Seasick is OK, but I once went through a huge amount of his stuff on YouTube and it was very very samey. At times his autobiographical stuff is about as palatable and pretentious as Pink's (whom I've never particularly disliked, to add to Chris's thread on phrasing the other day). ---------- Andrew, gentleman of leisure, noodler extraordinaire.
Never mind which key you should buy, if you don't buy my $20,000 custom guitar, which I will send to you in several months, I guarantee you that you will never amount to much as a guitar player.
Oh-oh, just responded to a post that went poof, i feel like i'm in the twilight zone.
Last Edited by on Oct 12, 2010 12:35 PM
Buz, I'd agree, but it depends on how you learn. Sometimes by learning more than you need you can actually help consolidate your learning of the lower level stuff that you really do want to use. Sometimes by learning more advanced stuff you just confuse yourself and don't spend enough time practicing the basics. And of course the best case scenario is you learn the more advanced stuff and can add that to your repertoire to.
Then you can cross reference that with your frustration level. If you think you are going to get confused by the complicated stuff and you really prefer the simple style of play, maybe the frustration isn't worth the payoff.
TN, tricks are sometimes a way of showing other people in the know that you are REALLY in the know. The thing to remember is that Van Gogh and Picasso really were brilliant artists, even if you didn't like their style. It gets even stranger with modern art.
It's common to hear people say something like, 'That's not art. It's just a bunch of paint thrown up on a canvas.' Sometimes it is. That painting elephant comes to mind, but when it comes down to it some of even this modern stuff is done by people who can paint brilliant paintings in much more classical styles. There is kind of a wink and a nod verification system. Not anyone is allowed to throw paint on the canvas; first you have to be an artist! There are gatekeepers that protect us from people who can't actually paint. Why? Because if anyone can paint by throwing paint on the canvas then the value of those paintings drops as the market gets flooded.
Music isn't so different. Each genre has rules for how you dress before you are taken seriously (and in pop, how you look.) Unfortunately, in the world of auto-tuning a producer can literally throw the paint on the wall for someone who looks better on stage than they do. For a musician, the creation of sound is the art. For the audience, the sound is the art. What do they care if it got painted by Van Gogh or an elephant or a hot teenager in a mini-skirt?
If you are pretty you can make it big without being a good musician. If not, you have to differentiate yourself from the crowd by being better or different. You can throw on Kiss makeup or throw down crazy riffs or write really catchy lyrics. That's how you get rich and famous.
The thing is, most musicians don't get rich and famous. Most musicians know they aren't going to get rich and famous. Why do they do it then? Well, for them, making the sound is the art, and they are artists and the audience. They need to be able to do art that satisfies them, and if they play out they need to play sound that pleases the audience.
The Crazy Theory:
Fancy can help you stand out from the other artists doing the same thing. From a marketing stand point, if 6 bands are vying for the same gig and 5 of them can only play simple the person booking the show has to decide if he wants a fancy show or a simple show. Let's say it's 50/50 chance he wants either one. If he wants fancy, the fancy band gets the gig. They get the gig half the time! If he wants simple (50/50 chance) then he still has 5 bands to chose from. 1/2 x 1/5= 1/10. If you are a simple band, at these odds you only get the gig 1/10th of the time. What if the promoter has 3 options to start with- a simple band, a fancy band, and a band that can switch it up. Now those simple bands only have a 1 in 3 chance of even getting considered, and then they have to compete with those 5 other simple bands. It's all game theory!
Then, another factor comes into play. Record companies are suing internet radio stations for royalties. I find this odd. For years there were payola scams where record companies paid stations for extra plays. It's got to do with how they get revenue and the earworm principle. Hear a catchy tune enough times and it grows on you. It usually follows a bell curve. The first couple times, you don't make out all the words, you try to dance, but you don't know the beat. But the song grows on you. It gets stuck in your head. It's your favorite song! You buy it (this is why the model is changing, if people download bootleg copies having a popular song isn't as important). Eventually, the song gets overplayed, but in the meanwhile, PAYDIRT!
