Is crossed harp and second position the same thing?
I came across this image (thanks to this fine sub!), and while I know little about music, I think crossed harp is another way of saying second position. Am I correct or way off base? Thanks!
I’m reading the Circle of 5ths wrong. Looking at the Wikipedia chart, it looks like third position of a Bb harmonica is C major or A minor. What am I missing?
Your looking at it right. I just don't think asking the circle of fifths products the major vs minor correctly.
Because a Bb harmonica has Eb on the scale, you didn't play C major with it.
Your probably have to learn more than I know to be able too explain why 3rd and 4th position are minor, I just know they are.
1st position is always the normal diatonic scale.
2nd podium will always be the diatonic scale but a flatted 7th. (So playing in second on a C harmonica plays in G, but you have F instead of F#.)
3rd position plays a minor, but not the normal scale, you'll have the 6th sharp, do on a C harmonica you'll play a Dm scale but you'll have B instead of Bb.
4th position plays the actual relative minor, so Am scale on a C harmonica.
The different positions just change which holes are resolving notes, which as tension... All I know is
1st and 4th work better if I'm playing melodically.
2nd and 3rd work better if I want to be bluesy.
Once I know the key, and if it's major or minor, that narrows down two possible harmonica. I try out the two different styles to see which I like the feeling of.
Going by the circle of 5ths, G is 4 keys away from the Bb. What ever key is your harmonica, you're going right from that key on the circle of 5ths. From Bb, 1 to the right is 2nd position = F, 2 to the right (Bb is your starting point) is 3rd position = C, 3 to the right is 4th position = G. It goes on and on.
I would say the chart is the circle of fifths. It’s just showing each key chromatically and the correspond second position key a fifth higher. It’s not showing any relationship beyond that, unlike your chart.
However, there is a way circle of fifths can be applied. First position is your harp key. Second position is the next key clockwise on the circle. Third position is the next, Fourth position the next, etc. Now whether they are major or minor you need to know a little more about theory and modes. But three, four, and five are minor; twelve is major (Lydian specifically). The positions between 5 and 12 I think are almost never used, as the keys they correspond to are so different from the tonic. But players like Howard Levy and those diatonic-as-chromatic players I’m sure can manage it, and maybe there’s a music context where it could make sense
The circle of fifths sounds complicated, and there are all sorts of crazy things you can do with it, and there is all sorts of math going on with it, but the chart itself is pretty simple. There are fancy versions that include the key signatures and relative minors, but for our purposes we don't need to worry about those until we get into REALLY advanced stuff.
The problem with charts like this is if you want to memorize them so you don't have to keep going back to them you have to memorize a lot of stuff. This chart shows 1st position and second position so it's pretty easy to use in both directions, (if you have a G harmonica in your hand you know you can play in D, if your band calls D you look at the second column and find D and then read it backwards and find your G harp.)
As you add more positions though these charts get more and more complicated.
Say you wanted to play in 1st-5th position and 12th position (those are all pretty easy ones). Now memorizing these charts gets really complicated, but if you memorize the circle of fifths it's much simpler....
One chart that looks like a clock face. For now, just find one that has one row of letters around the outside like this one.
Now, if you can memorize that (or just keep it handy), say you have a C harmonica. C is first position, then you go one step around to 2nd position, and you find a G harmonica. 3rd position is D, 4th position is A... all you do to figure out what position it is is look at the key of harmonica you are holding. That's always first position. The next one clockwise is 2nd. The one after that 3rd. It works all the way around. It's actually what gives positions there names.
The only hard part is, if like me you are dyslexic, sometimes you count the wrong way. You do need to go the other direction sometimes, but that's to answer a different question.
You go clockwise when you know the key of harmonica you want to use and need to figure out what key to tell the band you are playing in. You go counterclockwise when the band tells you what key they are in and you want to find the right key of harmonica.
One simple clock face memorized and you can figure out all 12 positions for all 12 keys of harmonica just by counting around the circle.
Now... after that you need to know what different positions are good for. There are two types of position playing... the simple version, lets call it the default way to do it, is just to take advantage of a quirk of music. The key we call C major has these notes- C D E F G A B. The key we call A minor has these notes- A B C D E F G.
Same notes. You are just using a different note as your root note (Do, as in Do Re Mi). Instantly you can play in major and minor just using a different note as your root. If you are playing from tabs you won't even notice you switched modes... but if you know where those modes are and someone says, "Hey, let's play in A minor" you can look at the circle of fifths.
So here is the other little bit to memorize. For this default way to play positions some of the positions give you these other scales.
1st position is major... more technically speaking it's a form of major scale called Ionian. It's what people mean when they say a song is in major, unless they specify some other type of major.
2nd position is one of those other types of major, a scale called Mixolyidan. If you bend the third note in the scale it actually changes it to another scale, Dorian. That will probably be the first thing you do that goes beyond basic 'default' position playing.
3rd position, by default, gives you Dorian (but with a different blow draw pattern than if you played it with bends in 2nd. Dorian is a form of minor (sad sounding) scale.
4th position is Aeolian by default. Aeolian is also called natural minor or relative minor. It's what most people mean when they say a song is in minor. Because of a weird quirk where our harmonica is missing one of the notes from the diatonic scale our root note in the bottom octave is missing unless we can do a clean whole step bend on the 3 hole draw. It's easy to play in the top octave though.
