Half Steppin, bars 9 and 10 in chorus' 1 and 6.
David:
I have been working through the study song "Half Steppin" trying to record a decent copy to send to you for critique. The one area that is holding me back are bars 9 and 10 in chorus' 1 and 6. I can play them quite adequately, and at reasonable speed, without the jam track. I can play them over and over without issue. However when I go to play the entire song I end up messing these bars up. I appear to not be able to cleanly hit some of the holes squarely (mainly the 3 and 4) thus inhibiting me to get the bend. Timing is not the problem. Of course I go back play these bars stand alone without the track over and over to practice and have no problem, but then mess them up again when going back to play the study song. So it's been a bit frustrating. Any advice on how I can get over this?
Thanks
Brian
David:
Thanks, will focus on that today and work on it throughout this week.
Brian
Cool. Feel free to send me that recording if you're not able to figure it out, I'll help you.
David:
I spent some time today looping through the first chorus. For a while I felt like I was not getting anywhere, then just recently I played through it five times and discovered something. When I got to about the four draw my lip/mouth muscles seem to weaken creating leakage. It appears that from bars 1 to 8 I was tensing up and tighten up my embrouchure especially on the deep bends. I should have known better. I realized I needed to loosen up and allow my tongue do more of the work to get the bends. When I did this my playing of bars 9 and 10 started to improve. In general I just need to relax when playing. So my goal this week during practice is to work on improving this area. I'll see if this corrects the issue.
Thanks
Brian
Fantastic, great job self-assessing.
David:
Was practicing this weekend and still having some issues. Then this afternoon discovered I was not fully reaching the 6 draw on bar 9. Thus it messed up where I was on the harp putting some of my holes and the lick slightly off. I also knew because my 6 draw and 6 bend sounded off. Once I corrected this the playing on bars 9 and 10 sounded so much better and spot on. So plan to further work on practicing the song this week now that I finally got this figured out.
Brian
Great. This is where HarpNinja is helpful. Turn down the backing tack and play into HarpNinja and it will tell you where you are on the harp if there's any question.
Evening Brian. I recommend you record yourself playing a loop of bars 7 through 11 (play it three times to see if the error is consistent) and listen back to what's tripping you up.