'Willow Weep For Me' - Getting Through The Bridge

[Bill Houle <saxandharper@xxxxxxxxx>]

So I finally got around to working on the bridge for
Willow Weep For Me. The A section is in G and 2nd
position works well. However to get through the bridge
in 2nd position I needed the 4 overblow to play the
melody line. So I?m working on that but I?m also
considering switching harps.  To avoid overblows and
keep it in the lower register of the harp a D, Eb or F
seem like they will work. Haven?t really worked with
each one enough to see which sounds best, but they all
require lots of the bends on the 2 and/or 3 draw.
Challenging in it?s own way but not as daunting as the
4ob.

I did it the brute force way, looked at all the notes
in the melody and then looked at where they showed up
on each harp. Anyone have easier ways to do that?  

It seemed to me that the whole process would have been
easier if I understood where the tonal center of the
bridge is. Is there a way to do that? I imagine there
are some standard forms but I?m clueless. I took every
note of the melody used in the bridge and treated it
as the I, then looked at where the rest of the notes
fell into that scale. Seemed like Cm made the most
sense and it is a chord that shows up a lot.

Which got me thinking about learning (or relearning in
my case) to play harp. Rather than thinking I?m going
to do a blues in 2nd position, a different way to
think about it would be the I is in 2nd position, the
IV is in 1st and the V is in 12th.   Seems like that
would help in modal playing as well. I?ve also noticed
when the tunes get jazzier 12th position is used a
lot.  Since the ii V I is likely in play that would
put the I in 12th, the V in 1st and the ii in 11th
position. I?m going to have to check that one out,
11th is totally alien territory at the moment.

Another one of those ?if I could do it all over again?
moments. If you started out learning all 12 positions
you could look at any song and translate the chord
movement into a map of positions once you decide on
which one lines up with the I chord.  Even without
overblows you would at least know which notes still
fit, or when switching harps would make sense. 

Bill H

P.S. If anyone is interested here?s a link to the
chords
http://mapage.noos.fr/realbook/RB/Willow%20Weep%20for%20me.jpg


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