The Flappy Chromatic

During 2020 I got a lot of design inspiration from some of the very earliest chromatic harmonicas made, back in the 19th century. A chromatic harmonica is essentially two diatonic reed sets a semitone apart, with a selector mechanism that ensures only one set of reeds is active at a time. We are now so used to the common format of a front mouthpiece and slider assembly that it’s easy to forget this is far from being the only way to simultaneously activate one set of reeds and blank off the other. In the early days of harmonica development, many different approaches were tried. A great place for learning about them is from this page on Pat Missin’s wonderful THE FLAPPY website: www.patmissin.com/patents/patents. html#chronology Another excellent resource CHROMATIC is M.A. Weber’s website, devoted to chromatic harmonica history: https://chromhistory.wordpress. com/2019/02/10/chromatic-harmonica-history/ Brendan Power Patron It has lots of good photos and some video clips demonstrating how these early designs worked. You’ll be amazed at the sheer variety and ingenuity of the many different approaches to making a chromatic harmonica! Quite a few of the early designs fitted into a category I call ‘Rear Selectors’: instead of having a front slider, they selected the desired reed-set from behind or under the coverplates. One that instantly appealed to me was the very first known design, by Johan Richter in about 1875. Here’s a photo of this type from the Hohner Harmonica Museum in Trossingen: Like a modern chrom it has two reedplates, each with blow and draw reeds, fixed above and below a central comb. However, it uses the most direct way possible of stopping one set of reeds from vibrating and opening the other: by simply pressing down on them!

The two coverplates are hinged at the front and spring-loaded at the rear. Whilst playing, you simply press down on the top cover to stop the upper set sounding and open the bottom set. They have a felt lining on the inside which protects the reeds from damage. You can hear this particular example demonstrated by the great Tommy Reilly, in this video 6:40-7:40: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/munnspillforum/1970/FTEM00002270/avspiller I was intrigued, and decided to try and make my own version. Unlike the original basic design, I wanted to adapt it to having a push-button mechanism. This was to give a playing feeling more like a conventional chromatic, and raise the speed of the opening/ closing flaps as well. Of course, this complicates things somewhat - but I thought it would be worth the effort. I spent a good couple of months last year trying different ways, and did achieve success – of a sort. I certainly got the plunger action and flap up/down speed working well, by using magnets instead of springs. However, along with the high flap speed came increased noise! No matter how I tried to dampen it, I couldn’t avoid the fact that when a fairly substantial part is slamming down on the reedplates at the speed of a typical slider trill, there has to be a rapid striking sound to some degree. And, since this is at the rear of the harmonica, it will heard by listeners and picked up easily by microphones. Conclusion: Technically it works, but is not a practical alternative to compete with the conventional front mouthpiece/slide assembly. So I reluctantly put my 21st century version of Johan Richter’s original chromatic harmonica design in a box, and moved on to other projects. Perhaps it will be opened by someone in another 150 years, they will solve the noise issue with some amazing new materials, and the Flappy Chromatic will rise again!