David's Tip of the Day: Advanced Player Beatings, Part 2

Yesterday’s long story was for the students that are reaching into the upper levels of the intermediate material or are just hitting the advanced material on the site. You’ll be working hard, wrestling with new and challenging techniques and making great progress towards your goal of becoming a great harmonica player. Your hard work will pay off by eventually being able to play these new techniques. Most likely the challenges of rhythm will keep you busy a bit longer, and this is common. What most find disheartening though is you’ll listen back to your recording and will find it, just like my sparring, a bit ugly.

You’re capable of playing the song, it just doesn’t sound very good yet. Your notes won’t ring out with clarity and your overall pitch will most likely be slightly flat from too much tension. Tremolo is missing, even though you’re capable of using it in more simple songs. It’s obvious that the focus on challenging technique makes it difficult to make this new song sound good. It’s common for me to receive submissions like this and I’ll tell the student that their technique is generally good, but needs more time to mature.

The great thing about this stage is that it just requires time. When you reach this point, use that study song as a warm-up each day and have fun working through other material of interest until the techniques embodied in that study song become effortless to perform… this is when it will start sounding good… you can then focus on the small details that make a big difference in the overall performance of a song. Keep your chin up, it WILL sound good, you just don’t know when… you just need to get on the path so that the when can happen.