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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Does anybody play quietly, acoustically?
Does anybody play quietly, acoustically?
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Lmbrjak
221 posts
Jan 02, 2014
2:55 PM
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@kudzurunner
Your acoustic work in that documentary is about as good as it gets. I'd like to hear a whole album of that.
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paperharmonica
13 posts
Jan 03, 2014
7:27 AM
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I almost always play acoustically and lately I've been getting quieter and quieter and leaving more and more space. I get a little disoriented by the sound coming from a speaker and for me the freedom of being away from a microphone lets me feel the lateral rhythms of a song more - but I'm sure much of that is just deliberate lack of microphone experience. I play alone though and don't have to compete with other instruments. i'm sure then it's another story. I also listen a lot to jazz and classical music and love how entire movements are beautifully quiet and have tremendous dynamic range.
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The Iceman
1363 posts
Jan 03, 2014
8:12 AM
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Responding to Kudzu's comment "Yes, many of us--especially those of us who have been buskers--try to grab attention with flash, straight off. But there's a whole other way of grabbing attention, the low slider, and Iceman has talked about it more than once. In a context where everybody is shouting, sometimes it's more effective to whisper. Sometimes that forces people to pay attention. Sometimes, of course, they just ignore you and focus on those who are flashing."
If you resist the momentum handed to you for "flashing" (like when it's your turn to solo during a jam session and all the musicians are already playing at '10'), you have the ability to control what is happening rather than feel that you are being forced to play where you are not comfortable being.
I will engage my beginning students with the homework to discover how quietly they can play one note while sustaining it with a solid unwavering tone, showing them that a "beam of steel" can be created at any energy level.
Once the student becomes comfortable with this, it opens up the door to so much more, as Barbeque Bob constantly reminds us.
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The Iceman
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