Hey folks, I had to more or less put the harp down for about 4-5 months due to other commitments, but now the obsession is back and I learned another song from David Barrett's excellent website that I want to share with you. Any kind of feedback is very welcome!
Some self-assessment: There are still some rough spots in the song, but I like the tone and the vibrato / tremolo is strong at times - however, I feel I should work harder on dynamics, especially when a note should decline at the end of a bar. I also think that my tongue flutter needs work, but I'm not sure how to improve it.
Looking forward to your perspectives, which have always been very helpful in the past!
Cheers, SkullKid
Last Edited by SkullKid on May 09, 2019 8:49 AM
Hi Skullkid. It’s good to have you back here. I saw this post and I’m sorry it’s taken me a little while to get around to playing it. I personally like that song, I think it’s one of David’s songs which comes together right from the start. Sometimes his lesson songs don’t really hang together that well as something you’d like to play for the overall musical effect, which is understandable. They are vehicles for teaching first and foremost. This one though is more musically cohesive I think and as you’ve identified it has lots of focus on elements of tone, texture and dynamics. About your performance, I think you have identified the areas which could improve and honestly from my point of view it’s that 80:20 thing. I don’t know that it’s strictly 8020, it could be 90:10 but you get the idea. I think overall you sound great and the elements of performance that separate your performance from being amazingly wonderful are relatively small but take rather a lot of focused practice to achieve.. and if you never did, it would still be great.. Some of those notes you played had really great tone. I listen to Yusef Lateef quite a bit; dunno if you’re aware of him but he was a wonderful multi-instrumentalist among his other academic achievements. He started out with sax but then took up oboe. Probably one of the greatest voices in jazz, concerning the oboe. Also played various flutes. Some of those notes you played had a great clear reedy woody tone like an oboe. I loved that, made me think of YL.
If you work out how to get the flutter to roll more, let me know. I’m like you. I think it’s ok but could be better. Ronnie Shellist advised me to just practice it more and that’s probably the key to it. I don’t practice it much really. I’m doing more on chromatic now though and it’s gonna be a focus for s little time. I’m hoping to see improvement.
