Okay, I probably *could* have played everything in my latest video, "Sittin' on Top of the World," before I went to SPAH.
But I *wouldn't* have, or at least I wouldn't have put it together quite this way--not without being inspired by:
* Michael Rubin's chromatic harmonica workshops (I play the chromatic in the fourth verse),
* the jams with Todd Parrott in which he called out a different key every 12 bars (although not possessing the skills of Parrott, I switch harps when I switch keys),
* the dissonant piano chords that Sam Friedman mixes into his blues playing (I save this mostly for the end)
* the various guitar jams I listened to that reminded me how good an 8-bar blues can sound.
Harmonicas used in this video:
G (cross-harp, key of D) Bb (cross-harp, key of F) D (cross-harp, key of A) C Chromatic, playing in key of Bb F (cross-harp, key of C)
Todd that was fantastic, I really liked all your differents Styles and approaches, it worked really well, also your tone was nice throughout with some cool vibrato.
Nice job Greg. ---------- Living the dream and learning the blues one little trouble at a time.
TO GREG: Thanks! I feel my tone has improved some since I switched to tongue-blocking earlier this year ... I'm finally getting comfortable TB-ing just about all the time (100% in this video).
TO MICHAEL: Thanks for the plug, and thanks for the inspiring SPAH chromatic workshops every afternoon, and blues jams every morning!
Todd, this is great. I'm already a few bars in learning what you've done. Re: tongue blocking ... Do you tongue block all your bends, and can you describe for us in any way how you came to learn that? I feel like the air stream is at the side of my mouth when I try to bend and tongue block, and that makes it so much harder to control. Thanks for sharing this vid! -Jordan
@BronxHarp Thanks Jordan! And yes, I tongue-block everything now, including bends, thanks to the few lessons I've taken (so far) with Dennis Gruenling. (I'll also admit it was a pain in the ass at first, because I had been a 100% lip purser for years.) As for describing tongue-blocked bends, well, Lee Sankey's "Harmonica Tongue Blocking - How to Bend" video does a much better job at explaining it than anything I could write in text: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KOBVKTkXmc&