I'm starting this thread for folks (and MAINLY ME) who would enjoy some criticism and help from the BIG DAWGS on figuring out where we stand in our battle/journey with the oh so wonderful and mysterious Mississippi Sax. Here my vid, just be honest, i'm good at taking a lashing (and or praise). So what level do you think i'm playing at AND what do you think my next GOAL should maybe be on the harmonica? I know you can't tell a TON from a short clip like this, but hopefully you guys can grasp a general idea of where i'm at. I've been playing now for 1 1/2 years. And learned completely from YouTube (ala Adam Gussow, Jason Ricci, Jon Gindick ect,) hard practice, and Harmonica for Dummies.
THANKS MUCH! ---------- $Daddy Rich$ "The Blues is Ok!"
Technique-wise: You have control of your bends including 2 hole half step and presumeably your 3 draw bends as well. You play cleanly and clearly and you know your way around the harmonica without a doubt. Tone is pretty good, not whiny/honky/breathy, but also not big and developed either. You are also pucker and tongue blocking interchangeably, using split octaves/chords. Additionally you are overblowing hole 6 and overdrawing hole 7. On top of that you are bending these overblows/overdraws. I presume it's a stock SP20 that you've possibly gapped to be able to accomplish the overblow bending, but I could be wrong. I'd say you are definitely middle-intermediate to advanced-intermediate based solely on technique.
Musicality on harmonica: I need to watch a few of your clips to really say, but I watched one minute of your Ground Zero clip and it's relatively low; probably middle beginner. Again, really hard to say since I don't have alot to go on based on this clip or the other one that I partly watched.
Overall: I'd put you at advanced-beginner. You have alot of great technique, but if you can't execute it in a live setting, in time and make it sound good to music then it's useless. I know because I fall into this category often. Buddah rated me a few years ago and said I could be a good player with more experience; I think that was a very accurate assessment. You've been playing less time than I have (about 10 years less) but you've accomplished alot in that time frame. It will be interesting to see how you develop as a player in another 1.5 years.
Edit - I just watched your clip jamming to a back beat and I was actually very impressed. I bump you up to middle-intermediate overall.
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 1:40 PM
You don't know how to play music. You lack focus. What you're playing is solely ego driven. It comes off as somebody throwing wet noodles at a wall and looking to see what sticks.
If you want to become a good harp player you have to: Learn to add emotion into your playing. DELIVER what you are playing to audience, don't just play a bunch of shit and think it's good because you tossed in some OBs. Learn to use space. Think in phrases, not licks.
----------
"Musicians are the architects of heaven"
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 3:15 PM
You asked where you should go from here. I'd humbly suggest you should get together with Buddha or some good teacher you like and get a couple of lessons on general musicality. You might find a blues week in your area and go jam your ass off for a week and learn from some world-class players.
Your technique is pretty solidly Intermediate to advanced Intermediate, I think--but you're still not really a player until you can do what Buddha said above. . . ----------
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 2:19 PM
Lot of guys would have turned the TV off first.........But for an 18 month player, I thought it was pretty darn good! Would be happy to achieve as much myself, nice job.
yeah I have been blowing a long,long time and he has me beat but I prefer not to play a lot of notes but to hang on what I do I can bend and hit clean notes but will probably never be flashy
Yeah, Buddha and oldwailer are spot on... but then it seems to me that you were actually trying to showcase your technical skills which, as ridge says, are quite advanced.
Here goes my vid,... go crazy, guys. I actually filmed these clips two weeks ago for my togolese friend. I tried to make his music better so that he had something cool to show to his friends at home (so this is my try at containing my egocentricity :). He was only here for holidays,.. I enjoyed our jams a lot.
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 3:25 PM
I am not even sure I am qualified to even post but I have been listening to clips like this on youtube and I know you can play some stuff that I would like to hear BUT when I hear stuff like this (I think Buddha hit the nail on the head ) it is just a bunch of riffs that if I heard played I would not be playing the harp today. Again it has nothing to do with your technique but I do not connect with it. That might just be me but a slower moving beat perhaps that I could start to tap my foot and get into is what I like or something that pulls me in and grabs my attention.
In summary I think you play pretty well but need to connect more with what you are playing so that I can feel that as well. Hope this makes some sense.
For somebody who has been playing a year and a half, your technique is very good. You've got excellent vibrato; a solid, full tone on single notes and double-stops (most of the time); the ability to sustain overblows (which I don't). You've got some speed, again including overblows. On purely technical terms, you're doing well. And obviously you were trying, in the video, to showcase your technical talents as a way of making it easier for people to diagnose you as a player.