So, lets go back to the simple bands vs. the fancy bands example. If the fancy band gets more play than the simple bands, whose songs are going to become earworms?
And now, after all that brainhurt, game theory and long tale economics, for something completely different.
Narcoran you must be a poker player,I havent read so much on game therory sence i put away all those poker books i studied before the harp became moe important to me,I bet you know pot odds implied odds and reverse implied odds ect.;-)
Last Edited by on Oct 12, 2010 1:00 PM
Back on topic: TNFrank: You're asking a bunch of rabid harp players on a forum dedicated to harp if it's OK to play s***ty? Are you kidding? I agree with Kudzu that you're just trying to justify you're lack of harp skills.No ,it's not OK to bend that 3 draw wrong. It's like saying I don't really need to play that flatted 7th right, as long as I'm sorta close. The internet gives us lots of information. Sometimes,it's overwhelming. I think you've got more information than you can digest. You see people running and you want to run with them. There's one problem: you're just learning to crawl. Slow down,son! Abandon this forum for a while,go listen to any of Adam's "All Time Greats". Figure out why they're great and then go woodshed a bit. Sure you can make good music playing simply,but you still have to play the notes properly. Your attitude is what give harp players a bad rap and justifiably so.Don't take that route on this forum or you'll continue to get slammed by the forum members. If that's your ambition you should join the Bob Dylan/Neil Young Harp Forum.(I like both artists,but their harp playing is far from my ideal.)
Flashy tricks can convey emotion, but so can simplicity. On the other hand, simplicity does not necessarily demonstrate the competence of the player.
I guess it boils down to whether the performer feels ego driven to 'prove' their capability, or whether they are secure enough in their ability to match their approach to the music.
I'm not saying that unskilled players can make emotive music as well as competent players - not at all. It's like the difference between a haiku and free verse. It can take far more skill to express yourself in 3 lines than it does to express yourself in three verses. The fewer notes you play (for example) the better those notes have to be played - dynamic control, intonation: they have to be 'on the money'
Overblows are a distraction. They are only flashy tricks if their purpose in the music is to show that you can play them.
I understand that there are some really great Pro harp players that hang out here. I really think that's cool to be on a forum with such skilled people. I think I've given some of ya'll the wrong impression though. Harmonica is just a side instrument that I wanted to fool around with until I can get back to work and buy another guitar. I know for some of ya' Harmonica is your first instrument, your "go to" but for me it was just suppose to be something simple and inexpensive to mess round on and explore for a while until I could get back to my main instrument, the guitar. It's like a guy who buys a used set of golf clubs because he wants to take up golf for the exercise. Pretty soon he's learning that the drivers in his set might not be the best and that he needs to work on his swing. Then the balls he's using aren't right so he has to buy different ones and then he needs new clothes and a different hat and before long he's so involved in it that he's just totally over whelmed by it all when all he really wanted to do was get out and get some fresh air and play a little golf. I think that's what's happened to me. I figured that I could buy a few harps, mess around with em' a bit and have some fun expressing myself until I could get another guitar but instead I'm getting hit from all sides about how I really shouldn't waste my time with those cheap harps, I need better ones and how I need to practice on "this" or work on "that" and if I'm going to be a harp player then I need to learn "X", "Y" and "Z" or I won't go anywhere playing harp. I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to have some fun but it just feels like this fun, inexpensive little instrument has grown so BIG that it's about to crush me to death. I really think I need to get back into the woodshead, work on basics, maybe check out a few beginner YouTube lessons and work on those and not hang out on forums talking about harps for a while. Can any of ya'll relate to what I'm saying or am I just talking to myself here?
