My new bebopped Hohner!

[Bluesy]

I sent an old leaky, windy, out-of-tune, never-played Hohner 260 to a magician out on the West Coast and it came back bebopped. In tune, easy-blowing, tight, and resurrected from a premature grave. I can't put it down.
Bebopped harps want to play the blues. They beg for it! They also like diminished 7ths, minor sevenths, dominant sevenths (some), and blues riffs, original and pilfered. While normally-tuned harps love long, languid ballad lines, bebopped harps want to swing! Blues In The Closet. St Louis Blues. Minor tunes, 'So in Love', tunes in F minor, Gm, Bb. Diminished 7ths. All come pouring out with surprising ease.
Mille gracie, Garibaldi!

Tomaso

[Gnarly He Man]

Hooray!
G

[Bluesy]

Update . . .
To put the tuning to a reality test, I'm playing that bebopped 260 exclusively. I keep a bunch of downloaded tunes in a folder marked 'Harmonica music'. Every day I sort of play through another two or three.

Here's the desktop folder list on my Mac:
 A Time For Love-G
 All the Things You Are - Ab
 Beautiful Love-Dm
 Blame It On My Youth - F
 Bye Bye Blackbird
 Charade-C mancini
 Don't know why-1.pdf
 Estate - Bruno Martini
 Estate.pdf
 I Fall In Love Too Easily Eb
 I Fall In Love Too Easily-F
 I Have Dreamed - F
 Just The Way You Are in F
 Just The Way You Are- C
 Just The Way You Are-Eb
 Lazy Afternoon in C
 Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be? - F
 My Foolish Heart-Bb (orig)
 My Foolish Heart-C
 My Foolish Heart-G
 Oh, You Crazy Moon
 Scarborough Fair - Dm
 Solitude  Eb
 Solitude- C
 Solitude- F
 The Girl From Ipanema - F
 The Summer Knows.pdf
 When I Fall In Love - C
A Beautiful Friendship-C  play in F
A Time For Love-Bb
Alfie in 'C'
Alfie in Db
All Or Nothing At All- C
Amazing_Grace_Gary_and_I.mp3 (This is a link to a swingy and audacious performance I like.)
Autumn In New York-F
Autumn In New York-G
Autumn Leaves.pdf
Billy Joel - New York State of Mind.pdf
Charade-D
Come Rain Or Come Shine.pdf
Connecting-3rds-and-7ths-All-The-Things.pdf (article from Wim)
Goin' Home harmonica in C.pages
Harmonica scales.pages (Some guy playing a really good scale routine on diatonic)
Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer - Charade-1.pdf
Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer - Charade.pdf
Henry Nemo - Tis Autumn.pdf
Hit-the-3rds-and-7ths-All-The-Things.pdf (Wim article)
I Didn't Know What Time It Was-G  play in C
I'll Close My Eyes lyrics.pages (GREAT tune!)
Invention slow.mp3 (Bach)
Jimmy Webb - By The Time I Get To Phoenix.pdf
Laura
Luiza Tabs harm..pages
Luiza, harmonica tabs
Luiza, harmonica tabs.doc
luiza.png (PNG Image, 1658x652 pixels) - Scaled (74%).pdf
Minor scales harmonica.pages
molt0100.pdf (article on alt. tunings)
My One and Only Love - C
New York State of Mind Lyrics
Oh, You Crazy Moon G, Van Housen and Burke
Ray Noble - The Very Thought Of You Ab
Ray Noble - The Very Thought Of You-1.pdf
Richard Rodgers, My Romance - C
SlideMeister TAB LIST 6.7.11.pdf (Henry's)
Smile harm. in Bb and C.pages
Stella By Starlight - Bb
Stella By Starlight - in C
Stella By Starlight- in G
Stolen Moments-Bb THIS!
Stolen Moments-C
The Christmas Song-F
The Very Thought Of You - Bb
This Love Of Mine.pdf
Transposition Chart.pdf
Victor Young, When I Fall In Love - F
What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life -C
Wonderfulworld.pdf

I'm going thru them with my new bebop, and really liking it's ease. Soon I will have another chrome bebopped by my west coast pal, but am having trouble choosing between the SCX/56, the CX12 or the CX Tenor.
As an aside, I have to apologize for my past pig-headedness in not embracing what is obviously a better tuning for chromatic harmonicas. Goes to show there's merit on all sides of an issue.
I won't get into its benefits - we've been thru that several times hereabouts but if you have an unused harp lying around, give it a try. I can almost guarantee it'll be an eye-opener.

