Nobel laureate Roger B. Myerson plays the 1847 with modified Fourkey-tuning

Roger B. Myerson was decorated with a Nobel prize in the field of economics in 2007.

Fortunately he found a good compensation for his most probably rare spare time: playing the harmonica!

...but as a skilled mathematician he had to find himself something very special as you can imagine - he invented his own version of a harmonica, which is based on the design of Fourkey tuning - but he "recalculated" it in order to play it with full octaves chromatically in four keys (without overblows).

This is what he wrote us about his newly developed 10-hole Fourkey variant - only available in the SEYDEL-Harp Configuarator:

"Fourkey tuning can sometimes make a 10-hole harmonica seem a bit narrow, as each octave takes five holes.

So I use a custom-designed Seydel harmonica as the best way to solve this narrowness problem in the 10-hole harmonica.

In my custom-designed Seydel harmonica, the fourkey tuning has been slightly modified to have two complete octaves and to get a good centering (within the harmonica's 10-hole range) of both the second-position major scale and the first-position minor scale.

In my fourkey harmonica that plays the major keys of C, G, D, and A, the [blow/draw] notes in this modified fourkey tuning are:


[D/E][F/F#][G/G#][A/B][C/C#][D/E][F/F#][G/G#][A/B][C/D].


To play in all twelve keys, I have two other custom Seydel harmonicas, with transposed versions of this modified fourkey tuning:


[F#/G#][A/A#][B/C][C#/D#][E/F][F#/G#][A/A#][B/C][C#/D#][E/F#]

(to play in E, B, F#, and C#),


[A#/C][C#/D][D#/E][F/G][G#/A][A#/C][C#/D][D#/E][F/G][G#/A#]

(to play in G#, D#, A#, and F).


Notice that the highest draw note in each case is raised one half-step above the fourkey pattern, to yield two full octaves in both first and second positions.


But I hope that Seydel will soon offer a 12-hole harmonica in fourkey tuning, as that will be the ultimate solution to the narrowness problem. When it is available, I promise to buy at least three (so that I can play them in all 12 keys), and I'll recommend them to everyone else who wants to play the ultimate melodic harmonica.

-Roger"


We at SEYDEL's will see if it is possible to make it 12-hole!


Find out more about >Roger B. Myerson or listen to >"Jazzman" playing on the Fourkey on Youtube!

Check out the Fourkey tuning in the SEYDEL



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