I'm setting this thread up so I can have a shot at working through David McElvy's transcription of Sonny Boy Williamson's song.
I don't really want to run foul of copyright law so it would be good if people had their own copy. I might be able to share this little part though, which is just the opening 4 bars:
There is some basic info on the page: F harp, cross harp (so the record is in C) 'rock and roll feel'. You can see the accompanying chords written above the script. Starts on G7, to F7, to C and then back to G7. So it's beginning in the quite common 'from the V', an intro of 4 bars which are like bars 9-12 of the standard 12 bar pattern. We've got a fairly standard 'harp tab' below the standard musical notation.
My experience with this book is that sometimes there are errors in the tab, the standard notation is usually more reliable.
The first note of harp is tabbed as a 5 draw and the standard notation indicates a Bb. That's correct for an F harp so the tab and script are in agreement.
The signature is 4/4 so 4 beats per measure (bar).
The first note is shown as a hollow ball on a stick, which is aka a minim aka a half note and is worth 2 beats. It's like counting 1, 2. It's tied to another Bb note which is a solid ball on a stick, with a tail (joining another note). That is an 8th note, aka a quaver which is worth half a beat so that gets you as far as 1, 2, 3... That is, it's not the entire 3rd beat, it's less than a 1/4 note, so we need more info about what to do for the rest of beat 3.
That quaver also has a dot after it, so it's a dotted quaver which means it's actually worth 3/16ths so not quite a 1/4 note, but more than an 1/8th.
more like 1, 2, 3 e and; with 'a' yet to come to finish up the 3rd beat
but this is all just the first 'note' you hear SBW play.
basically a wail on 5 draw
The reason I'm writing this is to illustrate you need to get the idea of a few basic bits of code, to be able to get what the script is telling you
A dotted note is half as long again as an undotted note.
You'll get the feel of the actual timing from the record so don't worry about it too much but be aware.
The next note shown is an A, which is tabbed as 5 blow and you'll see it's a solid ball on a stick but it has two tails. It's a sixteenth note aka semiquaver. so this 1,2, 3 e and a, with the 'a' being the 5 blow
Have a listen to the recording. It's the first 2 notes he plays and it runs into the 3rd note. The 2nd note is very fast and almost blurs into the next note as he moves onto the 4 draw straight away. That's why the 5 blow is notated as a 1/16th note.
(i had to edit i'm sorry, because i messed my count up. should be right now)
the next bit of notation is a solid ball on a stick resting above the top line (note G, 4 draw on an F harp), and it has a tail connecting it to the next note, so its an 1/8th note. 4 draw
1,2,3 e and a 4...
the next note is actually a chord of C, F and A, also written as an 1/8th note. this is the 'and' of 4
that would be an inversion of an F chord, with F the root (4 blow), A the 3rd (5 blow) and C the 5th below (3 blow, which is what makes it an inversion; its still the 5th but its in the lower octave)
its the chord which is interesting. McElvey has notated it as a blow chord but to me its actually a pull, or lift as some call it. you block the 3 holes and lift the tongue as you blow. thats the end of bar 1
theres no time to think about it though as the next note is rushing up, and to me thats a slap to the 4 blow, 1st note of the new bar.
so that chord plus the slap on the 4 blow just looks like it does on the page but its actually a SBW2 signature move, sometimes called the pull slap. i find it hard to separate in my mind in the dry fashion i've done above
if you looked at it on the page and thought about all those notes as distinct separate things its hard to hear/see how it matches what youre hearing. and i think the count, as notated and as i've attempted to describe, is only approximate. but once i began to see this is how McKelvy has notated the tongue block articulations i found it made sense to me.
