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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Update on my Time article
Update on my Time article
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barbequebob
3690 posts
Mar 13, 2023
10:13 AM
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Here's a link to an updated version about Time And Why Is It So Important For Harp Players To Learn About It:
Time
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Mar 13, 2023 10:14 AM
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Lou
138 posts
Mar 14, 2023
7:45 AM
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Damm, I didn't have the time to read all that :)
Just kidding ! Great article, my time or sense of the need for good time didn't happen right away I played sax, guitar & harp and it wasn't until I started playing Mandolin that and singing that I really started to focus on timing. Or it was probably the time when we had had a keyboard/sax player who toured with Tower of Power play with us & I was having a "great time" playing the harp knowing something was off & He turned & gave me a look that would kill ! I instantly quit playing and felt about an inch tall.
Now days my favorite quote to use on an unruley" drummer is "shut the F-up & hit on the 2 & the 4 !"
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barbequebob
3691 posts
Mar 14, 2023
9:10 AM
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@Lou--Far too many harp players completely ignore the importance of having good time and often STUPIDLY think it's only the job of the bass and drummer and almost always assume that all drummers and bass players have good time and EVERY pro, regardless of what instrument they happen to play, or what genre they play, will all tell you that there's absolutely ZERO truth to any such statements like that at all.
Time isn't anything anyone learns in a matter of days, weeks, or months but it requires plenty of woodshedding and the one HUGE side benefit of getting your time straight is that at the same time, it will greatly improve your listening skills as well.
Lou, I can tell you from experience, in a pro situation, if you mess up the time, oftentimes you will get fired for that, and deservedly so. When I started out with some old school pros, I screwed up the time, and the next thing I knew, there was a drumstick whizzing pretty close to my head, courtesy of the drummer, and the next thing he said to me was, "If you ever mess up that goddamned groove again, I ain't gonna miss!!!!" That got me into working on it diligently from that point on.
Most every classical musician that I've ever met, even if they've been playing for 20-30+ years, whenever they practice, they still always are practicing with a metronome.
Most jammers won't understand why every pro says "Tt's all about the groove," because too often, the only thing that they're paying attention to is the solo but the truth is, if you have a band where most or all of the musicians have lousy time, it won't matter how good you think the solos are because if the time isn;t good, the band will NEVER be tight and will NEVER be grooving, which means that the time is the responsibility of EVERY musician on the bandstand.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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TetonJohn
425 posts
Mar 15, 2023
5:48 AM
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I think it would be very helpful as a teaching aid to include very simple examples (sound files) of on, ahead and behind the beat -- each one even just 1 minute long with just metronome and simple playing (even same playing on each). I suspect a computer could do this using the same playing, and just placing it over the metronome differently. Heck, even a similar sound sample of poor timing could be useful.
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barbequebob
3692 posts
Mar 15, 2023
8:47 AM
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There actually is a drumming book that there may be some copies left on Amazon written by Fred Dinkins called It's About Time and though there aren't any examples of actual blues drumming, however, what he does have are examples of a wide variety of grooves taken in three different tempos where in the book, he gives you the number of beats on the metronome and describes being on top of the beat (right dead on the money with the metronome and for a lack of a better way to describe it, I would call it real time), then one example of it played as he called it as being on top of the beat, which most musicians I know usually call it playing ahead of the beat, as well as an example of as he calls it playing in back of the beat, or as most musicians I know usually refer it to playing behind the beat. The bluesiest sounding of all of these grooves is when the music is played behind the beat.
Metronomes, as I've slowly realized throughout the years, really can't be properly programmed to click behind or ahead of the beat properly because truthfully, there are far too many different delineations of how far ahead or behind are. A lot of this stuff is really subtle and just getting the time straight with the metronome will eventually teach you to listen for it because at the same time that it upgrades your playing skills, it adds the benefit of upgrading your listening skills by teaching you to pay attention to the very subtle things, the kind of stuff that too many jammers who've never worked on their time often wrongly believe that they're too small, too boring, and too unimportant to pay attention to but in the end, the subtle stuff like that has a HUGE effect on how a groove plays out in the end.
For both playing blues, jazz, and as well as learning how to play behind the beat, an old black pro musician gave me an important tip that I never forgot that in the end, made it easier for me to adapt and learn how to play that way and that's with both the vocals and whatever instrument you play, phrase largely off the 3 and the 4 AKA the back beat and then it becomes a helluva lot easier to play behind the beat because the more you do it, the more naturally it will become second nature. If you're phrasing mainly off the 1 and the 3, it almost always forces you to play ahead of the beat, and if you're playing blues, most black music genres, and jazz, everything will feel awkward, horribly rushed, and feel like everything's being played way too fast all the time, and then what you're playing is more in a rock or country music groove more than anything (there are tho, some country artists who play behind the beat, but it's a very tiny minority).