---------- Suzuki HarpMaster in C Suzuki FolkMaster in D,E and F Hohner Old Standby in A Hohner Special 20 in Bb Hohner Big River in Low F,G,A,Bb,C and D
I don't think we need to dump it on ol' Tennessee Frank. Look, all of us need to be reminded of the importance of having fun on the instrument and of using the instrument as an INSTRUMENT, which is to say as a medium for communicating something rather than as an end in itself, a fetish divorced from the production of music and good feeling.
The only mistake TNF is making is assuming that the fast & furious players he dislikes are a) not having fun; b) being "merely" technical or trick-filled, and c) any sort of reason for him to feel bad about his own playing.
When I spout off about how overblows are the future of blues harmonica, I'm doing it for a specfic reason and with a specific intent. I'm seeking to shake things up a little, in a constructive way, and I'm seeking to influence the young. But I'm certainly not trying to say, "Every single player who picks up a harp must learn how to overblow." Buddha may say that, but I don't. I simply think it's silly for professional blues harp players, and professional aspirants, to cast aspersions, as they have for two decades, on the very idea of overblowing. For many years, I was a voice in the wilderness; Carlos del Junco and I were the only two players out there in the early 1990s who were regularly throwing overblows into the amped blues harp mix. (Jazz harp is different, of course; Howard had disciples, including Larry Eisenberg and several others, and perhaps Larry should be included in this early vanguard.)
Now things have changed, thanks to Jason, Buddha, and some of the young guns, and I think it's great. I still think the instrument and the idiom need to progress, and I think overblows are one way in which that progress is taking place.
But I've never meant to suggest that every single player had to add them to what they were already doing. I merely suggest, when I teach, that players listen to how much fun overblows are.
I played a few overblows for Doug "Joe Lee" Bush on the phone the other day and he cackled out loud. He got it. And he's an old school guy. But he heard the fun.
TNF raises a related but important issue: flash is part of the blues, but so is feeling. The chief difference between rock guitar and blues guitar is that rock guitar heightens flash in a stagey, self-dramatizing way, while blues guitarists, flashy as they can be (think Albert Collins), are about adding subtle, powerful nuances to every note (think B. B. King squeezin' it). We're all familiar, in any case, with "blues" performers who come with a rock attitude and don't really have a feeling for the blues. It's hard to define the difference, and each of us sets the bar in a somewhat different place. Let's just say that Steve Vai in CROSSROADS is deliberately evoking the unfeeling rocker's version of the blues, and Ralph Macchio, when he plays a slow sweet song in the bedroom while Joe Seneca listens, impressed, is an evocation of blues feelingfulness.
I don't think that many blues harmonica players, including the Top 20 listed elsewhere on this website, play with the sort of deep feeling that the best blues guitarists evoke. Paul Butterfield was able to get some of that feeling in the live version of "Driftin Blues," and Little Walter gets it occasionally, as does Big Walter. Most of them just wail, jump, and boogie. Nothing wrong with that, but we shouldn't automatically equate that with deep feeling.
TN, I know your out of work. When you don't have something interrupting you practice schedule it's real easy to get swept up, and if you know your prone to that sort of stuff sometimes it's good to multi-task a little. Find a couple other things to get obsessed with so that when you get frustrated with one you have another one ready! :) If you can find things that overlap just enough but feed different needs, so much the better. (Like harp and guitar, or harp and art deco design... I stumbled on this Flikr stream a while ago. Now my hard drives are full with other pictures of harmonicas I've seen online all over the place.)
Once again, I NEVER said I dislike Fast and Furious players, I said is it absolutely necessary for me to learn to play that way in order to PLAY. I love listening to you Adam, and to Lee Sankey and Jason Ricci, it's awesome to hear you guys tear it up on the harp. I just don't think that it's the direction that I want to go in, I just want to learn to play a bit of simple harp so that I can have fun. That's all. ---------- Suzuki HarpMaster in C Suzuki FolkMaster in D,E and F Hohner Old Standby in A Hohner Special 20 in Bb Hohner Big River in Low F,G,A,Bb,C and D
I don't mind the uber-technical players as long as the music comes first. Not a big-fan of endless, show-offy harpshredding. But that's my personal preference. I have friends that listen to bands like Dreamtheater and the like, and I know that, for them, its as much about the virtuosity as it is the music. And that's fair enough.
