Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
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Here I am playing “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” at a Christmas gig we did a coffeeshop. I normally play the autoharp, but this song had too many weird chords, so I took a turn on the autoharp. That’s a Celtic Harp and an Oud playing with me:
Hi Marcia,
It is always refreshing and fun to listen music made on non-mainstream instruments. Nice work.
In reference to your Hohner problems, if your melodica is a vintage Piano 32 (which it sounds like), check the following.
If you shake the melodica without holding on to the strap, the strap can rattle, and it often sounds like something loose inside. I was fooled by this a couple of times until I caught on that it was the strap making the noise. If you hold the strap and shake the melodica and you still hear rattling, there is a problem. Parts should not be floating about inside a melodica.
In reference to the water valve problem: again, if I am correct that you have a vintage piano 32, the water valve consists of a piece of foam on a sprung piece of steel (you could call it flap I guess). The steel flap is suppose to hold the foam against the inside of the hole, sealing it. When you press the metal water valve button, it pushes the metal flap and foam away from the hole so the water can drain out.
If in fact you do have parts floating around, maybe one of them is stuck under the metal flap. Push the water valve in and shake the melodica to see if you can dislodge a loose part. Also, maybe the foam came off the metal flap. Look at the drain hole under a strong light. You should see black foam covering the hole.
Until you fix the problem, you can always seal the hole with tape so it does not leak. Then remove the tape to drain the water.
If you suspect there are problems, the Piano 32 comes apart and goes together easily. Just remove the screws on the back cover and take the cover off to investigate. When the cover is off, don’t be pressing the keys or a couple of them could pop out. It is not difficult to put them back in, but there is a tricky technique to do so and you will be there for an hour trying to figure it out as more keys pop off while you are working with the open melodica.
Hope all that helps.
Lowboy
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