I don't hear ego in your playing. I hear aimlessness, a lack of solid rhythmic grounding, and--curiously--no desire to demonstrate an ability to work the harmonica through the 12-bar blues form. I hear somebody who has indeed accrued techniques from videos put out there by various people you've named. I hear some of Jason's licks. I hear some of my solid tone. :) I hear some of Buddha's vibrato. But I don't hear anything like a coherent musical personality on the instrument, much less the glimmerings of an original voice.
That's OK. I don't necessarily expect all those things in somebody who has been playing harp for a year and a half. Still, the operative word for me is "unevenness." Something crucial, several crucial things are lacking. They are what you need to begin to pull things together: a sense of melody (meaning how to GO somewhere with a melody); a dance-groove; clear and unarguable passion gushing through the instrument; an evident sense of blues harmonic knowledge, which is to say the ability to communicate, clearly and deeply, your location inside the blues changes, and movement THROUGH them. I'm sure you've got most or all those things as a guitarist, but they're not coming through here. At all.
If you were my student, the first thing I'd ask you after this sort of demonstration is, "Play me a song," or "Play me a 12-bar blues." Or play me a solid rhythm and then work some variations. I'd want the song to have a melody that I recognized. I'd want the 12-bar blues to actually have 48 beats, no more and no less, and I'd want to hear the changes. I'd want to know how you carry a groove. Interestingly, the 3-minute sample of your playing gives me no information about any of that.
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 4:21 PM
Thanks very much everybody. Believe it or not I do have a lot of soul and my ego is pretty non-existent these days. I admit, i used to have an evil evil ego that almost took over once so i had to shall we say er..dispose of him....
I was expecting to hear some of the things i got in the replies and of course I knew it was inevitable that Mr. Buddha would be giving me a lashing. Good thing he can't reach me with that Monkey paw stick thing through the computer. But lemme say this tho: (and i'm in NO WAY attempting to strike up a battle with you Mr. Buddha, i'm just wanting to make a humble reply to your advice/suggestions and p.s. Thanks very much for the video you posted with the Plinking, that helped me greatly when i was starting out)
B:You're a Jammer and that's about it.
DR: Nothing could be further more from the truth. I'm really not even that much into jamming. I'm basically just a singer/songwriter and entertainer. HOWEVER, if you're talking my HARP rating, I AGREE WITH YOU i reacon. I actually think that should be a new category. Where does that fall, below beginner? ;)
B:You don't know how to play music.
DR: dang man, really? well, i respect everyone's opinion so that's cool i guess.
B:You lack focus.
DR: I agree, especially this week. But, I can always work on that. There was once a time I had the focus of Daniel San, but not today for sure.
B:What you're playing is solely ego driven. It comes off as somebody throwing wet noodles at a wall and looking to see what sticks.
DR: You'd have to know me, but I assure you I've got true love for the harmonica. If i come off as ego driven then i need to work on that cause i don't wanna project that image. Thanks.
B:If you want to become a good harp player you have to: Learn to add emotion into your playing. DELIVER what you are playing to audience, don't just play a bunch of shit and think it's good because you tossed in some OBs. Learn to use space. Think in phrases, not licks.
DR: I totally agree. Actually one of my strong points is using space and musical phrases and getting my emotion across to the audience. I did throw in that OB and OD, but.........sniffs,...it was for the fans man! they wanted it, and you gonna give the fans what they want.
Thanks Buddha, and seriously, I appreciate your comments and everyone else's too.
AND P.S. I'm not trying to be some kind of spectacle or anything, but in hindsight i now realize i should have given you all a better video to judge me by as explained by Mr. Gussow in the post above. SO Tomorrow i'm gonna try to post a simple 12 Bar Blues that has some sense of timing, rhythm, emotion and groove. Sorry that I didn't have my mojo working in the previous clip, but like someone said, I was just basically curious as to where i'm standing on some of the technical aspects of the instrument.
And HONKIN' ON BOBO: My balls and ego aren't very big nowadays, BUT i've been under the microscope so much in my life that there not too much i can't take mentally or verbally. (sticks and stones tho, they hurt, and also the Tree that fell on my car about 4 years ago while i was driving hurt pretty dang bad as well, go figure)
Thanks everybody. I'm sure this next video crucifixion IS going to hurt much more than this but like i said just give it to me straight. I respect your honesty.
Watch the eyes, they say to anyone who can read body language, "check this out" "I'm cool"
Listen to the last lick at the end, he play 3 minutes of garbage and then plays a cool little lick at the end. Then listen to his words at the end. "I don't care..." "I'm not going to make many takes..."
Even the begining is ego driven, he hold up a sign with his website address. For what? Then tell us that he teaches at the delta blues museum as if he's some kind of expert on blues.
That's all EGO.
Nothing he played had soul or depth whatsoever. Clarksdale strikes me as a guy, IN THIS VIDEO, as an intermediate level player who thinks he has more together than he does. He put it out for for people to marvel at his technique after playing for only a eighteen months. Then he tells us that he doesn't care what we think...
