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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
the harp of the future
the harp of the future
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waltertore
1445 posts
Jun 27, 2011
6:50 PM
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I recorded this one tonight (tounge in cheek)ala jimmi hendrix meets van halen and all that glamour speed, amped, loud, stuff. I thought maybe this is the harp playing of the future? It seems like the faster you play today and the more distored you get, the more skilled and innovative you are called.
the future of the harp
the future of the harp no effects
not going to join the crowd
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
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nacoran
4259 posts
Jun 27, 2011
6:57 PM
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Tongue in cheek? Is that more like puckering or tongue blocking? :)
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Nate
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waltertore
1446 posts
Jun 27, 2011
7:00 PM
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this is a secret way of playing that I will gladly share with anyone for only $99.99 or will trade for heavy metal attire :-) Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jun 27, 2011 7:01 PM
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Andy Ley
129 posts
Jun 28, 2011
5:43 AM
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walter; I for one would gladly pay $100 to see you in "heavy metal attire" :)
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waltertore
1448 posts
Jun 28, 2011
8:28 AM
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Andy: send in the $ :-) I did this over exaggerated song to show how easy it is to play fast and distorted. I got the distortion with an amp simulator on my recording program and added the un distorted version to show how amping a harp changes things. I did this song with a stock harp that is not at all liking the high notes played or played this fast. For my money having natural rhythm, leaving space, forming notes, with ones own style is where the real skill of ones playing shows. It seems today to be judged a real harp player one has to be over exaggerated with distortion, speed, and gear. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jun 28, 2011 8:35 AM
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walterharp
626 posts
Jun 28, 2011
10:16 AM
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what fun! you really made me smile, never a boring moment with you dude..
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Jim Rumbaugh
528 posts
Jun 28, 2011
10:21 AM
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I thought I heard Jon Popper in there somewhere
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The WV State Harmonica Championship at The Diamond Teeth Mary Blues Festival Aug 27th & 28th 2011, Huntington,WV
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toxic_tone
212 posts
Jun 28, 2011
11:02 AM
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wow dont have your speakers up all the way before you click play......i bout fell of my seat scared the shit out of meeee!!
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MrVerylongusername
1719 posts
Jun 28, 2011
11:06 AM
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Sounds like Nicky Shane! Point made Walter - now get back to the good stuff.
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waltertore
1449 posts
Jun 28, 2011
11:58 AM
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thanks guys! I use to play like this all the time in the early 70's when I was playing with my band "the stairway blues band and below zero blues bands", and members of the NY Dolls, Joey Ramone, Marc Ribot, and the like. I blew a shure 57 or green bullet into a twin reverb and once blew the speakers on a tweed bassman. I thought I was doing blues! I had so much energy that I would leap off stage onto tables sending drinks and patrons flying. Then I would break the pitchers on the floor and roll on them, playing the whole time. The youngsters think they have the wild channel cornered and don't realize that us older guys know how to do tha stuff too :-) Luckily I mellowed down or would have died. I would be so exhausted after a gig that I was afraid to sleep because my heart would stop. I had to stay awake to keep it working. I also was being paid $500-1,000 a night to play such music and I was playing 20 or more gigs a month. Sadly I pissed all the money away on drugs, fancy clothes, and just plain lost a lot of it somehow. We were doing got my mojo working, and all the top blues songs to these kind of tempos. Years later they called me pre punk..... I share thi with the youngsters to let them know that most every great musician started out wild as a youngster. That is the natural flow of life- hormones and strenght in action and as time goes on one mellows. To start out trying to be all controlled like a 70 year old SBWII will only make you a boring player just as much as an aging player that continues to recreate his youthful sound. He was a wild man in his youth I heard via Johnny SHines. Like fine old wine, only age will develop the depth that comes through no matter what you play. Otherwise you drink/play cheap imitation stuff. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jun 28, 2011 12:16 PM
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Fingers
56 posts
Jun 28, 2011
12:12 PM
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I have to agree Walter! i played for 12 years with bullet mike and amp with various LOUD bands! i am now getting used to playing acoustically again and i wonder how much the band added to the sound or how much the distortion masked!! and going by how nobody commented on my videos.......a fair amount. LOL.
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kudzurunner
2558 posts
Jun 28, 2011
4:12 PM
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Hah! Walter, I was prepared not to like the stuff at all, but it's actually pretty cool--and if I'm the only one who says that, then they're all lying.
Sure, after ten seconds or so, the novelty begins to wear off, and the lack of changes, the pure note-ism, begins to wear. By the same token, I hear some interesting technical approaches--they're much easier to discern in the no effects version--and at the very end of the no-effects version, you suddenly let the blues bleed in. I like that.