Dave Barrett notates the articulations differently and specifically. that requires a different mode of thinking to read successfully, i can do it but i have to meditate first. Glen weiser is more like McKelvy but he actually makes a separate notation to indicate slaps etc.
anyway, after the pull and slap to the 4 blow, hold the 4 blow. it is 2 beats plus a 1/4 note.
then things get exciting. a double stop 4 and 5 draw on the 'and' of beat 3, and then beat 4 consists of a slurred bend on the 3 draw; starting out as a straight 3 draw and bending it down in a swoop to the half step.
the lick carries over to the 3rd bar where it 'ends' (very temporarily resolves) on 2 draw.
the 2 draw is the end of that lick but its on the 1st beat of bar 3.
just a comment as an aside/observation; as the chords are changing every bar, you can see how this intro is working. the first bar on the G chord went through the root tone of the G chord to hit a 4 blow on the 1st beat of the second bar, which was when the chord changed to F, we anticipated the F chord with that pulled F chord and then slapped to the F, the root of the chord, then we hit the 2 draw on beat 1 of the 3rd baR AS the chord shifts to C. so this is a very harmonious intro and works beautifully to sets up the song for when the vocal comes in as a pickup at the end of bar 4 (anticipating bar 1 of the standard 12 bar)
Last Edited by SuperBee on Jan 23, 2017 3:06 PM
Thanks Bee, now I've seen the notation I've found the correct version of this song!
There are layers and layers aren't there? So, for me, a key ingredient - just taking the first note - is the attack and shape of the note. What I hear is that there's a sharp attack, either a TB slap or a LP 'chuck', an then he pulls down the 5D slightly flat, or maybe it's his harp's temperament?
Anyway, that's just one note. But all those things add up to my ears to either 'playing the notes' or 'sounding a blues harp' all the way to 'sounding like SBII'.
Those are the details missing from the notation in these kind of books. That's where I need a teacher to identify what's important and what's not.
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Jan 23, 2017 12:36 AM
its quite tricky to describe all this, and its probably harder to read. im giving it a rest and see whether i can get some video or audio organised soon to continue the rest of the intro
I want to learn what subtleties are there and how he is getting certain sounds. I imitate them to a point, but since I don't TB the 1&2 .. i think that's where i miss a good bit of the sound. The TB 1&2 is very distinct. You can imitate it pretty close with pucker, but not exact.
Perhaps i will post a clip of the way i play it now, just as a reference. And see how i can make it better.
Bee I am also very interested in HOW to read these books. As ive said, i have a few of them and they are useless to me at this point. You would really be helping me alot just by teaching me how to use these tabs.
I believe i have this exact book.
Edit; oh wow, i didn't realise you had edited your post above. Ill have to read it again later, im at work and dont have the time now. This is good stuff. I have so much material in all these books (dave barretts included) that I'm dying to use.
Last Edited by Killa_Hertz on Jan 23, 2017 6:40 AM
i dunno a good way to describe all the timbral nuances of SBW2's playing. there is a sound on my recording which i always figured was a defect in the recording. yes, he possibly does scoop the attack on the 5 draw but its rather subtle. those are the kind of things i think you need to work out for yourself.
my aim here is largely to demonstrate how to read the transcription.
i started to record some audio and it got to 11 minutes and i had only reached the point i described above, beat one of bar 3. thats when i decided i needed to get things much tighter.
i really settled on the example of this intro quite a while ago because it contains a lot of elements of timing and also the tongue block factors which i see drive people crazy. by necessity they are notated in a way that breaks down the sounds but when you play them it isnt really like that. so hopefully this will serve to start to break down some of those problems .
the thing i pointed out above, the pull-slap at the end of bar 1/start of bar 2 is one of them. you can hear it on the record. you could play the notes without it and it would not sound 'wrong' but its part of the 'essence' of sbw2 style...his 'feel'
there is another thing straight up after the point i got up to above. the very next thing you see in the transcription after the crotchet (aka 1/4 note) representing beat 1 of bar 3 is a chord comprising 1 2 3 draw. its shown as a 'ghost' note (i think thats what its called), smaller note heads and a stroke through the tail. what it actually is, is a pull (or lift) . what he does is immediately after playing that lick which resolves to 2 draw, he lifts the tongue briefly before playing 2 blow , 1 draw.
