At our uke group we are covering Van Morrison's Bright Side of the Road, and I'm playing the harp solo, and sure enough I started playing the harp upside down the other night. It raises a lot of questions. a) How do you personally avoid it, other than by looking at the damn thing very carefully (but swapping from uke to harp doesn't leave much time for that)? b) Why don't the manufacturers make a bigger difference between the top cover plate and the bottom cover plate? c) Does the fact that they never have mean that I'm just a twat?
Here's a reminder of how it goes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVQ9R2kSFRg
Last Edited by Andrew on Sep 21, 2017 7:45 AM
Haha, yeah it's a pain!! It might have happened to me once or twice in the past 50 years ;) A few years ago I bought some budget custom Session Steels from Ben Bouman and he sticks a fake gem on the right side of the comb so you can tell quickly which way round to hold the harp.
Yor cover plate idea got me thinking of a cheap alternative where you could have some sort of braille style code on one side of the harp to let you know the key as well as the orientation of the harp. Here is an example of me playing upside down harp, but it was down to a webcam error:)
I like to attach these to my harmonicas on the bottom right side so that when I am holding the harmonica I can feel with my right fingers ( these labels are raised,a sort of bubble)..this way I know I have it pointed the correct way..I have heard some players complain that it is hard to know if your are holding your harp the right way on dimly lit stages :) They are also easy to read in low light..best labels are available at Rocking Rons Music..here is the link
Perhaps if you are replacing the nails on your MBs with bolts, some kind of variant bolt-head could be used on one of the corners. ---------- Andrew. -----------------------------------------
Last Edited by Andrew on Sep 21, 2017 10:40 AM
I avoid it mostly by having key labels on the upper octave end in my box so I pick them up the right way. I do get in trouble sometimes when they're laying out for quicker access because I'm using more than one in a song. Don't make the damn it oops face. Play it off like it didn't happen.
There are various solutions from the more extreme like putting Turbolids on all your harps (no way with their shape that you get it wrong, the low end of the harp is huge compared to the high end) to putting labels on one end... either the glow in the dark or the puffy ones that you can feel (I think there are puffy glow in the dark ones too?) should work too.
The brand of harp matters too, or at least the screw configuration. Although I actually prefer the look of the Chicago Bolts like on Blues Harps and Seydels, the nuts on the bottom of the Lee Oskars give you a more tactile way to tell harps apart in the dark. The big, high contrast lettering on the back of LOs also makes a nice visual cue if there is any light.
I usually play a couple notes away from the mic before a song, just to make sure I know which hole the song starts on, which also usually sorts out any upsidedown issues.
You could get a case light, which would help with getting the right key too. Along the lines of what you said about the possibility of covers being slightly different, you could mix and match some models covers, although off the top of my head I only remember a few of the combinations that work easily. (Piedmont covers will go on a Sp20, but they dull the sound something terrible. With drilling you have a lot more options.)
And then, here are the two most radical solutions... learn to play both ways, or move to Australia so you have it the right way up! :)
You could try this. Take the sticker of the harp key off the box. Put it on the right side of the top cover plate. In my case, I can feel that it is there and it cuts down on the number of times that I end up with it upside down.
I asked my instructor who is blind the same question...then I swapped over to his method.
He wears his harmonicas in a custom belt.. ..he always puts them in order with the low notes down facing left. When he reaches for them with his right hand and puts them to his mouth the are in the correct position ready to go.
(I use a belt though not a custom one)
if you have a different method of keeping your harps available during a gig I would say much the same..always have them stored in your preferred method each one facing one direction..I'm thinking the key word is...always.
on a side note,one time between sets he took his belt off to set on the table but missed and some of the harps fell out of his belt onto the floor. When we handed him the harps one at a time he would give them a little toot and but them back in the correct position where they belonged..it did not matter if I gave them to him upside down as he had every note of every harmonica well memorized.. needless to say it was very humbling so see someone know his instruments so well...
I put a round white sticker on the top cover (right side) of all my harps, with the key written on it with a sharpie. Since I started doing this, I've never played a harp upside down.
I don't know any players who play well rightside up and upside down. I do occasionally do it (badly) when I've got a riff stuck in my head and can't rattle it out. It's sort of an anti-earworm trick that makes me play a few new notes. Then I flip it over and try to play what I played upside down and start a riff with it.
william clarke played upside down and backwards...
he said he didn't notice the numbers on the top of the cover plate. i told him if he took those sunglasses off, they would be perhaps a bit more visible. lol.
he then pushed his sunglasses down his nose and gave me a scornful look.
i suddenly knew how carlos casteneda felt with "don" genero..... Journey to Ixtlan
Last Edited by 1847 on Sep 22, 2017 6:42 PM
I usually look. With some harps it's easy to tell the difference. The thunderbirds are easy, and Joe Spiers put tbird covers on a couple harps he built me so they are easy. Sp20s are easy to pick. My home built harps usually have a nut on the bottom cover and easily detected like the sp20.
My harps are in my case a certain way. Arranged by key and by which way they face. Sure I occasionally get one upside down. So what? Flip the dam thing over! I have found that most times people are very forgiving about that kind of miscue. Live music is great for many reasons, one of them is, a mistake is gone in like 2 seconds. Nobody has ever come up to me and said "you messed that one note up on such and such a song". I once got to open for Bobby Rush. Between me and the guitarist we had several mistakes. I stepped on my mic cable and yanked it out of the mic. I grabbed a C instead of a D once. Guitarist broke an E string, switched guitars in midsong and broke another E string! Did Bobby notice? I don't know. When we met him he didn't mention any mistakes.
Play live. Move along. Don't let an error consume you. ----------
holy shit... the genius of little walter... as long as i have you.... listen close to what is going on here. they start on the 5 chord.. then it is a 8 bar blues... check out how far behind the beat this is...
it is F%$^%$# perfect... then they switch to 12 bars for the duration.
good luck finding a drummer that can play like that. thanks for this winslow.
i had this record at one time. i hate to admit it but, i just did not get it.
Last Edited by 1847 on Sep 22, 2017 7:54 PM
When I hold the harp with my left hand in the standard grip...I sometimes slap my index finger on the top of the cover plate so the tip of my finger slaps the right side of the harp. If I feel the reeds vibrate, it's upside down. If you do start upside down, just flip it over and keep rolling:
