[Martin]

Comments & thoughts
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1/ Which melodica to play reggae?

What are your feeling about different melodica sounds here? Did you identified some specific models?
I feel the Hohner 26 definitely suits reggae best

2/ How to get the reggae dub sound?

Studio effect brings really big change in the overall sound (check Pablo early and mid70 work). Any recommandation or advice about how to get interesting echo/distortion effect?
Here’s a recent recording (flute) with great sound effect:

“I use a very old Roland guitar pedal for a lot of my flute playing. I think it’s called the Roland Phase II. If I double-track my flute, playing two in harmony, then put it through the pedal, there’s a weird distortion that is pleasing to the ear! That’s my flute sound.”

3/ Tuning

I am a total music beginner, and i recently tuned (pretty accurately) my vintage Hohner26. I was dissapointed that i definitely prefer the old slightly out-of-tune sound. My well tuned melodica sound seems now too clean and with little personnality…
When listening Pablo early tracks, what’s your feeling about tuning? Maybe he didn’t tune his instrument after all…

4/ Note sheet

There’s no sheet note available for melodica track, but i was surprised to see a rather good number of amateur recording on youtube from which you can get notes (often with poor sound quality and hard to see key pressing, but it definitely helps a lot!).
I am currently transcribing some video into rough notes (but i have no knowledge to put into a proper sheetnote … maybe midi keyboard to sheetnote with a dedicated software?)

5/ Backing track for recording

Thanks to jamaican instrumental tradition from B-side vinyl, you can get a good number of instrumental or dub version!