Fellow harp players, I have missed this forum lately. After not getting much practice lately, I kicked my butt to get this before the year end. Constructive feedback welcome. (I know I need to work on my timing and I got some keys wrong. It's a very challenging song.)
Hey Hepcat, how long y'been working on that sucker? It's definitely a tough one. You can always tell a bluesman by the kind of music they listen to -- and yer definitely listening to some good music -- and starting to make it! you're hitting them bends. I dig how in the end y'really got into it. I think the problem with people like us (fairly new players) are that we're in such a rush to get all the sounds out... I heard it in Adam's video, I think it was the front porch blues, where he said that the old blues guys often iterated "take ya time... take ya time..." and that's what we gotta do! slow down and be aware and pay attention to time. Shit, I gotta do that! I'll post one of my videos where I'm having that same problem.
I don't like to make threads specifically to post my videos, so I'm gonna go ahead and take the liberty to tag along on this thread of wonderful constructive (or not) criticism -- kalabunga:
---------- I could be bound by a nutshell and still count myself a king of infinite space
OdaHUMANITY!
Last Edited by on Dec 23, 2010 5:34 PM
Well done, Hepcat ! You've got a good tone, just need to relax a bit and get in the groove. The tune has some technical difficulties, maybe you can simplify them in order to keep the rythm, I think it's more important ; you can always refine the licks after you've catched that groove perfectly. My two cents anyway.
Nicely done, Hepcat - for what my 3 cents are worth, I tend to practice things like The Gloth mentioned - simplify a notch to get the same tempo and rhythm and ease, and when that becomes effortless, start adding in the more complex details.
My other suggestion would be something like the software mentioned on this forum a few times over the years - "the amazing slowdowner" or any workable equivalent to it. Take that song and drop it a tad bit slower, so you can hit all the details with comfort and ease, and then bump it back up gradually to full speed as you get better. Software like that was hugely valuable for me to catch hard to hear notes and then to bring it up to tempo.
Ant13 - thanks for noticing. The Gloth, Blackbird - yep. Noted. I took on a bigger challenge than I could handle. I just loved the song and dreamt to play it when first heard it. Hence this project. I do have the amazing slowdowner and did slowed down the track a bit. Should slow it down more. Now I know my limits. Next thing is relax and get comfortable with the tempo and work my way up.
Keep in mind that it's your head that is moving sideways on the harmonica, try as much as you can to keep your hand steady, if your using the hands to slide the harmonica, you'll get less precisions....Another thing you can work on is your bends, you're not feeling comfortable with them, plus you're attacking your notes too much just let harmonica articulating for you...
But the thing that you've to work a lot, is your sense of the tempo, you're very often out of it (mostly because you don't know how to breath naturally with your instrument), to cure that, without the harmonica, clap your hand and keep a slow beat, as steady and regular as you can ---------- Never try to be as good as someone else, succeed to be the best player you can be!
Saint Louis Blues, as cool as it looks is a "difficult" song....Two parts, one major one minor. I would recommend you to sing along a backing track of this song, to record yourself while doing it, and then trying to do the same thing with the harmonica....
Playing overblows is great but the ones you were playing was not a part of a musical speech (just like an awkward use of a word), for this song this is not really necessary (I mean you can avoid) to play overblows, as long your bends are precise and neat...Search in that direction.
The quality of your blues tone is great ---------- Never try to be as good as someone else, succeed to be the best player you can be!
