian music on the BrazilMax Forums
Hering Harmonicas: Building a Better Harmonica in Brazil
by Bryan McCann
Blumenau, Santa Catarina - Ilberto Manke leans into his work, filing microscopic brass shavings from a set of virgin harmonic reeds. Manke is a tuner at the Hering harmonica factory in this small city in southern Brazil. Pumping a pedal beneath his wooden work table, he summons a jet of air that rises from a hose through a set of standardized reeds, producing a sweet hum.
When he takes a new reedplate û one-half of the guts of a harmonica - fresh from the assembly line and places it on top of the standardized reeds, the clash is cacophonous. With a few rasps of his file, Mr. Manke brings a muddy A-flat up to concert A, shimmering at precisely 440hz. The rest of the reeds seem to follow obediently, rising to harmony under the tutelage of his file. In less than a minute, the whole room reverberates with the celestial swell of a well-tuned harmonica.
Manke seems to know a thing or two about tuning, although he is relatively new to the job. He has been with Hering only since 1960 - fellow tuner Osmar Setter has been at it since 1958. Together, the pair tunes most of the 30,000 harmonicas Hering produces every month.
Manke and Setter are typical of the workers at Hering, who employ artisanal skills honed by generations of their German forebears. The factory itself - a cavernous wood and plaster shed that looks more like a Bavarian ski lodge than an industrial plant - underlines the continuity. The production end of the harmonica business here has changed surprisingly little since Alredo Hering founded the business in 1923. More of the stamping and cutting of the instrumentÆs basic anatomy is now given over to heavy machinery, but the close work that turns a pile of parts into a resonating marvel is still done by practiced hands trained through rigorous apprenticeship.
The marketing end of the business, meanwhile, has changed dramatically.
Through the 20th century, harmonicas straddled the divide between toys and musical instruments. Hering itself manufactured musical toys through the mid-1990s. Diatonic harmonicas - the small kind, usually with 12 holes and 24 reeds - were inexpensive enough to be nearly disposable, limiting the benefits of careful manufacture. And the market for fine chromatic harmonicas - the large kind, with the spring-operated slide that triggers a second set of reeds - was so small and fragmented that its specific needs were met mostly through after-market customization.
But in the 21st century, a niche market that used to be fragmented is now linked by instantaneous communication. Vigorous online discussions about arcane topics like the physics of reedplate resonance and the optimal glue for replacement valves keep harmonicists in Germany, Japan, the United States, and elsewhere deeply informed about the minutiae of manufacturing.
In Blumenau, globalism drives localism. The more Hering strives to meet the demands of the finicky wired consumer, the more it draws on the cumulative expertise of artisans like Manke and Setter. The result is that the Hering factory, a kind of outpost of 19th century German manufacturing in subtropical Brazil, flourishes for another generation, training a new cohort of apprentices.
Hohner, the German company that is the dominant player today, controlling roughly two-thirds of the world market for serious harmonicas, began churning out the first factory-produced harmonicas in 1857, and became a household name at about the same time as Otto von Bismarck.
Parallel streams of German immigration to the US and to southern Brazil then yielded similar consequences - the local popularization of the harmonica, adapted to new musical styles like the blues and choro, the ragtime-like music practiced with fierce devotion by many Brazilians.
But Alfredo HeringÆs decision to transplant old-world manufacturing techniques to Blumenau gave Brazil something the US never had - a thriving home-grown harmonica factory that maintained the old traditions in the new world.
A generation ago, it seemed like globalization would eliminate this odd survivor. Hohner bought Hering in 1968 but sold it in 1975. Hering struggled through the 1980s, its work force and market share shrinking. In 1993, current owner Alberto Bertolazzi left the SÒo Paulo financial market and bought the company in a speculative venture. ôMy idea was to buy Hering, quickly sell off its shares to international investors interested in the brand name, and return to SÒo Paulo,ö he remembers.
But BertolazziÆs acquisition happened to coincide with the rise of listserves catering to the obsessions of previously splintered subcultures. As he eliminated the toy line and prepared to sell off the company, he found himself bombarded with increasingly specific suggestions for adjustments that might increase air-tightness, resistance to humidity and tuning fidelity - the three challenges that most vex the industry.
