ROBERT TEMPLE II
7 posts
May 11, 2018
12:02 PM
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I have recently joined this great site and I hope I can learn from others' posts. There are so many interesting topics and followups, just great !
First off, I am a hobbyist player but I have quite a bit of mileage behind me, have played with some excellent musicians over the decades, continue to do so whenever I may. After playing at jams and as a sit-in player since 1973, I have only recently entered the very wonderful world of being able to play and use ob/ods. I love to play jazz/blues, funk, reggae, jump/blues, bossa and points in between. I am primarily a diatonic harp player and have used many different types and brands of harps. I tend to favor the recessed comb 10-hole models. I have also been happy on chromatic, usually 12-hole CX-12s and a bunch of Herings i bought in the 1990s from F & R Farrell. Consequently, I have developed pretty good control of all bends on both diatonic and chro so the move to being able to hit and add ob/ods was not so much a leap but a little more like refining what I already had control of, more like a short step. I am very happy with my progress. Developing muscles and muscle memory is the biggest hurdle to being able to hit ob/ods, I think. Breath control is of course very important to know about too, especially knowing about breathing from the diaphragm.
I wondered about mixing reedplates from different tunings and discovered the "dorian" harp using an A Major blowplate and an E Natural Minor drawplate. The new b7s on draw holes 3 and 7 make for some really easy runs for me. That, coupled with ob/ods on the same harp, opened up a lot more. I am thinking that valves on the 2 draw and 8 blow would be an advantage too.
My first ob/ods came the end of January this year. I finally bought a stage 2+ Bb SP20, my first ever custom job. Since then, I have learned to gap and sometimes add a bit of wax to the squeaky reeds so that I may now hit and use ob/ods on many of my older harps. So far, I have managed to not screw up any reeds when making adjustments. Embossing, I think, might be more prone to easier-to-make mistakes. So for now i just gap and wax.
Another setup i have recently taken advantage of is the country tuned SP20 in C that I have had sitting unused for ages. With ob/ods and valves on some reeds, this is yet another beast that has been staring at me for too long. I have yet to add valves to any harps but I can clearly hear the notes and the flavorings possible.
I know there have been ample discussions about this topic but I want to know if there any more, perhaps recent, discoveries or favored hybrids of all the above. Thanks one and all for your thoughts. Cheers !!!
Last Edited by ROBERT TEMPLE II on May 11, 2018 1:27 PM
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