if you play with tongue on harp, that is just a natural thing to do it seems to me
the final part of the intro can be played as a stand-alone lick. listen to seconds 6-8 of the recording. i'm not 100% McKelvy has this right but its very close:
a fast 1 draw (1/16th note...see it has two tails) followed by 2 blow, 2 draw (1/8th notes). its natural-seeming to me to slap this 2 draw but its not notated. the slap helps articulate the next part though which is a repeat of the 2 draw taken quickly into a 2 draw full step bend. the bend is played very briefly (shown as a 1/16th) before siding off to 1 draw (1/8th note) followed by 2 hits (1/16th notes) on a 1 draw, 2 draw double stop. thats a weak point for me, i usually dont bother checking whether i'm playing a double stop of just playing 1 draw. harmonically 1 draw works. but no doubt SBW2 was playing 2 notes.
i dont believe the point of these transcriptions is to make you able to sound exactly like the original but rather to give some fast tracking in understanding what you are hearing and then you can decide whether its important to you or not.
for me, just following my head i would probably not have noticed some of this. i think McKelvy has done a good job with this, not a perfect job, but good enough to open my ears, and i really dont know how he could have done it better with pretty standard notation.
Not sure if this sheds any help to the question but maybe to those who are annoyed with Standard Music notation dots and tails etc. But as few are used to Beat Tab notation, I suspect that this may hurt more than help.
Down Child - Sonny Boy Williams - Key of C = 2xF harp
/[Down][Child]x x /x [Please][TakeA][Fools,Ad]/ /[Vice ][2w2 1][-2][222]/[2w.][22 1][-.][LisTen]/
Is part reason why I hate notating from these Standard Music / Tab sheets. Why notate in actual sounded notes? At least Barrett has all his SM part notated as if played on a C harp… … even when his stuff is played in D or whatever. Then the reader can easily translate back to a harp that the player has likely memorized the note set from. Is hard enough to memorize the key set of the C harp. Who memorizes any other harp?? Not many I would imagine. Most do not even do that …
Am really thinking that all this is overthinking / working it too hard. That the player should be more to getting the overall and not the detail. Am sure SBW would agree even. But yes, there is some benefit to looking at some of the nuances. Is a good puzzle to solve at least.
Hi Shaganappi, i know what you mean about the key. I'm not a sight reader (yet. maybe i will go there. I made a start but then joined a chicago-style band and had to prioritize)but i can 'analyse' standard script to a degree.
yes, Barrett puts everything as if played on a C harp. so if you see a note which is on the middle line of the staff and thus a B, you know he means you to play 3 draw, whereas with McKelvy it would depend on the key of the song and harp. I've seen people rail against Barrett's approach too (HVYJ in particular comes to mind) as to overthinking, yes maybe. but this is a description, not a prescription. no one is saying 'do it like this'. rather it is an attempt to say 'i think this is what SBW2 did'.
and there is no intention on my part to tell anyone how to do it or that this is how i do it and you should too. my intent is to say, if you have this book and you struggle to read it, here is some help, or at least an attempt to help. i think i can read it, i think i know what it means and it has helped me at times understand what i am hearing a little bit quicker.
i don't usually sit down with the book and learn the whole song from the script. i might use it to get a start, and then probably if i am unsure i will look at the book to see if it clears things up. sometimes i think the book is wrong but then other times i see it is me who is not thinking right, and i learn something new about how to play.
in this song particularly i think the fills and variations on the fills are interesting. given the 'rock and roll' feel i think its possible these could come in useful applied to other songs.
there's already a takeaway from the intro lick, in the form of that turnaround lick at the end. admittedly its pretty much a TB thing but i think you cant have too many turnarounds if you are playing this kind of old music. some would say its old hat. it most definitely is, but i still love it
Well methinks (KNOW from your thread) that you can play circles around me. So whatever works for you - keep on doing. Was just doing a demo of what another look at the tab rhythm is doing per the SM notation you showed. Your analysis sound.
