JEW'S HARP

"Minor, Blues and Pentatonic" Jew's Harp Scales

How to plasy minor tunes on jew's harp? Jew's harp overtones can create a tone row quite close to the minor row. It starting from 13th overtone and is shown in the picture.

Similarly, "Blues" jew's harp scale starts from the thirteenth harmonic.

How to choose keynote of the jew's harp for use in ensemble playing of major and minor tunes? For example the melody you are playing is in "D Major", in which case you should take the Jew's harp on the "D" *, then our overtones are most similar to sounds made by other members of the ensemble. Customize Jew's harp key note for the minor and blues from the following table below, in our example for the "D minor" (or blues in the "D"), we need "F" jew's harp *, in which case we will have the right overtone series.

Tune Key	Use Jew's harp tuned on:
C Minor	D sharp
C sharp minor	E
D minor	F
D sharp minor	F sharp
E minor	G
F minor	G sharp
F sharp minor	A
G minor	A sharp
G sharp minor	B
A minor	C
A sharp minor	C sharp
B minor	D

One more popular scale in modern music is Pentatonic.

* In fact, you can use other notes, such as third or one-fifth scale degrees, but it's more complicated options that provide a strong additional coloring the overall sound, and here we consider only the simplest case with the tonic.

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