blues tuning

[unknown-user]

hi – as a neophyte harpist, i’ve driven myself beyond distraction trying to tune my 32 string lever harp to a pentatonic scale so i can play my own version of the walking blues. is there someone out there who can give me some advice on how to accomplish this ? i’ve tried just adjusting the levers but they sound horribly flat and simply leaving out notes so i have a five note scale ends up snapping strings ! any suggestions gratefully appreciated !

[kreig-kitts]

You should be able to play pentatonic scales with regular diatonic tuning, just by only playing the strings that are in the scale. So if you tune to C, remember only to play CDEGA for a C major / A minor pentatonic scale.

Are you wanting to tune it so that all the strings are in the pentatonic scale, with no repeating notes and without having to skip any strings? If your harp was made for a diatonic scale, I don’t think you could do that without having the top strings too tight and breaking, and/or the bottom strings so loose they’d sound awful if they played at all.

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