I would like to here from some members here when they had that "Awh" moment in there harp playing career. I am specifically talking about tone and technique here. When it happened, how it happened and what they think they were doing wrong up to that point. What was it that made you think to yourself, " Yea this is where I have been trying to get to, and now I'm here". I believe I am still waiting for my "Awh" moment.
I remember going to Hill Country Harmonica 1 and hearing the sound Adam, Brandon Bailey, and Deak were making - (among others) for the first time in person.
The sound was unreal, like 10 times the size of what I thought a harmonica sounded like acoustically. It was a real eye opener! Nothing could have been better for me than to have experienced that in person.
Getting a handle on the 3 draw bends. For example - Being able to hit the double-bend (e.g. A on a C harp) more or less consistently - Emphasizing the blue third in my solos, rather than using the 3 draw as a passing note - getting some "shape" to the notes between notes of the blue third - Repeating riffs on the IV with flat-thirds rather than blue thirds
I found it hard work, and I spent many years avoiding the 3 draw, but suddenly my playing was slightly reminiscent of my blues albums, rather than "biker blues".
I'm sort of hesitant to answer this, but I will take a stab at it.
For me, there has been no one "game changing" moment. If you play long enough, you will not only experience one such moment, but a series of them. It is all dependent on where you are in your growth as a musician. They are really a series of key milestones in your development as a musician. You'll have a series of moments that are extremely humbling and frustrating. I am my own harshest critic. I know the sound that I am looking for in my head. There are times when I get it and times when I don't. You'll also have other milestones along the way. I have had self learned instances, in the beginning, it was simple stuff e.g.
- bending notes - playing a certain lick properly - playing bits and pieces of a song - getting a whole song together - performing with other people in a casual environment - performing in public to a friendly audience - performing in public with a variety of way better harp players in the audience - performing in public with a variety of way better harp players in the audience and not sounding like crap
As I advanced, my milestones changed. They became different, e.g.
- Conquering stage fright. I still have moments, but it is rare these days. A lot of it depends on who is on stage and who is in the audience. When I see of hear a recorded performance, I know my state of mind when I hear it.
- Conquering my fear of singing. This is a work in progress.
- I've been on stage with some great harp players and seen/heard video of the performance. After hearing the video, I felt good about my sound, tone and phrasing.
I've been pretty blessed to have people that I respect provide me with constructive feedback (both positive and negative) about my playing and my performing. I have also received a great deal of advice from some of those same people. It has never been a formal lesson, but a small amount of advice. Most of the time, it has been unsolicited. Here is a small list of feedback and advice that motivated me to press forward:
- You've listened to enough of this music to know how it is supposed to sound. Record yourself and listen to it. Do more of the right shit and less of the wrong shit.
- Do not play with your eyes closed. Ever. When you are on stage with me, always keep your eyes open. I will provide you with visual clues. If your eyes are closed, you won't see them.
- You've got some of the best tone that I've heard. It is super compressed. You could play softer and get the same sound. It'll help you move around the harp better and improve your playing.
- Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon are both dead. The demand for non-singing harp players is at an all time low. You need to start singing.
- Your harp playing is fine. Your vocals need a lot of work. Focus on those.
- Focus on your vocal delivery and delivery. Look at Rick, when he delivers his vocals, he is all in. You need to be all in. Don't half ass it. Be all in. [a couple of months later…] Remember when we talked about you being all in, I've noticed that you are all in, your shit is sounding really good, as good as anyone.
- Prior to social networking, I walked into a bar 1000 miles away from home. I had been there once. I visited 18 months later and people remembered me. A couple of years ago, I walked into a bar 2000 miles away from home and people there who recognized me. It was flattering.
- "I have listened to you and watched you several times now. I mean this in the nicest possible way, you are one sick motherfucker."
- You need to start your own band. You've got some best players alive willing to work with you.
Life is a journey. There isn't one moment. There are lots of little ones that make you think, "hey, I can do this." They are the moments that keep you moving forward on the journey. The above feedback doesn't necessarily represent a single major milestone, but it refers to a progression and feedback that made me feel in like maybe, possibly, I was doing something right. I know that I have a ton of stuff to learn. I expect to keep learning throughout the course of my life.
