2chops
66 posts
Jan 25, 2012
6:57 AM
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A while back AW started a thread about his $10.00 stomp box. Along the way, billy shines said how he can't do the stomp box & play @ the same time. This got me to thinking...
Some of the songs I do I have no trouble playing harp & tapping out the rythem on my box @ the same time. However, some tunes I just can't do it. Unless I'm driving along in my Jeep. Odd. Anyways...the ones that give me trouble are songs that emphasise the up beat. Like Rev. Dan Smiths "Go Ye & Preach My Gospel". I can keep time with my foot while I do the vocals, and the fills. But not when playing the chorous. Wierd.
Anyone else have fits with working foot rythem on some songs more than others?
One reason this frustrates me is that I used to be a pretty good drummer when I was younger. So it's not like I can't do 2 different things with my hands & feet @ the same time.
How about yall?
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billy_shines
55 posts
Jan 25, 2012
8:26 AM
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i tap with my right heel sitting down. standing up i dont tap at all. on drums i loosen the high hat and let it fall i dont use my left foot at all when drumming.
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rbeetsme
594 posts
Jan 25, 2012
8:36 AM
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I can't dance, my grandmother even made me sit down! Yeah, I have problems keeping the rhythm going.
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billy_shines
58 posts
Jan 25, 2012
9:23 AM
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if you play guitar i tied a kids toy maracca yo my wrist with rubber bands. works really well for bo diddley
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HarpNinja
2098 posts
Jan 25, 2012
10:10 AM
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It takes practice. I have a stompbox and quickly realized I tap with my heel and not toes. They even make special stompboxes for that. Mine works fine with the heel, but it is angled, so that fatigues my foot.
I too tend to tap more when not playing harmonica. I had two things working way against me. 1.) I am a HUGE Derek Trucks fan and tend to naturally not move a lot when playing harmonica (I think that came from his influence). Seeing myself on video was boring enough to push towards moving more. 2.) My style tends to be demanding and I just can't play worth a shit when trying to be real animated.
Singing, stomping, and running around are easy. Play harp or had percussion while being animated....not so much.
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Mike
VHT Special 6 Mods
Quicksilver Custom Harmonicas - When it needs to come from the soul...
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billy_shines
67 posts
Jan 26, 2012
6:26 AM
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i cant find it now but i saw a guy had a piezo in the heel of a shoe with a 1/4" jack on the side of the heel. it was a natural acoustic stomp but amplified.
not only that but technically you could charge your cell phone while walking around. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuw9frP1GNo
also i get stopped by customs with every homemade pizo device in my possession. they wipe my instruments down with those wipes to look for powder marks. and understandable a piezo is an electric detonator that requires no batteries like whats in a charcoal sparker starter. so if i make a shoe no way are they letting me bring it on a plane.
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2chops
67 posts
Jan 26, 2012
10:46 AM
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@billy...Oh man I can just see it now. TSA giving you the once over @ least twice. Brow beating, wand waving...then in a moment of inspiration, for the sake of clarity, you say "No, wait. Watch this,..."and as you begin to attempt jumping up & down to demo it, the tackling & flogging begins. News @ 11. Could be fun.
After starting this thread yesterday, I picked up my own gauntlet and worked on this particular song with my box. Got it down pretty good, got it on vid, tried to upload to my youtube page in order to paste here...my phone is giving me a hassle. I don't get it. I uploaded 4 new vids of comparable size and length with no problem. Tried to do this one and it won't go. I'm baffled.
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billy_shines
70 posts
Jan 26, 2012
5:50 PM
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lol rotflmao. man i never thought of that the last time i had two homemade guitars and i asked if they had something i could plug them into to demonstrate.
and leaving turkey i had a tuner in my passport neck bag and this shoulder holster bag full of harps and the guy freaks out starts tapping me and wants to know whats in there. so i show him i play and he can see the notes light up and then it was ok. it was only recently i saw midnight express lol.
yeah TSA loves me. and the searches everytime i come back from holland. they test every medication, go through everything. ever see the magician who keeps pulling ribbons and silks out of a hat? thats my back pack socks stuffed inside kids wood shoes boxes inside boxes inside boxes. 4 hours im detained every time.
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lor
76 posts
Jan 27, 2012
8:29 AM
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Last time I visited family near Columbus I took my harps. No problem leaving Oakland (near San Francisco), but returning the TSA guy stopped the stream of baggage going thru the xray machine and peered at the image of my bag for a long, long time. A black woman in uniform walked by behind him. He asked her if she had any idea what that might be. No hesitation, she said "Looks like harmonicas." I nodded my head affirmatively. We moved on. Thank God for ethnic diversity.
I'm gonna make one of those piezo stomp boxes. The harps will make good cover.
