I made a dubstep beat and played blues harmonica over it. A critique of my playing would be much appreciated! Also, I recognize that the levels of the harmonica are too high, and I have a remix where I've lowered them.
I always try to diverge from 'traditional' blues lyrics, as they mean nothing to me viscerally -- I did take the same spare, somewhat repetitive aesthetic, but fleshed it out with some personal flavor, and a self-indulgent appropriation of Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" that, for me, is almost self-effacing.
I'm posting this here for general criticism, but especially for comments on my harmonica playing. I hope you all enjoy/tolerate.
It's interesting. I've mixed reggae/ska with harp too. Leandro Ferrari is one dude who has really done it well. I really do think that it's a new home for harp. That being said, I'm not entirely sure that you've done it successfully here. The main problem I see with your track is that there really isn't a "groove" that the harp sits in. Your harp playing seems quite removed from the underlying dub beat. I'm not just talking about the mix, either. The timing and grooves just don't sync up.
This is my advice on how to improve the track: Practice playing rhythm harp. Do so using offbeats (typical in reggae/ska music). Just tap on the down beats, and draw/blow chords on the upbeats. Then try to fill in the spaces between those upbeats with small riffs. Do this until you really just fit in the groove when you are doing it.
Then, when you play it over the dubstep riddim, you can make your harp fit IN to the rhythm, rather than float off separate from it.
Now just as full disclosure, I don't consider myself a super advanced harp player, or even that well qualified to be giving advice. I decided to offer my advice here, because I think you could have something pretty cool if you worked it up a bit more, and wanted to help out. Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'll post a couple of my YouTube vids where I'm playing in reggae/ska style. I use a looper pedal to set the beats.
I can't stand this dubstep stuff, and I don't like most drum and bass music (except for Nerve, and they have a real drummer...Jojo Mayer, of course!). But, one thing I do know is that there are a lot of electronic effects, so you absolutely need an electric harp sound. This acoustic sound just does not fit for me at all, but I liked the vocals. Rhythm is essential here, try to copy was the synth does with octaves and split chords.
Just a note on reggae, though...I don't understand how so much of this music is called reggae when it doesn't FEEL like reggae. Listen to classic reggae, they drop the one. Listen to how the groove goes: 1 2 THREE 4 1 2 THREE 4 1 2 THREE 4, etc. It is not like our American music where we accent the one so much, they accent the three. Of course, much of modern reggae does not do this, but I believe that's just because the drummer doesn't want to do it (or can't, it is very difficult to go against your natural feel). Just my thoughts, though.
Reggae and Dub changed into a Krautrock/Jamaican inspired electronic music towards the end of the seventies. It lost it's African beat and became re- colonised. Even people as revered as King Tubby were running a formula by then. Ska only lasted four years, rocksteady two, and Reggae, thanks to Bob widening its appeal internationally another seven. Any one drop Dub with Carlton Barrett on drums is usually a good omen. One of the most influential drummers of the last century. Tuned his snare real tight like a timbale so his rim shots really craaaaacked! Try playing third position along to early Augustus Pablo. Beautiful stuff. There is a blog on ''Harmonica in Jamaican music'' which is very good, type that in. Augustus Pablo played a melodica, a wind blown keyboard that sounds alot like a chromatic harp in its third octave. There is Fire by Black Uhuru has great harp by Julio Finn. Adam you probably know him as a fellow author of blues lit.
Last Edited by on Nov 07, 2010 12:30 AM
Isaac: I think you're right. I was trying here to get a delta feel over a soundbed that represented complete electronic excess, but I suppose I would have to tweak the rhythm of my playing to mesh more with the beat -- I think it's a matter of emphasis, and yes, I may have been overplaying. I also thought what Zack said was interesting: the heavy emphasis on the three.
Zack: I don't own a harmonica mic or an amp, and have neither the money nor the space for them, unfortunately (well, space space for the amp, in any case). Maybe in a few months...but yes, I agree -- a more electronic sound with some reverb would have helped the song.
I use audacity (and am trying to learn ableton), and the reverb on the harp near the end is from that. Also, I don't know if any of you are into playing harmonica into a compressor mic-mixer system, but the term 'punching in' refers to when the sound kind of overloads the mic and the waves become square and somewhat overdriven. I tried to punch in on some of the harp riffs (by leaning in close to the mic) in order to achieve a quasi-amplified sound. It didn't work out quite how I would have liked it to, unfortunately.
Though I'm still practicing harmonica, the next songs I am in the process of writing probably won't feature it -- one is a folk ballad type thing, and the other is fingerstyle guitar. I'll probably give this fusion-thang another go after those two are done.
If you've got stuff recorded in separate tracks you can adjust the volume or pan the instruments left and right to give them more separation. When I'm recording into Audacity personally I try to get as clean a recording as I can. You can always add effects after but short of rerecording you can never really reproduce that clean signal again.
I usually normalize the tracks, then add a little delay. There are all sorts of ways to get an electronic sound, from phasers to high and low pass filters. Even the right amount of delay can give you a more electronic sound.
The best advice I can give you for finding the sound you want in Audacity is to set a notebook next to your computer or keep a word document open and record a short piece and just start messing with it. Save the original copy with a different name and keep track of what effects you use and in what order.
that's very good advice, the word document. i always lose track of the levels.
panning is a difficult thing to pull off, especially if you're mixing the track for it to sound good on any speaker system AND on headphones. What I did was adjust the gain to offset the 'punched in' sound, and then applied compression, EQ, and adjusted the gain again. I might try putting some phasers on the harp, see how that sounds -- thanks for the suggestion!