Was an odd one in that it actually gave EXPLICIT swing for much of it. As if a PC recorded and made the score. Not sure. Generally, most score is notated in straight time and the player just plays it swung. So I did the same when notating in Beat Tab.
Was interesting to see how complicated the dual system and even just the rhythm notation is when expressed in SM as opposed to the simplicity of Beat Tab. No ties or dotted notes. No weird 1/16 notes, so few symbols needed including half notes or different rest symbols.
Yet ALL the rhythm and note information has been retained and in a much more compact manner when I did for the above. If I had shown it in larger font, maybe that would be more apparent to a new reader.
But the -'s, spaces, x's, commas along with the w's and s's (the chording details of multiple notes played - whispers and smiles) cover the whole nine yards including both explicit swing along with the general rhythm for the words.
Good exercise for me. Not sure if I helped you though. Maybe I have too much time on my hands haha.
yes i must say i have no idea of the beat notation. but my intention with this thread was specifically to attempt to decode the McKelvy approach to transcription, using this song as an example rather than for any intrinsic merit of the song.
another thing i should point to re the McKelvy book is that it has a fairly plain 'harp tab' in conjunction with the music script notation. so the question of which hole to play, in or out is usually not difficult; just refer to the harp tab. But the information about rhythm and timing is contained in the MS.
I have used the book to help me learn a few songs now. what i can say works best for me is to first of all be quite patient and don't aim to get too much at a time.
Ah I misunderstood what you were trying to do. In the other thread I read that you were trying to get at what SBII exactly plays, rather than decoding the transcription.
I find these transcriptions get you so far, but not all the way. I mentioned before the Paul Butterfield teaching audio CD which has an accompanying transcription book, not written by him, which DOES attempt to capture everything. It's practically unusable.
In this context, the Tomlin Leckie lessons are a great example. He provides standard notation and tab, like your one, to go along with a video lesson which adds a bit more detail. So the notation gives you the bones and you can listen and copy things like the articulation, swing etc.
You end up with a good outcome, but not an exact copy of the original.
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Jan 23, 2017 10:52 PM
"... playing with the tongue in contact with the harp is a much broader topic than simply how to obtain single notes. Has anyone here had a crack at SBW2's "Downchild"? I'm studying it currently. Just have a listen to the 4 bar harp intro. There are 2 distinct tongue block elements which to me are the essence of the approach. I've been thinking of using this tune, just the intro, as the topic for a little video/audio lesson and realised there is so much information in it that if a person doesn't have any tongue block technique it might be really difficult to teach. Anyway, I'm working on it. Speaking personally, It's one of those things where you (I) can obviously play the song you're (my) own way and that's fine but working with McElvy's transcription and the record to get what SBW2 may have actually been doing is worthwhile because of something much broader than just playing a specific song."
i do say '... what SBW2 may have actually been doing ...", but i meant specifically in terms of the Tongue Blocking. perhaps the distinction isnt very clear.
speaking of PB, its just a short time that i noticed a particular thing he does on the famous record of Born In Chicago, and began to attempt to emulate it. i'd studied those solos as taught by Adam G and Hakan and then played along with the record. i knew i wasn't quite hitting it like PB, but ive been playing it for years now, and usually roll out my version of his solo from the record, as well as my own improvisations. anyway, after about 5 years ive finally heard what he does on the end of the 1st lick of the solo and its improved my enjoyment of playing it.
No, I haven't been all that clear, probably even to myself.