As for the claim in your OP that "the faster you play today and the more distorted you get, the more skilled and innovative you are called," that's just silly. John Popper, Sugar Blue, Carlos del Junco, and Jason Ricci all play very fast much of the time, although by no means all the time, and they play with widely varying amounts of distortion (SB and JR play with no distortion whatever, right on the vocal mic and with lots of hand action, when they do some slow blues, although they usually play with lots of distortion on uptempo and funky stuff), and all four deserve to be called skilled and innovative. So? They get called skilled an innovative because they're skilled and innovative, not because their playing is characterized by distortion or speed. I'm sure YouTube would let me track down lots of other players--mostly Popper wanabes, I suspect--who play fast & furious but aren't particularly skilled or innovative. I don't really think that their speed and distortion fools a whole lot of people over the age of 17.
Alex Paclin plays very fast and lyrically with no distortion. He's very skilled and, to my ears, quite innovative.
I humbly and respectfully submit that you're attempting to hold down the classic "moldy fig" perspective. That is, sniffing dismissively at "modern" music and finding it hopelessly wanting when compared with the Good Old Stuff. Balderdash. Charlie Parker is now the good old stuff. When the original moldly figs attacked him in the mid-1940s, they said exactly the same thing you're saying: too many notes and bad tone. It wasn't true then, it's not true now.
What IS true, though, is that some people will always reject The New by caricaturing it and thus trivializing it. When you clump speed and distortion together, for example, as negative ideals, you're hoping that we'll accept as "natural" the idea that those two things go together. They don't. Many of us have ears, and we're not interested in reactive poses. We're interested in making useful distinctions between good new stuff and not-so-good new stuff.
As music evolves through time--and the blues harmonica has evolved markedly through time, as Little Walter's genius makes clear--there are always bound to be bad imitators of the new stuff as well as talented purveyors of it.
Heck, as a master of modern technology who spreads a new song or two or ten a day into the ether-net, you should be embracing the fast, new, daring, and innovative, not clumping it without discernment into a stack marked BLECH!
Last Edited by on Jun 28, 2011 4:19 PM
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waltertore
1452 posts
Jun 28, 2011
4:32 PM
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you got me adam. I was generalizing way too much. My approach, which is a new one as far as I can tell, is generally dismissed by most musicians and people in the business because it lacks the mucho thought out, planned, rehearsed, format. If I did high brain jazz, strange fusions of different instruments/styles with high technical abilities, I would probablu fit into the improv music world. I have reached out to that community but most are affiliated with colleges as teachers and my simple amercian roots approach has yet to get any kind of response. I do try and keep an open mind and find certain aspects of the players you mentioned interesting. I can't help but be moved by some of the stuff those guys do, but their entire package sounds way to thought out for my liking. Luckily we all are able to persue the grooves/techniques/approaches to music that interest us. I will ask this though- if those guys didn't play so fast/busy most of the time would they called innovative? I contend there is still an endless universe of inovative stuff that is based in less frantic playing via phrasing, space, tone, and groove. The average player tends to dismiss that arena as all played out already and also is not aware of when one is trying to be innovative they are a million miles from it. IMO Innovation comes from inspiration that blasts through without thinking it out. The truth is most bands of recent times that have been hailed as innovative went into the venture with that in mind. An example of old innovation without thought is the distorted amp. Blues guys cranked those cheap little low watt amps they had up to max because they needed to so as to be heard. Now guys turn this into a near science of thought. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jun 28, 2011 4:46 PM
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toxic_tone
214 posts
Jun 28, 2011
5:02 PM
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IMO, random playing will probably never get the respect because of the fact that it isnt thought out. think about it, random ideas can be genuis but u cant duplacate and you cant count on it everytime. when i improv sometime i hit very big and other times i dont. now because of the fact that its not reliable i could be missing out on alot. even if you are random it should in some respect be thought out so you can always bring brillance to the table. other then that it becomes a fluke. lets say i make a improv song and it becomes a hit. dont you think people will want to hear it again? but then you say it was a one time thing sorry but here is a new one for you.... right there, i am turned off.
now like you. i too have a dream of a sort... i want to be up in carnagee hall with all diffrent type of instruments each of those guys will have blank screens infront of them i will be the composer and i will compose there live. still i plan to think this out and have some sort of plan before going up. even in a sense some kind of structure. i hope i have not offended you its just my thoughts on the matter..
i think that john popper even if you took the speed off would be AWSOME. i mean have you heard his new stuff? great groove and still john popper. along with suger blue he is amazing as well which is john poppers idol in his words..
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waltertore
1453 posts
Jun 28, 2011
5:10 PM
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toxic_tone: no offense taken. IMO brillance comes from the spontaneous approach. To recreate things over and over again I see as a thought out process. That is much easier to pull off, is predictable, and leaves me wishing they would just cut loose more. I have done both ways and can tell you that spontaneously creating the words and music everytime you perform makes for no safety net. that is the rush that I love and cant find in a rehearsed/repeated approach. It is all opinion when it comes to art. Your opinions are as legitimate as mine, and BB Kings :-) Your summary on a spontaneous approach to music is basically what I have heard much of my career. I only have a very limited amount of time to listen to others music because I am creating my spontaneous music with most all my free waking hours. When I do listen, it is to the old greats. Guys like popper/sugar blue lack it big time to my ears next to a SBWII, JImmy Reed, Slim Harpo, lightning hopkins. It is not the technical notes but the entire sound that is created that is what turns me on. Bascially the more the song can take me into it, the more I like it. Technical ablilities don't impress this aspect and often get in the way of the story for me. When the wolf sang you felt as if you were right there with him. That is what my spontaneous approach does for me. It takes me right to the story. I am in it and the music is just the vehicle to get there not the destination. To be honest I listen to very little music by others anymore except for the sonic qualities that I am trying to figure out for my recording knowledge. I wish I could hear them spontaneously just flowing instead of take 35 that makes the record. In my journey I wore records out listening to them over and over again but today I am in a different place.
