Harp Tips

Harp Tips 

Soloing

The Good Doctor 0 Comments , , ,

So you joined a band and it’s your first rehearsal or maybe your first live show. At some point the rest of the guys look at you and nod: time for your first solo. What should you do? Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring, you have plenty of options.

Do what comes naturally

Just pick a harp in the right key and go for it. Sometimes it’s the best option! Trust in your natural musical abilities.

Follow the melody

Pick up the melody line during the song, repeat and build on it during your solo break.

Follow the rhythm

Pick up the rhythm during the song and vamp over your solo break.

Follow the chord changes

Perhaps the most satisfying for you and the audience. Avoid retreating into trills and effects. Get musical. Play off draw 2 over the 1 chord. Use some blow notes over the 4 chord (try blow 2 or 4 and work off them). Find the patterns around draw 1 or 4 when playing over the 5 chord and the turnaround at the end of each bar sequence. Use light and shade – start quietly and build tension – especially in a slow blues. Work melodies, blues notes, moods, patterns, stops, licks and effects; but pay attention to the chord changes. The result is an accomplished musical contribution. (more…)

Harp Tips 

Buying a harp – the San Francisco experience

The Good Doctor 5 Comments ,

Below is a copy of correspondence with the Haight-Ashbury Music store in San Francisco…

Thanks for your reply.
I came into your shop last week, but was bitterly disappointed by the level of service you gave me. I was all set to buy a dozen harmonicas, a Green Bullet and an amp, but came away with nothing. That’s a few 100 dollars worth of business.

I teach harmonica and have played for 25 years. I was the UK harmonica champion in 2000 and perform regularly with headline acts. I know my stuff and how to go about buying my instruments!

Your assistant was absolutely clueless about harmonicas and said so! In fact I ended up talking to one of your customers about which harmonicas to buy because the assistant was unable to provide basic information. This I can understand as I am not a guitar expert. But the level of attention and personal service was deplorable.
(more…)

Harp Tips 

Glottal Stops

The Good Doctor 0 Comments , , , ,

OK so you’re following some harp tab, or working on a toon, and you encounter repeated notes. Let’s take the start of Amazing Grace as our example. You can start either from Blow 6 – Blow 7 – Blow 7 or, for the more daring, Draw 2 – Blow 4 – Blow 4. New students will often articulate the repeated note using the ‘stop-start’ approach. They quite correctly sound the first of the repeated notes with a soft blow, stop, then blow again to play the repeated note.

While this approach is perfectly fair, for the Beano and Dandy fans amongst us, it’s for softies. It’s too polite. We need to use the Dennis the Menace method and attack it with a hefty glottal stop.

What’s that? Imagine yourself in the cast of East Enders. Try saying ‘Better get some better butter’ with a cockney accent. You’ll need to use four glottal stops to get through and make it sound authentic. Still not clear? Don’t pronounce the t’s. Notice anything? Right – you’re not stopping and starting like a softy, but punctuating from the glottis (the space between your vocal chords). Welcome to Bash Street.

And it’s the same when playing those repeat notes. Breath flows continuously out from, or in to, your lungs but is interrupted by glottal stops from the back of your throat. For an extreme example, check out Junior Wells with Buddy Guy on Hoodoo Man. On the vinyl recording you can probably hear more glottal stop than harmonica! It’s an example of amplified ‘power harp’ playing….and yes I concede it is a classic.

If you find the glottal stop doesn’t come naturally, persevere. It’s actually a simple technique, but one you will have to master to improve your playing. Especially since it is closely related to that elusive throat vibrato we all want to find when we start out.

For the full tab to Amazing Grace click here