I've tried on numerous occasions to get in touch with the author of that book, Fred Dinkins, to allow me to download some of those examples, which would be a great teaching tool indeed but I've yet to hear back from him (hopefully he's still with us).
The music that's the farthest behind the beat actually isn't blues, but old school reggae, like Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Toots And The Maytals, and in fact, it's so far behind, that if you pushed even farther behind the beat, it would actually wind up being FAR ahead to the beat following. In blues, the 50's Chicago blues musicians, from Muddy, Wold, LW, BW, SBW, JImmy Reed, all played way behind the beat and whenever you hear a rock musician play that stuff, it always feels too fast even if it's still at the same setting when measured up against a metronome because much of the time, a rock musician will more likely be playing the groove either on top of the beat or more often, ahead of it.
Teton John, when I had contacted Fred Dinkins, it was basically what you mentioned that I had in mind to use as examples that one can learn from.
There are so many free metronome apps on every smartphone available that most of the excuses harp players make are largely flushed down to toilet, but two apps, one that's free to try one made by Soundbrenner that was designed to go along with their musician's smartwatch that has a metronome, allows you to set the metronome up to what's referred to as a "drummer's metronome," where you can have it click, vibrate, or use something different, but mute the 1 and the 3 so that you only hear the 2 and the 4, which will make it easier to hear exactly where you are when trying to learn how to play ahead or behind the beat.
Tonal Energy is a paid app that costs $3.99 but it's well worth every penny as it's both a tuning app with an excellent metronome that also allows you to set it up for the "drummer's metronome" as well. I should note that I learned that little trick with a mechanical metronome from a helluva drummer friend of mine who would eventually be my regular drummer. A cheap mechanical metronome won't have that feature but a much more expensive one will, but the two smartphone apps I mentioned will do that at a far lower price and equally as well.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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TetonJohn
426 posts
Mar 16, 2023
3:12 PM
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Here is a video with guitar showing on the beat and behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1k6RFxcSl0
A shorter example (again with guitar):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD6Y68sGX0c
Last Edited by TetonJohn on Mar 16, 2023 3:12 PM
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barbequebob
3693 posts
Mar 17, 2023
8:27 AM
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@@TetonJohn -- after watching the video, that's basically behind the beat for a rock band with the lead players doing it but NOT the rhythm section because the backing track he's using is dead on top of the beat and in blues and black music in general, the entire band plays behind the beat, ESPECIALLY the rhythm section. When it's only the lead players, it does NOT have what the real feel of playing truly behind the beat sounds and feels like.
What I learned about playing behind the beat comes from actual gigging experience with a lot of the old blues musicians and they always had the entire band playing behind the beat, especially the drummer and bass player.
The video example doesn't really give you what a real behind the beat groove feels like, which is both jazzy and bluesy at the same time.
I'm glad you posted the video but it really doesn't demonstrate what real playing behind the beat is when it comes to THE GROOVE and when the backing track is played right on top of the beat, that sure ain't true behind the beat and definitely not bluesy or jazzy.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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TetonJohn
427 posts
Mar 18, 2023
10:19 AM
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Bob, Interesting to get your take on those supposed examples. I was just hunting around for simple, clear, hearable examples -- I guess I'll keep hunting.
Earlier (or in your paper) you mentioned reggae being seriously behind the beat. First time I heard reggae and tried to dance to it, I just couldn't get it -- perhaps I was thrown by "behind the beat."
A year or so later, I really got into the reggae groove and started going regularly to the Reggae Lounge in NYC and watched the Jamaicans dance. Later I got one of the best compliments of my life when, after leaving the dance floor, a couple of Jamaicans asked if grew up in Jamaica! Maybe I was DANCING behind the beat! Eventually, I felt a shift from the old groove that seemed associated with the change of smell at the lounge, a shift to crack, that changed the vibe, musical and otherwise.
I moved out west eventually and saw a lot of white kids dancing very poorly to reggae, rock dancing, presumably on the beat -- energy vs. groove -- in spite of their dreadlocks.