So what's the point? To me it came off as a show off video that didn't show anything but deficiencies.
Was I needlessly harsh? For that bit of ego driven drivel? Absolutely not.
I call 'em as I see 'em.
As I said before, the technique is there, the tool box is adequately full, now it's time to do something with it.
----------
"Musicians are the architects of heaven"
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 5:26 PM
being able to keep the beat,to play a 12 bar blues I am convinced is very important if you are simply playing with an acoustic guitarist like charlie hilbert you have to master it or you will fall flat and that guitarist will not want to jam with you anymore being ableto perform riffs,bend or play clear 2draw notes will never be enough and these last 3.5 months I have been on this modern blues website has left me no doubt its tough you have to work your ass off
/So what level do you think i'm playing at AND what do you think my next GOAL should maybe be on the harmonica?/
Level: seems pretty impressive to me, sounds like you've put a lot of work in over the last 18 months.
GOAL: kudzurunner's suggestion
/If you were my student, the first thing I'd ask you after this sort of demonstration is, "Play me a song," or "Play me a 12-bar blues." Or play me a solid rhythm and then work some variations. I'd want the song to have a melody that I recognized. I'd want the 12-bar blues to actually have 48 beats, no more and no less, and I'd want to hear the changes. I'd want to know how you carry a groove./
seems pretty sensible to me.
I hope posting the video ends up being a productive experience!
@Buddha:
Are you impugning the good intentions of a fellow board member? Or do I need to adjust my eyes/brain/understanding of English?
I love when the british chime in I have cousins in brighton I have never met because of an un uncle who was stationed near oxford in the early 50s you are so much more civilized than us but with great sense of humors
I watched some of your other video. I now cut you less slack. You CAN play music but you didn't with the harmonica why? Clearly you have a tap into the aether that allow for the musical connection.
You are a musician, you can sing and you can play guitar. What I don't understand is why a bloke like you plays jibberish on the harmonica but otherwise plays nice music. You have the technique to play real music on the harp so why don't you?
I also call bullshit on the humility bit. Not that I care but at least be honest with yourself and us. Your whole website is ego driven... and you're giving harmonica lessons? Please. You have no business giving harmonic lesson right now. It's your ego that tell you that you think you're capable. Not your soul.
So you say you were humble in the vid. Fine. So was it a show of technique or were you actually trying to play something? And that little lick at the end comes off as if you were giving the finger to us. If it was a show of technique then it's ego driven playing. If you were trying to play something, then you don't know how to play music. The thing is, I KNOW you know how to play music and I feel almost violated for having spent the time to look into your other videos in an effort to help you.
I didn't watch the video. I intentionally looked away and let my eyes glaze so I could devote all my attention to the sound that Clarksdale was actually making. My responses are based on that.
Your responses were based partly on listening and partly on looking. Really? I'm surprised and disappointed. I thought that a master musician like you would devote all his attention to the sound and not let himself be distracted by the body that creates the sound.
The ego lives in the body--the eyes, for example, and what they perceive. Your ego responded to his. I was listening to the spirit that expressed itself through the music, and to the music that resulted.
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 7:13 PM
I listened while not paying attention to see what caught my ear. Ego caught my ear. Then I watched and saw the body language which confirmed what I heard.
I master musician and teacher pays attention to all things wouldn't you agree. I was looking for things like tension in his hands, shoulders and neck. I looked for how he was holding the harp. I would be doing him a disservice if I didn't pay attention to everything.
I didn't see an issue with tension or holding the harp so I didn't comment on that.
Then I watched six of his other vids to discover is actually is a very good musician.
I EVALUATED him as a harmonica playing musician per his wishes.
Are you really disappointed that I was so thorough in what I looked for? That doesn't make sense to me and make ME feel disappointed in you that you only evaluated a portion of his playing.
I think you've got a good voice on the harmonica. Clarkcsdale. Do you modify your harp yourself or is it a stock?
He has put his video out for criticism and so that means all kinds of criticism. So I really don't know what the problem is with Buddha giving his expected "I calls it as I sees it" approach.
From now on if someone posts a video WITHOUT stating "I want nothing but good criticism" then no one should argue about another members' opinion.
seacrest out.
---------- I could be bound by a nutshell and still count myself a king of infinite space
I'd go with Adam's critique. Tone and technique are OK. Not great, but very respectable for how long you've been at it. But this was just wanking, not music. No rhythm, no form. And gotta agree with Buddha - you have an ego and it shows. Its part of why you put the video up. You wouldn't have spent so much time talking to us, having a silly name and holding up a sign if you didn't.
