I am learning a country song (Nobody Answers When I Call Your Name) on my key of C Richter Seydel Session Steel. I have moved the arrangement around a couple of times to get a bendable third. The way I see it, it is only gonna work in 4th position (is that correct ? key of F) or B flat. In both of those keys I need overblows to get one or more notes of the melody.
I was thinking it was mostly jazz that needed overblows, but here is a simple country song, and it seems I need them. Unless I am doing it wrong.
I guess when you wander outside of songs written for harmonica, you need to think a bit about where you are gonna play a song, so the bends line up in the right place. Or just forget about the bends.
I do get mixed up on this quite a bit, I'm thinking key of F on a (C) puts you in 12th position and key of Bb puts you in 11th. Just curious as to why you need a bendable 3rd? ---------- Greg Jones 16:23 Custom Harmonicas greg@1623customharmonicas.com 1623customharmonicas.com
Umm, Howabout second position? That'll get you a bendable third? but yeah if it's a major tune including the major seventh you'll need 5 ob. I'm not familiar with the tune but second position major pentatonic is quite often useful in country tunes.
But overblowing is fun so go for it! ---------- Pistolkatt - Pistolkatts youtube
it is indeed in F (12th position on your C harp) until the key change at the end when it modulates to Gb, which is a pretty tough key to play on a C harp.
I don't see why you need a bendable third in this tune either, but you've got them if you want them on the 2 and 6 hole draws, no overblows required. Until you get to the key change that is; I'd switch harps for that myself.
Here's Gill doing it live on TV a half-step lower, in E with the modulation going to F:
I couldn't be more pleased that the instrument I'm most possessed to play can be fully chromatic with some effort :-D .
As to this tune maybe try it on a different key harp or possibly hint at the melody instead if C isn't working out for you.
"I was thinking it was mostly jazz that needed overblows, but here is a simple country song, and it seems I need them. Unless I am doing it wrong.
I guess when you wander outside of songs written for harmonica..." (spackle20)
As you realized you're thinking about overblows/overdraws incorrectly. They are just notes that need different technique to play then the rest. Nothing else. You don't need them when doing covers of traditional blues tunes because for one reason or another they were not played on diatonic harmonica in traditional blues tunes, certain notes in certain octaves were not played. But, some of those overblow/overdraw notes definitely fit in the chords that the band was playing behind all those traditional players. One doesn't need to play every note on every octave that fits over the current chord to sound good :) . But yeah, like you said, when you stray from traditional blues harmonica covers you'll see that overblows/overdraws are needed to be hit (or harmonica switching or chromatic harmonica or some other concoction) to get the right note in the right octave to match certain pieces of music.
After playing around with it a bit I liked bending the third a bit. At the end of the verse, when he sings "I call your name", I like letting that major 3rd sag into a minor in between words. I think Vince does such a wonderful job on the meloday. One foot in country and the other in blues.
