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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! > Little Walter's "Rocker"
Little Walter's "Rocker"
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wheel
116 posts
Nov 27, 2012
12:11 PM

I was trying to reproduce original Little Walter's sound and approach he is still unreachable but why not? :) I hope you liked it!
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5F6H
1427 posts
Nov 27, 2012
12:20 PM
Nice playing, you got the feel OK. Good job.

If I was to be ultra picky, I think the wet effect was a bit over the top. One of the things I particularly like about Rocker is that it is substantially dry and you can realy hear the harp without the effects of reverb or delay. But that's probably just me...;-)
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Joe_L
2193 posts
Nov 27, 2012
7:52 PM
Nice.

If there had been no delay or echo effect, I would have thought this would have been a recording from the 50's.

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cliffy
19 posts
Nov 27, 2012
8:18 PM
what backing track did you use? thought you sounded great.
Frank
1497 posts
Nov 28, 2012
7:46 AM

Wheel, that is a really great SOUND, lit up my ears buddy!

I did ROCKER last Feb...really taught me A LOT about less is more concept> regarding using a few notes to make a big statement - his ideas are short and sweet but meaningfull :)
barbequebob
2109 posts
Nov 28, 2012
8:00 AM
The less is more concept also means that you let the groove drive the music rather than trying to force things to happen. From what I understand on the original session, LW was playing thru the board and the boards were all tube back then and recording boards get more easily saturated than an amp does. Much of what LW plays is not played hard at all, often times quite softly.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Rick Davis
926 posts
Nov 28, 2012
8:05 AM
Frank, that sounds great!

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-Rick Davis
The Blues Harp Amps Blog
Frank
1498 posts
Nov 28, 2012
8:01 AM

No doubt Bob, that is one of the mind boggling revelations you get when studying LW's sound, he is a light player - smooth as silk...

If I played that with out the amplification you would of hardly heard me as far as LOUDNESS is concerned... I wasn't playing hard at all, the mic and amp gave it the kick in the ass as far as capturing the technique and transferring it with umph and balls.

Thank you Rick :)

Last Edited by on Nov 28, 2012 8:02 AM
5F6H
1428 posts
Nov 28, 2012
8:49 AM
@BarbequeBob " From what I understand on the original session, LW was playing thru the board and the boards were all tube back then and recording boards get more easily saturated than an amp does."

Interesting Bob, I had never heard that with respect to this session (Oh Baby/I Love You So/Come Back Baby were the same session, they still seemed happy enough for Walter to use amps at this time?). Desks may have been tube but were designed for good clean reproduction...distortion from a desk then would have been much like that from a desk today, waspy...as they were/are just voltage amplifiers (preamp, no output section to round off the envelope & smooth out harmonics)...this track strikes me as more "airy" than that? But I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that it couldn't have been a desk.

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CarlA
173 posts
Nov 28, 2012
9:54 AM
Sounded great! What set-up did you use to record this piece?

-Carl
barbequebob
2110 posts
Nov 28, 2012
10:00 AM
I can remember playing into an old portable cassette recorder in the 70's getting this very same over compressed sound. From what I understand, low-Z mics weren't the industry standard at the time either. Also something that's taken for granted since the early 70's is the use of headphones and back in the 50's, having headphones for every musician recording in the studio was extremely rare.

Frank, some notes are hit somewhat harder and because many of the notes are hit softly, a slightly harder attack often gives the ILLUSION of being played considerably harder than it actually is and that accounts for at times a more sax like quality in LW's playing.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Frank
1500 posts
Nov 28, 2012
10:01 AM

Yes, he is a master illusionist... he does a harder attack in such a way that it doesn't suck the life out of a note, but gives it it's full freedom of explosion - it massages the tone - and doesn't strangle it.

Last Edited by on Nov 28, 2012 10:03 AM
wheel
117 posts
Nov 28, 2012
10:27 AM
thank you all for your good comments! And also big thanks for very interesting discussion!The most interesting for me in this instrumental are micro rhytms that Little Walter bring probably into every phrase.
The backing track is from Hal Leonard's book about Little Walter. My setup is: RE10 mic, lone wolf harp break and t-rex reptile delay.
Joe-l, now I hate my delay pedal! :)))
Frank, your version is great! Like it!
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Last Edited by on Nov 28, 2012 10:32 AM
Joe_L
2197 posts
Nov 28, 2012
10:48 AM
Don't hate it. Just pick and choose when you use it.

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