Stevie Wonder charts?
Well, I'm in trouble now. A musician friend is putting together a band for a Salute to Stevie Wonder show, and has asked if I'd be interested in playing chromatic. I'm OK with blues in D of course, and even other keys, but Stevie Wonder's stuff could be a challenge, even if I'm just doing an "impression" of it. Do any of you know of any sources (books, websites, etc.) with charts or transcriptions of what he plays on some of his biggest hits? Thanks!
Thanks! Hoping my ear can detectl any accuracy issues, and that I can deal with how each contributor seems to have a different method of indicating tablature. Looks like interesting stuff, though, and pretty much what I'm looking for.
Stevie plays diatonic occasionally, but mostly plays a C chromatic (though sometimes a B or a Db). Isn't She Lovely is in E on a C chromatic, so the diatonic tab for some unspecified key makes no sense.
His style started with playing in C on a C chromatic, and using the slide-in draw notes for blue notes (Eb, Gb, Bb) and the slide-in Draw C, and button-push ornaments that used those notes - check out the live vesion of Fingertips to get the full flavor of that approach. He later branched this style out ot G and F, but can play in any key he wants to. For instance, for Once in My Life he plays the solo in F#, and Alfie is in Bb. What can I say, it's helpful to know all your keys on chromatic.
Thanks Winslow!
Yep, could hear that "Isn't She Lovely," the first song I decided to work on, is in E major. Four sharps. Because some of the stuff posted on YouTube uses tablature style I'm not used to, and is just distracting, in the end it might be better just to try to learn by ear. Or - while I'm certainly no Howard Levy in this regard - work out first on piano.
A terminology question: Some notes in the melody that require that the button be pushed in have a nice sound if one starts on the nautural, i.e., button out, and then slaps it in (like in the E major scale, quick movements from G natural to G# and C natural to C#). On a guitar, ukelele or banjo, this is called a "hammer-on." What's it called on a chromatic harmonica? (I think David told me once, but I forgot.)
Thanks again.
I classify slide ornaments as follows:
Approaching a slide-in note with a quick slide-out note a semitone below: SLIDE JAB
There’s also the less-common reverse jab, where you approach a slide-out note using the slide-in note from a semitone above.
Then there’s the SLIDE BUMP, where you play a slide-out note, bump the slide in and then let it out, to temporarily raise the note by a semitone.
The SLIDE DIP is the opposite of a slide bump, where you play a slide-in note, let the slide out and press it back in, to dip the note down by a semitone and then return it to pitch.
Thanks Winslow. The term "jab" should have come to me the other day as I was getting a COVID booster.
The link i pasted was a quick & dirty search. If you spend a bit more time using the right search fields, you'll find also chromatic tabs for Isn't she lovely etc. Example: https://www.harptabs.com/searchsong.php?Name=Isn%27t+she&Author&Username...
Yep. Thanks again mmarquez! Among the fun things about the website is that lots of folks have posted their own approaches, both on chromatic and diatonic. (With their own notation systems.) Lots of good stuff here.
Accuracy is hit or miss
https://www.harptabs.com/searchsong.php?Name=Stevie&HarpType=0