You always hear people say "you have to have good acoustic tone to have good amped tone." Which leads one to believe that you play the same way when doing both. But are there two different ways you must play to get great Tone?
There was a thread in the Beginners Forum about playing Amplified which led me to the question: "Do the pros play differently when playing amplified through a cupped mic than they do when playing acoustically?"
I will copy a few comments from that thread here in an attempt to lead you to follow my train of thought.
I wrote "One of the things I'm finding hard to get used to is adjusting my playing to get my best tone while I'm playing amped. Let me explain .... When playing acoustically I am constantly making micro adjustments. Weather it be to my embouchure, to my breath force, my throat, etc. ... in order to get the desired tone I want. Now these things happen very fast and practically automatically. (It's not like Im holding every note and trying to make it sound better. I think you likely know what I'm talking about here. I Hope.) Obviously these Micro Adjustments have a great deal to do with the sound of the harmonica that I'm hearing while playing. Because I can hear the tone coming from the harp I know how to adjust if it seems a bit off. My problem is that while playing amped I have a kindof hard time telling what the harp is doing and I think this leads to me playing a little sloppy at times. ( Tone wise.) Especially after playing for a long period of time. It's very hard to tell when playing through a Dirty Amp weather everything is just right or not. It sounds alright, but I'm just wondering if I'm playing with the full quality of my acoustic tone.
A good analogy would be a Def persons voice. Because they cant hear it, they can't adjust the tone to sound how it should. ( I hope that didn't come off too crass.)
Does/Did anyone else have an issue with this?"
To which MTG replied.
"I get the impression that people play a lot harder acoustically, and as you say that gets a certain strong sound that you can only get that way. But with amped I think soft is the way. The output can still be big though. It's just my belief (from comparing) that you get the 'biggest' sound by playing quietly and having the amp loud.
There's a bit in the Little Walter bio I remember hazily where either he is shown, or someone else shows him, how to survive three sets every night by not blowing/drawing hard but letting the amplification do the work.
There's a specific technical thing to do with cupping the mic: when playing acoustically the goal seems to be to get lots of nice harmonics, crackles and pops to make an interesting timbre. The goal of deep cupping though is to reduce all that and just get a strong deep fundamental harmonic. Then the amp adds all the nice stuff."
SuperBee made the point
"One thing I know about playing through an amp is that when things get loud and it's a battle to hear yourself, considerations of good tone are hard to maintain."
All this considered, It makes me wonder if Pros have two completely different techniques that they use. Often players do things without knowing they do them, so to ask someone they may think that they do not, but in reality they do. I figured this was a question for the Main Forum. I would like to hear everyone's take on the subject.
Much of what you wrote where you've quoted yourself applies to both acoustic as well as amplified harp as well. When people play too hard, just in terms of breath force, the tone often gets considerably thinner, tinnier and downright harsh as hell and the average player often doesn't understand this one bit.
In an interview together with blues guitar great Louis Myers (who was also a GREAT harp player in his own right as well), Little Walter had said that he preferred to play amplifed and his reason was that and I quote, "don't have to be blowing so hard."
Too often, the average player just doesn't get that message one bit, and many players only real playing experience is too often in the setting of the open jam, and to be brutally honest about it, that means you're gonna be often dealing with a lot of really crappy musicians that the stuff that you see going on, if they did that with pros, I can absolutely GUARANTEE you that the would either get their sorry behind fired in a nanosecond or they'd be getting a non stop ration of s**t and they would deserve every single bit of it, and I most certainly HAVE done that.
Room as well as stage acoustics can make things tougher to hear, even if you a great set of monitors for the stage and can play tricks with your ears. A big problem with harp players is that they're often too damned timid to seize control of their situation because they're afraid to offend people playing with them on the bandstand and they often never learn to assert themselves, even if it means being a total a**h**e in the process to get the message across. One of the things about leading a band or just playing a solo that you have to learn is to take control and learn how to give signals that are clear and concise and not just do the same damned things harp players usually do, which is just go thru it and whine non stop about it.
