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This is part of a series about tuning the diatonic harmonica

Part 1 - Tune a harmonica using your ears and a simple chromatic tuner
Part 2 - More Better - ultra precision tuning
Part 3 - Perfect Pitch: Using breath dynamics for tuning
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Can you have too much of a good thing? Probably.

Can a harp be in absolute perfect tune? Maybe. If you don't care all that much about harmonica tuning (as long as your harp doesn't sound too bad), you can stop reading this and go back to playing some mean harp or practicing scales.

You can find a straightforward method of tuning a diatonic harmonica here: Tune a harmonica using your ears and a simple chromatic tuner. That will get your harp sounding very nicely.

If you obsess about tuning and are willing to spend a considerable amount of time and effort to get it perfect, read on!

In summary, we will apply the same strategy we've used to get the octaves in tune to the fifths and thirds.

Here's an important fact: You need to tune every Fifth with as much accuracy as you can.

What's so special about the fifths?

Every note of the scale has a purpose. For example, the Thirds and the Sevenths give the scale it's general sense of being (major, minor, dominant...). Fifths imply the Tonic; they are closely related to the tonic. It's important to get the tuning of the fifth (and fourth - same thing) right to make the chord sound nice.

Since the tonic and fifth are so closely related, the margin of error is considerably tight. A very small adjustment can go a long way. Often a fifths is tuned to less than 2 cents from ET, so even if you like your harps tuned to ET, you should be able to get away with such a small offset - you get the best of both worlds.

No chromatic tuner will be of help - you need to use your ears for adjustments this precise.

There are a lot of fifths on the standard diatonic harp. Every arrow in this picture is an interval of a fifth. If you enjoy tuning, dig in!

I can't tongue-block these intervals without affecting my embouchure which will cause some bending of these notes. That's not helpful to precise tuning! To play these intervals with a natural embouchure, you can isolate these pairs of reeds with the cover plates off using one finger to mute the thirds.

There are two chords on the draw plate so there are two different Fifths! The 2 draw is the tonic of the 1-2-3-4-5 draw chord. But the 4 draw is the tonic to the 4-5-6 minor chord. So 2-4 draw is an interval of a fifth, but so is 4-6 draw. These notes are repeated up the harp so 6-8 is a fifth, too.

Waitaminute! 6-8 is a fourth! Yes, but 8-6 is a fifth!. Take a minute to think about that...

...

And 8-10 is a fifth.

So tune the fifths with your tuner and then fine tune them with your ears. Play the tonic and the fifth and eliminate beating in the same way you eliminate beating when you tune octaves (using variable breath force to figure out which way to adjust the notes. See here: Tune a harmonica using your ears and a simple chromatic tuner. These beats are a little harder to hear than straight octaves, but they are there.

Thirds anyone?

Now that you have tuned all the fifths to perfection, can you use the same process with the thirds? Sure. Play the tonic and third together and fine-tune it to eliminate beats.

On the draw plate, there are two chords so there are two thirds. The 3 and 7 draw are major thirds to the 2 draw. The 5 and 9 draw are minor thirds to the 4 and 8 draw. Since major thirds need to be tuned about 12 cents flat to be just, you can compromise and find a nice sounding spot in between equal (0) and just (-12). Minor thirds are just at +16 but they sound pretty good near zero.

Remember the 5 draw is also the flat seventh of the 2 draw as well as the minor third of the 4 draw. What sounds good for one may not sound so good for the other. You decide what's best...

This is an extended French TunerTuner™. They are not part of my tool kit but are available separately.

What does it do? It helps tune the Fifths, Thirds as well as the Octaves on the blow plate.
The extended French Tuner works just like the regular FT. It plays octaves on one side and plays the other intervals on the other side.

Octaves:

Fifths:

You don't need any fancy equipment to tune properly. Even the French tuner/extended FT is just a tool to speed up the process. Use your ears. I'm posting these images to offer you a further visual example of what reeds to tune as pairs.

