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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
All harmonica players much watch this video.
All harmonica players much watch this video.
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isaacullah
2757 posts
May 13, 2014
8:26 AM
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I've been told by nacoran that I need to make my thread titles more "trolly". So there ya go, Nate! But seriously, this video really blew me away. This kid has two vids on his youtube, and they are both outstanding.
This guy is an unknown (at least to this board) and has the talent and an ear for progressive harmonica playing in genre's other than blues. The other youngbloods out there have some serious competition comin' their way!
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YouTube! Soundcloud!
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isaacullah
2758 posts
May 13, 2014
8:35 AM
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So, some google digging tells me his name is Fernando Ricco, and is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He's apparently part of a Brazilian harp-centric musical movement called "Gaita Groove" (I guess "gaita" is Portuguese for harmonica?) that really focuses on funk and other similar musical genres. He also has learned from some of the very best musicians around:
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YouTube! Soundcloud!
Last Edited by isaacullah on May 13, 2014 8:40 AM
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kudzurunner
4689 posts
May 13, 2014
8:43 AM
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I like it! Both videos strike me as way stations on the way to something better and more fully developed. Certainly he has some strong chops, trending towards fairly straightforward, tonal (i.e., remaining in one cross harp key, which is why he's switching out harps on that first vid), with a few overblows thrown in. His rhythmic concept, when he's blasting away, is well developed; he's done the work required, for example, to play repeated staccato notes in certain oblique patterns that aren't simply fast 1/16th notes.
If he were asking me where the room for improvement is, I'd suggest two things right off the bat:
1) start a little slower and build. He doesn't build. Both videos strike me as somebody trying to prove that he can play interesting riffs at a high tempo, rather than somebody actually trying to create a piece of coherent music at the length of the video. Understood as showcases--as showoff pieces, in a sense--they work fine. But they sacrifice musicality
2) Vary note lengths a bit more. More specifically: hold long notes! Longer notes--wailing, vibratoed, or merely as textural variation--are entirely absent. This, too, hurts the overall musicality and emotional content of what's going on. Imagine how much more powerful the first piece would be, for example, if at one or two points he suddenly started walking chromatically up the scale, holding each note for between two and four beats (or more): half notes and whole notes. At that tempo, with that rhythm section blasting along and all those cool harmonic things happening, that would be an incredibly powerful move. In other words, he's playing jazz fusion--that Return to Forever groove strikes me as the major influence on what's going on here--without doing what Al DiMeola, Mike Stern, all those guys always eventually do, which is scream on some longer notes.
I like it, though. He's certainly somebody to know about and watch.
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isaacullah
2759 posts
May 13, 2014
8:49 AM
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Yeah, analysis spot on, Adam. Some longer notes, especially in that second vid, would really have been effective! And I would love to hear him "do a track", from start to finish, with a leadin, a proper musical build up, hit a crescendo, and then take it to the outtro. I'll be keeping an eye on this guy (and the Brazialian harp scene) from now on.
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YouTube! Soundcloud!
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nacoran
7738 posts
May 13, 2014
10:31 AM
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As soon as I saw the title I knew I had to click on this one! :)
Nice stuff. Like Adam says, I'd like to see a little more variation, but at a show, that might be 'the fast song', so who knows.
As for the Brazilian harp scene, I suppose it's makes since, since harps are notorious for snagging hair. Badumpum.
Seriously though, I wonder if Brazil has the harp scene it does because harps were/are made there, or vice versa, or maybe it came over with immigrants. Brazil has a fairly large German population (4th largest immigrant group). For a while they actually had two harp companies there.
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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
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timeistight
1566 posts
May 13, 2014
10:39 AM
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I think he's great. He doesn't rush or lose the groove even on those fast lines. I'd like to hear him with a live band.
Nice of him to let us sit in on his lesson with Fred Wesley, too.
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Frank
4240 posts
May 13, 2014
3:19 PM
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supurrbeoso :)
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