So I was at a bar with some colleagues last night. After we were already there for a while, a DJ came in and started setting up karaoke. One of my colleagues asks me if I have a harmonica on me. Of course I do. I have an A harmonica.
He says it would be cool if they sang some karaoke and I played harmonica. He asked if I could do that. He has in mind something like Tom Petty, Aerosmith, or Rolling Stones.
I said I had to go to the bathroom and then I left the bar.
I can imagine NO way that this could have gone well. What would you have done? ---------- Marc Graci YouTube Channel
The first questions I'd have to ask is, if it's a song that usually has a harmonica part is the karaoke machine/recording even set up to take out the harp part and if the guy running the place cool with it? You don't want to upset the host, but if they are fine with it, yeah, go for it.
I think there are three types of karaoke people... people who do it as sort of a camaraderie thing, people who take it seriously and people who are just afraid to get up there. I've done a lot of open mics but only done karaoke once. It went horribly, but it was still fun. Personally, I like to have an idea what I'm going to do when I'm going to perform, so I might have said, hey, let's go outside for a minute and see if we can figure out exactly how this would work, but I could see it going over really well with a crowd. I think I'd want something I could sink my teeth into more than Petty/Aerosmith/Stones for a harp part, but I think on all those the harp is usually done by the singer, so you could sing when you weren't playing.
Most general audiences (as opposed to blues specific ones) are used to Bob Dylan, so if you can play something a bit more bluesy it usually really impresses them.
And bad form slinking out! Booo!!! You should have at least bowed out more gracefully. :)
The one and only time I played harp in front of an audience was in a bar in Yichang, a city in China's Hubei Province.
It was during an overnight stay on a trip to the Three Gorges and we had decided to go to the hotel's bar to kill time. They had karaoke so some of us got up and sang. The song "The One You Love" by Glenn Frey came on and my friends said I should get up and play along because it was a "blues song".
So I got up with my key of C Blues Band harp and played. I had no idea what I was doing, just randomly noodling around, and I don't even know if I was playing in the same key as the song. It was probably one of those performances that give harp players a bad name. But I got a big round of applause at the end of the song and everyone told me what a great job I'd done. I'm sure the copious amounts of alcohol we were drinking had a lot to do with it! And it remains a fond memory of my younger days.
If I was in the same situation again (and sober) I would take Nacoran's advice.
Last Edited by Glass Harp Full on May 20, 2018 6:09 AM
If the crowd is right (as in, not people who take Karaoke too seriously), then why not? I've done Piano Man, Heart of Gold, What I Like About You, Long Train Running, and Bad to the Bone at Karaoke. If I had the right harps in my pocket, I would do Bonnie Raitt's Runaway.
I've tried a few times “intrumental karaoke with harmonica”, because I'm a bad singer. Experiences are positive. Singers have liked it as a fun variation. The karaoke pieces usually go from the same key as the original. But if you do not have a suitable harmonica, karaoke host can change the key several steps. Good places also have blues music. For example, Sonny Boy Williamson's "Help Me" I have found as karaoke version, mara
