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| Curiosità, Recensioni, Notizie e quant'altro vuoi sapere sul blues e non solo... | ||||||
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HARPNINJA Review |
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| HarpNinja a new application
for fast learning and perfecting the diatonic harmonica.
Reviewed on the iPad version by Gianandrea Pasquinelli Update. ver. 2.2.1 has been released for Ipad, OsX and PC. ver. 2 is a major update. The graphic layout has been completely rewritten and now is much more functional. Fast at opening, more alternate tunings, 12 hole chromatic layout, exercises and pitch calibration. New functions added; kamcord video recording; this makes possible to record short videos with voice overlay, a great feature for sharing any progress in your preferred social network (clever !!!!). Also a new keyboard mode is now present. Chapeau Mr. Komuso. HarpNinja is a new application targeted to the beginner and intermediate-level harmonica player that hit the Apple store a few days ago. Harpninja, also available for Windows and Mac users, is developed by fellow harmonica player Komuso Tokugawa (Harpninja) with an eye to the harmonica teaching market segment. Placed on a medium price range, Harpninja is actually composed of three separate applications; Circle, Tuning and Melody Dojo; these can be selected from the main window where a settings (more on this later) and a help section are also accesible. |
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| What are
the specific functions of the individual applications ? Circle Dojo is based on the classical circle of fifth diagram but it is completely interactive; circle helps the harmonica player to interpret chord progressions, easily transpose music to a different key, understand harmonica positions, scales and modes. Circle has a simple and clever layout; harmonica keys and greek modes are easily accessed from the left, top window while harmonica positions from the top right. Major chords and positions are labeled red, minor blue, and diminished green. The layout is very intuitive; I found this tool useful to analyse music sheets and choose the right harmonica key to play my favourite songs based on the harmonica position outline. Tuning Dojo is a more complex application that I found useful also for the advanced harmonica player. Basically when you open tuning there is a well done diatonic harmonica layout and a pitch analyzer; there are also many settings; first select the key of your harmonica and then blow; if you hit clean notes the right hole glows green and you are right; if you hit dirty notes (i.e., 2 and 3 draw) nothing happens; at the same time, the pitch analyzer (medium, bottom of the window) indicates the pitch of the played note and its frequency). This is a great first exercise for the beginner; hit all the available harmonica notes clean; however this is only the surface of the application; additional examples of its utility are; improve draw and blow bending ability; beginner and intermediate-level harmonica players find difficult to achieve clean bendings in three areas; 2 and 3 draw bending, and 10 blow bending; with tuning, you can visually check your technical progress and finally succeed in fine tuning these difficult bendings; you can also play the visualized notes on the window to facilitate the correct note intonation; here there is also a twist for the advanced overbend player; first you have to check the show overblows/draws option in the setting menu; I found challenging to achieve a steady intonation on 4, 5, 6 overblow and 7 overdraw and I realized that when my bandmates complain about the wrong intonation of some of my notes are right; moreover, I was excited to discover that I was able to articulate my overblows to hit notes a semitone higher (i.e. on a C harmonica, 6 blow overblow let me achieve G, Bb, B, Bb and G again); very tricky. Another tuning possibility is scale exercise; you have to select a scale related to the harmonica key you are playing and tuning let you know what are the scale notes; now you listen to the scale by pressing the correct notes on the window and then you start playing the scale checking you have chosen the right notes; to completion, there is also the option to record your exercise activating audio recorder at the bottom right of the screen. A great gym! Melody Dojo is a music game targeted to facilitate beginner-level melodic learning; when you open melody a window let you choose the tune type (simple w/o bends or based on the first four most used harmonica positions); at the present there are not many songs available but more will be included in the next release; you can also select the option pause mode that let the software wait for your correct played note; once you have selected a song, an effective layout assists and helps you to learn the selected song while listening to the correct execution by the iPad speaker; execution speed can be varied at will using a slide. The game is a little slow at opening and is limited to the C key diatonic harmonica. Price range. At $14.99, you may think that this application is a little expensive. But if you consider that, you are buying three separate applications, the software is developed for both desktop and mobile devices, on the market there are applications for harmonica much more expensive and that do a lot less, and the product is destined to constant development, I think Harpninja deserves them all. A praise to the developer. In summary. Harpninja is a great tool for learning harmonica; simple and intuitive; although targetted to the beginner-level harmonica player, Harpninja is useful to strenght individual teaching programs and has the right tools to improve bending and overbending intonation in intermediate-advanced players. Cons: a little bit slow at melody opening. Wish list (in order of priority); i) layout for chromatic harmonica ii) more alternate tunings iii) more tunes iv) exercises (scales, major, minor and diminished triads, arpeggios) v) pitch calibration (for extending the tuning potential capability) vi) midi song import and automatic song analysis generation (see harping - http://www.harpingmidi.com; I find very useful the harpmidi ability to let you know what is the best key harmonica to play a song based on the number of required bends and overbendings). |
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