GB2120442A

GB2120442A - A slider-type chromatic harmonica

Info

Publication number: GB2120442A
Application number: GB08307859A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Junichi Okumoto
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 1982-03-26
Filing date: 1983-03-22
Publication date: 1983-11-30
Also published as: GB8307859D0; JPS58146293U; DE3310780C2; DE3310780A1

Abstract

The invention provides an improved slider-type chromatic harmonica. The arrangement of the reeds in the individual holes are such that: when the slide lever is at the unthrusted position, the two reeds in a first hole for breathing-out and breathing-in are so tuned that the pitch of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-in is higher by a whole tone than that of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out and the pitch of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out in the rightside hole next to the first hole is higher by a whole tone than the tone produced by the reed for breathing-in in the first hole with successively elevated pitch by a tone in each of the rightwardly positioned holes, and, when the slide lever is at the thrusted position, the two reeds in a hole for breathing-out and breathing-in are so tuned that the pitch of each of the tones produced by the two reeds is higher by a semitone than the pitch of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out or breathing-in, respectively, of the same hole with the slide lever at the unthrusted position. <IMAGE>

Description

SPECIFICATION A slide lever-type chromatic harmonica The present invention relates to a slide levertype chromatic harmonica which is easy to play and imparted with high operability not found in any other musical instruments.

Slide lever-type chromatic harmonicas can give semitones of chromatic scale and have performance as a solo instrument because musics can be played with a single instrument of this type without changing the instrument from one to the other even in playing melodies of different keynotes differing from the case in blues harps. A problem in the instrument of this type is the considerably complicated playing operation required in key transition so that many of the beginners who wish to master playing music using the instrument sometimes give up use of the instrument and take another instrument which is easier to play.

That is, FIGURE 1 illustrates the arrangement of tones in typical ones of the conventional slide lever-type chromatic harmonica. Of the figure, FIGURES 1 (a) and 1 (b) are for the arrangement of tones when the slide lever is at the unthrusted or thrusted position, respectively, the reference numerals 1,2,3,4 and 5 indicating positions of the holes from the right to left where the righthand side and lefthand side in respective positions correspond to the tones produced by breathing-in and breathing-out, respectively. Different from pianos and the like musical instruments in which tones of the same pitch are never produced, there are overlapped tones of the same pitch in the harmonica of this type as is understood from FIGURE 1. Firstly, the tone F overlaps at the position 2.Further, the tone C is in triplication and the tone C&num;is in duplication at the positions 4 and 5 corresponding to the transitions between octaves. Thus, there are multiplications with respect to the tone groups produced by breathingout or breathing-in between the slide lever at the unthrusted and the slide lever at the thrusted position.

Therefore, the player of the harmonica must select one from the overlapped tones. It is natural that he selects the tones of F, C and C# at the positions which he considers easy to produce but the player of the harmonica feels troublesomeness in this selection because the selection is to be made for each of the musics.

It is, so to say, as if a piano produces a tone of the same pitch with a white key and a black key.

Although guitars and the like instruments can produce a tone of the same pitch at several positions on different strings, such as multiplication (overlapping) of tones in the harmonicas causes a confusion in the player of the kind never encountered with other instruments because the breathing must be reversed depending on the condition of the slide lever which may be at the unthrusted or thrusted position to produce the tones of F and C in question.

Thus, the present invention provides a slide lever-type chromatic harmonica with such an improved arrangement of the reeds that: a) when the slide lever is at the unthrusted position, 1) the two reeds in a first hole for breathing-out and breathing-in are so turned that the pitch of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-in is higher by a whole tone than that of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out, and 2) the pitch of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out in the rightside hole next to the first hole is higher by a whole tone than the tone produced by the reed for breathing-in in the first hole, pitch of the tone being successively elevated by a whole tone in each of the rightwardly positioned holes, and, b) when the slide lever is at the thrusted position, the two reeds in a hole for breathing-out and breathing-in are so tuned that the pitch of each of the tones produced by the reeds for breathing-out and breathing-in is higher by a semitone than the pitch of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out or breathing-in, respectively, of the same hole with the slide lever at the unthrusted position.