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barbequebob
3694 posts
Mar 20, 2023
8:46 AM
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@TetonJohn -- part of the problem is basically cultural for most white people. There's the standing joke with most pro musicians, and this is especially true whenever I'm around a lot of African American musicians or white musicians who are TRULY tuned into something jammers pay little or no attention to and it's also too often the case with a lock of white rock musicians as a general rule and that if you're in a church with African American people as the overwhelming majority and you shut your eyes, it's too easy to tell who the white people are there because the African Americans will clap on the 2 and the 4 (the beats in any tune that uses 4/4 time) and a white person will almost always clap either on the 1 and the 3 or on all 4 beats. Unfortunately, that little "joke" is far too often the truth. Even the late jazzman Jackie McLean has even said that he usually can tell if a musician is a black man or a white man because a black musician will play behind the beat and much of the time a white musician will play ahead of it. Again, it all boils down to what real pro musicians always stressed to me that IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GROOVE.
Jammers with lousy time almost always think that people dance to a solo, but the real truth is that people dance to a GROOVE and a solo doesn't mean squat if the groove is played poorly, which means that ALL of the musicians HAVE to have good time in order for it to be tight, grooving, and danceable at ANY tempo and each member of the band that has lousy time will seriously weaken a band and in the pros, if you mess up the time, you have an 80-99% chance of getting fired and if you lost time, you'd absolutely deserve getting fired because it ain't like the low musical standards that jammers tend to get used to fast where something like that will be put up with and in every band, the two musicians in this order, under ZERO circumstances can you afford to have lousy time are the drummer and the bass player and from pro experience, for both of those two, the hands down number one reason for those two to be fired from a band is lousy time.
What you did you were dancing and dancing behind the beat was that you were actually in sync with the groove, or from a pro musician's standpoint, you were working WITH the groove whereas before, you were doing it like a jam hack with lousy time and unknowingly FIGHTING the groove.
In recording studios, especially when there's a major label involved, regardless of genre, much of the time, recordings are done in a series of overdubs, which has been the norm since the early 1960's where what they have recorded first the rhythm tracks with a reference vocal, and then everything else is overdubbed. Now why is this happening. It's been especially true when they began seeing a lot white music bands coming wasted out of their minds and traditionally, in many white music bands, the WEAKEST part of the band is almost always the rhythm section and so every little time screw up in a recording has absolutely ZERO place to hide and often times for an album, they have the rhythm section spend every single day for two weeks to make sure every groove is tight and nobody screws the time up (it's also the biggest reason why both drum machines and what's known as a click track, which is basically a metronome being played thru the drummer's headphone mix, were invented). Once everything else is done to their satisfaction, then if the reference vocal is good enough, they'll keep it or overdub a new performance altogether.
To put it bluntly, lousy time is also lousy musicianship.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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wolfkristiansen
466 posts
Mar 23, 2023
10:48 AM
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Hi Barbecue Bob,
Earlier in this thread you stated, "in blues and black music in general, the entire band plays behind the beat". This prompts a question that has always puzzled me.
If an ENTIRE band plays behind the beat, lets say to the exact same degree, are its members not thereby back to playing exactly ON the beat?
To give an example: Consider five band members collectively using a metronome to help improve their sense of time. Picture them all playing exactly 100 milliseconds later than where the metronome tells them where the beat should be. They will not be in time with the metronome. BUT... they are exactly in time with each other. In other words, in the process of all members playing behind the beat, they end up playing ON the beat, at least vis-à-vis each other.
If you wanted to be cheeky, you could accuse the metronome in this example of "rushing the beat".
I guess what I'm saying is this: To realistically say certain band members are playing BEHIND the beat, there has to be at least one member laying down the "official" beat, so that the others can be said to be playing behind it. I hope I made myself clear, and am looking forward to your thoughts. This is posted not to be provocative, but in a sincere attempt to understand the concept.
Cheers,
wolf kristiansen
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barbequebob
3695 posts
Mar 24, 2023
8:28 AM
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When a band is 100% fully playing behind the beat, when put up against a metronome, everyone, especially the bass and the drummer are playing hitting behind the click at the exact same spot just milliseconds behind the click of a metronome, and the same but in reverse for playing ahead of the beat.
If you have a metronome that can be programmed to where you can silence the 1 and the 3, it becomes a lot easier to hear it.
If you have the bass and drums playing right on top of the beat, which is basically exactly where the click is, regardless of where the lead players are, it's THE GROOVE that's still on top of the beat and so that's really an entirely different thing altogether. When I'm talking about behind the beat, it's ALL ABOUT THE GROOVE.
