Re: mic&amp

[Mike Curtis <wd6ehr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> >This is absolutely true.  If your acoustic tone stinks, you can't improve 
> >it by buying all the boxes and amps in the world.  If your tone is 
> >excellent, you'll sound great through anything - even playing with no 
> >hands in a bare rack.
>  
> This says it all. I have come to this conclusion myself. Only having two 
> solid years in as a harp player, I was at my mentor's place this week. He 
> has been playing for over 30 years and I was wondering about his killer 
> tone. We sat down and he walked me through it and I got it ! I was not 
> opening up my throat and lungs enough. First of all this guy is a tongue 
> blocker. The tongue block combined with a diaphragm vibrato makes all the 
> difference IMHO. I started drawing the notes from the diaphragm instead of 
> the mouth and throat and I can really hear the difference. And in this 
> business, if you have no tone you are dead in the water !
> I have an old ASTATIC (don't know the number but it had a metal handle built 
> in) and I could get decent tone from it, but my mentor friend got a much 
> better tone. I have seen the light !  I am a born again harp player ! All I 
> have to do now is really practice using the diaphragm technique and get this 
> down.

Thanks for mentioning "opening up the throat".  I have a couple of
students that will greatly benefit from this one suggestion.  When you
already do this without thinking about it, it's easy to take it for
granted. 

I prefer lipping to blocking (which I use occasionally for big blocked 
chords while doing lead lines) (but I also do leads with chords with 
lipping, by opening the left side of my lips - when I first learned, I 
had no concept of tongue blocking - amazing what we come up with out of 
ignorance :-), but again, so much of playing harp is personal preference, 
and if it works, it's "correct".

> Just thought I'd share this with everyone...

I for one am glad you did!  Thanks!

Although I'm new to Harp-L, I've seen a lot of good stuff here.  And I've 
also seen none of what I refer to as "musicians' ego", e.g. "I have to be 
right at all costs, even if I'm wrong" :-)  I guess one must be humble and
reasonably secure to want to play the smallest instrument in the band :-)

Keep up the good, helpful dialog.

-- mike curtis
wd6ehr@xxxxxxxxxx