Hello all!

Greetings!  My name is Steve Shaw and I play traditional music from 
Scotland, England and Ireland on diatonic harmonicas.  I can see 
that I'm not a complete unknown hereabouts as Russ and Dave also 
hang around...!

Whilst I play 10-hole single-reeded harps for most of the tunes I do 
use tremolos too.  When I first started with tremolos I bought some 
cheap "Weekenders," which are actually pretty good, but I was 
frustrated by the fact that they only came in the key of C (though I 
was told by Donald Black, the traditional Scottish player, that they 
were once available in D).  Of course, the great thing about these 
is the complete octave at the low end - unlike my next purchase, a 
double-sided Echo (in D and G), which had the blues harp tuning at 
the low end, so no 4th or 6th note of the scale.  But I'm an 
inveterate tinkerer, and so I retuned the 2-draw note up by a whole 
tone to get the missing 6th back.  As 2-draw and 3-blow are the same 
note in the blues harp tuning, I hadn't lost a note by doing this 
but I had gained a very important one.  So I did this on the D side 
and the G side, which meant a considerable alteration of pitch of 
four reeds, as each note has two reeds of course.  The 4th is still 
missing of course, but it's actually very rare that you need this 
note in Irish tunes.  Out of hundreds I've come across, I can only 
think of two that need it, so that doesn't trouble me at all.  I 
also did some fine-tuning to get the harp into equal temperament 
tuning, and I mess about with the degree of tremolo to get what 
sounds like a sweet tone to my ear.  All this work could have been 
avoided had I known about the Suzuki tremolos!  But I do like the 
Echos - I find them reliable and long-lasting, and the double-sided 
ones are very useful in Irish medleys when you need a key-change - 
you can soon get to be very adept at flipping the harp over.  
Obviously, you need the right keys for this - I have one in A/D as 
well as my D/G, which are the correct combinations for Irish.

Anyway, that's enough about "me and my tremolos" for now!  I'm glad 
I've found the list and I look forward to some ardent exchanges!

One aspect I wondered if anyone has experience of is playing 
amplified - especially with a hand-held microphone - with larger 
harps that you can't easily cup.  I'd be grateful to hear of 
anyone's expertise!

Steve  

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/trad_irish_harmonica 
HEAR my CD clips: http://www.gjk2.com/steveshaw/cd.htm 
READ review of my CD: http://www.irishmusicreview.com/sshaw.htm   





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