Part of the amplifed sound problems aren't with just guitar players (altho they can obviously be a royal pain in the butt), but also with loud electric bass players (and they actually do much more damage to your hearing than a guitar player will) or loud drums. On top of that, in open jams, many of them also have such really horrible time that you really don't have a groove to work with and when you try to do dynamics with them, you also run into major time problems as well.
Too often in ther vast majority of open jams, the first thing I see harp players do is go stupidly macho and use more breath force to try and play louder, and they're often never smart enought to know that doing that is ALWAYS a losing battle and they're often the very SAME people who complain all the time but NOT ONCE do they ever make an effort to seize control of the situation and because of that, they are often their own worst enemy in the process.
Does that mean a pretty fair part of the onus belongs to the harp player?? Absolutely, yes!!!!
If you were to be playing in an jam that comes under the heading of a pro jam (sometimes referred to as the snob jam) or one that's actually well run by local blues heavyweight, like for example, the one in the bay area run by Aki Kumar, as an example, there will often be a NOTICEABLE difference in how things are because somebody like that will never allow it to get out of hand, plus they tend to attract better musicians and jammers who are much more musically together and those types actually pay attention 24/7 to what's going on and rarely you will ever get into such crap.
Many jams are run by some bands that the jam may be their only gig and often times, those bands are not particularly good to begin with and they tend to attract much worse musicians (and at times the house band is only barely much better than the horrible jammers going there).
Most pros technique between acoustic and amplifed is often pretty close to each other, but the ones best at real acoustic harp often get the use of their hands in the process of shaping their sounds happening (which means NO mic in the hands EVER).
Loud bands aren't just tough for harp players, because it's also pretty tough for a vocalist as well.
For both vocals and acoustic harp, I always have the mic I'm using set hot so that I don't have to eat the damned mic and so for both vocals and harmonica, allowing me the luxury of being able to back away or get closer for contrast is enormously helpful so that I don't wind up killing myself to do anything.
One thing I was taught by a piano player is that they're often used to not hearing themselves and learn how to do things by sheer feel and to stop panicking about being heard. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Nov 17, 2016 10:16 AM
Amplified Harp is an instrument. It is not the same instrument as acoustic harp. You use your technique with the instrument to elicit a variety of tones.
When it comes to playing amplified, the biggest new skill is learning to cup. It is not natural, you won't be good at it when you first try, any more than you were with that OTHER instrument, the acoustic harmonica.
YES they share a lot of the same skills (like flute and saxophone) but they are simply not the same across the board. You get better at cupping for years.
Yes, pros play differently when they play amplified with a cupped mic than when they play acoustically. This is true if ONLY for the fact that cupping is a skill applied in the process. But I suspect you'd find many other subtle, even unconscious differences in the WAY the harp is played when playing amplified, to exploit what's good about that instrument and avoid what isn't. ---------- *************************************************** /Greg
I feel i do play pretty soft. Although I have found that there is a certain level of tone that you achieve when you add a bit more diaphragm-ich pressure (not lung pressure or more air exactly) that you just can't seem to get playing super softly. Do you find this to be true?
The whole band cituation doesn't really concern me at this point. Sorry perhaps that one bit was misleading.
Greg
Yea using the hands when acoustic and cupping when amped is a huge difference.
But those "subtleties" is what im really after.
I feel i have a decent cup, but either way.....
What im concerned about here is more what happens in the mouth, throat, diaphragm, etc. That differs from one mode of playing to the next.
Is there a slightly different "target" one aims for as far as internal tone when playing amped?
I think you ve already answered that question greg, but to take it further .... what do you think you/others do differently?
For the most part, mouth, throat, diaphragm, etc are just about the same for both styles.