For me a personal hell would be to have to repeat the same songs over and over again. I no longer expect the average musician or music industry person to get what I am doing. I do it for me and if in my lifetime someone that can make get my sound out there big enough to generate some good tours in good rooms for good dough, I am ready. Either way is cool because I am following my dream! I know you are too young to have seen most of the blues greats but I can tell you firsthand most were either way on or way off. I have walked out of many a shows by them. If the handheld video camera was around then, many of the greats might have been bashed into nothingness instead of the imortality they achieved. I also saw/got toe be onstage with a bunch of them when they were way on and way off. When they were way off and you were stuck onstage for the night it was like a bad nightmare. Today it is expected players will be near perfect everynight.
Follow your dreams. If I had that one about carnige hall, I would be on it full time right now. Life is short and you will be an old man before you know it. that is why I do what I do. I have no regrets only great excitement about what the future holds for my music. I could have had a chunk of the big time if I sidestepped my dream and went with offers that would have put me in with the big names of music/film. All I would have to have done was forget spontobeat and do the rehearsed thing. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jun 28, 2011 5:44 PM
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toxic_tone
215 posts
Jun 28, 2011
5:18 PM
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well said well said.
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walterharp
629 posts
Jun 28, 2011
5:19 PM
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most of walter's work is commentary on society... you may or may not agree with what he says, and most of it is just putting himself in some other's shoes.. unconsciously.. he is having fun and still putting himself out there in new ways. this one was mainly just for fun and he did admit to having done it all himself, so i guess an ability to be self critical is good as well. the only thing certain about opinion in music is that nothing is certain :-)
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waltertore
1454 posts
Jun 28, 2011
5:28 PM
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toxic_tone: I added more and I hope it inspires you and was not intended to offend.
walterharp: Thanks for sharing that insight. I would say 75% of my songs come from personel experiences of some sort from my life and what I have been around, seen. the other 25% comes from places unknown.
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
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kudzurunner
2560 posts
Jun 29, 2011
5:10 AM
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Well said, Walter. I don't disagree with anything you've said in the posts following my own. Certainly THE most important part of being a musician, from my perspective and I believe from yours, is finding YOUR thing, something that bodies forth your creativity and engages your passion and manifests your individuality, and then doing that. You've found THAT thing, and I applaud you for staying true to it.
I wonder, though. We all have moods, shifting selves. You've been expressing those selves through spontaneous verbal compositions set to music for the past little while, and that's good. But your "modern harp" burst that inaugurated this posts suggests that you just might have a mood or two that requires shredding instrumental expression. A nostalgic mood for the good old days of instrumental excess? Why can't that sort of thing--a burst of over-the-top harp shredding--be a part of what you do these days in live performance? Most solo artists have a moment when they change it up, create a radically new texture, in live performance, just to create variety. If, in a one-man band performance, I suddenly stood up and played WITHOUT percussion, asking the audience to provide the beat by clapping, that would be an equivalent move.
I'm just saying. Think about it, Yngwie. I think it could be a real crowd pleaser. It could be a way of letting your audience see where you've been. (It's sort of a modern variant of the aged fiddler who throws down his fiddle for a moment and dances an insane jig while people shout, "Go, granddaddy!!!!")
Last Edited by on Jun 29, 2011 5:11 AM
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waltertore
1457 posts
Jun 29, 2011
7:34 AM
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thanks for that suggestion adam. In response to your suggestion, I rememebered this. At a gig in austin, with my trio, I played a set of hendrix/roy buchannan inspired guitar. Terry LeCrox (guitarist for will sexton) and david grissom(guitarist for joe ely, john mellencamp) came up to me and said they always thought me a fairly straightforward lightly amped blues guitarist and couldn't belive I played that way. They asked why I don't do that more in my sets. I told them I have no idea what is coming out of me and planning certain things kills my spontaneous flow of conciousness instantley. That is what I am so addicted to- the jumping off a cliff feeling that happens everytime I play spontaneously. The cool part is I fly instead of splat on the ground below. I have been doing the spontaneous thing for more than 50 years and by now it as natural a thing as I could imagine so when things like that psycho harp riff stuff comes out I run with it for as long as it lasts. I have been inspired by parts of what you and many of the names you mentioned do. That is what triggered this thread(at least I think it did). Another cool thing about being spontaneous is that everything that ones sees, hears, smells, touches, dreams about, continuiously works its way into the music. What I look forward to the next time some of that harp playing comes out me! Thanks. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
2,800+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
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