Great post Joe! For me it was many years ago at our Tuesday jam one of the first times I pushed the dynamics hard on a song and the two really good guitar players on stage with me just picked it up and we went for a ride. We all finished up, looked at each other and said 'where did that come from?'. And then recently 'I don't think you realize how good you are'. Kind of puts the pressure on when, from another thread, you're just realizing how little you know.
I'm not sure I'm answering the question correctly but, I agree on everything Joe L. said above. I'm working on some things that I think might eventually become one of those moments, singing (if I can remember the lyrics and not screw up the timing), overblows, (I sound like a wounded goose at the moment). I don't think I can expound on technique, I'm a trial and error player. Had a bit of a aha moment the other day. I went to a jam that I hadn't ever been to and the house band(Ton of Blues} had a harp player (Shakey Steve) that was great. My usual local blues jam has few if any harps players show up. Steve couldn't have been nicer and I ended up using his Bassman LTD which was a treat. After I sat down he and another harp player said I had a really nice vibrato and my playing fit in nicely with the rest of the band. So, I'm slowly realizing maybe I do have a style of playing that perhaps... could maybe be my own? Well not really my own... but you know what I mean.
I've had a few breakthrough moments with harmonica. Luckily, one of them was actually caught on camera, during this impromptu lesson on 12 position I had with the late great Chris Michalek (and our own Oldwailer):
Honestly, the 15 minutes or so that you see recorded here has influenced my playing in so many many many ways, that I can't even fathom. I owe a huge debt to Chris, and the knowledge he gave me for nothing but being his friend.
Note: These are in two videos because it was way back in 2009 when YouTube still limited you to 10 minutes. ----------
I agree with the folks who say there is not one big gamechanger moment but a lot of little ones. A big aha I had this year is that I am not really getting worse, my ear is getting better. Had I not recorded things along the way I might not have realized this. Casual recordings I thought sounded pretty good when I made them, do not sound as good to me now as the recent ones that I can tell need work! This is both encouraging and frustrating, but mostly encouraging. You can't fix your intonation or your timing, until you can hear that you are out of tune and out of time. Once you can hear this, you will improve quickly up to the point of your ability to hear. This is why listening, really listening, to good music is as important as practice. Live is better than recording but recordings help.
Last Edited by STME58 on Mar 18, 2015 6:21 PM
Mine was when I first learned vibrato. I had been playing for a couple years and still had no idea how to get that vibrato I heard other people use. My friend, and sometimes harp teacher, Matthew Smart had a great vibrato so I asked him how to do it. He said he couldn't tell me, he just did it. I was watching him do it and I noticed his throat moving and pulsing as he played that deep vibrato he had. I went home thought about it, put a harp in my mouth, and out came a vibrato. Not a beginner vibrato, but an almost fully formed vibrato. Just like that I had it! Unlike everything else on the harp that came slowly after endless hours of work, this one just happened all at once. One day I couldn't do it, and the next day I had it.
Finding out how to make a really good acoustic cup, rather than aimlessly flapping hands around. It opened the door to the wide, and hugely satisfying, world of static and dynamic acoustic and electric tones. Not just wah-wahs.
Definitely a 'before' and 'after' with that.
And more recently, twigging that the interplay of hands and vocal mic could expand that world even further. Specifically I found could recreate some sounds that I heard on records and had wondered how they were possible. That lightbulb moment came from re-reading Winslow's Blues Harmonica for Dummies.
If I were teaching my slightly younger self, I'd tell myself in no uncertain terms to get this sorted well before looking at overblows and other glittery stuff.
After starting out trying to do the modern thing and learn the harp as a chromatic instrument, then working back in time and listening to older styles and learning to appreciate it for its essentially quirky diatonic-plus nature. The penny dropped while listening to Jerry "Boogie" McCain, as I remember, working the upper octave in crossharp.
(No disrespect to modern and diatonic-chromatic players)
I’ll +1 a lot of the comments above. I don’t have many clear “breakthrough” moments. Progress for me is incremental rather than stepwise.
I do record myself constantly and post things on YouTube. (It’s always the best I am capable of at that particular time.) Six months or a year later I often listen back and cringe. There is always something off, that I don’t like. (This is a sign that my ears and/or technique have moved up a notch.)
