Owen Evans
86 posts
Sep 04, 2015
7:49 AM
|
I read Tony Eyers thread on this subject and could not access the article. So for all of you like me who need some schooling on the subject, I found this excellent tutorial by Nico Wayne Toussaint who uses the standards set by the late great Norton Buffalo to help us with comping the singer. Hope it's as useful to you as it was to me. He uses "Jack of Diamonds" as the example.
http://www.nicowaynetoussaint.com/#!harp-tutos/c1181
|
Harp Study
133 posts
Sep 04, 2015
10:19 AM
|
Thanks for posting. I enjoyed that. An area of interest for me for sure.
|
Mirco
302 posts
Sep 04, 2015
12:14 PM
|
Accompaniment is one of the most fun parts of playing for me. You have the opportunity to be really creative within certain confines (sticking to notes of the chord, playing fills). A good player can really add texture and depth to the song through skillful accompaniment.
I really like Dave Barrett's lessons on Accompaniment. He goes into a lot of depth about where and how to play.
The gold standard here, I think, is Little Walter when he plays with Muddy. He plays constantly, but it's always underneath the vocals. It always complements the music.
----------
Marc Graci
YouTube Channel
|
The Iceman
2662 posts
Sep 04, 2015
12:52 PM
|
Back up harmonica example (to the vocalist, etc) is on the Session Work thread. This example is not playing all the way through underneath everybody, but being totally comfortable "not playing" as well as surrounding the vocalist with support.
Very musical approach.
----------
The Iceman
|
nacoran
8653 posts
Sep 04, 2015
9:59 PM
|
I have been working on singing harmony when I'm not playing (or singing lead). When I am playing harp at the same time as the singer sometimes I try to think as if I'm singing harmony.
----------
Nate
Facebook
Thread Organizer (A list of all sorts of useful threads)
First Post- May 8, 2009
|
MindTheGap
657 posts
Sep 04, 2015
11:37 PM
|
Thanks for posting these (Owen, Tony and Iceman) all very helpful, particularly having some examples listen to.
I like what Mirco has to say on this. Particularly 'creative within confines'. There's a lot in that phrase.
|
Kingley
3917 posts
Sep 05, 2015
12:52 AM
|
Playing behind vocalists is one of my favourite things to do on harmonica. I prefer to play in a supporting role over playing solos most of the time. It's an interesting and challenging art form to do that, as opposed to soloing where you are mostly calling the shots. It's something I feel many players do not focus on enough. It's similar to playing rhythm guitar. So many guitar players focus on lead playing and forget that rhythm is where the cool shit is really at.
|
Owen Evans
88 posts
Sep 05, 2015
8:24 AM
|
You are so spot on with this MindTheGap. I have spent the past couple of months re-learning 'chords' and this same lesson applies so well here because one must play within the confines to sound good but, being creative with this differentiates each player's sound/tone/signature.
|
