First I'd like to say I'm glad to be part of your forum I've been playing diatonic harmonica for about 25 years now and began with the Blues as a reference as many players I guess influences by the Sonny Boys, Big Walter, Little Walter, George Smith, Charlie Musselwhite, Jerry Mc Cain, Jerry Portnoy, Jr Wells, Billy Branch, Sugar Blue, Sonny Terry, Mark Ford, Little Sonny, Jazz Gillum, Slim Harpo, Frank Frost and so many others I've always been interesting in discovering and exploring new techniques, music styles with this tiny musical instrument
A french national TV contest has participants choose from 8 tunes. You pick one up and do whatever you want with it ... then 8 finalists are chosen by a jury.
I decided to give it a shot and wrote/recorded this arrangement in a very short time.
I'm glad to share it with you below. In case you like it please share ;)
Nice! I also liked the Flight of the Bumblebee, where lightspeed has likely been beaten. Are you using the valved Suzuki MR350? There's another guy here whose velocity is rather surprising, but what's your technique, and how do you manage your breathing during fast sequences?
I only know a few French harmonica players, but I've noticed several of you seem to be playing non-blues blues harp. Have you noticed that, or do I just a skewed sampling?
Good remark Nate, I only give my feeling, not an answer: french players want to carry the harp to extremes, so blues is only a stage: they IMO don't study, digging it deepdown like you, american people, could do. Simply cultural differing. Maybe I'm wrong, but anyway your question is relevant.
To Laurent : Thank you. I only use regular harmonicas, no valves, no special tuning ever ! I consider the challenge is to use the regular diatonic harmonica to play other things. It's the instrument I play I don't want to modify it. I mostly use those harmonicas : Promaster, Hammond, Fabulous. Here I use the Promaster MR350. I use bends and overbends only.
For breathing I just try to use as little air as possible
To Nate : I think that a lot of french harmonica players began harmonica with JJ milteau books which are not just blues oriented. This must have been an influence. ANother reason might be that of course Blues is not our culture although it is very popular. I would also add that you have Howard Levy in America who has been playing a lot of different music genres for 30 years or more and Howard has had an impact on a lot of harmonica players around the world I guess.
As far as I'm concerned I began to play exclusively blues and then discovered country, bluegrass, then jazz and more music styles. It's interesting to play different style as each brings technical difficulties and the joy to accomplish a goal when you manage to achieve it.
Very nice. I liked the way you were playing with the tune by giving it more of a pop arrangement. What position were you playing? Sounded like cross harp to me, but I may be wrong. ----------
Hi Mr So and So ... Well I never think in terms of position but more in terms of scales / arpeggios ... The tune is in D minor and I play with a regular C harp. Hope this helps and Thanks for watching ;)
Last Edited by on Sep 19, 2012 4:00 PM
Nice work David, You make the harmonica seem right in place with that piece. It not good music "for a harmonica", but just plain good music.
I appreciate you comment about scales and arpeggios. That makes more sense to me than position as good way to go about selecting a harp for a piece. (I am still trying to come to grips with exactly what position means)