The internal critic will never be satisfied. I view musical excellence as an ever-receding horizon at which I cannot arrive. It’s no cause for despair. It means I will have something to occupy me for the rest of my days.
I have always pushed myself to play a bit outside my comfort zone. At the first blues jam I went to (after ten months of woodshedding), I waited two hours nervously before the leader got me up. I made it through with no major stuff-ups. He said, “you can play,” at the end of the night, which was a big relief.
First time busking, first time singing, first time solo busking, first time singing unaccompanied in public. All stretched me a little.
All I can say is: record yourself, stretch yourself, play with others, learn and keep growing.
Just shows how everyone is different. I wouldn't be without those gamechanging moments - sometimes they come out of the blue, sometimes they are hard won. But for me, when there is a before and after - that's a great feeling.
Learning the harmonica seems to have presented more of these than other instruments where there is an orthodox method and well-trodden route. Because of it's hidden nature, it's been a long series of 'how do they do that...' questions and revelations. Fantastic. You don't really get that with the piano or bassoon (cue the bassoon players).
Must be great, though, it you can do it naturally without much effort. I guess you go onto higher plains.
Depends on your personality type, but if it had come easy, I don't think I'd have stuck with it. I'd probably have been happy playing the songs I knew about already, and not have investigated thing more deeply.
PS Endorphin rush is important. There are plenty of reasons not to learn the harp e.g. 'Oh, you are in band, what do you play?', 'Harmonica', 'Ah...'
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Mar 20, 2015 3:47 AM
Joe and Isaac said a mouthful here. Like Joe and many others, if I'm honest about it I must say there have been many breakthroughs over a long time. Getting an amp that sounded good and didn't feed back too bad. Getting past a couple of over used draw bends. "Discovering" both 3rd and 1st position. Very crucial was learning better breath and wind control. Along with that, learning to sing without damaging my vocal cords- a hard one that kept me off the vocal mic for months while a polyp healed. Maddening not being able to sing when you've been used to it for years! Finally getting some good harps in my case, above average at least.
Realizing that I could go into the Zone and do some amazing things I didn't even know I knew.
If you can work with the same partner(s) for some time you find your way deeper into specific songs. You can get lost in there but afterwards people will tell you how great you did. There have been times I was lucky someone had a camera going.
I remember tuning a blues radio show in once and hearing some pretty good harp work that sounded familiar, and realizing THAT WAS ME on there! Kind of eerie but validating to have that happen.
I'd stop short of this whole thing being a new religion, but there is actually a spiritual aspect to it when you delve into it far enough and long enough.
There's always a next milestone, regardless of how long you've been playing IMO. But as far as a game changer as a newer player, you need to discover resonance and how to properly breath through the harp. The OP asked how to get "there". For me it was through ditching the pucker for 100% tongue block, working with a super 64, and working with a small tube amp (Kalamazoo). I spent literally a year figuring out how to TB the blow bends, and as I did I noticed the tone and ease of draw bends would get better. Is TB better, or was I just using different muscles that pucker didn't need, or was it just practice. Not starting a debate just telling my story. The 64 just doesn't work right unless you breath right, get one. The Kalamazoo sounded thin when I first got it. One day something magical happened, and I was able to get a huge foghorn tone, much louder with less force than I ever got by blowing hard. Resonance. Once you get that, the chase for gear becomes finding a combination that doesn't mess up your tone, instead of finding some magic tube or pedal to make *that* tone. Also many obsessive nights of practicing along with recordings until the sun came up. So basically just keep it in your face, your ears open, and don't give up.
I got to say that I am very happy that I started this thread. It's not only very educational to me, but a lot of others, I'm sure. It's great to here all these stories from you all, about what got you to where you are, how, why, and all the little stepping stones along the way. This is some of the best info I have ever read to date, and is great for a beginner like myself. I hope the stories keep coming, as I think that I may have had a moment myself now, now that I have something to reference it to. Reading Joe's comments about TB, I think that that was a stepping stone for me, and gave me that "Awh" This is what I should have been doing all along. Not that I think TB is better, just better for me. Thank You members for all your replies, to this topic, and I hope they keep coming. This is just like a good book that I don't want to put down.