The butterfield thing is more along the lines of what you were saying about attack etc. it's about how he treats that 4 draw at the end of the glis right near the start of the solo. I slide up to the 4 draw, dip it and let it up. I mean, that's what butter did, but not really; he didn't let it straight up like I've been doing for years. He really milks it while he lets it rise from the bend to unbent. Ive been 'playing the notes' I'm afraid. There's a real emphasis there which I just noticed on the day of a gig which would open with that song. I had been up late celebrating a long-standing friendship, the other party to which was about to move far away, and I woke early, out in the countryside. Happily it was a pleasant sunny day and I was able to stroll around my friend's property practicing my born in Chicago solo for a few minutes. It's always a work in progress.
Yes I hear it. When I was taking lessons from Ronnie Shellist that was a distinctive thing in his style: taking a note and playing about with the pitch. He'd throw them in all over. Much more than off-the-shelf dip like I might do. A favourite was to end a phrase by trailing off a note both in volume and pitch. His singing is similar.
...but I'm diverting from your purpose: Down Child, TB and notation. Back on track now...
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Jan 24, 2017 2:57 AM
its the version of Checkin' up on my baby which is transcribed in the McElvy book. i've sporadically searched for years with no luck, and found it just this minute! it was the first thing i tried to learn from the book and then realised i didnt have the right recording. years ago. ive since learned to play the other version by ear but i'm pleased this has been shared on youtube; the first time ive heard this version.
I can understand why they released the other take. This one has some interesting aspects but also some flaws. Pretty exciting moment for me for a couple of reasons.
ok, now i'll try and get back to the programme
Last Edited by SuperBee on Jan 24, 2017 12:28 PM
something like this. i'm using the webcam on my PC in bad light and i have the wrong harp (E). just a test of the equipment but i'll post now and edit later;
hmm, well that sux. preview not available. dont know why and its too late to mess around with it now. its first time using this PC and camera app. normally i use imac or phone. oh well, its not much value anyway. just me trying to play what i've described; whoopee. Just checked on my iPhone and found the video plays direct from the Box app. For those of you with access, it's in the 'lick vault' shared folder. Not really worth the trouble of watching. But I was hoping I could use my Laptop to make a more didactic video. Normally I use the iMac and that's fine but I have to go to where it is rather than taking it where I am.
Last Edited by SuperBee on Jan 24, 2017 12:32 PM
this one is gonna have to rest for a few days which is sad because i actually have a few days off work and thought i would be able to get down with it, but ive a gig on Saturday and have been set a task of learning 5 songs in the meantime. 4 of them are good songs for an aspiring harp player in the chicago style, so its good really. Sweet Home Chicago. i'm keen on Little Junior Parker's version for a solo but accompaniment i'm undecided on Key to the Highway: hard to believe i dont have anything to play to this already but there you go. Stormy Monday, probably the 1st blues number i learned words for. would probably not sing it if was up to me T Bone shuffle. obviously have to learn the hook. not sure what else. fun song which i really like.
Bee, check out Billy Boy Arnold's Key to the Highway. The recording is closer to acoustic than you might be looking for, but something to work with for sure. ---------- Phil Pennington
Bee I could download the mp4 fine. For info the audio was ok quality but the video was a bit jumpy and blurry. Maybe the low lighting or your settings?
Good luck with the gig. Great songs to play. I used to use Sweet Home Chicago and Stormy Monday as substrates to play the things I'd been learning at home each week.
My fav Key to the Highway inspiration is LW actually. Firstly because it's amped harp, and most other versions are acoustic and a bit heavy on the sickly campfire wah for me. Secondly because he doesn't try to play the tune and hence avoids the long 3'' bend everyone else tries vainly to distract attention from by waving their hands about :)
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Jan 25, 2017 6:27 AM
Nice Bee. Glad you got another good gig coming up.
I don't know how to play most of the songs that i probably should. Perhaps that's something i should be working on. Learning those songs that are a given that you should know for jams, gigging, etc.
I know some. Mojo, chicken shack, caledonia, maybe a few more. But that's about it.
I still wanna see about these darn tabs though, so i hope you come back to this when u can.
