Another HARP Teacher writes and plays different....I'm confused
David: I’m practicing LOA 5 My Blues and it’s actually beginning to sound like music. Your lessons are great, challenging, and progressive. I bought a lesson (on the net) from Sandy Weltman, a great player. His TAB notation is different than yours, so I spent half a day re-writing it in “Barrett TAB”. His TAB also doesn’t relate to TIME, nor to NOTES, merely holes. First, why doesn’t everyone use the same TAB?? Your TAB is great!!! Easy to understand, accurate, note related, and shows time, expression, dynamics, and more. Second, it seems that he strictly puckers, so, obviously gives up slaps, pulls, and lots of stuff. His first lick (translated to Barrett format), for example, 2 3’ 4+ 4’ 4 5 4 4’ 4+ 3’ 4+ 3’ 2 2” 1 1+ 1 2 (a “Paul Butterfield type lick) is nearly impossible to play tongue blocked (he plays it very, very, fast by the way). He also (obviously) leaves out all the great slaps, and techniques that enhance my playing. It sounds great when Sandy plays it, but without all the TAB details that you put in, I don’t know how to learn it. I hate to merely forget about other teachers because they may have lots for me to learn from, but honestly, your stuff is great!!! I just want to expand my scope of listening and learning. What’s your thoughts on this?
Hello DNullman. I'm glad you like my approach and notation. Unfortunately harmonica TAB is not standardized... nothing we can do about it... just one of the pains we have to deal with. In regards to pucker... that lick can most definitely be played in a tongue block. There is no difference in speed between any embouchure... tongue block, pucker or U-block... you can play them all equally as fast. So, in this case, you just need (as in all challenging music) to slow it down until you can get up to his speed.