The Blues Harmonica: The history of the blues harmonica

The history of the blues harmonica

The beginning

They say it was developed from the Chinese "mouth organ" (the "chen") and that it was really supposed to be just an aid to help tune "proper" instruments.

They're probably right.

Undeniable facts are:
Around mid-19th century Hohner started playing around with the idea of blowing air across a metal tongue to produce sound. That was hardly news, the basic principle had been used in European organs for ages. But what Hohner did, was to leave out all the extras - space-consuming bits like the air pumping mechanism, resonators and keyboard mechanisms. All they used was a tiny little "reed" inside a tube (a "channel").
This was the pitch pipe. There was only one note, but unlike virtually any other instruments of that time, its pitch was extremely stable, making it a perfect reference point for tuning instruments.

A single note is hardly enough for a musical instrument, though. But that's easy to fix. Just put two different reeds in the same channel and a simple valve mechanism that allows one reed to be activated when you blow trhough the channel, the other when you suck (actually we call it "draw") through it.
You need more than two notes? Simple: just stick a couple of those channels together and you have a harmonica!

The Richter scale

Now, the next question is: which notes do you need? There are lots of different types of harmonicas for different uses, but one configuration has had far more success than the others. It's called the Richter scale.
Richter was a gentleman who worked for Hohner at the end of the 19th century. He came up with a configuration that included almost all notes of a major scale through three octaves and the two most important chords in that particular key. Best of all, he managed to fit it all into a small, compact ten channel harmonica.

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This particular page was created 15/02/2004 and last updated 17/05/2005

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