Improvising

Marko -

You ask big questions that are hard to answer in a short reply.

Style can be described as a personal approach - you can hear the styles of Junior Wells, for example, or Little Walter, and you can hear how they both have been influenced by the style of John Lee Williamson. But describing those highly individual differences is more difficult than noticing them.

With some effort, you start noticing specific licks, and where the player uses them. You can also notice an overall approach to a solo. For instance, you might notice that in one case, the soloist starts very intense, pulls back, then comes on strong again. Or they may start with something that builds into a strong final statement. Every soloist will have several approaches to how they tell the story within a 12-bar verse. If you listen first to the changes in the intensity, and how the soloist makes an entrance, then keeps your attention, then how they conclude, you'll get the overall shape of what they do.Then you can look at the specifics. What actual notes, licks, etc. do they play? How do those phrases add up to create the main effect?

Approaching a solo this way, you can learn ways to shape your ideas to the musical form, and get beyond simply imitating. Some of David Barrett's books do a great job of breaking down the 12-bar blues verse into its components, and then showing how soloists exploit those components to build a solo.

Does this help?

Style can come from innovation or from what's been done already.

It's really a shaping of materials in such a way that it develops character.

This can take on the character of a specific individual - Like Sonny Boy I, Cotton, Walter, Wells. Or of a whole school of playing like the Chicago school that they are all considered to be a part of. But for them to be part of a larger style, they obviously have to share some stylistic traits. The only way for that to happen is for them to borrow from each other, or be influenced by one another.i

You can develop an individual style that is totally original, but then you're less lkely to be part of a school. You might develop your own licks, your own approach to interacting with the underlying chord structure, and your own way of building the dynamics of your playing over one or more verses of the underlying structure, which could be 12 bar blues or some other form.

Some players, such as Little Walter, were both members of a school but also innovators who changed the game in several ways. Walter found new ways to use existing licks and also added licks, many borrowed from swing music. He also found new ways to structure his solos, which employed longer phrases and a more fluid approach to rhythm.

I shouldn't ignore factors like tone, and techniques that are not licks as such. For instance, amplified tone made a huge difference to style. Use of tongue techniques in combination with amplification led to a huge area of development.

And techniques such as bending notes had a huge impact. There was a time when there was no such thing. When bending was introduced (I'm guessing this happened at the dawn of the 20th century more or less) it made an enormous difference.

Also, the development of second and third positions had major impacts on playing style at different points in history. Positions aren't really techniques. They're more like conceptual approaches to the entire stock of resources inside any one harmonica.

I guess what I'm saying is that style is your way of shaping the entire stock of resources that you employ when you play the harmonica. How do you shape those resources to make musical statements? ask this question about every harmonica player you hear and you'll make a lot of useful discoveries.