Now I'm no doubt gonna get slated for this comment.
But to me this has about as much in common with "Blues" harmonica as Edvard Grieg does with Metallica.
Of course Howard is a great player but in my opinion I would rather hear him play Jazz with a Jazz band. Rather than Jazz harp over a straight blues backing. Which is what is going on here
This brings about another question: What does Grieg have in common with Metallica?
Answer: More than you'd think. Coming to mind right away- 1) Similar treatment of non-chord tones 2) Use of melody 3) Similar style of arppegiation to draw out a harmony.
Aesthetics and marketing are not musical values.
Of course, this vid does have alot in common with blues. More, perhaps, than Grieg and Metallica.
I agree with Kingley. It may kinda sound like blues, have it's riffs and the typical backing. But at it's essence its jazz. Still funny kinda music. Jazz returning to blues... lol.
Nah. Kingly has got it right. ENDLESS NOODLING. ZZZZZzzzzzzzz. Yeah, the technique and the knowledge are there but to what end? I do think Howard began to realize it himself at about the 4 minute mark. He started to play an effective and simple repeated riff that I thought was the most IN CONTEXT thing he did. 'Course, there really is no accounting for taste.
Noodling? I personally don't see it. He's playing one sick lick after another not mindlessly going through patterns or scales here. I'm hearing a lot of very appropriate and exciting musical ideas being blasted out.
I'd be interested in an example of someone playing "in context" over this type of music or something similar.
I guess I'd say somebody like Billy Gibson is more to my taste. And I'm certainly not saying that Howard Levy can't play. That would be stupid. It's obvious that he can make a harmonica do whatever he wants it to do.
He noodles a lot early on, and lets his prodigious technique, rather than his musicality, lead his note choices. It's fascinating stuff, obviously--he's figuratively playing circles in five dimensions around what other diatonic blues players were doing back then--but it certainly ends up in the free-jazz side of jazz-blues.
I mean sure: Ornette Coleman plays "blues," as all the southern-born sax guys did, but nobody would confuse him with Hank Crawford.
Then, at around 4:20, Howard's musicianship, his blues sensibility, suddenly comes on line. He quiets the band and suddenly a feeling is there that wasn't there earlier. He's grooving.
This lasts for more than a minute. It's fine stuff, and it's definitely blues.
I'm not somebody who beats jazz players over the head by saying, "It's not blues," but I'll agree with those here who have reservations about what Howard/God is doing early on.
By the same token, it's important to recognize when things shift, as they do here, and a musician shows another side of what he's about. Howard's car has 1000 horsepower and four cooling systems, so of course it has a tendency to spin out when he rounds the corners with full power on.
But he demonstrates here, after 4:20 or so, that he also knows how to carve some pretty sweet turns.
Firstly Kingley's his original post on this thread is spot on. Couldn't of described it better.
I am a jazz sax player when I play with a blues band I play play blues. Not jazz blues of anything else because it can't and won't fit.
This is a typical example of a jazz player not understanding the blues it's emotional content and it's simalarities and differences in jazz and other forms of music.
Some of those lines are pointless with that rhythm section.He may be the only diatonic harp player in the world to run those chromatic lines etc but unless you have a jazz bass player who knows what he's doing a piano player of guitarist who is schooled in shading chords correctly with the appropriate harmony so the soloist can work out on chord extention and or cycle movement and ( sub harmony usually through cycles) it is just a load of rubbish. It means and communicates very little.
For sure it tells a story about the player. For me it misses the point of what music is about.
I have no doubt it is a measured and decided upon performance.
But it is horses for courses.
Having said that I know why he's doing that but I don't respect it.
Iv'e been around music far too long to know what's happening here.
Iv'e seen of more to the point HEARD it all too often with jazz players on all different instruments.
It's his interpretation and that's quite fine and correct but frankly it's not good music it is awful.
Having said all that I am a great admirer and fan of some of Mr levy's Jazz playing for sure ha but not this. The sad fact is someone of this quality doesn't need to do c... like that. As always they bow to the usual pressures albeit unwitingly.
Which ever one of you on this thread put that Levy was ("ripping it up" ) you are not listening man. Listen to the whole band listen and hopefully you will discover that it is trying to put strange jagged shapes into a round hole. ( Quote= ripping it up)=Reminds me an impressionist painter who realises that he is known so does anything and the dunderheads who know of his work will just think it good and buy it anyway. Even when he's basically taking the P...
Last Edited by on Sep 28, 2009 5:49 AM
I think it's fine and not unlike what a good guitarist would play.