What you're thinking is typically more along the lines of classical music theory, which only allows the groove to be played right on top of the beat and nothing else. Bear in mind this, when the GROOVE is played behind the beat, what does the band seem like it's doing? The groove always feels slower than it actually is and when you play ahead of the beat, the exact opposite is happening. I fully explained that in my article.
If you want to check it out, get either a mechanical metronome that had the drummer's metronome feature where you can erase the clicking on the 1 and the 3 so that the only clicking is on the 2 and the 4 (which is the backbeat and in most stuff, that's where the snare drum hits), or use a cheaper option but equally as good with a smartphone app, like either Soundbrenner's or the paid app Tonal Energy, which will allow you to do that.
Again, that trick was taught to me by an excellent PRO drummer. In all of the videos that I've seen made by guitar players, it's been obvious to me that they have ZERO experience working in blues or black music situations in general and have never been exposed to what REAL behind the beat sounds like. The majority of their experience is almost entirely with rock bands, in rock music, grooves are RARELY ever played behind the beat and it's a helluva lot more common for grooves to be played ahead of the beat than behind the beat. The same goes for country music as well. In classical music, it's only on top of the beat. In jazz, there's a lot of stuff that's played behind the beat.
In rock music, the overwhelming majority of drummers don't even understand the concept of playing behind the beat, let alone actually playing and that's a big reason why most rock drummers make HORRIBLE blues drummers.
The bottom line is what pros have always told me from day one: IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GROOVE.
If you took the time to fully read the article, I discuss this in full and the way you've put it is often the way white musicians, ESPECIALLY if they have lousy time and often have never bothered to work on their time, by default, think of the drummer as their personal metronome, or as more than a few of them have put it, "the drummer is the beat," but unfortunately, there is ZERO truth to such statements because the very first thing they all FAIL to take into account for is the fact that there are a lot of drummers (and bass players as well) who have really god awful time and if you're using a drummer as a metronome, it's clearly obvious that you have a very defective metronome and because you haven't spent any time working on getting your own time straight, you wont't have ANY real way to be able to tell the difference and if you spend the time to get your own time straightened out, I absolutely GUARANTEE that you would never make such a mistake ever again. If you go to the majority of open jams, at least half to an overwhelming majority of jammers FOOLISHLY buy into this nonsense.
It also confirms why many pros will tell you that the two most important members of the band in this order are the drummer and the bass player and if you're band has either one of them with lousy time, ESPECIALLY the drummer, your band is totally sunk and not one leader player, regardless of how great you THINK they are, will be able to right than band's ship at it's always going to doomed to totally suck because the groove is a total mess.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Last Edited by barbequebob on Mar 29, 2023 8:46 AM
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Gerry
119 posts
Mar 24, 2023
11:13 PM
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Last Edited by Gerry on Mar 24, 2023 11:20 PM
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GamblersHand
739 posts
Mar 31, 2023
6:17 AM
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I agree with 99% of Bob's post, though I have a slightly different concept of playing time - in front of / behind the beat.
I don't see the whole band playing behind the beat - they would then be playing on a different beat a few milliseconds later!
The kick usually sets the pulse, then depending on the style of music the backbeat/snare might be late. Sometimes there's an extra push (anticipation) on the 1, say with funk music.
Listen to say Honky Tonk Woman - the snare and guitar are very behind, but the kick drum pulse every couple of bars gives the reference point.
For a groove that's in the pocket, the bass is usually just behind the drums, so that the drums give the attack and the bass then the shape or "bloom".
For blues soloing, you usually "take your time" and play behind, but you can add energy by playing in front. That's not very common to my ears and runs the risk of speeding up the band's tempo.
I think it's very effective in blues to start a phrase on the backbeat i.e. the second (or fourth) beat of the bar - or rather, just behind that backbeat!
Anyways, my $0.02 of the topic
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TetonJohn
428 posts
Mar 31, 2023
8:21 AM
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GH, thanks, this makes sense to me -- that the beat is established/held somewhere (in this case the kick) so there is a reference point to be ahead of, on, or behind. I hope Bob chimes back in on this - to put my mind at ease.
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barbequebob
3696 posts
Mar 31, 2023
8:46 AM
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Playing off the backbeat AKA the 2 and the 4 is usually something many white musicians often don't do but when ever you're doing that, playing a behind the beat groove becomes much easier to do and makes everything bluesier, even in tunes that have changes that clearly aren't blues at all and that's for both the solos as well as for the vocals as well.
