Überreader Marc asks me in one of his comments to link to www.HarpTabs.com. I must confess that, while in the early days of Planet Harmonica I tended to track down every single tiny site on the subject of harmonicas, after a couple of years they became so numerous that I started deliberately not investigating any new site out there, simply because it was too time consuming.
Following Marc's request, I checked out HarpTabs and while I fail to understand the logic behind their diatonic notation (and the site's ergonomy is not very friendly), it's an absolute treasure trove of user contributed tabs. If you're willing to invest a little time to learn how to navigate and decipher the notation, it's pretty amazing. What I find great also is that, scanning through, many tabs are from popular music and tunes, not blues standards.
So anyway, I apologise for taking so long to identify a new, great, resource !
Wow--thanks for posting, Ben!
Although users are free to use whatever notation they want, most tabs use the following:
+ = blow
- = draw
' = half-step bend
Example: -3'' = full draw bend on the 3 hole
If no + or - is used, it usually means the note is a blow note.
I think the link in your post isn't quite working... or it could be a glitch on my side...
Posted by: marc | January 31, 2007 at 01:22 PM
Fixed.
The three whole issue is exactly my point. What's a 'full draw bend' ? The notation recommendations tend to suggest that it's the note bent all the way (so, Ab on a C harp) thus making me wonder about the full tone bend (A on a C). Either it's not explicit (they should have said: on whole 3 you have -3b, -3bb and -3bbb (substitute ' for b). I just think that this is needlessly confusing for beginners.
Posted by: Benoît F. | January 31, 2007 at 01:36 PM
-3'' does represent an A note on a C harp. I agree--I'm a fan of the -3b, -3bb, -3bbb approach myself, but -3', -3'', -3''' is not such a far cry. Each ' represents a half step, so maybe I should have said a full step bend in my example instead of full bend.
Posted by: marc | January 31, 2007 at 02:11 PM
Just to be clear on my side, I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm saying they're confusing. What the site says exactly is
+ = blow note
- = draw note
b = halftone bend
bb = full bend
A full bend is not a notion that can be understood by a beginner as anything else then "bend as far as it goes".
Anyway, minor point, still a great resource !
Posted by: Benoît F. | January 31, 2007 at 06:01 PM