The only difference I've noticed is, in order to get a certain acoustic tone that is thinner, more transparent and metallic, and has its own specific charm, is to go for more of an "eee" orientation for the back 2/3 of the tongue rather than the "oh" or "aw" which opens up the mouth chamber for more rounded and fuller tone. ---------- The Iceman
I strongly agree with Greg. two different instruments..
of course good acoustic tone is critical but I've come to appreciate guys who have good amp'd technique. Mostly because I've noticed that my technique isn't as good somehow! I'm not quite sure what it is I'm not doing but I think it's just time and experience and hard listening, experimenting, and making adjustments until you are getting the sound you want consistently
There's certainly more to amp'd playing than I initially thought or at least that's been my finding so far.
I've been checking out Andy Santanna's mic technique recently. He does this thing where he just lifts his index finger for a brighter tone on certain notes it's pretty cool. ----------
4' 4+ 3' 2~~~ -Mike Ziemba Harmonica is Life!
Last Edited by slaphappy on Nov 16, 2016 3:25 PM
I don't pretend to be a pro, but I do have quite a bit of amplified gigging experience. FWIW, when I play amped I strive for a more even tone. Playing acoustic I tend to vary breath pressure for purposes of expression. Playing amped the mic reacts to more subtle variations in breath pressure so you don't need to vary breath pressure as much to achieve expression.
Also, if you have a good mic HOW you grip it (which includes how tight or loose your grip is, your hand position relative to the harp and mic and the relative positions of the harp and mic to one another) can provide substantial variations in tone, timbre and volume. Good amped players have learned how to control these things to get the various sounds they are after. The importance of mic handling technique cannot be overestimated.
What BBQBob says he learned from the piano player is gospel. When you play electric you can't always hear yourself as well as you would like, so you need to learn how to function in situations like that without letting your amped volume get out of control.
I think that Little Walter and Louis Myers interview also mention about how to use the microphone. Once, you get that skill down, I don't think there is a lot of difference. Listen to some of Louis Myers acoustic playing and his playing on his LP's where he's playing clean. Not a lot of difference in sound or tone. Listen to some of Cotton's playing through the PA and acoustically on youtube. He can use more hand effects when playing acoustically. Other than that, not a ton of difference.
slaphappy - Lots of guys will modify the way they handle the mic to get different tones. Andy's great at it. RJ Mischo, Rick Estrin and other guys who saw the old guys learned those techniques. Lots of guys today who don't see a lot of harp players don't seem to experiment with subtle changes to mic technique. They all seem to want that big bassy sound that just goes womp, womp, womp. Watch the videos of the old guys and you'll see what I mean. Watch their hands.
Good acoustic tone + good cupping technique = good amped tone.
Effects don't give you good amped tone, just different amped tone. You can have good tone with effects, but effects don't assure good tone.
Once you have good amped tone, then you can incorporate changing your cup and embouchure to get different amped sounds.
Time and time again I have heard poor acoustic tone and/or poor cupping negatively affect amped harp tone. I have heard different players through the same mic and amp have wide variation in sound.
Deak Harp and Greg Heumann are two players who have posted here whose acoustic tone and amped tone without use of effects is very good. Mooncat has outstanding acoustic tone, and I assume great amped tone. Since he clearly loves effects with his style of amped playing, there is little chance to hear him play thorough an amp without layers of effects.
P.S. I have acceptable acoustic and amped tone and am still working on it. I probably always will be working on it. ----------
Doug S.
