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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
where is everyone?
where is everyone?
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bandini
2 posts
Jan 24, 2024
12:34 PM
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Hi all - After a break of many years I'm very gratefully re-engaging with harmonica lately, finally having healed a number of the issues (intense neck/back/TMJ stuff) that forced me to stop playing for the last decade or so.
However, I'm finding that the online world of harp resembles the rest of the web these days - which is to say that all the old forums and areas where people gathered seem to have vanished or become graveyards.
This place seems to have come to something of a halt, as has harp-l and some of the other places that used to have such active and lively discussion.
So, where is everyone now? Has all the harp talk been herded into social media like the rest of the internet? Or are there new forums I'm not aware of? Has everything just been said about harp, and is everyone tired of talking about it now?:) Where'd y'all go?
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nacoran
10433 posts
Jan 26, 2024
11:00 AM
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Yeah, a lot of it has moved to the social media platforms. Their software is just more up to date.
I still check posts here, but I also hang out on Modern Blues Harmonica on Facebook (we tried integrating some cross capability here, but FB degraded their tools for that). The forum on FB just passed 70k members. There is also Just Play It, Harp Jam, and Harp Jam Nation, all also on FB. There is also /harmonica on Reddit. (I'm an admin on the MBH FB page, as well as Just Play It and /harmonica.)
There are others, but those are the big ones I know and frequent.
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Nate
Facebook
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First Post- May 8, 2009
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dougharps
2354 posts
Jan 26, 2024
3:43 PM
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I still read here and the FB MBH, though I am not a user of FB. The FB version does not seem to foster the type of in-depth discussions once featured here by longtime players seeking to expand knowledge and share techniques.
New younger players seem to be drawn to the FB style of social media interface, and showoff posts see a wider audience there than here. Users on FB seem more at home with other modern social media. Videos posted here seemed to be sharing among a group of participants, while FB videos are posting for the general public.
Online instruction providers seem to be the sources of harmonica knowledge.
Overall there seems to be less information sharing by intermediate and advanced level peers these days.
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Doug S.
Last Edited by dougharps on Jan 27, 2024 7:06 AM
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Lou
147 posts
Feb 03, 2024
9:04 AM
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Good to hear FB has 70K users (I]m not a FB user) I'm just wondering if the harmonica is becoming less popular in recent mainstream music and maybe has some affect on this sites use.
20-30 years ago it seemed that more major bands and players were prominent with the likes of J Giles, Fabulous T-birds, Alaman Bros, Stevie Wonder, War, Norton Buffalo even the Rolling Stones. So there was a fair amount of harmonica in top 40. I don't even know if top 40 exists anymore ? Maybe I'm living under a rock but I'm just not hearing much Harmonica in new music releases.
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Thievin' Heathen
1252 posts
Feb 04, 2024
11:08 AM
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I don't think the harmonica has lost any popularity. Zuckerberg is simply sucking up the market share.
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Marc Ihm
2 posts
Feb 04, 2024
10:10 PM
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reddit/harmonica looked promising, but for my taste has too many beginners asking for first advice; which is great and justified for them but can become tiresome.
There is also a stackexchange site for music; but none (yet) for harmonica ...
Last Edited by Marc Ihm on Feb 04, 2024 11:31 PM
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RobDawg
15 posts
Feb 05, 2024
6:39 AM
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I've returned here to the cozy forum I know and trust. I ended my facebook last year. I'm sure I've missed some things. I miss MBH group and Jason's pedalboard group sometimes. To anyone who remembers me from real life or Facebook, "Hi!".
Robert Stalvey
Holden, MA
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harpwrench
1126 posts
Feb 06, 2024
12:38 PM
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I’m still around, sad that forums have been pretty much crippled by Facebook. I deleted FB from my life and am happier:)
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www.spiersharmonicas.com
High Performance Harmonicas
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Raven
211 posts
Feb 16, 2024
9:42 AM
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I also noticed a drop-off of posts here and attributed it to the end of the pandemic and people getting out of the house and back to work in person. During the pandemic MBH was buzzing every day, so I assumed that was the answer. I don't bother much with FB anymore...it's a real time waster and full of nonsense, political jabber and everyone's last night dinner. Just don't care what you baked yesterday. MBH has been a valuable resource for locating repair techs, retail dealers and comparing products...influenced some of my buying decisions.
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Rontana
557 posts
Feb 17, 2024
8:43 AM
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I just checked this site the other day, after years of not posting (still playing, just not posting) and noticed the drop-off in activity as well. I'm averse to Facebook (and almost all social media) so the quietness here was a disappointment.
Does anyone know if there are any sites around like the old "Harmonica Boogie" page? That place provided me hours of happy practice time, but it's long gone.
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Ron Marr Music & Wood Carving
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wolfkristiansen
469 posts
Mar 08, 2024
11:38 AM
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The current drop-off in posts can undoubtedly be attributed to the factors already discussed. But consider the possibility that many posters have said everything they want to say. They have no interest in repeating themselves.
