Not brilliant---the guy can't keep time. He's waffling all over the place. I'm not talking about when he deliberately speeds up. I mean after he gets going he can't hold a beat steady let alone carry a groove. Not very musical IMHO.
Alright, I've listened to it four times, and I don't detect him not being able to keep time. I tried drumming along a few times (not on actual drums ya know, just pencil tapping kinda thing) and I don't detect it.
Now I'm no pro muso, but I like to think I'm very objective about my own musicality (or lack thereof). There's a shitload I'm not great at on harp, but I never thought keeping time was one of my major problems.
Of course, if the majority of posters come in and say "yeah, he can't keep time", looks like I'm going back to the drawing board on one more thing.
The trains gets a rollin' at about .30, where after that does he slow down or speed up? I'd have tried to metronome him, but I ain't gots one.
Oh yeah, and regardless of the answer, I dig this guy.
Last Edited by on Aug 22, 2011 10:40 AM
I'd like to see some of the posters on here play guitar, harp, drum, hi-hat and sing and keep in time.
@hvyj. I have a lot of respect for your knowledge and the time you give to this forum, but don't you think you're being a bit hard. For goodness sake, I bet the kids love this sort of thing and throw a few shapes to it too. Not very musical or not very purist blues? lets face it he's probably doing more for popularising the harp amongst the younger generation than all or any of the discussions on this forum have. ----------
@Honkin On Bobo:"Waffling" does not necessarily involve speeding up or slowing down It's the consistency of the spaces between the beats which varies quite a bit with this guy, but not all the time. It's inconsistent. I mean, his meter is ok--he's not dropping beats or turning the beat around and he has the proper number of beats in each measure so "one" is where you would expect it to be but there's no groove because of the waffling. It may not be as noticeable because, after all, he is accompanying himself.
Probably fun to watch this guy perform and he's probably pretty high energy. But there is a difference between a competent drummer and someone with enough coordination to play in meter on a drum kit. This guy plays in meter but he's waffling on and off through the whole tune. it would be more obvious if there was a bass player. More of a novelty act than a musical performance IMHO.
@tookalooka: Entertaining? Sure to a certain extent.. Personally I find it annoying to listen to, but, then again, i find most rap annoying to listen to as well and that's also pretty popular with younger audiences. No accounting for taste.
Last Edited by on Aug 22, 2011 2:54 PM
I'm a professional musician who has been playing for more than 40 years, and I've played with a lot of drummers. I don't detect his meter waffling any more than that of most of the drummers that I've played with (and I've played with some good ones, most recently Burleigh Drummond of Ambrosia). I also played harp on the rack for a long time (still do occasionally), and can tell you from experience that what this guy is doing is phenomenal. Mr.hvyj; can you play harp that well, even without the rack, guitar, high hat and bass drum?
I don't really detect anything outwardly noticeable in his meter. He isn't a drum machine, which is a good thing. He had some enjoyable single note runs in there that he pulled off nicely, especially for a rack player.
At first I wasn't digging the super-repetitive punk-esque distorted guitar riffing, but then I realized that this was exactly what he was aiming for. I kinda dig it. Thre's enough folks playing acoustic or slightly distorted-I applaud him for kicking things up a notch. Nothing wrong with spicing things up a bit. A man after my own heart. Break the mold, screw the status quo. Don't try to sound like someone else;they already beat you to it.
All this talk about waffles has made me hungry. ---------- Todd L. Greene
@bluzm: Well, I'm not usually blown away by train imitations on harmonica and personally I don't spend much time practicing train imitations but i don't play any guitar and can't keep a beat on a drum kit at all. I'm not saying that what he's doing is easy and, as you say, there's a lot of working drummers out there who waffle. But the better ones don't or at least don't very much. I'm not familiar with the drummer from Ambrosia, which is, of course a well known recording act.
i don't find the one man band thing all that interesting, but I certainly agree that's it's not at all easy to do what this guy does. His harp playing is fast and accurate, but not technically very difficult to do if a player can play at the speed he uses when he starts playing melody. Good harp playing, though and difficult to execute using a rack. Not so difficult without a rack, but credit where credit is due since i assume he IS using a rack. But I'm not about to go out and buy the CD.
Last Edited by on Aug 22, 2011 12:51 PM
I like it. And it's a small world - one of the album reviews for this on CD Baby says this: 'Remember the snippet of a street musician from U2’s ’”Rattle and Hum” doing “Freedom for my people”? Well, this is like that. On Acid!' ...a reference to Satan and Adam, right?
You know, i went back and re-listened to the Orange Blossom Special since my original take on this drew so much criticism. It's a little hard to make out just what is what because of the nature of the recording, but I think it's the foot pedal of the bass drum that I am listening to that waffles (is not steady on the groove). Whatever he is doing to get the snare sound isn't off but the bass drum pedal is--at least to my ear.
Ok , can i do it? hell no. But I wouldn't try. And then again, if he's such an up and coming phenom, he should be able to afford to hire a competent drummer. I'm not such a big fan of the OMB thing anyway.
Last Edited by on Aug 22, 2011 2:47 PM
Anyone remember a band called the Chickasaw Mud Puppies? This is about identical in every way minus the fact it’s four vs. one...Thumbs up for the unusual and 5-stars for doing it alone!
@hvyj - I'm actually not blown away by train imitations at all; some well known harmonica guru (I can't remember who right now, hope it isn't AG) has said every harp player should be able to play a good train imitation - in more than 40 years of playing I've never even tried. Why should you if you're not at all interested in playing in that style? By the way, I was so inspired by these videos that I pulled out the old guitar and rack; I can still do it! Maybe I should go out and busk?
@bluzmn: Yeah, I agree. Personally, I've never been interested in playing my harmonica like it's a harmonica. i get most of my musical ideas from other instruments so there's a few categories of harmonica specific techniques that I've never been interested enough in to work at (chugging, whooping, train imitations, hand wahs and flutter tonguing are among the techniques I'm content to leave to others).
I always play with a cupped mic. I would think playing harp on a rack would be difficult to do well. I can actually play pretty fast when i want to but I think that would be much more difficult to do using a rack.