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waltertore
1892 posts
Jan 27, 2012
5:16 PM
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If you let music find you instead of you conquer it, it makes all this stuff easier. What I mean by this is let your natural groove emerge. Let go of thinking you have to have x amount of beats to be legitimate, x amount of key changes to be legitimate. Look at the greats. Most every one played the same basic thing their entire life and by playing it for so many years slight changes made it sound different from song to song. Generic players plauge the earth-play dozens of styles and it sounds like cut and pasting from a computer. Stick to what works easy and let that unfold. It will take decades but you will end up with a sound that is you and playing will be fun instead of work. IMO too many players here approach music from a work headset- stated goals, schedules, etc. Much like a blueprint for building a house. That works great for stuff like that but art can easily evolve without all that. For me, and many of the blues greats I played, recorded, lived with, never did this. They let the easy stuff guide them. This allows you to play with no thoughts and the soul instead of the head shines through. I keep posting here to keep this way of doing music alive because it will always be modern if it is unique to you! 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
3,500+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jan 27, 2012 5:21 PM
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billy_shines
72 posts
Jan 27, 2012
6:03 PM
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not quite a stomp box but this is my newly developed african distortion rhythm shaker D bow bridge.
http://handmademusic.ning.com/video/billy-s-shaker-bridge
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lor
77 posts
Jan 27, 2012
9:48 PM
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One of the problems with he piezo is its sensitivity - that is, it picks up handling sounds so awefully well, especially the high pitched ones.
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lor
78 posts
Jan 27, 2012
9:58 PM
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@walter
It's happening to me, a beginner to be sure. I had this soulful expression before. I knew my heart was being heard. Folks who heard me confirmed the communicative value. Then I got to trying to sound like other people and heard myself no longer.
But I want to sound like some who are accepted in order to reach that audience.
Where do I go from here?
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billy_shines
74 posts
Jan 28, 2012
7:21 AM
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crystal mics are piezo electric, bone and wintergreen lifesavers are also. you can tame it. this guys custom pickups do not feedback. its a rod piezo inside a beef bone sealed up with wood and filled with peices of brass pistol primer clips. the effect is it makes the instrument growl like like a distorted guitar acoustically, or electric with no added effects. and it shakes when i tap my foot on my heel. or i can tap the instrument.
http://a1.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/108/4fcfa7f4a1149f9a1d00f91e72d01a2e/l.jpg
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waltertore
1895 posts
Jan 28, 2012
7:59 AM
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lor: I can relate to your story. I think all self taught artists go through a discovery phase where because there are no rules most everything is done unfiltered. This is very soothing to the soul. Then as ones skills advance the natural human need to fit in kicks in. We are a communal species and the more we fit in the better we feel. I went through a phase you are going through. My skills got good enough to compete with the big names and my ego and human drive to fit in really pushed me to go that way. I just kept playing, often confused over this battle in me that I could not really pinpoint at the time, and eventually my need to fit in and ego lost out to the way of playing I started out with. This was and still is how I do music- no idea what words and music will come out.
I get a kick out of all these rock stars going back to their roots with new albums. These guys are so conditioned to fit in even these albums are generic. the need to fit in/keep money rolling in superceedes everything else so their roots albums are no differnt than their commercial hits. this same scenario happens in all generes of music.
My advice is to simply keep playing. Let the music take you over. Most people say they do this but in reality they have plotted out the scenario before they began and are thinking through most all the stuff they do. I often hear this- "Man I love just making up stuff and not knowing where I am going". That gets me excited because like all humans I want to find a place where I fit in too but as we talk more it usually goes to that they do it on rare occasions and even then it is structured before during and after with things like what beat will follow from song to song, how long solos go, etc and basically it is just another scripted song.
I could be a lot more popular if I sat down and plotted out my music, buffed it, considered what is popular, etc. But that is like building a house. I like living in a house but enjoy not building one but instead enjoy just drifting with my life. Not knowing where I am going is a very spiritual high for me.
IMO one cannot seperate their lifestyle and art. We are who we are and our art reflects it. This is why it is so easy to read a musician for me. You can immediately identify the thinkers- also if you blindly bet they were thinkers you would be right close to 100% of the time.....
If plotting your music out turns you on that is great but if you really want to drift into the song, one has to be spontaneous. This means no pre thoughts on anything like song selections, beat selections, key selections, chord progressions, lenghts of songs styles, subject of songs, genere, dynamics, tones to be used on instruments/voice. These things are the very essence of what most every musician calculates before, during, and after, everything they do musically. I have been on both sides and there is a world of difference between thinking out a song and having no idea of what you will do.
I have gone to a 1 man band with no intention of doing it. It evolved to it and now I realize why. It allows me to drift completely out of me because there are no concerns with others. I rarely do overdubs, play to backing tracks, loopers, because they make you follow stuff that is unchangable. to be completely spontaneous things have to happen in real time because the past and future both involve massive amounts of thought. I am not intending to be putting down the thought out way, but sharing the how to get to spontaneous music. 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
3,500+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jan 28, 2012 8:13 AM
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2chops
70 posts
Jan 28, 2012
11:18 AM
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@walter Regarding your earlier statement about letting our inner groove emerge rather than over thinking it, I agree. What I've done with the song mentioned in my original post, is adapt it to the groove from within me. The thought/ making the mechanics of it work, is a matter of getting what's in my head & heart to be coordinated with the phsical tools. Since my original post I've since worked this out. If I can get my phone to upload the vid of it to my youtube channel, I'll share it here for yall's perrusal.
You seem to me like quite the character. And believe me, I mean that in the best way possible. Being a bit of a character myself, I can appreciate where you're coming from. Thanks for your input.
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You Tube = goshinjk
I'm workin on it. I'm workin on it.
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waltertore
1897 posts
Jan 28, 2012
1:21 PM
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thanks 2chops! I feel completely normal and wonder why the rest of the music world is so different....... Try just letting the heart play. Your heart will get the mechanics to catch up in a seamless manner but if you force it, it will forever sound thought out. Good luck! 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
3,500+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jan 28, 2012 1:22 PM
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