I've just posted a thread where a harmonica player imitates the sounds of a hen (link).
I think this imitating of sounds is very cool.. we all know the train imitation with the steam and the whistle.
Then there's the talking harp...
And we shouldn't forget tooka's submission to the HPC3 where he imitates a phone call at the end...
I have one sound that I like to show to people and I haven't heard it anywhere before (probably because it's so crappy). It's the sound of a car on the motorway passing by (I know sad, ain't it...? ;). I play it with the two hole draw bend.
Do you guys know of any other examples of sounds that can be imitated with the harp? Any videos? Soundbites?
---------- germanharpist on YT. =;-) - Resonance is KEY!
Last Edited by on Feb 21, 2010 11:22 AM
You posted that chicken sound too! I love Tooka's piece. The whole thing sounds like a carnival ride. With a little work you can imitate saxophones and trumpets, and maybe even some strings and accordions. You could probably do an ice cream truck jingle.
Actually, I was listening and trying to imitate talking harmonica after a couple months of playing harmonica that I finally got a lot of my bends sounding nice.
As to less deliberately musical sounds, I've stumbled on car horns and European style police sirens while messing around. I've heard some Fox Chases where some of the barking is actually the harp, I think, and some horse sounds. I do something (and have heard other people do it to) that sounds like a bee hive using just cheek puffs. With a little harpboxing you can get some drum sounds.
If you talk into the harmonica (instead of trying to make the harmonica talk) you can get some robot voice sounds. It helps to modulate your volume a bit to flange the sound a bit.
Sometimes I flick or tap the cover to make a percussive noise.
Last Edited by on Feb 21, 2010 12:06 PM
Sounding like different instruments is interesting, however I was going for stuff lke the barking dog, police sirens,... etc. Do you know of any samples of these?
Btw. talking about train sounds, the following site was linked here some time ago, train sounds, which is a very cool resource.
---------- germanharpist on YT. =;-) - Resonance is KEY!
You can get a more European siren by alternating the 4 and 5 blow on a C harp (although I haven't checked it against a real siren, I might have the pitch off.) I did the robot voice on the LLF, and the Bee Hive on the C (it's a rapid 1-3 draw/blow done with the tongue instead of breathing, like you were doing circular breathing. I'm a little out of practice and I think a Lee Oskar might not have been a good harp to do it on. It works best on smaller harps.)
Todd posted this video earlier of Frederic Yonnet with a horse sound, although it's more of a lip sound than a harp sound. He does use it on a blow later in the video.
What key harp do you use for your ambulance siren?
Last Edited by on Feb 21, 2010 1:18 PM
That took about 6 tries to post correctly! You could probably also do an air raid/fire house siren. I'm not sure which version of the Fox Chase had the dog yaps on harp. It was a little dog.
You could probably get good car horns with a little playing around.
Nacora, some sweet sounds. Yonnet's headshakes at the beginning are pretty cool, IMO. Btw. I used a A harp. Yeah, Hazmat Modine rocks. It's not exactly what I'm looking for, but he rocks. ---------- germanharpist on YT. =;-) - Resonance is KEY!
A cat yowl doesn't seem to be too hard, although I can't get regular meow, and now that I think about it, sometimes in the summer when I'm outside I've tried to imitate birds with a little bit of success.
I do a receding siren effect at the end of an original song called "Drunk and Stupid" by using a slow warble on the 4 and 5 draw, then bending the 4 draw. The 5 will also bend enough to make the dopplar effect of the receding ambulance.
I posted this recently in another thread. I made a patch on my Rp155 that makes the harp sound like a bamboo flute. You can hear it come in about halfway through
