MindTheGap
1524 posts
Apr 24, 2016
11:37 PM
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In Lanthus' thread he asked about a harp solo to go with his band's version of Got My Mojo Working. At the time I happened to be listening to a 'Found My Baby (Gone)' with Good Rockin' Charles on harp, and noticed that fitted his groove and tempo very nicely. It's not classic 'Mojo' at all, but that's not the point.
I liked my own suggestion so much LOL :) that I spent some time unpicking that solo this afternoon. In fact I "joined Lanthus' band" for a bit, and played it over the track too!
As is often the way, turns out that what sounds simple actually involves little twists that make it good. I tabbed it out for my benefit but happy to share.
The key IMO is how he uses the 4 and 4' - hard to show in a tab, but sometimes it's just dipping up into the note, sometimes it's roughly as swung 1/8th notes 4, and sometimes used in a triplet (4' 4 4').
Like a lot of good harp, it sounds loose and is played with some slop, but underlying it's actually very precise. Putting in that extra note means that the beat falls on a different place in the phrase 2nd time round, which IMO is a defining feature of blues harp phrases: taking a phrase (or similar phrase) and shifting it with respect to the pulse.
Tabs always fall short of showing the nuances, but here's what I have...
3' 4+ / 4 4 3' 2 2+ / 4 4 3' 2 2'' / 2
3' 4+ / 4 (4' 4 4') 3' 2 / 4 (4' 4 4') 3' 2 2'' 1 / 2
3' 4+ / 4 4 4' 3' 1 / 4 3' 3'' 2 2'' / 2
Turnaround 3' 4+ (45)trill / 2 2''
Here's my 'Learning Version' where I play it acoustic, simple, straight and clean so I'll be able to remember it later.
And this is the thing I've derived from it, keeping the main idea but changing some of the peripheral bits and adding chucks and so on. What I'll do is play around with the 4 4' dips, there's a continuum between a short 'thwa' and a more drawn out swung 1/8th note. And then there's the variable depth of the bend.
This is a nice solid bread-and-butter solo idea to have in the bag. But also the idea of taking a phrase and shifting it about in the bar is a principle that you can use again and again.
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Last Edited by MindTheGap on Apr 25, 2016 12:35 AM
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