@MindTheGap writes: "...You don't really get that with the piano or bassoon (cue the bassoon players)."
This reminded me again that one of the big differences between the harmonica and other instruments is its accessibility (ie. its cheap and portable). I just put a $5000 bassoon (that's a student model and I am renting it)in the hands of my 13 year old son. I sure just didn't hand it to him and say, "Play around with this and see if you can get any good sound out of it!!" He only gets the bassoon because he has proven himself on sax. It helps that his sax teacher also teaches bassoon. I would put the bassoon at the opposite end of the accessibility scale from the harmonica. The tuba is bigger but costs less, the piano is not portable but can be found in many places. (When is the last time you saw a bassoon, or anything other than a piano or maybe a guitar, in a hotel lobby for guests to play)
I don't think there is any other instrument that gives a novice such unfettered access as the harmonica does. Even if someone gives you a trumpet or a guitar, you probably won't carry them around with you and use them when you have a few spare minutes (There are exceptions, I understand John Coltrane was almost always practicing his sax) . This access does have negative consequences, the term, "familiarity breeds contempt" comes to mind.
What I was just wondering is, what can we harmonica players learn for the more structured learning techniques of the more classical instruments and, even more interesting to me, what could the free experimenting harmonica culture offer to the more formal training , (besides a ready target for ridicule :-))
Last Edited by STME58 on Mar 20, 2015 9:30 AM
It is really interesting to read of everyone's varied experience and perceptions of the way that they've progressed. For me, it was very much a series of "punctuated equlibria", where I didn't progress much, separated by some pretty large leaps forward in ability. I think that those "stable periods" were basically me accumulating muscle memory and confidence in prior skills, until there came some tipping point that let me jump to the next level of a technique or musicality. When I think about it, many of those tipping points were predicated by some sort of lesson or conversation I had with a better player (like I got from Chris in the vids I posted), a bit of info gained from this forum, something I heard in a song, or during a jam session with other musicians. I'm trying to think if there was any breakthrough I had that was only predicated by practice, and I can't really think of one. Vibrato maybe? That would be the only one I can think of. It was something I consciously worked on for about a year, and one day it was just "there". EDIT: and I wanted to add that it's really interesting that my story about vibrato is very very differnt than that jpmcbride told above! Goes to show that there's no "one way" to do things! ----------
STME58 - I'm not ridiculing the bassoon or formal training. Personally I chose the viola over the violin as I particularly like playing those supporting instruments in a group setting. And I like the sound of them.
I don't play the bassoon, but my point is that there is, for the instruments of the orchestra, typically a well-trodden path to learning an orthodox technique. There certainly is for piano and viola, and so that gives rise to fewer gamechanging moments.
MindTheGap, I did not take what you said as ridicule, but rather as pointing the difference between formal and informal training. I agree that "there is,for the instruments of the orchestra, typically a well-trodden path to learning an orthodox technique". I was trying to offer a potential explanation, based on my experience, of where some of those differences come from.
I think accessibility is a big factor. You know you like the viola over the violin because you have had a chance to try both. I have never picked up either so I have no idea of my preference. I play trombone because I got access to one in the 4th grade (give the trombone to the tall kid, he can reach 7th position). The more accessible something is the more we feel free to experiment with it. I will open the back of a $40 harp long before I would consider monkeying with the F holes on a viola! My recent experiences in trying to obtain one tells me that bassoon is one of the least accessible of the commonly known instruments. I'll bet that is a factor in why you, or I , don't play bassoon. I expect, but have no evidence to support this, that the ratio of bassoon players that follow a more rigorous training path to those who just pick it up and noodle around til they figure it out is higher than any other instrument, except perhaps the cathedral organ. I also think that those who do a free form learning path should incorporate a little rigor, and those who are locked into their method books should put away the sheet music and feel around for what their instrument can be made to do.
Last Edited by STME58 on Mar 20, 2015 10:59 AM
STM58 - Great. I was concerned I'd touched a nerve mentioning the bassoon. It was an example of a minority-choice instrument, viola would have done as well.
Yes I think you've a good point there. The gulf in accessibility between a harp and pretty much anything else is massive.