A new niche was opening - the possibility of reaching harmonica mavens through pre-market artisanal detail rather than after-market customization. Instead of selling shares, Bertolazzi turned to the older generation of Hering workers and to professional Brazilian players like Ronald da Silva (a.k.a Ronald da Gaita), and they began tinkering. The retro-model 1923 Vintage - a 12-hole diatonic with a wooden body and brass screws that would be instantly familiar to a 19th-century German - grew out of such experiments. So does the Stan Harper 56, a 14-hole, 56-reed chromatic harmonica that is the new pride and joy among HeringÆs artisans.
The instrument draws on local materials and the factoryÆs wellspring of artisanal lore. The body of the Stan Harper is made of sustainably-harvested Amazonian hardwood. Its new, low-profile mouthpiece eliminates wasted breath and improves response. And thick brass reedplates produce greater resonance.
None of these details have stopped serious harmonicists from indulging an elemental urge to become one with the instrument by adjusting its innards.
JosÚ Staneck of Rio de Janeiro, for example, switched from a 12-hole chromatic to the Stan Harper as soon as it became available. In his estimation, ôThis instrument is amazing. I barely did anything to it.ö Meaning all he did was: take apart the harmonica and, using a curved jewelerÆs awl, carefully bend each reed to the exact height suited to his playing style. Then he cut 14 holes in a piece of scotch tape, exactly matching the outline of the mouthpiece, and inserted it between the mouthpiece and the reedplates, in pursuit of perfect air-tightness. Then he nestled a slim cone of aluminum around the spring, to prevent it from bruising the wooden body during trills.
But these fanatical alterations are entirely in tune with the spirit of the factory in Blumenau. On StaneckÆs current wish list is a Stan Harper with a slightly higher pitch, with A tuned to 442hz, as is common in many orchestral settings. He knows that, with professionals like Manke and Setter on the job, Hering is precisely attuned to his needs.
Hering products on Amazon.com
Visit Hering Harmonicas in Blumenau, Santa Catarina
The folks at Hering are extremely friendly and happy to receive visitors to the administrative house, where they have a small display about Hering history, including old models, etc. The people there can talk about the various aspects of production. They do not normally offer tours of the adjacent factory building itself, both for safety and proprietary reasons.
Hering Harmonicas
Rua Ari Barroso, 685
Salto do Norte
Blumenau, SC
Telephone: + (55-47) 3338-0299
Hering USA (in English)
Bryan McCann is the author of Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil and Director of the Brazilian Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is also an amateur harmonica player.
Find Brazilian music on Amazon.com.
Listen to BrazilMax Radio
Talk about Brazilian music on the BrazilMax Forums
Converting Tabs to Notes for the Harmonica
I just found the greatest Tab Ruler chart for Harmonica players. This chart is located on what is probably one of the best harmonica information and song sites I have seen yet. You can access the site at http://www.harptabs.com/. Look for "Tab Rulers" down the left side. It opens a page with access to several charts and aids for converting harmonica notes and tabs.
I have a notebook that I keep copies of music I have downloaded. A copy of all these charts will go in the book
I have a notebook that I keep copies of music I have downloaded. A copy of all these charts will go in the book
Playing the Harmonica
I had a good night tonight. I played my Harmonicas in town at the informal jam session that a few local musicians put on. This was my third attempt and I did pretty well. The past sessions I involved myself in weren't as good because I was so nervous. It's funny how easy it is to play music in front of people, even when you know they are listening, and how difficult it is when you get in front of a microphone and do it "for real." I played three songs when it was my turn. The first was called "Haste to the Wedding," next I played "Maria" then I played "Wild Horse at Stony Point." All went fairly well even though I was a little nervous when it was my turn. One of the "old timers" told me I did well but was "a little bit fast."
Huang Harmonicas
Huang harmonica production began more than two decades ago by two ex-Hohner harmonica makers, Frank and Cham-ber Huang (also a virtuoso harmonica player). Incorporating their working and playing experience, the Huang brothers developed a product line that is comparable to any of the world renowned brands. Made in a state-of-the-art factory in China, they are lower in cost than competitive models, without a sacrifice in quality. As you probably know, many of the "traditional? companies are manufacturing in China, also producing excellent products. The Huang products include a broad range of diatonic harmonicas, chromatic, bass and tremolo models. Solo and Octave tuned models are available. Many professional and recreational players consider the Huang harmonicas among their favorite harps. Considering their competitive pricing, multi-key purchases are now affordable. Huang is constantly improving their products, and many of their standard products have now been improved with 25% stronger reed plates and better air-tightness. We carry the entire Huang product line. In stock and ready to ship. Try a Huang harmonica today !! You will be a believer !!
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