"I'm not going to waste my time, take after take, trying to make it perfect." That would presume you thought there was an "it" - surely you wouldn't have played the same stuff again, because you weren't playing anything. It is one thing to do another take when you're trying to play something specific - it would be another in this case. ---------- /Greg
I just saw some of his other videos and now I'm a bit confused. He played and sang well. It would have been better if he would have played with one of his own tunes so there would have been a musical context. ----------
I wasn't going to watch this, but after reading some of the other commentary, I had to. I've watched a lot of videos on youtube. Honestly, I don't think that I've seen anything else like it.
I think all successful musicians/artist have big egos. This guy definitely has some balls he has some technique down but it did not sound very musical & lacked structure . I would say practice getting some rhythm get the beat inside you. Id recommend David Barrets web site that has helped me a lot. I could do with some ego myself
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 8:07 PM
Dang man, am i really looking that Egotistical? Goodness gracious, I'm really a nice guy just having fun on a harmonica. I didn't realize how much fuss it was gonna cause to ask about what level I'm playing at. I don't really know what to think man. Mr. Heumann, I don't know what you're talking about me holding up a "silly sign" for "you guys" and a "silly name". I do that on ALL of my YouTube videos. That's just my Trademarked performing name and i always promote my website whenever the chance arises. I'm trying to make a living like the rest of you all. Since i'm so silly I guess i'll not need order anymore of your volume controls and such for my silly little harpy blowing. (thanks by the way, the control works just great). I'm not a customizer, i had a website reserved for the future possibility just in case I became good enough but I'll doubtfully be pursuing that. I'm not trolling, i'm real, I plan on giving lessons on the harp when i get comfortable enough to do so. I'm required at my job to teach blues on guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, vocals, and now harmonica at the local Delta Blues Museum. That's just ONE of the many reasons I took up the instrument. I guess i should have posted the video BELOW earlier instead of my earlier "wanking".
Mr. Gussow, I apologize for the commotion on the forum, I truly just wanted some guidance and feedback, ect. I'm really a very easy going guy trying to have some fun who does music for a living. I'm sorry for offending all you folks with my enormous Ego. I think my Goofiness comes off as cockiness to some folks for some reason, i don't understand. I guess i need another exorcism to get that thing removed again. Do people ever just joke around anymore these days or is everything just SO serious? wow!
ANY HOW, here is a sample of a "SONG" with a little bit of STRUCTURE for you all to rip me on. Have fun :) Freddie King's Hideaway.
i don't even know what you mean "trolling" "troll" what the heck is that man? I'm just a human being. Are you? ---------- $Daddy Rich$ "The Blues is Ok!"
He is obviously promoting himself by flashing his website. Any smart musician trying to get noticed would do the same thing. I do similar things by putting links on my posts, same as everyone else promoting their own stuff (Harpninja, Waltertore, Greg Heumann, etc.) Nothing wrong with that.
He is fairly new and genuinely likes the forum. I think this is his way of getting us to check him out. He's a brave man and it seems to have worked.
Yes I know you're a human and you have a soul and feelings and lets all hold hands and dance around the magical gum drop tree~~~
Though seriously, could you not be any more modest?
You play really good for someone who's only been at it for 18 months.
There's something about the fact that you come on up here and talk to us like you need some public assessment on the forum when you're already teaching and customizing harps.
Sounds to me like you're just here for a laugh or to virally promote yourself. Ain't nothing wrong with those 2 things in my book.
Just please, quit the "I'm a humble little newbie" bullshit and be straight with us.
Im hesitant to chime in...being a player with about the same amount of time in. He's no troll, at least I dont think so. Its obvious by his other vids that his playing in other musical contexts has transformed well into harp playing, and has given him somewhat of a leg up in the 18 months hes been at it. good job, ive been playing only a bit longer and i cant do some of that shit...
i also dont see any violations of the forum creed MP. misguided representation isnt listed anywhere. Zhin has a point about asking our opinion when you already teach. that seems silly. unless you teach to raw beginners. then it isnt as silly...to the people you asked for input in the vid, daddy, it screams: "look at me!" but to each his own. Affirmation is sought out by everyone to some degree. I accept that this is how he chose to do it. Why hate?
Your Welcome MP i deleted the responce a second ago i reread the very 1st post and it said opions from big dogs so i thought i better not say anything sorry:-)
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 9:35 PM
ok my 2 cents, Earlounge i think you hit his motive on the money,which apartenty it worked,If he has only been playing 18 months hes doing great,im at 14 months and i dont sound anything like him,But i wouldnt be teaching if i was him untill i had more time in.He does seem a little cocky but in a inocent way,and i think entertainers need some cockyness for the job they have to do,if its more confidence cocky and not the other kind.
MP you sounded great i dont know why you was wondering i thought you sounded like a pro.
German harpist the video would not load to good but from what i heard sounded like a cool rythem to go along with the guitar.
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 10:09 PM
Last Edited by on Jun 22, 2010 2:19 PM