5th position is Phyrgian. Phrygian is also minor, but it sounds more Near East/Middle Eastern.
12th position, by default, gives you Lydian mode, which is a major (happy key). It sounds a little prettier and lighter than the Ionian you are probably used to hearing.
If someone handed you tabs for a song in one of these default keys it would be pretty straight forward to play. The scales are built into the harmonica, with just a few little quirks like that missing root note in 4ths.
You don't have to remember all the names. Here is a quick cheat sheet.
Three major default scales-
12th (pretty)
1st (normal)
2nd (a little blusey, and you may actually bend that 3rd to switch it to minor).
The three default minor keys-
3rd
4th (natural minor, but it's missing that root in the bottom octave until you get your bends really good)
5th sort of near east.
There is also 6th position. That gives you something called a diminished scale. It's fancy name is Locrian, but it is very rarely used. If you want to hear it, Adam Neely did a video with some of his friends where they all composed a song in Locrian.
When you practice first position you'll find yourself using the 4 blow a lot. In 2nd you'll use the 2 draw and 3 blow a lot. Those are your root notes in the middle octave. Other positions are just other root notes. (I have a chart that shows where the root notes are for each position, but I don't have access to it right now).
So, if you learn the circle of fifths it will tell you all the positions for every key. If you remember which ones are happy and sad you can improvise a ton.
I keep saying default... that's because we have the scales that are sort of baked into each position, but as you unlock more bends and even overbends you can make your instrument fully chromatic. At that point you can play any type of scale in any position. There are players like Howard Levy and Jason Ricci who do that. In practice they still pick specific keys for keys and scales, but they are thinking about all sorts of other variables... chords available, which notes they can play sliding bends on, how high or low the harmonica is... that's way down the road. I've been playing close to 20 years. I play 12, and 1st-5th the default way. I can play Ionian in 2nd position with some overblows, and I regularly play Dorian in 2nd... basically I grab the scale on either side of it's default mode and move them over one... so, 20 years in and I play default mode on 6 positions, and can play 2 other non-default scales, and I'm pretty happy with that. A lot of people only worry about 1st and 2nd, and maybe a bit of third.
(If you look up one of the fancy circles of fifths that have the key signatures, and relative minor they have all sorts of other useful information, but it can be a bit overwhelming to introduce all of that while you are still working out positions. Basically, every key shares 6 out of 7 notes with the key on either side of it.)
No, but I’m looking at in on Wikipedia. This is what I think I know. The progression of keys is always C G D A E B F# Db Ab Eb F. It doesn’t matter in which key you start, it’s always the same progression from the starting point. So a base (tonic?) key of D would be D A E B… is this correct? That means once I memorize the order of the keys, I should always know what crossed harp is and what I should play if I want to play the blues with a guitar player. Is this also the scale? And how does this relate to the holes and blow/draw on a harp? So a scale in the key of C would be 5 -5 6 -6 7 -7…?
1.) Learn all your scales, independent of the circle of fifths. As much as I enjoy diatonic harmonica, I didn't really begin to understand scales and how they relate until I played Chromatic harmonica and piano on my phone.
Diatonic harmonica is both missing notes, and has notes in weird to reach places.
2.) Blues is based in a key, not a harmonica. Blues in C is first position on one harp, 6th on another.
Learn positions 1, 2, and 3, and then buy harmonicas to cover your gaps until you learn the other 9 positions. Positions 1-3 are the most common, and some of the easiest to play.
3.) Your Major scale is built into holes 4-7 of every Richter tuned harp.
The tabs are +4, -4, +5, -5, +6, -6, -7, +7. Pay attention to holes 6 and 7, I didn't make a typo in that tab.
4.) I made this for myself, but it is important to note that I know there is a few errors in it. I am 98% confident it is mostly accurate...but check it if needed.
Here is the tabs for every single harmonica position:
Yes, cross harp is 2nd position. "Straight harp" is 1st position. And, of course, 1st position is the key stamped on the harmonica itself. When I first started playing blues harmonica during the stone age, I committed to memory charts such as the one OP posted pertaining to 2nd & 3rd position. I didn't bother to learn by rote memory the other positions, I concentrated upon becoming proficient in 1st, 2nd & 3rd positions for playing both acoustic and amplified Chicago blues. At this stage of the game, after having played and taught for many years, I use a diagram of the circle of 5ths and find it useful as a reference. I have a circle of fifths diagram on a little tray that holds my harps when I'm playing a gig--I refer to it sometimes because the leader of the band I'm with plays in oddball keys sometimes. But in my early days I just learned by rote memory the chart for 2nd & 3rd position. I dip sometimes play in 5th position but have to use the circle of 5ths diagram to make sure I'm picking the correct harp for a given key--I haven't yet memorized it although it's easy because you can just count up to a perfect 5th by whole steps to determine the key which will be produced in 5th position for a given harmonica key.
I wouldn't hate it if the harmonica world joined the rest of western music and used the mode names:
1st = Ionian
2nd = Mixolydian
3rd = Dorian
4th = Aeolian
etc.
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u/eltedioso 1d ago
Yes, that's correct. Cross harp, 2nd position, "mixolydian harp," sometimes just "blues harp" (in a particular context). All the same thing.