There ARE some grooves where the bass drum is dead straight on top of the beat with the snare playing the 2 and the 4 behind the beat and the first tune that comes to mind is the Wilson Pickett classic In The Midnight Hour, and many drummers have a very difficult time getting this groove right even if they do have relatively good time.
I've played with a number of the old masters and they most certainly DO have the entire band playing behind the beat and that's where I learned that from. Now there are some grooves where the drummer is playing a bit farther behind the beat than the bass player is and the first tune that comes to mind is a NYC jump blues tunes by Rudy Greene called Juicy Fruit. That's a groove where utmost care with the time and making sure neither the drummer nor bass player overplays even a tiny bit or that groove will fall apart in a nanosecond.
When the entire band is behind the beat, and the classic examples of that is the early 50's sounds of Chicago Blues ala Muddy, Jimmy Rogers, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, SBW, etc., all of those bands from top to bottom are playing behind the beat and it gives the ILLUSION of playing slower than tempo actually is, especially when you put it up against a metronome, preferably one that allows you to silence the 1 and the 3 and allows it to click on the 2 and the 4 (the backbeat).
Those old bluesmen I gigged with basically said that the drummer dresses the beat up and really is NOT the beat, which had been the common philosophy of white musicians for years. I took me a helluva of woodshedding to really get a handle on all this. The common notion of working together with a drummer to get your time straightened out has one very glaring flaw that most people never bother to consider and that what if the drummer's time sucks??? There are a lot more drummers as well as bass players whose time totally sucks more than you think and the single, easiest place to find them is in most every single open jam you can name anywhere in the world.
The whole behind the beat/ahead of the beat thing, much of the time it's very subtle tho at times quite dramatic but it plays a very crucial role in how the groove will ultimately play out.
The big thing I've learned from learning time was paying attention to details, one of them being that whenever I was sitting in with a band, to pay close attention to where the bass and drums are playing, and with the drummer's, where is his "2" are hitting, and quickly you can find out if they're on top, ahead, or behind the beat plus how far and if I have to call out a tune and count it in, if the band's playing ahead of the beat, I will call it at a slower tempo so that I don't feel like I'm getting run over by a bus on some serious drugs because of a heavily rushed groove or if they're behind the beat, where I can do the opposite and things will play smoother and bluesier and jazzier.
Time isn't something that takes a few days, weeks, or months to learn. It took me a good year and half to really feel comfortable with my own time based on DAILY woodshedding to get it right.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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Wailing ptarmigan
34 posts
Apr 10, 2023
4:56 AM
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Wow, that's some tough love right there! I've never played at a jam night, but now I'm thinking its jsut as well.
I agree with everything you've said - I have recently started learning bass, and one of my teacher's exercises is setting the metronome on the 2 and 4 - very effective way to internalize the beat.
You also have hinted or stated that "the groove is everything" - any music lover or musician who hasn't figured that out yet just isn't paying attention.
An often-repeated bass mantra (partly tongue in cheek) is that its better to play a wrong note at the right time than a right note at the wrong time.
THE GROOVE IS WHAT MAKES YOU MOVE!
thanks for starting this conversation
Cheers
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barbequebob
3697 posts
Apr 10, 2023
8:34 AM
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@Wailing ptarmigan --- Thank you, sir!!! In just about every harmonica forum that's mainly been around the diatonic harmonica (I hate the modern term of it being called blues harp because when I started out back in the 1970's, blues harp actually meant that you are a blues player and wasn't being used as it is today as a blanket term for diatonic harmonica and there most certainly ARE diatonic harmonica players who are horrible at playing blues) and 80% of this stuff I will guarantee you that you will NEVER learn in an open jam just about anywhere in the world with the exception of what's known as the special invite/pro jam/snob jam, where the jammers as a general rule play a helluva lot closer to or are already at pro level quality and although for newer players, it can give them some valuable bandstand experience, it's a gigantic double edged sword because it's the single EASIEST place to learn every wrong thing in the book plus depending on the jam you go to, at least 50-90% of the jammers have absolutely god awful time and I'm being ultra polite about that.
A couple of years ago, one person posted on a thread on this forum that he wished more pros would come to the jam sessions but to tel the cold, hard, brutal truth, you almost never see them because lousy time is one of the BIGGEST reasons why they won't go there and it's not just from the jammers alone because even the host bands in a lot of cases have musicians in them with horrible time and that includes the two musicians you absolutely can NOT afford to have with lousy time and in this order, it's the drummer and the bass player. If those two have lousy time, they'll never be locked in and the grooves will be a mess and it won't matter a hill of beans how good the lead players are in the end and every jam session with a host band like this will be lucky to have that gig for maybe about a year to two years at the most because along with the jammers being horrible, the audiences will get bored to tears and will stop attending and for any of those jams to survive, it can't be just with other jammers in the audience because you need the non musician audience members and they buy the drinks when the groove is going because they get dancing and then they get thirsty and it doesn't take rocket science to figure things out from there.
