Rachelle Plas Style
My wife is really into the style that Rachelle plays, in the clip below its very upbeat and fun.
Around 20 seconds in, sounds train like and warm. 1min 15 seconds she goes into an awesome melodic style. I think the longer harp is the golden melody tremelo? and then the new golden melody -- which I understand to be focused on ET for no dissonance from tuning related to other instruments, but happens to be her go to.
Question # 1 - Is the golden melody at all a significant part of what she is doing? Or would she do the same bars on other good harp? Is there a classification of this style of harp playing, is it blues? Jazz?
Question # 2 - My wife and I are not going to play anywhere but the porch or back deck, easy fun hobby --- should we be using ET since its marked as a "solo" tuning? I told her I did not think so. Despite playing alone, I think I understand the comoprimsed JI tuning to allow "it all sounds good - even if its a bit off pitch relative to itself" wouldn't that suit a solo or duo old 40 somethings? She is thinking that the ET is for individual playing, whereas I understand it to be about, well, a properly tuned harp still using diatonic to play nice in the sandbox and focus on melodic in-tune tones.
Question # 3 - As a trumpet player my natural mucle memory for double-tongue, trills, tounging styles are all very forward articulated using tongue-back as needed, but in a uniform manner. I am seeing some tongue blocking and getting a bit worried my tongue is going to get very confused laying sideways. I'm just working on chords (train - breathing) right now, I fear something terrible might happen if I pucker or u-block (I can do that too - I only tried for 10 seconds David I promise). But, perhaps I'm just not yet able to appreciate how to make that work having the tongue not forward centered.
Thanks again!
Jason B - Michigan
Playing The Blues - Rachelle PLAS & Philippe HERVOUËT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeHj5gHgIrk.
Rob:
Your answers were perfect, thank you very much. I'm definately not shying away from learning it. And thanks for the context around their style! Wife and I just got a set of CAG Rocket Amp, feels like special 20 but nicer. And its consistent with my Low C. I'm reading Winslow Yerxa's Beginner Harmonica Dummies book right now, great instructor.
Yeah and in the music world a lot is subjective and personal, I just like to get my head around the big ideas and work my way down, so your explanations thus far, in this thread and the previous were most helpful!
Thanks!
Jason
Also just joined as a member of Spah!
Jason:
You're already having lots of fun as a bluesharmonica subscriber, with great questions. Some of what you've got here might be good questions to address to Winslow Yerxa in his "Ask Harmonica Expert ..." thread, others for David in his "Ask Harmonica Instructor ..." thread. My own responses, below, may or may not be all that accurate, but for my two cents:
This is a fun video. Rachel and Phillippe's salute to Sonny Terry. Including her Sonny Terry-style "whooping."
The "longer harp" at the start? It's a Hohner 12-hole Low C 364. Marketed decades ago in the UK as the "Echo Vamper," Rice "Sonny Boy Williamson II" Miller made great use of it on numbers like "Bye Bye Bird." (Check out David's Rice Miller Artist Study in the Lessons, with David's own salute, "Sonny's Bird.")
Blues? Jazz? While what Rachelle and Phillipe are playing is generally thought of as blues, the sound goes farther back, into "train" and "fox chase" impressions. Check out Joe Filisko's lessons here on the site, about that style.
Question #1: Rachel would sound good on any harp, be it $7 junk kids' harp, a 40-year-old mouldy harp pulled out of a landfill, or whatever. She definitely favors the Golden Melody (and as a Hohner endorsee is featured on the box for the Golden Melody). A lot of players like the Golden Melody, some due to the equal tuning, some due to the it's construction and feel in the mouth, some due to its having been one of Hohner early plastic comb harps (before better sealing methods, wood combs used to be a big problem when they got damp and swelled), and some, like Howard Levy, because they took up harp at a time when Hohner's quality control for the Marine Band was slipping, and the Golden Melody was simply the better-quality harp.
Are you a member of SPAH? (Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica, www. SPAH.org.) If not, you'll definitely want to check it out. In the latest issue of SPAH's quarterly Harmonica Happenings Winslow Yerxa has a great revicew of the new (544) Golden Melody, including how it plays, and how it differs from the prior (542) model. And there has been lots of talk about it in various threads here. I own one Golden Melody, the old 542, in C, and don't play it much, but I might buy one of the new model just because it looks so cool!
Question #2: The dinosaurs were probably arguing about equal tuning vs. compromised tuning. You've got a good understanding of tuning temperment, that with mathmatically equal tuning, some types of chords don't work as well. The way various compromised tunings help make much-used blues harmonica chords sound better is why most blues players favor one version or another of compromised tuning. But it's subtle. While a fellow harp player with a really good ear may think your playing a tune in one version of tuning sounds better than in another version, I have yet to meet any music audience member who could hear any difference. So if you like the sound of one harp tuning over another, go with it.
Question #3: The dinosaurs were also arguing about tongue-block vs. lip-pursing millions of years ago. If you're going to learn blues, you'll want to learn tongue-blocking. It opens up a whole world of iconic effects that you just can't do with lip-pursing. (As Dennis Gruenling says - and you can buy one of his tee-shirts that says it - "If you ain't blocking, it ain't rocking!") While learning blues harmonica, just keep in mind that while trumpet and harp both use breathing, they are completely different instruments!
Catch you again soon!