This isn't a particularly effective teaching video, but it raises an important question that doesn't get addressed often enough. I'd love to hear more conversation about this issue: how the space we play harmonica in (acoustic or amped) affects the sound:
This a great topic. I did several concerts when I was in college at the old U.S. Mint bldg.. It has a Rotunda with high marble walls with mosaic tile floor and a dome ceiling. The instrumentation was two classical guitars and chromatic 2016. The volume that was available was fantastic as was an expanded level of tone color. I performed some classical pieces and bunch of jazz standards. One song Crystal Silence by Chick Corea worked great. ----------
Space is part of the equation when it comes to room acoustics. Up until everything began getting closely mike sometime in the 60's, the ambient miking technique, where you have a a mike on an amp (tho on many recordings from the 50's and earlier, there weren't any mics on the amp at all), one in the middle of the room, and one way in the back was common, recordings were done more like the way people's ears are listening to music and I've done recording projects this way and I've found that everything sounds so much bigger and fatter this way and the sounds breathe.
I've recorded with my amp in a heavily tiled bathroom and with the sounds bouncing off the walls, there's a natural decay/reverb/echo that negates the need of using delay or reverb units at all. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
I think the length of decay and the strength of the reverb you want also depends on the type of music you are playing. You want bigger, longer reverb for swamp blues than for delta blues. And you want even bigger, even longer reverb for reggae. But the absolute length also depends on the tempo of the song. Most reggae is super slow, so big reverbs are needed to fill all that space. Punk rock would need much less reverb! Lol! ----------
