"Your Internet portal to all things Chromatic. While we are "up and running," there are a lot of features yet to be added; so when you see a gap here or there, please just be patient with us. We've been putting the most time into the bells and whistles on our new SlideMeister Forum, that replaced the old slidemeister group back at Yahoogroups. Lots of cool stuff planned so bear with us as we grow and visit us often. In the meantime, the all-new SlideMeister Forums is fully operational, with new goodies being added as they become available to us. If you have trouble registering for SlideMeister Forums, or logging in please contact us.
SlideMeister.com and it's associated forums currently offer many special features not found on any other harmonica group on the web, with much more on the way.
SlideMeister.com
From day one, (back in 1999 on the original SlideMeister on E-Groups and later on Yahoo) all we ever wanted was to bring attention to the Chromatic harmonica on a global scale, and serve the Chromatic community. Where the other groups claimed to embrace all harmonicas, yet were all but anemic in Chromatic content; we simply state (up front) who we are and why we're here. While we actually do have a diatonic "daughter board" in our BanterMeister section, we keep it well seperated from the the main focus of our forum. In other words, you'll never have to sift through the short-harp stuff to find Chromatic stuff.
Chromatics
Yes, there are other harmonicas out there, but the Chromatic harmonica is the one everyone's heard yet no one recognizes when they see it. A harmonica isn't just a harmonica; there are differences. A diatonic is the one that's found (sooner or later) in every baby crib and ends up (when played well) in Blues, Country & Western and Southern Gospel music, etc.
The Chromatic harmonica is the bigger, "silky" sounding one with the button, usually in Grampa's drawer, if found at all. Folks make a conscious decision to play one of those because:
* It's harder to find
* It costs more to buy (about 4 times the price of a diatonic)
* It’s a bit more involved to learn
* It gets cranky when dropped, or when it’s played in cold weather.
* It likes to be kept in its comfy little case
But players gladly accept those downsides because the Chromatic excels for Jazz, Classical, Standards, Big Band stuff, Broadway, Oldies, Latin, Ethnic and Western. The amazing part is that it can also hold it's own playing Blues, Rock, Country, Celtic, and more. Where the diatonic harmonica basically "rules" for Blues, C&W, it can't handle the rest with enough grace to really make it acceptable. To be fair, there are a more than a few phenomenal diatonic players out there who are nothing short of amazing, but even they'll probably admit: playing "Mozart" would be a stretch.
The Chromatic harmonica is, to the Diatonic harmonica, what the classical guitar in to the dobro.
Another interesting point is that while most Chromatic players also play diatonics, (some extremely well, by the way) the same cannot be said for the majority of diatonic players. Hmmmm! We'd like to try to change some of that. :o) Are the lines between diatonics and Chromatics being blurred? I suppose it could happen someday, but for now, SlideMeister will continue to be the "Chromatic Oasis" SlideMeister Forums? Oh, that's where you can find the one and only "SlideMeister" newsgroup (our real-time all-Chromatic forum) and BanterMeister (our real-time everything else forum) along with our ancillary groups, just to make things even more interesting.
Just click on grey SlideMeister Forums button above to see what what makes us the best harmonica forum on the web. To join in the fun, click: "Join SlideMeisterForums" at the very top of this page, read the Rules & Regs, click the "I read’em" button and wait for your approval message. Then click on the grey "SlideMeisterForums" navigation button on the left, sign in and we’ll see you on the forum.
Enjoy! And welcome to SlideMeister!
A.J.Fedor