Last Edited by dougharps on Nov 17, 2016 7:54 AM
@Killa Hertz -- Learning breath conrol is so essential because there are things you can do by varying the force just VERY VERY slightly, but with the average player who never learns this, they never master the subtle inbetween stages, just go from zero to pedal to the metal and that's one of the things I learned from both taking breathing and relaxation exercises from a reputable vocal coach and watching Big Walter Horton play and hang with him as often as I did. The subtle stuff is often harder to learn than the stuff that just smacks you upside the head kind of obvious stuff. I also used to see Big Walter change the shape of his cupping style by either the entire hand as well as just a single finger with each different finger and that often made an enormous difference, even whle playing amplified as well, and he definitely had the classic tight cup but often times he purposely did NOT tight cup so it could allow him to get a wider variety of tonal colots for both acoustic as well as amplified playing and the average player, it's often just one way or another and litle else beyond that. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Nov 17, 2016 12:39 PM
All I can say, is that Barbeque Bob has been and is dead-on correct about breath force. These past 12 months I focused on what Bob has been harping on about(no pun intended) using CONTROLLED breath and working exclusively on acoustic tone, hand effects, etc. I have also virtually given-up on "open-mic" events, as Bob also mentioned that most of these so-called jams will stifle your progress as a misician. All I can say is that now when I do attend the extremely occasional jam, people notice a big difference. To barbecues Bob, we salute you for your wisdom and input. Thank you brother:)
Last Edited by CarlA on Nov 17, 2016 10:33 AM
There are a few bands in my area that have good volume control but mostly the bands have a hammer and tongs approach.At loud volumes,it's damn hard to hear the subtleties of hand effects.I have learned so many bad habits from playing with too loud bands.Most of those subtleties are hard to achieve without some aural feedback. Not to mention ANY dynamics.
Last Edited by Tuckster on Nov 17, 2016 11:19 AM
@Carl A -- Thank you so much and I'm glad to be of help. Unwittingly, in a few of your videos in a jam, you gave us some perfect examples of why jams can stifle you without even knowing it and on one of them, if anyone here has ever taken the time to really get their time straight, they would've heard that the guitar player's rhythm chops were virtually non existent, and both the drummer and bass player's time were absolutely horrible and all of those things made everything sound completeley grooveless and it prevented you from really playing at your best and on some videos of you by yourself, some of that bad time stuff, unfortunately, did rub off a bit. You can now see why I say being in the open jams too much can actually be a detriment to you and your progress as a musician. Keep it up and you can and will achieve things you never thought you could be able to do. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Nov 17, 2016 11:47 AM
Bob I think I'm a pretty good judge of my skills. Meaning I think I can look at my playing objectively. Also I record myself ALOT, so that helps.
And I know I'm not that great of a player yet, but I think Breath Control is something I Definitely do have. Infact I think it's one of my strongest attributes in my playing. I dont play at jams so I guess I haven't been subject to all that stuff your talking about. I learned everything from all of you Veteran players on the various online sources. Aswell as from the records. Walter Horton, Rice Miller, Ronnie Shellist Have been my biggest influences, I think. I'm getting pretty decent with the hand effects too. That's one thing I really miss when playing amped. But as Tuckster brought up, It's probably not very useful in a loud live situation.
Timing is something I have worked on very little. I'm sure my timing isnt great. I would like to think it's "ok", but it's probably worse than I think.
I haven't posted any of my playing for quite a while. So I think I'll do that soon. Get some critique on where I'm at.
I think with more Amped practice and experience will come the answers to my questions.
No opinion about his acoustic tone, but a while ago, Adam posted a vid of him, Shellist and Aki Kumar playing amped with Aki's band and Shellist got buried. As far as amped tone is concerned, if what was on the vid Adam posted is typical, a hard rocking band would blow Shellist off the stage. Aki's band really grooves and cooks but is not particularly hard driving and Shellist got buried by them. If you can't cut you can't claim to have good amped tone.
Last Edited by hvyj on Nov 17, 2016 9:52 PM
My opinion is based on several live performances I attended featuring Ronnie this last spring (2016). One show was a two band show with both Aki Kumar and Ronnie Shellist on stage at the end. Both sounded great. I have also heard Ronnie at other events in previous years. He has good acoustic and amped tone. Period.
I cannot account for the levels in the video to which you refer that was posted here and that I also saw, but I strongly stand by my words about Mr. Shellist's tone playing blues.
I would not voice an opinion on tone quality of a pro based on one video. ----------
Doug S.
