|
beginner forum: for novice and developing blues harp players >
Your Own Learning Curve
Your Own Learning Curve
Page:
1
MindTheGap
1209 posts
Feb 23, 2016
11:18 PM
|
We've touched on this before, and discussed in general terms - plateaus, S-curves and so on. But tigertoo's comment in the 'what are you working on' thread prompted me to think we should be more precise about it. The point being that everyone must think 'how am I doing compared to the average?' and it would be helpful for other beginners reading this forum to get a sense of how people feel they have progressed.
In brief: my learning curve for harp was a bit odd. Deceptively straightforward for the first few months, and frustratingly slow after that.
What I found was that I acquired the basic, stated techniques (single notes, bending etc.) within a few months - apart from two-holes shakes. It required serious effort, but felt like a sensible payback. These are tangible, measureable things: e.g. I can hear for myself if I can play single notes, I can test my bending skills vs a keyboard. It wasn't a matter of opinion that I couldn't do a proper two-hole shake.
Then I learnt some different positions other than crossharp. But I found that wasn't enough to make the music I wanted to hear, and the rest of the time (3 years or so) I've spent trying to sound like things I hear others play. That has been much more about less tangible things like articulation, timing, shaping notes, use of hands, cupping, timbre. And technical stuff around microphones and amps, that has taken some time and effort to unpick too. A lot of this IS a matter of opinion.
My experience is that learning the harp has been quite different to other instruments where you start simple and make it sound OK - not great necessarily but, you know, musical. And then you layer on the techniques. I'm learning drums at the moment and I'm at a novice stage. But that is like that.
In hindsight, I wish I'd gone about it the other way round: start with simple note choices but focussed on things like articulation and note shaping first - things to make it sound good. But there was a strong push to learn e.g. bending because that's blues harp.
Your experience may be quite different, I'd be interested to hear it.
----------
Favourite Threads
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Feb 24, 2016 12:35 AM
|
ME.HarpDoc
124 posts
Feb 24, 2016
9:30 AM
|
Interesting, MTG, like you I feel like I have to get bending down, etc, to sound "bluesy". I record my focused practice and I often am not satisfied with my sound. However, when I attend an occasional blues jam I'm usually totally improvising my solos rather than trying to match what someone else did on a particular tune and it seems to come out well. On those recordings I sound pretty good. So I think in my case, it's playing with other musicians that helps me improve. Backing tracks help some too. But when I'm trying to establish my own groove I have to first listen to something like Adam' s tips and I do ok. Left to myself my groove sounds more like scale work than a bluesy rhythm.
|
Post a Message
|
