Been wanting to do this song for a while and finally got round to it but man its given me grief! I'm playing Capo 2 in D and G harp in 2nd. First time through It's guitar and harp playing the melody plus fills and then one verse with vocals plus harp fill at the end.
Sounds good. Since you don't need the b7 (C) note for this tune, I would go with some sort of country tune/major cross adjustment--and so much of the melody uses the second degree (E), I would also suggest Paddyfying blow 3--so those two together mean Melody Maker. But Major Cross would also work well.
Thanks Gnarly and good observations. Ditching the PITA 5ob would be a relief. I would have to get an MM to play it live on rack. I haven't taken up alternative tunings as yet but this might be the tune to try it out on.
I like it . . . more than a few times the harp parts had a very cool violin feel ---------- •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• "Humor is always the first victim of political correctness."
Very nice melancholy version of this great song. To my taste, as a listening experience, not sure you need to play the melody line "exactly" on a richter-tuned harp—unless you were doing it as a kind of exercise to finesse difficult bends. You pulled it off pretty well, but as a performance piece I think your guitar, vocal and simple harp embellishments work best, unless you get a MM tuning. Thank you for sharing. Very cool.
Thanks Tomaxe. I understand your point. I have made it my thing I guess over the past few years to pick a song I like and play the vocal line and then add a solo or fill (Sting's Wrapped around your finger, recently). Sometimes it works ok and other times the tonal quality of bends or OB’s can become slightly off-putting eg the sweeter the melody the more noticeable they are. Especially when you have to hold a double bend on draw 3 or OB at the end of a phrase.
The major hassle for me on this song were the hole 5 overblows which I struggled with. They were too short and a bit edgy for my liking.
I have been resistant to alternative tunings (perhaps it’s the ‘magic’ involved in trying to achieve notes the Richter harp wasn’t designed for that continues to motivate me.) However if it doesn’t serve the song it’s pointless I guess.
Thinking about this makes me realise that if I was asked to play this song on a chromatic I probably wouldn’t be interested!
I note your suggestion earlier mentioned by Gnarly re the MM tuning and have tuned one of my old harps likewise and it is so much better for this song…no 5OB! And I didn’t miss the normal Richter 5 draw as it was not needed on this, as Gnarly said. So I can play this one racked now that I don’t have to focus so much on the OB’s.
Not sure what the purpose is for raising the 5 draw a semi-tone though as you would presumably miss having this note on many songs? I’m aware you can bend draw 5 to get the missing note which would be ok on blues but not so good on nice melody’s .
Let's use a C for our example. Draw 5 is F, and raising it turns it into F#. That's the 7th degree of the G scale, so cross harp is now major. Any song in a major key will benefit from this tuning. The draw bends give you the accidentals, so the middle octave is almost completely chromatic.