Some points to remember about tuning intervals relative to the tonic:

- If you play both the Tonic and the Fifth, a chromatic tuner will indicate the tonic - even if the tonic is the higher note (example, 3-4 blow or 6-8 draw.)
- Use your ears just like when tuning perfect octaves.
- If you hear beating that disappears when you increase your breath force, the bottom reed is tuned higher than the top reed (again, even if the bottom reed is the fifth)

Happy tuning!

This is about methodology.

I made yet another harmonica tweaking video.

Here's a video demonstrating some of the things that are straightforward to quantify so that you can make changes that have a measurable benefit.

Some of these things include:

Tuning: It's easy to measure the pitch of a reed and whether it's in tune with another reed. Play all the octaves available and listen for "beating".

Bending: Bend the 3 draw (or any other bend) with as little force as you possibly can. You will find a "blind spot" somewhere in the middle where the workload is handed off from the draw reed to the blow reed as you bend down. How much work is needed to "skip over" this blind spot can be felt, albeit subjectively; it tends to be more work on lower key harps. We learn to "skip over" this blind spot early on when we are learning to bend. A well-playing harp can be played with very little breath force without having to work hard around the "blind spot".

Reed shape efficiency: By playing a single reed using your lips on the plate off the comb, you can get sensory feedback on how easily the note responds, how much flow you need to make the note sound strong, and how loud the note is. A well-shaped reed will make the whole reed plate vibrate when you play it.

Reed shape efficiency (again): By bending the single reed's note down, you can determine if the reed is prone to squealing. That's a great indicator of how efficiently the reed is set up.

My wife says I look like a clapping seal.

Yes, I do.

This is a quick and easy way to install a flat comb in to a Marine Band harmonica. The stock comb has dimples to make room for the ends of the rivets which hold the reeds. My combs provide more surface area to make an airtight seal with the reed plates and the rivet ends need to be flattened.

This is a harp in the key of G. The end result is a fantastic harmonica that is loud and responsive. I was happy with the instrument but was not satisfied with the 4 overblow due to the shape of the reeds (out-of-the-box profiles).

I spent a few minutes and did some re-shaping of the blow and draw reeds to make them more efficient. It's much more work than just gapping. But the end-result is a 4 blow that is not tight and plays normally with hard pressure as well as a solid - and bendable - 4 overblow.

With good reed work and a little embossing, any harp can play overblows as passing notes.

The overblows in this video can be hit cleanly. They cannot be played with any more expression such as being sustained or bent. That's the difference between a regular harp that can play overblows and an "Overblow" harp. The overbends on the Overblow harp are meant to be played with expression and will not squeal or drop out when bent up.

You don't need bulky, expensive and complicated equipment to tune your harmonica with great precision. The French Tuner™ helps you use your mouth and ears to quickly tune the blow reed plate of a diatonic harmonica. The French Tuner helps you eliminate beating and provide smooth chords.

Its precision design allows the French Tuner to work on all major brands of 10-hole diatonic harmonicas including Seydel (which have wider spaced holes) and many 12-hole harps.

Use it to help adjust reed profiles too! The French Tuner will isolate individual reeds and provide an airtight chamber for you to assess and make fine-grained changes to reed shape. Pucker or tongue-block embouchure can be used to best help you adjust your reeds to your playing style.

Order one here.

Use the French Tuner with my free harmonica tuning guide here:

Using the French Tuner:

The notes of the blow plate are organized in a repeating pattern. The root note, the third and the fifth. This pattern makes it very simple to tune the blow plate.

Hold the French Tuner over both notes of the octave and use your mouth to play both reeds at the same time or just one at a time. Lay the reed plate back down on your workspace and adjust the pitch of either note and recheck.

Precise tuning means you will be doing lots of small adjustments. The French Tuner allows you to quickly make adjustments and recheck the pitch of the reed without having to reassemble the harmonica every time.

Tips and Tricks:

Tip number one: Special 20 harps

On Hohner Special 20 harmonicas, the reed plate has extra openings next to a few slots to accommodate the recessed comb. This can cause an airleak when using the French Tuner to tune these notes. You may notice that these notes sound quieter or are harder to hit. This can make you unsure of how to tune them. But there is a very simple solution to this problem.