An object of the-present invention is to provide an improved slide lever-type chromatic harmonica which is very easy to play and freed from the problem of the complicated operation inherent to the conventional chromatic harmonicas of the similar type.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a novel slide lever-type chromatic harmonica imparted with superior operability not found in other musical instruments by the unique combination of the operation of the slide lever and breathing out and in characteristic to harmonicas.

Still another object of the invention is to provide a slide lever-type chromatic harmonica capable of greatly facilitating execution of tone overlapping as is conventionally practiced as a technique of harmonica playing.

Other and further objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following described examples taken in connection with the accompanying drawing.

FIGURE 1 is a diagram of the tone arrangement for the key of C in the conventional slide lever-type chromatic harmonica.

FIGURE 2 is an illustration of an example of the slide lever-type chromatic harmonica of the present invention.

FIGURE 3 to 6 are each a diagram of the tone arrangement in the slide lever-type chromatic harmonica of the present invention and (a) and (c) in each of the FIGURES correspond to the unthrusted and thrusted positions of the slide lever, respectively. In each of the positions, the symbols at the leftside and rightside indicate the tones produced by breathing-out and breathing-in, respectively.

The fundamental principle of the harmonica of the present invention is the equity of all of the key tones without preference of a particular key tone.

Beginning with the tone of C with successive increase of the pitch by a semitone, the arrangement of the tones is given by the order of C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A" and B and the tone next to B becomes the tone C higher by an octave than the first C. The 12 tones from the first Cto the B are taken as one group. In a slide levertype chromatic harmonica, four different tones can be produced at a position of a single hole and the 12 tones are allotted to three positions of the holes of fours beginning with the tone C.

An example of the harmonica of-the present invention is described below with reference to the accompanying drawings of which FIGURES 2(a) and 2(b) illustrate a front view of the slide levertype chromatic harmonica of the present invention with the slide lever L unthrusted or thrusted, respectively,-and FIGURES 2(c) and 2(d) illustrate a top view and a bottom view, respectively, of the same harmonica with the side covers removed. In these figures, the numerals 6, 7, 8 and 9 indicate the reeds for the tones of C, C&num;, D and D#, respectively, the numerals 10, 11,- 12 and 13 indicate the reeds for the tones of E, F, F# and G, respectively, and the numerals 1 4, 15, 1 6 and 1 7 indicate the reeds for the tones of G#, A, A&num; and B, respectively.The numerals 22, 23, 24 and 25 indicate the holes when the slide lever L is at the unthrusted position and the numerals 26, 27, 28 and 29 indicate the respective holes when the slide lever L is at the thrusted position. To explain the relation between the lever position and the pitches of the tones, a whole-tone scale of C, D, E, F", G* and A" is obtained by alternately breathingout and -in at the holes 22, 23 and 24 with the slide lever L at the unthrusted position while a whole-tone scale of C", D", F, G, A and B with respectively higher pitches by a semitone than the former tone scale is obtained by alternately breathing-out and -in at the holes 26, 27 and 28 with the slide lever L at the thrusted position.The reeds 18, 19,20 and 21 produce the tones of C, C", D and D" of the next higher octave than the reeds 6, 7, 8 and -9, respectively, and this pattern of the reed arrangement is repeated with every three holes from the left to the right.

The tone arrangement in the slide lever-type chromatic harmonica of the present invention is diagrammatically shown in FIGURES 3(a) and 3(b) with the slide lever at the unthrusted and thrusted positions, respectively, in which the left-hand and right-hand symbols at each of the positions indicate the tones produced by-breathing-out and breathing-in, respectively.

An alternative reed arrangement is also possible in which the reed for breathing-out in a hole used with the slide lever at the unthrusted position is for the tone of D, C# or D# instead of the tone C. FIGURES 4 to 6 are each a diagram of such a reed arrangement, respectively, given in the same manner as in FIGURE 3.