Here is a repost of something I posted on MBH in early 2012. It was a response to kudzurunner's lament-- "When there's no gnashing of teeth and close, hot struggle, things get boring."
Cheers,
wolf kristiansen
"Music forums, in fact forums for any loved art or thing, are like marriages.
In a new marriage, there are passionate declarations of love for the chosen other. There are passionate, sometimes nasty arguments as the lovers stake out their turf-- what can each compromise on, what can each absolutely not compromise on?
In a middle-aged marriage, the big issues have been settled, or the ones that haven't are studiously avoided by the partners-- why go there?
Old marriages-- the partners can't even work up the energy to argue. I think of that whenever I see a couple eating at a restaurant, no life in their eyes, and barely a word exchanged during the meal. That's an old marriage, man! Sometimes it's not an old couple, but their marriage sure looks old.
Back to forums. Here's an example from the '90s-- bit.listserv.blues-l.
When it started, people enthusiastically shared their love of and opinions about blues. The discussions soon turned nasty, even poisonous. It had a couple of "Buddhas" who eventually got kicked out when they overstepped the boundaries.
In its middle age, blues-l settled down, but much of the passion was gone. A lot of that passion had come from the sh*t disturbers. The moderators became hypervigilant in stamping out fires before they got too big.
In its old age (now), blues-l is content to be a vehicle for gig announcements and notices about whatever old bluesmen were born on today's date. There is not a shred of passionate opinion or thoughful analysis offered or sought.
So... where is Dirty South Blues Harp Forum right now? It's the youngest harmonica forum on the web, but it's easing into middle age. Some of the sh*t disturbers have been kicked off. (Even Buddha was banned, just before his untimely death). The big arguments have gone round and round-- tongue blocking vs.lip pursing, overblowing-overdrawing vs. traditional playing, tone from gear vs. tone from acoustic technique, blues as black music vs. blues as universal music, etc. How often can we gnash our teeth over these things?
Here's an example of a Dirty South Blues Harp Forum issue I have studiously avoided since I got shot down a year and a half ago:
I still don't like the sound of overblows and overdraws. I've tried to like them, but they are still jarring, to my ears. I don't often talk about it. I've shied away ever since I got Buddha's response when I said they were overrated, in my 8th post to Dirty South Blues Harp Forum-- practically a virgin poster. Here's how the Wise One replied:
"Overblows- I can't do them." - then you should STFU seriously. I don't care who you've played with or who you are, if you can't do it perfectly then your opinion on them is bullshit."
Okay, I get it. I won't bring it up again.
I'm guessing there's others who won't revisit an issue at this point in this forum's existence, either because the issue has been settled (e.g tongue blocking vs. lip pursing-- both embouchures are useful for different things, learn them both), or the issue generates too much flak. It's not worth bringing up.
Conclusion-- Dirty South Blues Harp Forum is easing into its middle age. I wouldn't say it's boring yet. There's still plenty of passion and healthy disagreement.
(For what it's worth, I still eagerly read the posts in this forum almost daily, and the posts on harp-l maybe once a week. Harp-l used to be my "go to" forum, now this one is).
Cheers, and thanks for starting a vital forum for blues harp players, kudzurunner."
wolf kristiansen
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bandini
5 posts
Mar 17, 2024
9:04 AM
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Interesting post, wolf. Great insights.
It's certainly hard not to notice that the only forums from the old days still thriving are the ones that opted for no censorship/content moderation. They are chaotic, vulgar, frequently infuriating... but thriving.
Whereas as far as I can see, every place that took the path of Control has dwindled into total stasis and irrelevance.
Some fairly obvious larger implications there that I doubt would get by the spam filter if I pointed them out directly.:)
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nacoran
10436 posts
Mar 20, 2024
11:52 AM
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One more thing I've noticed... and I worried about at the time, is that groups need a certain amount of activity to feed more activity. Let's call it a sustainability level. If a group falls below that level it tends to wither. Sometimes, subdividing a group can take different parts of that group underneath the threshold. It's kind of like splitting a plant too soon. It may have been a healthy plant, but when you divide the roots none of the subsections are quite healthy enough to live on their own.
I disagree that forums that decided to censor are dying. Yes, some spice can sometimes keep things going, but the FB version of MBH is just about to hit 75k (we are at 74.7k right now). The /harmonica subreddit is similarly close to the 30k mark. There were at least two other groups on FB over 10k (Tomlin Leckie's group, but he decided to mostly move that over to his own site so he had more control over it and could monetize it better) and Harmonica Jam (the admin passed away there without promoting any of his moderators to admins, and it withered quite a bit and was a home to a lot of porn spam before FB finally picked someone (not one of the prior moderators) to run it. Harmonica Jam Nation is still around too... a spin off run by the mods from Harmonica Jam. Just Play It is heavily moderated and while it's a bit smaller it has a nice vibe.
I just think that it's easier to keep a lot of people engaged with the tools you get on social media, and you get more interaction because every time someone goes to check their Facebook to look at cat pictures or whatever they may get a notification about harmonica stuff too.
At one point there were at least 3 FB groups
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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
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