Heard a band do a pretty nice rendition the Allman Brothers' classic, "Jessica" the other night, and it piqued my interest. Futzing around a little I find that the opening works pretty well on the low couple of holes, until you need to go lower and run out of harp. Can't seem to find where else on the harp fits.
So I thought I'd ask the experts: how would you approach this song? What position/tuning/overblows/magic/etc? I'd also like to hear how you arrive at whatever you suggest. Still working on how to figure things out that are more complex than the normal 1st/2nd/3rd/I/IV/V.
Here's the original:
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Last Edited by garry on Jun 27, 2016 9:33 PM
I would probably figure out what notes are in the melody, the timing, and chart that out. Then pick whatever key harmonica I could play those notes at that timing at that tempo.
First pos on an A harp would be my starting point. Begin on hole 6. Might sound a bit squeky -- maybe there´s a low A harp around ?-- but I´m not that wild about the current trend of the low and low low harps. Gets indistinct and mushy and I prefer the squek -- which can be tempered a bit with tone and precision.
I"m not sure if its true for this song, but I know its written by Dickie Betts. He was playing around on the guitar at home, and his three year old daughter started dancing to what he was playing, and then he started playing to what she was dancing. Cute story.
I also heard an interview with Greg Allman, who said that he had the task of transposing Dickie's songs, since Dickie didn't read music. He said that because Dickie wasn't trained, his songs were very difficult to transpose.
Thanks for the suggestions. Playing in first starting on hole 6, as Martin suggested, works pretty well until you run out of harp on the high end. Will have to try hvyj's suggestion and move down next. I also have heard that most of Allmans' stuff is pentatonic.
Not sure I'll be able to pull this off, but it will be fun trying, and you only get better taking on stuff you can't play. Besides, this will be fun at jams. I like throwing out parts of "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed" when I'm warming up, particularly when I'm around musicians that don't know me. Really freaks the guitar guys out.
If you find you like the bottom 6 for this, or any other tune, and you find you are running out of low end, you might want to try a Steve Baker SBS 365. If I'm not mistaken, his tuning scheme duplicates the bottom 3 holes for 1 more octave down.