As is described in the above in detail, a one-toone correspondence is given in the slide lever-type chromatic harmonica of the present invention between a reed and a tone of a particular pitch differing from conventional harmonicas of the similar type in which there are two or more reeds at the same position to produce a tone of the same pitch. Therefore, the player of the harmonica is freed from the burden of selection in playing to ensure less load on the player Furthermore, while not only the key of C but also several other keys must be used in the actual playing of musics, all of the keys can be played with the harmonica of the present invention when the player has mastered execution in four different manners.In the first place, the keys of C, E and G" can be grouped as "a key beginning with a tone produced by breathing-out with the slide lever at the unthrusted position". Similarly, the groups of the keys of D, F# and A", the keys of C#, F and A and the keys of D&num;, G and B can be considered as "a key beginning with a tone produced by breathingin with the slide lever at the unthrusted position", "a key beginning with a tone produced by breathing-out with the slide lever at the thrusted position" and "a key beginning with a tone produced by breathing-in with the slide lever at the thrusted position", respectively.This means that an advantage is obtained with the harmonica of this invention that the 12 tones can be divided into 4 groups and the tones of each of the groups can be produced by either one of the four combinations of the lever position, which may be the unthrusted or thrusted position, and the state of breathing, which may be breathing-out or -in.

This advantage is further suggestive of the possibility that the chromatic harmonica of this invention is more functional than other wind instruments played only by breathing-out and never by breathing-in.

Furthermore, the chromatic harmonica of this invention greatly facilitates the tone overlapping execution which has been practiced since early days as a technique of harmonica playing. For example, while the so-called octave execution must be played over 5 holeswith the conventional chromatic harmonica with large burdensomeness for the player, the same effect of playing can be obtained with the chromatic harmonica of this invention by playing over only 4 holes. Moreover, since an interval of a whole tone is always obtained only by simultaneously playing two adjacent holes by breathing-out or -in, the third execution is possible at any portion of the harmonica. Thus, many advantages are obtained with the chromatic harmonica of this invention also in respect of execution.

In connection with the form or size of the instrument, the harmonica of this invention can be advantageously of a smaller size than the conventional ones because tones over 4 octaves can be covered with 13 holes in the inventive harmonica while tones over 4 octaves are produced with 1 6 holes in the conventional ones.

As many apparently widely different embodiments of this invention may be made without departing from the spirit and scope thereof, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the specific embodiments thereof except as defined in the appended claims.

Claims

1. A Aslide lever-type chromatic harmonica having the reeds arranged in such a manner:that: (a) when the slide lever is at the unthrusted position, 1) the two reeds in a first-hole for breathing-out and breathing-in are so tuned that the pitch of the tone produced by the reed breathing-in is higher by a whole tone than that of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out, and 2) the pitch of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out in the rightside hole next to the first hole is higher by a whole tone than the tone produced by the reed for breathing-in in the first hole, pitch of the tone being successively elevated by a whole tone in each of the rightwardly positioned holes, and, (b) when the slide lever is at the thrusted position, the two reeds in a hole for breathing-out and breathing-in are so tuned that the pitch of each of the tones produced by the reeds for breathing-out and breathing-in is higher by a semitone than the pitch of the tone produced by the reed for breathing-out or breathing-in, respectively, of the same hole with the slide lever:atthe unthrusted position.

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2. The slide lever-type chromatic harmonica as claimed in claim 1 wherein the reed for breathingout in a hole produces the tone of C with the slide lever at the unthrusted position.

3. The slide lever-type chromatic harmonica as claimed in claim 1 wherein the reed for breathingout in a hole produces the tone of D with the slide lever at the unthrusted position.

4, The slide lever-type chromatic harmonica as claimed in claim 1 wherein the reed for breathingout in a hole produces the tone of C# with the slide lever at the unthrusted position.

5. The slide lever-type chromatic harmonica as claimed in claim 1 wherein the reed for breathingout in a hole produces the tone of D# with the slide lever at the unthrusted position.

6. A slide lever-type chromatic harmonica substantially as herein described with reference to Figures 2 to 6.