Just hold the French Tuner as usual and block the leak with your fingers. Just be sure to not cover up the slot.

Tip number two: As you go up...

You will notice that you will need to keep a larger difference between the pitch of both notes of lower octaves than the difference in pitch on higher octaves. Use these example values to get the idea: Tune hole 4 right on pitch. Tune hole 1 about 2-5 cents sharper than hole 4, depending on the key. Tune hole 7 about 1-2 cents flatter than hole 4. Tune hole 10 about the same as hole 7, maybe a hair to the left. It will be flatter, but your tuner may not pick it up. Use your ears and the flowchart to eliminate beating.

Be careful with your breath force. The French Tuner creates an airtight seal on the blow chambers. Once you put the reed plate back on the comb, the channel will not be so tight any more because the draw reeds will create more of an open space. When using the French Tuner, keep light breath force to avoid tuning the reeds a little sharp.

The reed profiles of the top octave may be such that those reeds only respond to harder breath. In that case, you will always have trouble getting the tuning to be perfect. In that case, focus on the lower octaves and tune the top octave when the plates are assembled to the comb using the Five Cent Tuner to make very small adjustments.

Tip number three: The waiting game

Be patient. Tune the harp and let it be for a few days before you attempt to adjust the tuning again. In the long run, that will save you a lot of time and avoid some confusion or frustration.

Enjoy tuning your harps the easy way!

Updated 2019/12/01

This is part of a series about tuning the diatonic harmonica

Part 1 - Tune a harmonica using your ears and a simple chromatic tuner
Part 2 - More Better - ultra precision tuning
Part 3 - Perfect Pitch: Using breath dynamics for tuning
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There’s nothing like playing a harp that’s in tune! You can set up a harp to be as loud and responsive as you can but if it’s not in tune, it won’t have any mojo.

Tuning a harmonica with a guitar tuner can be a painful experience because the needle just seems to bounce around. Using an analog strobe tuner makes things easier but strobe tuners are bulky and are very expensive. No matter what equipment you use, you need to employ some breathing techniques to get the pitch of each reed right.

You can do it! Here’s a tuning method that relies on the use of a basic chromatic guitar tuner and the technique of fine tuning by eliminating "beating" while playing octave splits.

How your own harps need to be tuned is entirely up to your playing style. Use this method to get your harps in better tune than most out-of-the-box harps.

Use a swiss file, a good emery board or a diamond-tip engraving tool to remove brass from the tip of a reed to raise its pitch. Remove brass from the base of the reed to lower it. Support the reed from underneath with paper or a tempered steel support tool.

Remove some brass and then recheck. Don’t bet on a hole-in-one, it’s far too easy to overshoot the mark!

Believe me, overshooting the mark is the number one harmonica tuning frustration and will account for most of the time you spend tuning unless you address the problem. Aim for getting halfway to the pitch you want in one shot. Then, go back for more, this time aiming to get halfway again until you “sneak up” on the target pitch. You will save a lot of time going about it this way. If you can land on the pitch you are aiming for on the fifth attempt, consider that success!

Warm the harp by playing it for a few moments and then tapping out the moisture before reading the pitch. If you forget to warm the harp, you may end up with unpredictable results.

It takes time. Don’t aim for completing the task in one sitting. Tune it and the come back to it to double-check.

Should you tune it today? Brass needs to rest/relax and work itself out - if you have made changes to the reed shape, let the harp sit for a few days before you expect to be able to tune it with accuracy.

A chromatic tuner doesn’t have the accuracy to be able to get the pitch as close as you need it to be to play octaves, splits and chords that sound right. If you never make use of chords or other combination of notes, you can get away with less accuracy and tune your harps to Equal Temperament.

To tune a note by “using your ears”, tune notes in pairs. Most notes in Standard Richter have one or more of the same note one octave away on the same reed plate.
First use the tuner to get the pitch of one reed as close as you can. Then find its octave and tune that one, too. Play the notes together and listen if it sounds good. When two notes are out of tune, you will hear beating - a pulsing wobbly unpleasant sound.