I'll tell you this, of all the players that played that night, he blew us all away. He got the most house by far. There was an energy about his that made people stop and just listen to what he was doing.
What nobody knows except me is that Howard flew from Chicago on his own dime and played that show for a few slices of pizza and chicken wings. Of course we were promoting the Global Harmonica Summit at the time, he certainly didn't have to do that.
Although, I never formally took lessons from Howard he was always teaching. I didn't play the right music for the club. It was groovy but much more jazzy than bluesy. Howard explained to me why he played what he played and encouraged me to do the same. He listened to the arc of players and music that was played before him. He noted what grooves and songs had been played so he called different grooves and style so the "audience would have fresh ears for [him]" He said he had noted the audience had been lulled into complacency and that was the first hurdle he worked on when consider what he was going to play. He said he also considered the players in the band. The bassist was the weakest so he had to play within his limits. He said he knew the guitarist was the "real deal" and somebody he could trade licks with and somebody was going to truly support him so he was the "safety net".
He mentioned that I played for myself and not for the audience. I should have considered what kind of crowd it was and play the music they are expecting rather than what I wanted to play. I remember clearly that night, he said, if you want to play YOUR music, YOUR way then you need to play in a concert hall. Playing in a bar is different because you need to size up the audience. What is the energy in the room? How long have they been there. What do they like? What are you going to do to please them? What makes them cheer?
Here's one of my secrets, they way I am regarding the harmonica has a lot to do with how I learned from Howard. They way I teach you guys and my bluntness is very similar to the way Howard taught me.
I view Levy the same way as I view John Popper. I appreciate that what he's doing is extremely technically difficult, and that I could practice 12 hours a day for the rest of my life and still never be that proficient or master the instument the way he has. But what he's playing doesn't move me, it just doesn't. And all the musical/harmonica snobs in the world arguing all the technical complexities can't change that for me.
As a beginner who plays a little, when I hear Levy or Popper playing, I usually listen for the first 30 seconds or so and find myself thinking "wow, that's technically amazing!", and then I change the station and/or move on to something else.
Last Edited by on Sep 28, 2009 7:23 AM
Buddha quoting Howard: "...if you want to play YOUR music, YOUR way then you need to play in a concert hall. Playing in a bar is different because you need to size up the audience."
Did you watch the video all the way through? I don't care HOW bad a harp player you are: if you practiced 12 hours a day, you'd be able to play the slow stuff Howard settles down and plays between 4:10 and 4:50. It's basic third-position blues. There's nothing technically amazing about it. It's easy stuff. And he's doing it beautifully, with real feeling. Dynamics are a part of this, and the way he leaves space.
One thing I try to do on this website, and through all my teaching activities, is to encourage people to listen deeply rather than making quick, dismissive responses. I'm writing here not as a snob, but as an empiricist, someone willing to listen. A snob, frankly, is somebody who listens as you've described: 30 seconds and out.
I'm not trying to change your mind, but there's simply no way you could have listened to the passage I'm flagging and written what you've written. Your words, which are a valid response to the first several minutes of the video, simply don't apply to the passage I've flagged. They're factually mistaken.
For me, this is a critical element. I don't get to do "my music" or get "my message" across at all if the house gets tired of me. Our band is getting busy for this very reason..house appeal. I see the points others are making regarding jazz/blues/feel/groove, etc. For me, the applause at the end tells me I did it right, or I blew it that time. I want to be able to drink a whole bottle of water while the crowd settles down so we can play or talk again. That has only happened to me once and has given me something to keep shooting for again. The house really tells me a lot.
First point, I wasn't referring to you as a snob (though I see how it came off that way). I've always considered your playing, teaching and critiques to be the epitome of the combination of technical knowledge and heart and soul that blues harpists should aspire to. I was referring to the critic(s) who attempt to invalidate the tastes of beginners by glazing their eyes over with a technical explanation of what we should be liking. I am not referring to you here.
If not listening to the entire piece on every youtube clip I pull up makes me a snob...all I can say is guilty as charged, where do I go for my membership card?. After listening to the entire piece I don't disagree with any of your comments, though I stand by my comment regarding the first part of Levy's piece regarding technical proficiency and for me it's inability to make me feel something (as uninformed as I am).
I also stand by my own taste..I'd rather listen to Little Walter, Magic Dick or you.. than Levy or Popper any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
I'll bow out here and leave the rest of the discussion to the wise, accomplished and knowledgeable players who've got far better taste than I .
Last Edited by on Sep 28, 2009 2:41 PM
