Hello, friends!
This post is about history of diminished tuning. I asked Pat Missin, famous expert on altered tunings about the invention of the diminished tuning and here's what he replied:
The diminished tuning (actually that should be diminished tunings, as
there are a few possible variations) has been invented a few times.
Some time around 1990, I had a dream that I'd retuned a 12-hole Marine
Band 364 to this layout. I'd never thought of it before, but as soon
as I woke up I made one and played it for the rest of the day.
However, I wasn't the only person to have had this idea.
In 1996, Christian Neumann was awarded German patent 29512316 for two
tunings, one of them being the diminished layout. This is odd, as the
German patent office had previously refused to grant patents for
harmonica tunings, plus this tuning had already been patented
elsewhere.
In 1993, Dr John Yeadon was awarded UK patent 2259802 for several
chromatic harmonica tunings based on modes of limited transposition,
including a couple of variations of the diminished layout.
In 1992 Magic Dick and Pierre Beauregard were granted US patent
5166461 for various diatonic tunings, including the diminished layout.
Alfred Hirsch from Germany apparently came up with the diminished
tuning himself, about the same time that I did and if I recall
correctly, so did Steve Jennings in the UK.
I would not be at all surprised if lots of other people had the same
idea.
Hope this helps,
-- Pat.
Next post will be more on practice!
If I recall correctly, Ed Coogan told me that he thought up the tuning on his own as well. He said that he had the simple idea that each hole would bend a 1/2 step, and of course to have all the notes available, each hole would be a 1/2 step above the last. This only coincidentally formed the symmetrical diminished scale.
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