Re: [Harp-L] Ghost Notes on Harmonica



V,

The guitar player and i were working something out before we played, so no tape was rolling for that. The recordings were made on a tinny sounding mono cassette player with pretty indistinct sound quality that was placed next to the guitar amp. i don't remember what the particular chord was that i couldn't get until i played the split interval, but i play split intervals like that all the time and it's not actually very hard to do, although it may take a little practice to play them cleanly.

Just put the tongue on the harp and blow or draw out of either side. Adjust so you are getting only one hole on each side of the tongue. Start with the 1-4 draw and 1-4 blow which are octaves. The ghost notes are most powerful and pronounced playing octave stops, but are present for all split interval double stops. once you can play those relatively clean, just move up and down the harp playing different split intervals and listen to the different ghost notes/differential tones that sound. None are dissonant, but if BOTH notes are in the high end it can sound harsh, although the 7-10 blow octave sounds cool. Play around with it.

Now, once you're relatively comfortable playing split intervals up and down the harp, slide the holes of the comb inside the mouth past your teeth when you do it. If you are primarily a LP player, as i am, it helps to have a deep embouchure to start with. But, anyway, playing split intervals with the harp in past the teeth produces really BIG FAT smooth tone. Then, if you lean on it hard with a slight almost bend and a tight cup, you'll drive the hell out of the mic element and speakers. So once you can play split intervals clean and deep, you can apply controlled air pressure (throat constriction actually works best) and get some pretty interesting sounds. You can also vary the mic cup to change texture. Using different breath and mic technique, you can make the split intervals sound very sweet and clean or really distorted and wild, all of which will fit better on most material than the chords actually available on the harp. You've got to think out of the box a little and have a feel for what tonal texture fits with what the rest of the band is doing, but it's really not very difficult to do.

Btw, for grins you can play clean deep split intervals through a decent rotary sound unit, and you WILL sound like an organ.

If you play this stuff through some bullet mics or dirty amps, all you may get is a lot of indistinct dissonant shit coming out of the speaker(s). But using a mic with wide frequency response (like, for example, a 545, an Audix Fireball, SM 57 or 58, EV re 10 or 15, etc.) through a relatively clean to moderately gritty set up, it works well. Try it. You may be surprised.

JP



On Jan 20, 2009, at 5:44 PM, <venkyr@xxxxxxx> wrote:

If this was recorded by someone in that room, would you mind sharing with us? Thanks John!
www.myspace.com/harpdad




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