harp

Our best tool for bettering our playing is to record ourselves and listen back with a critical ear. If you use this tool correctly, by the time you send your final recording of a study song to me, it should be pretty dialed in. I shouldn’t be making comments about missed notes, they should be more about technique, tone and approach. When listening back to your recording, use your finger to follow along with the provided music/TAB and mark areas that need improvement. continue reading...

I had an opportunity to see Steve perform at the World Harmonica Festival five years ago. Steve's a very innovative player and super-nice guy.

Steven De bruyn - HOHNER Masters of the Harmonica
http://youtu.be/aXLXE4OIfcQ

Use more repetition. Students have a tendency to play lick-after-lick, not presenting a central idea for each chorus. This gut reaction is from the feeling that a solo should be exciting and full of fireworks. This may create an exciting solo for one or two choruses, but by the third chorus, or third song in that set, it gets old. Repetition is the only tool we have to tell the listener that something is important. By not using repetition, you're telling the listener that nothing you're playing is worth remembering. continue reading...

Use more space in your playing. Most of us have a tendency to over-play, especially when excited or trying to play a burning solo. Space not only gives the other musicians an opportunity to uplift what you're playing (by playing fills and pickups to chord change for example), but also provides the listener with the space to digest what you played so they can appreciate when you repeat, use variation or move away.

Today starts a series of observations from working with students at last weekend's Harmonica Masterclass Workshop.

Vocabulary continue reading...

Excessive volume from the band is an extremely common problem for harmonica players. We have issues hearing ourselves (which causes feedback problems trying to raise above the volume of the band) and all ideas of musicality and dynamics are thrown out the window. Here are some tools you can use to help combat this... continue reading...

Blues Blast Magazine released this interview with Charlie Musselwhite today: http://www.bluesblastmagazine.com/featured-interview-charlie-musselwhite/

This is our quote of the week at United Academy of Martial arts. I thought I would share it with you as well, it's to the point and right on the mark.

"Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success." by Napoleon Hill

In a standard 12 Bar Blues, with our most common vocal AAB rhyme scheme, fills are found on the last two bars of each four-bar line (of which there are three). These fills happen on the I (one) chord. This makes fills generally easy to play due to there being no chord considerations to be made.

In a non-12 Bar Blues progression this may not be the case, and this is true for "Key to the Highway."

Play fills to Little Walter's recording in the following manner... continue reading...

A student came in last week asking about jaw movement after watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0fusOgxp_8. Here's what I told him...

"I tend not to focus on jaw movement anymore with students as a technique to study. In my experience, some techniques tend to show up in one's playing over time without having to focus on it, and this is one of them. To answer your question... when moving a hole to the right and coming back, you can use your jaw to make the quick motion away and back. The same applies for moving from one hole to the left and back. continue reading...