Harmonica information, history and anagrams

Harmonicas are free reed musical wind instruments (also known, among other things, as a mouth organ, French harp, tin sandwich, blues harp, simply harp, or "Mississippi saxophone", having multiple, variably-tuned brass or bronze reeds, each secured at one end over an airway slot of like dimension into which it can freely vibrate, thus repeatedly interrupting an airstream to produce sound.

The harmonica lacks a keyboard. Instead, the player selects notes by placement of mouth over the airways, usually made up of discrete holes in the front of the instrument. Each hole communicates with one, two or a few reeds. Because a reed mounted above a slot is made to vibrate more easily by air from above, reeds accessed by a mouthpiece hole often may be selected further by choice of breath direction (blowing, drawing).

Harmonicas is commonly used in blues and folk music, but also in jazz, classical music, country music, rock and roll and pop music. Increasingly, the harmonica is finding its place in more electronically generated music, such as dance and hip-hop, as well as funk and acid jazz. Harmonica seems to be an instrument that crosses ethnic, musical, and cultural divides in a manner that is not as well duplicated by many other instruments.

The basic parts of a harmonica is the comb, reed plates and cover plates. The comb is the term for the main body of the instrument. These are traditionally made of wood, but plastic (ABS) and metal combs are perhaps more common today. The comb contains the air chambers which cover the reeds - the name comb comes from the fact that in simple harmonicas it does resemble a hair-comb.

Types

The Chromatic harmonica

The Chromatic harmonica uses a button-activated sliding bar to redirect air from the hole in the mouthpiece to the selected reed-plate desired. This harp is used for Celtic, Classical, and Jazz, as well as many other styles.

The Tremolo Harmonica

Tremolo harmonicas have two reeds per note. In a tremolo harmonica the two reeds are tuned slightly off a reference pitch, one a bit sharp and the other a bit flat. This gives a unique wavering or warbling sound created by the two reeds being not exactly in tune with each other and difference in their subsequent waveforms acting against one another.

The Octave Harmonica

Octave harmonicas have two reeds per hole. The two reeds are tuned to the same note a perfect octave apart. Many share their basic design with the tremolo harmonica explained above and are built upon this "Weiner system" of construction.

The Orchestral harmonicas

The orchestral melody harmonica, or Horn harmonicas as called in Asia, are mostly found in East Asia. These consist of a single large comb with blow only reed-plates on the top and bottom.
The Orchestral Melody harmonica (Horn harmonica)
The Bass harmonica

A Bass harmonica consists of two separate combs joined together one atop the other with moveable connectors at their ends. These are all-blow instruments covering much the same range as the viol family Double Bass. Those made today are all octave tuned, in that each hole has two reeds one of which plays the bass note and the other a note an octave higher. The lower comb contains the notes of the C major diatonic scale, while the upper comb contains the notes of a C#(Db) diatonic scale.
The Chord harmonica

The chord harmonica has forty eighrt chords major, seventh, minor, augmented and diminished for ensemble playing. It is laid out in four-note clusters, each sounding a different chord on inhaling or exhaling. Typically each hole has two reeds for each note, tuned to one octave of each other, but less expensive models often have only one reed per note.

Harmonicas developed from the intense interests in free reeds which arose in Europe in the early 19th century. While free-reeds had been fairly common throughout East Asia for centuries and known in Europe for some time before this period, around 1820 there was a virtual eruption of new free-reed designs in Europe and North America. While a young Friederich Ludwig Buschmann is often cited as the inventor of the harmonica in 1821, it was almost certainly a case of simultaneous development amongst several inventors working independently with mouth-blown free-reed instruments appearing in the United States, the United Kingdom and on the continent at roughly the same time. In 1825, Richter tuning was developed, while in 1857, Matthias Hohner, a clockmaker, purchased one of Buschmann's harmonica, and became the first person to mass-produce it. Sometime by the 1850s, the diatonic harmonica had more or less found its modern form and the other diatonic types followed soon thereafter (the various tremolo and octave harmonicas). By the late 19th century, harmonica production was big business and had evolved from a handcraft into mass-production with figures well into the millions, a status which continues to this day. New designs continued to be developed in the 20th century including the chromatic harmonica (first made by Hohner in 1924), the bass harmonica, the chord harmonica and others. Even in the 21st century radical new designs such as the Suzuki Overdrive and Hohner XB-40 continue to be brought to market.

Shortly after Hohner began manufacturing harmonicas in 1857, he shipped some to relatives who had emigrated to the United States. It rapidly became popular, and the country became an enormous market for Hohner's goods. President Abraham Lincoln carried a harmonica in his pocket [4], and harmonicas provided solace to soldiers on both the Union and Confederate sides of the United States Civil War. Frontiersmen Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid played the instrument, and it became a fixture of the American musical landscape.

Famous Harmonica band

Borrah Minevitch Harmonica Rascals
A Troupe da Gaita

The Harmonicats
Adler Trio

Anagram of Harmonica

'A rich moan' = 'Harmonica'

'Harmonica muscial' = 'Ouch! I'm a carnalism.'

Foreign names for Harmonica

Mundharmonika = German

Armónica = Spanish

Harmoniko = Esperanto

Mondharmonica = Dutch

Mondharmonica = Polish