does anybody out there play this classic in first position???Ive tried but you must be very good at blow bends on 8 and 9 blow..….neither are root notes in first but they can be bent
I play it at home. I haven’t played it in public; oh maybe I tried it with the band but you need everyone to buy into these things and someone either wasn’t keen or had other priorities. I decided to work on a solo version. Richard Sleigh made a video solo performance which I attempted to emulate. The melody part was no problem and the bassline was ok but the fills with the mid-high octave splits were challenging. I did get to a place where I thought I could take it to a folk mic night but never did.
have you tried in cross harp?jimmy reed played his version in Aflat…….as you got my drift...….first position blues harp is beyond me......but would love to get there
I don’t recall if I’ve tried it in cross. I probably have at some time but mainly became interested in the song as part of my pursuit of learning to play in 1st, so that’s where I went with it.
I’ll try and cross it next time I get a break where I can play a harp.
I think I finally committed to getting blow bends sorted after Jimi Lee started encouraging me to overblow the 6. He said “it’s a lot like the 8 blow bend” (meaning the technique).
Well, I couldn’t blow bend the 8 either so that didn’t immediately help, but that’s when I decided I was gonna do something about that
“Honest I Do” was one of the songs which helped me get there. ‘Bright Lights Big City’ was another.
For me, this worked. First I had to be able to make the note bend. If I just tried to play the 8 blow and then bend it, I could do it but I wasn’t fluent. It wasn’t like I could hit it straight away every time or even half the time, but I COULD do it sometimes. So those 2 Jimmy Reed songs start with that situation where you start blow bending on the 8 and play a little lick. I did the Iceman 5 minutes a day method. Every morning I’d go to the shower room and turn on the strip heater and while the room warmed up I’d practice for 5 minutes then I’d have my shower. Pretty soon I had that 8 blow bend down pretty well and I was starting to get the 9, and not long after that I had the 9 as well. That really opened up the first position for me and I found I was having a lot of fun playing the top of the harp. It was the most fun I’d had playing harp in years. After that I started to play first on the low end as well and that just gave me so much more I could do.
But Honest I Do in second seems to me it should be quite achievable too so I’ll have a go
A band I´m playing with insists that it should go in E. 1 pos bends get rather squeaky there, so I tend to oscillate between an intro played on an LO A MM harp; then solo in 2n pos (ordinary A), and play an outro in 12 on a B harp. (I change harps frequently when I play. No bigger deal.)
A low E could be a way out, if one wants to retain 1 pos riffing but I´m no bigger fan of the low harps, and in such a case I´d stick to my standard E.
groyster1, I think he played it in A and at some point in the mastering it got slowed down a little. Hohner didn't make a diatonic Ab (G#) harp until 1966. Honest I Do came out in '57.
While I have not done this one and don't expect to any time soon- a tough one in a duo- I think it would not be too hard to get it done. ---------- Music and travel destroy prejudice.