Tom/

[Gnarly He Man]

Word, brother man--
Who's next 

[rusty]

  My horns are on the way

Dang thats an impressive play list Bluesy. I have to be VERY selective these days as I'm running out working memory (not talking about my computer)

[Bluesy]

My horns are on the way

Dang thats an impressive play list Bluesy. I have to be VERY selective these days as I'm running out working memory (not talking about my computer)

Rusty,
That desktop folder is not just a list of tunes' names, Each one is Real Book type music, some in several keys. They open as a PDF file.
They consist of a melody line with chord-names above the line. I'm sure you've seen them. If the original key is a hard one, I learn it first in an easy key, then maybe tackle it in the original key.
BTW, that list above doesn't include all the tunes I've downloaded. There's another whole folder. Can I play them all? Heck no! but they're all familiar to me. Enough work there for a couple of lifetimes.

Somebody said that he has no trouble storing information in his head -- it's retrieval that's the problem!
Oh, by the way, your horns are on the way. For bebopping? If you don't mind saying, who you sending them to?

TomC/

[rusty]

Blown away!!!!
I just received my orchestral bebop tuned SCX 48 from Gnarly He Man
What a blast! Wahoo! I'll write more later...... Must play it NOW!

[Bluesy]

Congratulations, Rusty!. I'm sure you're going to love it. I only had a 260 done and that's the chrome I play the most. The tuning is just more sensible. Gary does good work.

TomC/

[rusty]

Still in a transitional mode adapting to the new tuning. First let me say how pleased I am with Gary's work. Gaps were set perfect for me (how did he do that??) the instrument has never played better and somehow even the tone is better then I remember. I love the Orchestral range as it matches the violin. I picked up my sheet music and played "Air on a G string" right off the bat. I have not done any proper studying on the bebop changes and occasionally still after but a few day's do hit a wrong note still BUT....it has opened up a bunch of possibility with improv. My improv sounds more fluid.  Certainly has allowed for easy blues riffs. At this point in time this is how I'm feeling, I am going to submit one of my two beloved Sirius 64's to bebop. I think I will also try some other tunings with different harmonicas. I don't mind switching tunings back and forth, I already do that because I play diatonic too. I like how its gotton me playing outside MY self imposed box! As it stands today my SCX48 Orchestral Bebop tuned harmonica is my "have with me at all times" horn of choice. It has provided what I was looking for in my CX12 tenor but never really happy with. A big shout out to Gary!!!

[Tim Atwell]

Is this be-bop tuning the same as diminished tuning, and is that: Blow C Eb Gb A/Draw D F Ab B?

[Gnarly He Man]

First, thanks to Rusty--glad the harp turned out well for you!
Secondly, what is bebop?
Bebop tuned instrument replace the redundant C note in the tuning with another note--so the pattern on the first three holes remain the same, and blow hole four is tuned to either A or Bb.
I like Bb--it's the first flat, you know 

[oldstudent]

With Bb notes replacing the (lower) redundant C notes in a C-solo-tuned diatonic harmonica, a bebop-tuned diatonic harmonica can play two full major scales (here F and C major).  When such a diatonic instrument is half-valved, with valves on all the draw notes, then simple blow bends and draw bends are enough to get a full chromatic scale.  So it comes very close to achieving the ideal properties that Andy Newton described in 2007.

I have such a half-valved bebop diatonic instrument, and I admit that it seems quite good (almost as good as my preferred fourkey tuning) for easy chromatic play in a diatonic instrument.  The half-valved blow-bends are not as good as simple draw bends, at least when I do them.  And having 4 bend notes among the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, the half-valved bebop can require a lot more bending than a fourkey (which has only 2 bend notes in the chromatic scale).  But the half-valved bebop diatonic has three big advantages: chords, range (4-hole octaves instead of the fourkey's 5-hole octaves), and similarity to the familiar standard tunings.