I love Dream Theater but on my best day I'll never have a right hand that'll let me shred like Petrucci does, it's just not in the cards for me. My style of electric guitar playing it more like Clapton or B.B.King, slower, more soulful or at my wildest Angus Young from AC/DC, which, if you listen to him is just a rehash of the Blues cranked up a bit. I love to play music but I've never had the encouragement in my life to push me to get truly great at it. I'm a hack, a decent hack but a hack none the less but I do have fun playing. ---------- Suzuki HarpMaster in C Suzuki FolkMaster in D,E and F Hohner Old Standby in A Hohner Special 20 in Bb Hohner Big River in Low F,G,A,Bb,C and D
listen to nacaron! you are like totally addicted to MBH in an unhealthy way.
it seems to me that you just throw out whatever comes into your head.
it's not like this forum is 20 guys or so and needs new junk everyday to debate. there are hundreds of regular posters and a few thousand members.
chill out dude. take a break. give it a rest. then come back and say something of interest like,
"i picked up a fake anvil case from costco for $20. it's actually for camera gear and has moveable dividers. it fits tons of harps and mics,etc... beats the shit out of expensive hetrick stuff." ---------- MP hibachi cook for the yakuza doctor of semiotics superhero emeritus
Last Edited by on Oct 13, 2010 1:00 PM
I play primarily for my own enjoyment but also intend to make a living out of it. I'm what some people would call a naturally gifted musician - a label that annoys me a little, some of the people that use it like to think that I didn't have to work for my abilities. Though I do realise that I was born with a certain understanding of music and a healthy dose of soul that perhaps puts me at an advantage over others. (excuse that mini-rant lol)
But yeah, I respect your way Frank, you want to play for your own enjoyment, without the scorn of technically-burdened snobs weighing you down. I have very little time for those sorta people.
I am lucky in that most people recognise the soul and feeling in my playing and respect me for it, regardless of how technical I might be. I also have the advantage of living in a small town in Northern Ireland, the people here don't get the chance to see too many harp players. So when I sit in with a group the novelty factor alone gets me plenty of attention, if I happen to play something that compliments the song then all-the-more-better :)
One of my friend isn't really the most gifted guitar player. He has the same problem as many mediocre players, that he can't really tune his guitar properly. Once he manages to get some passable tuning down, he plays a nice long blues riff by heart (always the same) with a couple of bent notes to 'test' if the guitar sounds good. First, this riff doesn't let you hear at all if the tuning is correct. Plus, the thing that first seemed so impressive is lame once you realize that this is the thing he plays best... but he's a cool guy. ;) ---------- The MBH thread-thread thread!
Last Edited by on Oct 12, 2010 4:24 PM
@ Frank - "I need to get back into the woodshead, work on basics, maybe check out a few beginner YouTube lessons and work on those and not hang out on forums talking about harps for a while. Can any of ya'll relate to what I'm saying or am I just talking to myself here?"
That's what most people have been trying to tell you Frank.
"It's like a guy who buys a used set of golf clubs because he wants to take up golf for the exercise. Pretty soon he's learning that the drivers in his set might not be the best and that he needs to work on his swing. Then the balls he's using aren't right so he has to buy different ones and then he needs new clothes and a different hat and before long he's so involved in it that he's just totally over whelmed by it all when all he really wanted to do was get out and get some fresh air and play a little golf."