Although your tuner may indicate that two notes are of the same value, it's not accurate enough to get it perfect and they probably will still sound out-of-tune (you will hear beating) when you play them together as an octave split.

Play the octave harder for a moment. If the beats disappear, the lower of the two notes is tuned too high. If nothing happens or the beats get worse, the lower note is too low. That will give you the information to decide which note to tune and in what direction. Obviously, if you just tuned a reed using some reference, don’t adjust that reed, rather adjust the other note in the octave split.

Make small changes to each reed and recheck often. Higher reeds require surprisingly little work to change pitch.

If you are not sure which note is out-of-tune or if you overshot the mark and have lost your point of reference, try playing each note individually and looking at the tuner again for hints. Try using other hints, too. You can play each note with another audio source like a keyboard or another instrument. Or, depending on the adjacent notes, play a chord and listen for extra notes that appear when the harp is in tune. Getting the harp in perfect tune is a difficult process. It gets easier with practice.

Also, it’s normal to hear beats when playing octave splits very softly, that is playing well below normal breath force. Force on any reed will lower the pitch of the note being played and normal tuning is adjusted for this amount of force - if you play a note with far less breath force than normal, it will sound sharp. The lower the reed, the more sensitive it is to this phenomenon. Lower reeds need to be tuned a little sharp to compensate for this effect. Aim for getting the octave split in tune when playing with your everyday breath force level.

What to do when the tuner says two notes are in tune, but they sound out of tune:

Tuning Method for octaves and chords:

The old-fashioned method of tuning a harmonica involves using a table of offset values for each reed. (See the table at the end of this document.) You would need a very precise tuner and have super-human breath control to be able to get each reed to those exact values. Most inexpensive tuners are pretty accurate about indicating when the needle reads zero so we use that to our advantage and change the calibration reference of A concert pitch instead of trying to figure out exactly what value the needle is showing. Changing the reference of A 440 by one Hz changes the pitch of each note by about four cents. For example, to bring a reed to -12 cents we change the reference of A from 442 to 439 and then tune the reed to get the needle to read zero.

Using a chromatic tuner that has an adjustable reference (at least A=436 to A=444) do the following:

(The needle must read zero unless specified.)

Root (Tonic) notes
Tune Blow 4 to A=442
Tune Blow 1 to match Blow 4 (use your ears to find beating and then try to eliminate it by fine tuning)
Tune Blow 7 to match Blow 4
Tune Blow 10 to match Blow 7
Fifths
Tune Blow 6 to A=442, with the needle just to the right of zero.
Tune blow 3 to match blow 6
Tune blow 9 to match blow 6
Thirds
Tune Blow 5 to A=439
Tune blow 2 to match blow 5
Tune blow 8 to match blow 5

You are done the blow plate. Verify your work by playing the 1234 chord and listen for beats. Go up the harp that way.

Root (Tonic) note
Tune Draw 2 to A=443. It should match blow 3 by ear.
Fifths
Tune Draw 4 to A=443, with the needle just to the right of zero
Tune Draw 1 to match Draw 4
Tune Draw 8 to match Draw 4
Thirds
Tune Draw 7 to A=440
Tune Draw 3 to match Draw 7
Flat sevenths
Tune Draw 5 to either A=436 (1950s tuning), A=440 (current Marine Band), A=443 plus a hair (19-limit)
Tune Draw 9 to match Draw 5
Nineths
Tune Draw 6 to A=444
Tune Draw 10 to match Draw 6

You are done the draw plate. Play the 12345 draw chord and listen for beats. Go up the harp.

Use the French Tuner™ to speed things up! Although this tool is optional, it makes tuning the blow plate faster and easier than putting the harp back together every time you need to play the reed you are tuning.

See this page for more information on tuning your harp with accuracy: Ultra Precision Tuning

Here’s a comparison of the most popular harmonica tunings:

Common Tuning offsets from zero (equal temperament)