(I hope that it's ok to mention a buttonless bebop instrument here, as I am saying how chromatic it can be.)

[joculi]

... I think I will also try some other tunings with different harmonicas. ...

I highly recommend diminished a.k.a. "dimi" tuning.  It is not too difficult to switch to dimi from solo, but then benefits are great.  Because the tone difference between all holes is consistent in dimi, all the notes are where they "should" be.  I find it much easier to play by ear and I find I hit far fewer wrong notes.  It is also easy to play in pretty much any key. 

Gary once called bebop a "gateway tuning."  So I think you are on the right track to try out some more tunings...

[Gnarly He Man]

Reviving this old thread, nice to see old friends enjoying alternative tunings.
I just retuned a set of Fabulous 16 reed plates to the C6 tuning for Will Galison, but tuned down a half step—so it’s a B6 (hope you understand).
I don’t know why manufacturers don’t make a Bebop tuned chromatic commercially available.
Solo tuning works for a lot of folks, but I bet they settle on one C or the other (and, of corse, employ the draw C equally or more).
Just adding content here, any other advocates of Bebop tuning still here?

[servus]

Um. I don't think I really understand what be-bopped tuning is.

PJ

[Gnarly He Man]

The easy way to understand is:
Chromatic harmonica is tuned like holes 4-7 of a diatonic harp—beginning and ending with C, alternating blow and draw notes on the first three holes and reversing breath direction on the fourth.
Bebop tuning changes the last C to Bb, so no breath direction reversal.
Same with the slide notes.

[servus]

Aha! So you get blow Bb and draw B instead of blow C draw B. Actually pretty logical. Thanks.

PJ

[John Broecker]

Another Altered Scale slide chromatic:

I have a Seydel-customized Chromatic Deluxe
slide chromatic: C major 7th chord, exhale,
and D minor 7th inhale; on a key of C harp,
slide out. Slide in exhale is Db Major 7th chord,
Eb minor 7th inhale.

The C major 7th slide harp has F major and
F major 6th chords, but no G major or G dominant
7th chord, the 2nd most important chords of the
C major scale.

But, if you play in the key of F on the C major 7th
harp, you will get the C dominant 7th chord.
Playing Amazing Grace in F, a pentatonic major
scale, it will illustrate the concept. Amazing Grace
uses no "fa" (Bb) or "ti" (E).
 
Here's the slide out chart. The Large lettered
spellings are exhale, and the small letters are
inhale. It's a 12-hole, 3-octave range harp.
It was made for me in 2007, as an experiment.

SEYDEL CHROMATIC DELUXE, MAJOR 7TH;
KEY OF C FACTORY-TUNING, SLIDE OUT:

Hole:||  1  |  2 |  3  |  4  |  5  | 6  |  7  |  8  |  9  |10 | 11  | 12 ||
        ||C d |E f |G a |B c |C d |E f |G a |B c |C d |E f |G a |B c ||
        (The slide-in chart raises the scale a half-step)

Compared to the standard solo-system harp,
this harp has no redundant exhale Cs, but it
has an inhale c note to complete each octave.

This makes it easier to perform (an opinion),
and it adds many extra chords not available on
the standard solo system harp (see the chart).

We don't need a limited-chords Richter slide harp
or Chordomonica II, when this "7ths" harp offers
more useable chords (another opinion).

Best Regards, Stay Healthy

JB, Self-proclaimed Gumball Guru

[Age]

Aha! So you get blow Bb and draw B instead of blow C draw B. Actually pretty logical. Thanks.

PJ

Yeah, as a "newer" player, now might be the best time to try it. For a guy with ADHD, in his eightieth year on the planet, it's not for me but I gotta admin, it's a pretty cool and logical tuning. 

[Gnarly He Man]

I have converted a few--I'm getting Michael Rubin's Sirius 48 ready for a gig he has in Berkeley California, doing his original music (worth checking out if you haven't yet).
https://michaelrubin1.bandcamp.com/album/ill-worry-if-i-wanna