That's the thing Frank.... you need to go out there and have some fun... don't sit in front of a freak'n computer explaining irrelevant stuff.... I've got 400 or so posts since this forum started... I wish I had the time YOU have... Yeah, I know, you are 49 and you don't have a job... well I am 57 this month and I have to work my ass of to stay in business... and I CAN'T buy harps.. not even cheapos... it wouldn't be fair to my wife.... get your priorities straight Frank and smell the roses.... and don't step on the roses other people are trying to give you.... Do yourself (and perhaps some others) a favor.... don't reply to this post... instead... take your harp and play something you like... maybe try to find the root notes for the I-IV-V chords or something...
Frank's got something good going, but nobody, even Frank sees it. Don't spoil it for him by making it seem to be more of a great undertaking than he wants to take on now.
He just wants to toot a few notes for fun. He'll play "Home on the Range" and stuff like that around the campfire. He'll enjoy it. Good! Then he'll want to add a few embellishments to it...make it sound folksier or bluesier. He'll enjoy it. Then he'll want to start playing a REALLY spiced up version of it. He'll enjoy it.
Playing that song, he's developed some chops. But he's getting tired of "Home on the Range." Let's see...What will he play next? What might he have to learn to play that new song?
.....If it inspires you, Frank, the other day I was mowing in the big tractor and holding the harp one-handed with my embouchure choking the 6 blow with pressure. I hit a bump and heard a little shriek of a note of the overblow! You never know when the first signs of a breakthrough will occur! ;) ----------
Last Edited by on Oct 12, 2010 7:43 PM
Frank, the other day I was mowing in the big tractor and holding the harp one-handed with my embouchure choking the 6 blow with pressure. I hit a bump and heard a little shriek of a note of the overblow!
Man i Love it Classic Classic Classic :)
Bro's You want to check out Old NOD what i get up to in other Forums and How many Forums I'm ON,Hay i could be on another Forum or many and saying very rude things about you behind your back :(
I could be on another Forum talking to others like i know something about the subject after iv'e gleened info from members here on the Forum :)
Or i may be the Cuss i am to others as i am here check me out Just Google search my name as it is here N.O.D. You will find out how many forums im on and how much time i spend there :)
i could be a serial Forum Junki the things i say may up set you very much i would hate to lose your respect:(
Come On Brothers Give Me a Break we are being Tooled:(
Have a Laugh at this little lot:) http://www.harmonicaclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3698&sid=3c2192a16e17665b22685622e5d3bb66
"Have a Laugh at this little lot:) http://www.harmonicaclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3698"
So What? He posted on another harmonica forum, who cares? Several other people on this forum also post on other forum (Harp-L, Bushman, etc).
I read the thread and it's just him talking about harmonicas with other people. It's not like the posts made on HarmonyCentral, so I have no idea what your problem is NOD.
MP, I wasn't trying to imply TN was addicted to MBH in an unhealthy way, I was just suggesting that when you have different eggs in your basket, and you have lots of time to look at those eggs, sometimes it's good to have LOTS of eggs. That way you don't get too upset if one of those eggs seems cracked!
MP, huh, that's new. Come to think of it, someone asked me to delete one of their posts yesterday. Mods now have check boxes to the left of the post. We can delete all the posts we want once we've checked them, which is handy if a spammer posts a bunch of posts in one thread. Of course they usually just post one comment in a whole bunch of threads, and it's no help there. I didn't notice the regular delete was gone though.
The delete is still there. I used it on this thread. Look just to the left of your name on the offending post. There is a little box there that doesn't exist by anybody else's name. That is your very own and personal delete feature.
oops see you found it. took me a minute to interpret your last post MP ---------- The Art Teacher Formally Known As scstrickland
Last Edited by on Oct 13, 2010 1:57 PM
Frank - if you ever lived in a place where there are a lot of really good players, you really have to bring it to get the attention of people. Sometimes, you have to slap someone in the back of the head to get that attention. That's where tricks come in handy. They are that virtual slap in the back of the head.
Last Edited by on Oct 12, 2010 7:43 PM