Last Edited by dougharps on Nov 17, 2016 10:18 PM
@ Doug: you may very well be right. Perhaps the vid Adam posted was not typical. I have no idea. It just struck me as WTF??? since he has such an elevated reputation. I just have seen his YT instructionals, some acoustic vids on YT and the vid Adam posted with Aki's band. Maybe he was just having a bad night, IDK.
That video just has RS out of the mix because his rig (of the 3) wasn't as loud. In the Ziggy's videos posted by Rick Davis he was always cutting through just fine.
Last Edited by Littoral on Nov 18, 2016 4:00 AM
Shellist is a MONSTER dude. You can't judge a man by ONE video you saw him in. Listen to his record Til' Then. If you dont find that he has GREAT acoustic AND Amped Tone, you might have to get your hearing checked. lol.
Actually the same things your saying here have been said about Walter Horton. He has plenty of times when he played Awful. (Compared to his normal playing) Lucky for him there was no youtube. 8^)
I have seen videos of Ronnie playing with other players where he didnt play so great, but my take on it was ... He was being nice and not trying to be too assertive during another players show. Trying to let them take the lead. It seems he's kind of laying back.
Anyways that neither here nor there. The point is, listening and Trying to Copy guys like Ronnie and Horton basically forces you to have proper breath control.
Ya know, some players are excellent with their own arranged, rehearsed material but not as strong in a situation where they have to extemporize. Everyone's skill set is different. I haven't listened very much to Shellist so I really don't know. On everything of his that I have listened to, his rhythmic approach is pretty white, which is one of the reasons I haven't spent much time listening to his other stuff, but that has nothing to do with tone. And he obviously has very strong technique.
3 instruments... if you are playing on a front porch with your buddies and no amplifiers in sight that is a different kind of 'acoustic' than standing off of a mic getting a clean sound. When you don't have a mic at all you'll probably have to play louder if you want to be heard. That's actually a good argument, economically speaking, to get at least some sort of amp and mic earlier rather than later, because playing hard, particularly when you don't know what the upper limit is, is a good way to blow out harps.
And of course, you cup playing acoustic too, just more to shape the sound than to create backpressure. Can't wah without the basics of a cup down.
I would play alot late at night when everyone was sleeping. So i would get a harp with non vented covers .. and in a lower key (quieter) .. and i would cup the harp to kill the sound.
So I learned how to hold my hands to best kill all the sound. Then one day i realised that I had already learned the perfect technique for nice big hand wahs.
I love playing acoustic. I miss about if the subtle effects of acoustic playing while playing amped.
Like there's that perfect spot when using your cupped hands that actually makes the note a good bit louder.
But i was more interested in the internal differences between the two styles of playing.
There is a lot of "playing the amp" in amplified harp. Unless you live on 100 acres out in the country or have a large studio space, "practicing the amp" presents a bit of a problem. I'm practicing acoustic and playing amplified acoustic 90% of the time. And looking for a farm.
@Killa re: "Is there a slightly different "target" one aims for as far as internal tone when playing amped?
I think you ve already answered that question greg, but to take it further .... what do you think you/others do differently?"
No - I don't think there's much of a difference in this regard. You should always be striving for the best acoustic tone even when playing amplified. I think the differences are more about how often you chord vs single note, how hard or soft you play, what rhythmic effects you use and of course how you involve your hands. ---------- *************************************************** /Greg
Alot of those things have been getting easier recently. Navigating the harp, especially on fast runs, with the added weight of the mic gets a lil tricky at first. But im getting better.
"How often you chord" Yes that's another thing that was a little wierd at first. I had to get used to not using chords so much. I use them a ton acoustically, to create a backbeat, etc. Ive tried to lean more on slaps and big octaves for that while playing amped. Seems to work ok.
Theres something about getting a good acoustic rhythm cooking, that it seems you just can't do amplified.
Anyhow, thanks for the great tips. And BTW Loving that VC i just got from you. Night and Day. Don't know how i ever played without it.
