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Harmonicas by Brendan Power
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Brendan Power Harmonica Review
The name Brendan Power should need no introduction on this website, in fact some of you reading this may already own harmonicas made by the man himself. Recently, after cutting back the amount of custom work he did, Brendan came up with a way to make a few of his innovations more readily available, by having a couple of harmonica manufacturers produce factory-made versions of some of his harmonicas.
The PowerDraw and PowerBender are both 10-hole diatonics made by Kong Sheng, a company who have recently raised the bar for harmonica production in China. With the PowerBender, holes 1 to 4 are the same as a standard 10-hole, with the rest of the holes set up to allow draw bending all the way up the harp, with increased chromatic and expressive possibilities, as well as some really cool chords. Brendan has produced an instructional book/CD set to help you explore what this tuning can do, but I think most intermediate harmonica players could adapt to it quite easily with just a few hours of noodling around - and have a lot of fun doing it.
The PowerDraw tuning is similar to the PowerBender in that it eliminates blow bends and overdraws and enables draw bends all the way up the harp. This tuning is probably even easier for a typical harp player to get into, as the first six holes are identical to standard tuning, with a few notes shifted around in the highest four holes. Definitely a plus for the blues player is the ability to get the upper octave flat third and flat fifth in cross harp without needing overblows or overdraws, although its usefulness is certainly not limited to blues. Both of the samples I received for review are responsive and well tuned, with very comfortable ABS comb and stainless steel covers, production quality easily on a par with mid-priced instruments from the big name manufacturers. Both of these tunings would be a bit of a challenge to make yourself, unless you are pretty good working with reeds and at £33 for the PowerBender and £30 for the PowerDraw, this is a more economical option than paying a professional to retune a harp for you. Both the PowerDraw and PowerBender are currently available in the keys of G, A, C and D and Brendan has a bunch of videos on YouTube demonstrating what can be done with them.
Brendan Power PowerBender Harmonica Detail
Brendan Power PowerBender Harmonica
The Brendan Power PowerBender Harmonica tuning builds on the best parts of the traditional Richter Tuning, while altering the scale to make the real juicy and important notes much easier to obtain throughout the whole three octave range. If you’re interested in a fresh sound on the 10 hole diatonic, LOTS more bending expression and easy jazzy playing, the Brendan Power PowerBender harmonica is a good choice for you!
Same familiar breathing pattern in the upper-middle registers. All draw notes bend everywhere, holes 1-10! On the un-valved version you can overblow every hole 1-10, for full chromatic playing. Overdraws and blow bends are no longer possible or needed on a PowerBender – they are replaced with simple draw bends. On the half-valved version, a mix of normal draw bends and valved blow bends gives full chromaticism. Top octave easy to play (intuitive) as many familiar phrasings can be adopted from the bottom octaves Easy to play in the common positions: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 11th, and 12th.
PowerBender Background
PowerBender represents the culmination of 30 years experimenting to create personal alternate tunings. Each one is really usable; I’ve proved that by recording 18 albums with various earlier alternate tunings. They all have excellent qualities that remain valid for those who wish to explore them further, and will be described and demonstrated in other books.
However, I believe that in the POWERBENDER I have hit a winning combination of strengths that rivals the Richter tuning for all-round playability, but surpasses it for expressiveness, ease of play and contemporary relevance. The POWERBENDER is a new universal tuning updating the 10 hole diatonic for modern music styles, which emphasize note bending and fluent improvisation in different keys.
It builds on all the best parts of the traditional Richter tuning, while altering the scale to make the real juicy, important notes much easier to obtain, with fantastic expressive ability throughout the whole three octave range.
Its beauty and strength is that it relies overwhelmingly upon draw bending for chromaticism and expression, an easy technique all players master quickly. Every draw note bends a semitone or more. Overblows are still available but significantly reduced in importance, as they are not required for most playing.
A development of my earlier tuning experiments, the POWER BENDER reached its final form in 2008; since then I have adopted it as my main tuning
for improvising in blues, jazz, rock, folk and pop styles. It’s such an easy and sweet sounding tuning on out-of-the-box harps that anyone who tries it quickly gets hooked.
Available Keys:
- C
- A
- B Flat
- D
- Low F
- G
Brendan Power PowerBender Harmonica
The ChromaBender is made by Hering and looks like a 12-hole chromatic with the button missing. From a constructional point of view, that's pretty much what it is, but where the purpose of the lower reeplate on a standard chromatic is to provide the sharps and flats when the button is pressed, on this harmonica it is there to enable the natural notes of the instrument to be bent - full throated double reed bends like a blues harp, not like the valved single reed bends of a standard chrom. Actually, there are a couple of notes in each octave that do not bend - on ChromaBender in C, this would be the F and the first of the paired C notes, but these bends are not needed for chromaticicity as you already have the E and B available as natural notes. All the other notes can be bent by one semitone.
I have to confess something at this point. A couple of years ago, I had thought of building a harmonica that was essentially the same as the ChromaBender, but the idea didn't really appeal to me strongly enough for it to be worth the work. Later, when I heard that Brendan was having them made, I thought that made good commercial sense, but I still didn't feel the need to rush and get one. However, within a few minutes of playing around with the one that I was sent for review, I just fell in love with it! This is a really fun harmonica - nothing new to learn (if you are already familiar with the standard chromatic layout and blues style bending), loud, full toned and expressive. I don't think it will replace the standard chromatic, but it definitely offers up a whole new world of possibilities - and did I mention how much fun it is to play? The ChromaBender is currently available in the keys of C, D, F, G, A, Bb and costs £130, around the same price as a standard Hering 12-hole chromatic. It comes in a nice zippered case with a really helpful explanatory leaflet and again, Brendan has videos on his YouTube channel demonstrating some of the possibilities of this really cool harmonica.
For more details of these and some of the other unique harmonicas he has to offer, visit www.brendan-power.com. Of particular interest are his Slide Diatonics and his unique AsiaBend harmonica. The more adventurous of you may be interested in his TwinDiatonics in various configurations, SliderBass, Inline OctaChroms (octave tuned slide chromatics) and Double Chromatics in a dizzying array of options.
Update
Since writing the above review, Brendan has unfortunately had to discontinue production of the ChromaBender. Also the Kong Sheng versions of the PowerDraw and PowerBender have been discontinued and replaced with versions made by Easttop. Additionally, premium versions made by Seydel are available, at a slightly higher price. His Lucky 13 harmonicas are also available in PowerDraw and PowerBender tunings in all 12 keys, as well as Standard, Solo and PowerChromatic Tunings.