If you're learning bass, excellent idea, and if you're going to do that, along the way, it's an obvious necessity to learn music theory (you can if you want along the way, learn to sight read but learning theory comes first and there are only three types of gigs where learning to sight read is a necessity and that's classical music, jazz, or if you're going to be a full time recording session pro and too many harp players foolishly confuse the two. Music theory applies to ALL instruments and for harmonica, it allows you to have a further understanding of a lot more stuff and if you screw up, it'll be a helluva lot easier to work your way out of it because of your knowledge of theory whereas most every other harp player would panic and make a really dumb face and something a pro would scream bloody murder at you because your face telegraphed the screw up, making not only yourself look bad, but everyone else even worse than you do.
In more brutal honesty, lousy time is one of the main reasons why a lot of bands are going to be very reluctant/unwilling to hire a harmonica player and then harp players wonder why their thought of as nothing but a bunch of really lousy musicians. Too many will spend thousands of dollars on gear but learning things that will make them vastly superior musicians, like learning time and theory, they just won't bother and the one thing they're not smart enough to understand, if your time sucks, great gear won't hide it because, truth be told, it makes it a helluva lot louder and easier to hear.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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Wailing ptarmigan
36 posts
Apr 10, 2023
12:59 PM
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Hi Bob,
I am 100% with you on learning theory. I did a few months of David Barrett's course and to his credit he has a great couple of units on theory that got me started and now with bass I'm getting it again with a slightly different focus. The guys I play with are pretty good with theory as well so that certainly helps. I really cant imagine a musician (amateur or otherwise) NOT wanting to learn it.
I also like your distinction between blues harp and "folk" or "pop" harp. they are certainly different a[roaches (see my other post above).
It still suprises me the amount of "below par" harp playing I hear sometimes. I'm barely mediocre, have a small repertoire of reliable licks, and dont like to criticize others, but I've certainly heard bands where the harp player should have just kept it simple or let the guitar go for another 32 bars. It's always a pleasant suprise when I hear a harp player with taste, tone, time and tact! (also see my post above for a nice example or two).
All the best!
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barbequebob
3698 posts
Apr 11, 2023
8:31 AM
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It's not surprising to me at all about hearing so much below par harp playing because part of the problem is that with most rock bands, the frontman is usually the playing harp, and 80% of the time, they're god awful and this is what the general public sees most of the time and think harp players are often a bunch of drunken idiots pretending to be musicians plus many harp players get on the bandstand and also buy gear FAR too early in the game before they're truly ready to be at that stage.
Part of you're saying in the last paragraph is essentially for a harmonica player is to learn NOT to be usual idiot jam hack harp blower and learn how to be a REAL musician and a big part of being a truly good musician isn't just playing skills, it's also developing good LISTENING SKILLS, and that's something that while you learn to get your time together, at the same time, you're also getting a lesson in learning how to listen and find out that the things that are often extremely subtle that many harp players think of as being either too unimportant, too small, or too boring are the very same things that always have a knack for coming back to haunt them at the worst possible moments, kinda like a famous athlete that puts up gaudy numbers but consistently chokes in the clutch.
When it comes to learning theory and time, harp players unfortunately lead the way for being the laziest musicians in the world when it comes to that and then they wonder why nobody wants to hire them.
Playing another instrument actually helps out a lot, not just with the theory end of things, but it also teaches something invaluable, which is learning the "language" of the instrument so that whenever you're trying to arrange a tune and/or explain to a musician who plays an entirely different instrument, it makes things light years easier to do so in a way that they can easily understand what you want from them. I also play guitar and I've actually had to teach some guitar players the stuff that I wanted played and much of that was stuff I learned from my time touring with guys like Jimmy Rogers, Luther Guitar Junior Johnson, and Sunnyland Slim. In fact, when I was on the road with Jimmy, he often didn't call out the song keys but held out his hands so I could see the position of his hands and fingers were in, and then I knew instantly what key he was going to be in.
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Sincerely,
Barbeque Bob Maglinte
Boston, MA
http://www.barbequebob.com
CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
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