I've decided to perform an experiment. I'm going to assume Chris is right about everything (and see if it leads to a reductio ad absurdam. No, only kidding).
I was listening to Done With the Devil yesterday and thinking, yep, every time Jason plays in third position, I think, damn, I really need to practise that. Also on track 3 I think he plays an Ab harp, and this morning I listened to Miles Davis's Summertime, and it was in Bb, so I'd need an Ab harp to play along with that in 3rd. So question 1 - should I buy a harp in Ab?
Then just now I had an urge to listen to Joni Mitchell, and I thought that would be a great way to break away from 2nd position, and I wondered what Chris's thoughts were.
Specifically, how do you choose which position you are going to play in? I started off with In France They Kiss on Main Street. That was too easy: - 3rd position on a D harp seemed natural, but I'd like to get away form 3rd position too.
So my challenge to Chris is to listen to Joni Mitchell and pick out for us some songs where 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions would be wrong, and tell us what he finds.
Last Edited by on Jun 28, 2009 7:59 AM
I'm running out the door to make dogs bite people. :-)
I'll be back in a few hours. I don't have any joni mitchell music so I will use YouTube, is that ok?
Something to think about, all positions have a sound/flavor to them. If it's minor-ish I almost always pick 3rd. if it's Funky I almost always pick 3rd.
If it's blues or bluesy, I pick between 2nd and 3rd
If it's a jazz blues or smooth jazz like then I pick 11th
If it's major sounding, country, folk or smooth jazz like, I pick 12th.
If it's ethnic, I look to 7th or 8th because most of the notes are bents notes and my vibrato pulses UP instead of down. Sometimes I look to 5th. Some West African styles of music work well in 12th and 2nd. Latin styles work well in 4th. Lots of Asian music works well in 4th but some traditional Chinese music needs 12th.
Classical music is often in 3rd (played major) or 12th depend on the music. Sometimes, 1st when I want really stable notes.
For summertime, I use 3rd but there is a youtube were I played it in 12th (that was first for me and it was caught on vid) You can hear how much more fluent I am with that tune in 3rd but it doesn't matter that much once things are dialed in. so which of those two positions do you think sounds best?
Bit of a tall order. She became jazzier during the Seventies until she made Mingus, which I love, and I was thinking of the jazzier stuff when I posted, but a lot of her fans gave up on her when she made Mingus. Most of the youTube stuff seems to be earlier folky stuff. You can try this, but the basic key is C#, which may be a tricky one to begin on.
A couple more things at random. I don't know yet if my idea behind this experiment is clear
I would use an Ab harp. I tried a C, Bb and G harp, all were ok but what makes me want to use the Ab is the surrealness of the two draw half step bend and the 5OB with vibrato as well as the four draw bend with vibrato. I listen to the tune and feel for how I feel and what I imagine... it's dreamy but I can also see/feel a girl who is slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean... she's reaching out for the sunlight as darkness and death surrounds here.
I hear the other instruments in the background and hear them as whale sounds... the whales and the dolphins are coming to the rescue.. so I would insert my music as if I were such an entity that is letting the drowning girl that all will be ok.
Ab Harp - http://www.harmonicapros.com/music-tools/furryblues-joni.mp3
Last Edited by on Jun 28, 2009 1:08 PM
Jeez, is it the Chinese year of the Ab harp or something?
Thanks for the cool responses. Coyote is track one of Hejira, where it's played in C instead of C#, so that would be 12th on a G harp. I've got a G harp, so I'll work on that.
Goodbye porkpie hat is track 11 on Mingus, where it's in Eb, so no change, and it's looking like I'm going to buy me an Ab harp. Except that it's in 2nd, so there's no need to play along with it.
In the case of Furry, on Hejira (track 3) it's a tone higher than the YouTube performance, so that would be a Bb harp. And I've got one of those.
A lot of these later songs have a lot of key changes, so the next step is to decide which pieces benefit from multiple harps maybe!
Last Edited by on Jun 28, 2009 2:06 PM
"do you understand why I picked the Ab harp over the others for Furry?"
Not yet. I had a quick listen to your mp3. What you did seemed a little bit more improv than I'd have done - I'd have just tried to learn the melodies first as I heard them. But I was doing something else at the time and not giving it my full attention. I'll try D, C, A and Bb harps on the CD version and see what I discover.
ah... i was just playing as if I were soloing more than as a support person. It's hard to play that way because so much is happening and I naturally want to avoid playing over singers.
I picked the Ab because of the available bends, the wideness of them and the tonality of certain bends. I wanted LOOOOONG Drawn out bends and I wanted to be able to bend notes UP instead of always bending them down like you would in say 2nd position.
I also didn't want super stable notes like I would normally go for on a regular tune. This tune, to me anyway, has a haunting sound to it and I wanted to playing with THAT theme or flavor of it. You might hear something different.
I'm thinking more about harps and why to choose one position over another. One thing I can't stand is those players who based everything out of 2nd position, it's just not a great utilitarian position.
You have think beyond just playing on a song or over a set of changes. You have to think how can I add to this song? What is the mood? How can I capture that mood? How can I be a part of the song? How can I get inside the song.
I saw this topic heading a few days ago and read through the thread, and listened to the sound samples...they reminded me of everything that was great and everything that was frustrating to me about Chris. It pisses me off that he died without ever getting his shit together, in my opinion, at least as far as harp is concerned. Some of his youtubes are painful to listen to - they are just BAD, but even in the midst of a jumble of forced non-musicality, there is often brilliance. We used to challenge each other to pick up whatever harp was nearest and play along to whatever, and it was sometimes cool, it was sometimes a learning experience, but it was often brutal - and definitely not fit for publication....but when he could get through the hyper competitive, 'prooving he could do anything' mode and just play harp appropriate to the music, he was amazing. I miss him, too.
