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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Do you really need a Custom Harmonica
Do you really need a Custom Harmonica
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harpdude61
936 posts
Jul 26, 2011
1:02 PM
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I've read this thread with interest and thought a lot about it.
IMHO...Whatever music comes out of a "tough" stock harp, whether straining, grimacing, sweating, or whatever, can come out the the most delicate set-up custom harps. You may not be bound up as tight, but you sure can make it sound like you are.
Jason does some really raunchy hardcore slow blues in 2nd position all over the harp. Wailing hard on some very aggresive stuff, but I don't see him switching harps when he starts playing clean 32nd and 64th notes later in the song.
You can make that tight gapped 4hole draw wail on a custom harp if playing softly thru a good mic and amp.
I noticed at Hill Country that the two players that played the softest while playing acoustically, were Jason Ricci and Alex Paclin. You had to move in and listen to hear them.
Amplificaion is where customs rule (I've paid attention BBQ Bob). THe softer and more relaxed you play the more you can do. I don't just mean speed and overblows, I mean little nuances, partial bends, cresendos,...any type of emotional playing.
Buddha told me that very few players would even be able to make his harps sound they were so tight.
These top players with custom harps do it all. I'm not sure I can agree that a stock harp would enable them to do anything they don't already do.
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KingBiscuit
74 posts
Jul 26, 2011
6:53 PM
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NO.
Custom Harmonica falls in the WANT category.
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Seven.Oh.Three.
121 posts
Jul 26, 2011
6:58 PM
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If the question read: "would I benefit from a custom harmonica?" my answer would be this-
There are two camps on that. Camp 'A' says no. Because you need to build your chops up enough to be able to do these things on an ootb harp. Then try a custom and it will be easier.
Camp 'B' say yes. Buy a custom and that way youll know you're not being held back by infierer harps. Then you can transpose the technique to any ootb harp and get it done.
Which camp are you in?
7.o.3.
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Sarge
66 posts
Jul 26, 2011
11:12 PM
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I wanted some custom harps cause Walterharp had some and I didn't. social egalitarianism at work.
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Wisdom does not always come with old age. Sometimes old age arrives alone.
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colman
59 posts
Jul 27, 2011
5:02 AM
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tinus koorn a great OB style player,i think he does
most playing on a C-harp.playing the chromatic scale
any key could be done on a C-harp. thats to the extreme but the natural evolution of this style.
this sounds like a lot of work but if you want to bebop you got to woodshed...
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hvyj
1618 posts
Jul 27, 2011
5:25 AM
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I don't OB and I don't like close gapped harps. I play with a relatively strong attack because I like the different timbres or tonal characteristics I get from the reeds when I do. I'm not hard on harps because I create all airflow from my diaphragm. I don't play as hard as some players do, but neither do I subscribe to BBQ Bob's recommendation to use the least possible amount of breath pressure.
Playing customs gives me better response, but most important it gives me consistent precision on bends.
Before I started playing customs I had real difficulty accurately hitting and controlling blow bends and I just could not get the 10 blow to drop a whole step. Could not do it. Now, blow bending has never been a big part of my playing, and i never worked at it all that hard, but I felt that for as long as I have been playing it's a skill i should have mastered.
Within a few weeks after I started to play and practice using custom harps, I got to the point where I am now able to hit and control ALL available blow bends on ANY KEY of harp, custom or OOB. WOW! I was never able to do that before.
The customs were so much more responsive and precise that instead of fighting the harp to get blow bends, I was able to identify exactly what I needed to do to get the desired response in order to achieve and control blow bends and quickly refined my technique so that now I am able to hit all the blow bends ON DEMAND on ANY KEY harp whether OOB or custom which is an unbelievably dramatic improvement for me.
I still don't separate the two available blow bends in the 10 hole consistently well, but, other than that, I can't believe how quickly I mastered blow bending once I tried doing it on custom harps after spending 30+ years fighting with OOB harps.
So, yeah, I think playing customs improves one's technique and that playing customs will make you play better on OOB harps. It did for me.
Last Edited by on Jul 27, 2011 3:13 PM
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groyster1
1219 posts
Jul 27, 2011
5:43 AM
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this is a very interesting thread-the only way you will ever know if a custom harp is to try one for yourself-its what you decide for yourself is what counts-I am glad I have the ones I own but certainly dont think all your harps need to be custom harps-I really think stock harps play pretty well at least for practice purpose
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Blowyourbrassoff
28 posts
Jul 27, 2011
2:12 PM
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I would like to add my two cents here, even though it's all pretty much been covered.
Most players don't need a custom, however for those learning new techniques such as overblows and overdraws having the custom can in some sense be a learning tool, in that it makes it easier to achieve those notes, therby allowing you to get a feel for them and how they sound, as well as the technique for doing so, which in turn can make it easier for you to do them on a stock harp.
In most cases the work that customizers such as myself are doing is in a sense working to make the harp do something it was never intended to do. I was talking with Todd Parrot the other night about a harp that I recently built for him and we were discussing that.
I think that having a custom does open up some new doors for the players by making it easier for them to achieve certain techniques, however great players like Adam can do amazing things on harps that are right out of the box. As musicians, myself included, there are times when we think that new gadget or piece of equipment is going to make us better musicians, in my experience only practice can do that.
For those of us that make our livings building them there is the challenge of trying to make them do all of those things that people are experimenting with and to make each one better than the one before it. It has to be a labor of love in order to dedicate the time to it. Building a harp, depending on the setup and the model, can take a lot of hours to do, between machining the parts, doing the fit and finish work, the time spent staring down a microscope working on the reeds, the playing and readjusting, etc etc.
So no you don't need a custom, but they can make excellent learning aids on the way to furthering your abilities.
Chris
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Todd Parrott
594 posts
Jul 27, 2011
8:31 PM
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And it's a great harp that Chris built for me. More to come later on YouTube....
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