Not bad, I'm thinkin'. Reminiscent of some real old-school stuff. It provoked some varied imagery in my mind (in my brain, in my head), i.e., prison scene, cowboy campfire, Leadbelly's In the Pines, even a little (feather) Indian incantations. Congratulations. Now you have something of your own.
Very nice. Nice lyric. Really nice vocal. Good harping. All the sudden I'm seeing scenes from 'O Brother Where Art Tough'. It would have fit right in on the soundtrack. :)
Thanks for all the kind words of observation all. @ K Hungus your right about the timing. I didn't even tap my foot through all of it. I had the words written down and was to focused on trying to get the music to match and come out right. Ahh, truth is it needs a lot of improvement. I've got along ways to go and a lot to learn yet. Still I'm glad I gave it a shot and recorded it, gotta start some where. Again, thanks for sharing your observations! Duane C.
Hey Duane! I had a real nice slow tune that I played a while ago and I wanted to put a timing beat to but I couldn't do it. I found there are some tunes that needs the timing to vary at different parts of the tune for dramatic effect reasons. In the end I just went with gut instinct and it came out well.
Thanks Tookatooka & FM, I guess that's true sometimes. I think my gut instinct was definitely in play.
@tooka, watched your post the other day, Great playing and a neat little rig. I could hear that working in some public areas quite well. One would just have to give consideration to the available acoustics. Heck, one day a while back I walked into a huge restroom in a public place and just had to pull out my harp. It was all tile and I could hear every footstep. Whipped out a little tune and it sounded cool.
Duane, I concur with the others. Nice tune. You are doing a lot of things right with your playing and singing, and creating new songs. That is all good, so keep it up.
I've found myself listening to and playing/singing some old-school gospel/blues numbers recently, such as Blind Willie Johnson's "Soul of a Man" and "I Just Can't Keep From Crying". I try to model the harp part after Willie's slide guitar work. He plays and sings the same melody and often just drops a singing phrase and let's his guitar sing it. For me, keeping the beat is the challenge too. I often walk and play and sing. Walking is a good way to set a beat and drill that into your brain, so that you can turn on that internal rhythm machine any time, eventually. ----------
hmmm... see I like the free timing feel of it. And since there is no beat its not as critical. Its free flowing. And other than one spot with the stutter stop where you looked down at the words and became self concious the timing while not excactly on beat is a lot closer than a lot of folks get and is pretty consistent thru out the piece. There is about the same length each time from when you start playing to when you sing and then go back.
I listened to it twice and there are some slight timing issues but i do not think they are that bad. There is a a lot of pick up notes both in the singing and the harp and for a song done freely and sans metronome again I think it flows well. could it be tightened up? Sure.. I think you could go back and re record it with an eye for balance between the vocal and the harp as is said.
But other than clearing up that one lyric stumble I think this is pretty good.
To do with the timing, it's like saying you have to play a certain number of bars i.e. 12, 8 or whatever. But listen to someone like J.L. Hooker and you'll soon see that it doesn't matter if you're the guy in charge. Nice work buddy.
Good day fellow harpers, @ Blown Out Reed, mr-so&so, shadoe42 & Leatherlips. Thanks your words are with thought and good words. This exercise has really increased my respect for those who make their living writing music, WOW... my hats off to them. I've listened to several times now and feel drawn to continue working on for awhile to see if I may apply some of the advice and improve it. This morning I pulled out a scale book from David Barrett and a note chart for the harp. I'm not sure but I believe I was actually playing in Em or 5th position on the C harp. I have played that scale some and all those notes work. the beggining four notes are from that scale, with the 2 blow being the resolution note. I also noted that when I played in the middle register, the 5 draw definitely did not sound right. So I'm going to continue with this mode and see if I can expand on the harmonica phrases and part a little more. Thanks again for all your great words of support, I never imagined it would get such a response.
Soulfull, deep, honest. It's you're presentation. True roots vocals and harp playing. Well done. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Suggestion if I may, don't try to improve on this. You've laid it down and put it out there. It's good. It's you and it's something you wanted to do and felt it was ready for audiences. To change it to improve timing would affect the feel and cadence of the song. I say leave it alone. Use the info to move into you're next tune. Can't wait to hear that too. Very well done ---------- "Keep it in your mouth" - XHarp
