From Blues to Irish

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

- --- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "ChipComcast" <jandkday@xxxx> 
wrote:

  I would like to put it back on the Irish stylist.

  What can I do beyound the blues and try some Irish music?  I know 
about
Jimmy Conway & Brenndan Power.  I know they try to imiatate a fiddle 
and
songs are mostly in D and in 2 parts.

 But what else???

==================

It's not just fiddle. Accordion is also a great source for harmonica 
players. Diatonic accordions, widely used in Ireland, Quebec, 
Louisiana, etc. have a tuning very similar to diatonic harmonica 
Richter tuning and a push/pull system that coresponds to blow/draw, 
so much of what they do fits well on harmonica.

Reels, etc - let's just call it "trad" for simplicity - require a 
somwhat different skill set to what is required for blues. There's a 
lot more steady streaming of fast notes, there is more arpeggio 
playing and skipping around and of course ornaments of various kinds.

I'd suggest getting a metronome and use it to get up to speed on 
things like getting up and down the scale from Holes 4 through 10. 
Trad tunes often move at 120-140 beats/minute, with the melody having 
up to 4 notes per beat - a stiff clip if you're not used to it. Start 
by playing the scale going up and then back down, starting on each 
note in the range of Holes 4-10. Start at whatever speed you can 
comfortably and reliably manage, then work your speed and assurance 
up in little nudges. Along with straight scales, work on nighboring-
hole arpeggios, things like:

(holes numbers, same breath) 4-5-6-5, 4-5-6-5, 5-6-7-6, 5-6-7-6, etc.

5-4-5-6, 5-4-5-6, etc.

6-5-4-5, 6-5-4-5, etc.

Once you have a good command of those, try some of the skipping 
arpeggios:

6-4-5-4, 6-4-5-4, etc.

4-6-5-6, 4-6-5-6, etc.

These may benefit from double embouchure - cultivating the ability to 
switch between a right and left tongue block.

A huge amount of what you want to play will work most easily in first 
position. Some of it will require third, amybe fourth, and certainly 
some second as well, depending on the mode of the tune.

One piece of good news - if you have a good command of octaves, 
tongue-slaps and other such chordal tngue-blocking techniques, these 
can be adapted nicely to trad tunes if used with taste and discretion.

Once you have some of the techniques under your belt- or while you're 
acquiring them - find some books of Irish or Scots traditional tunes 
and learn some of them. If you don't read well, you can also check 
out the huge amount of ABC tunes online. ABC is a way of writing down 
tunes using only letters and punctuation. There are thousands of trad 
tunes in ABC format online and you can download them as MIDI files 
that you can play along with. You can also get software that will 
play back ABC tunes at any tempo and even in different keys. That way 
you can learn the tunes by ear. For more on this, visit the ABC home 
page:

http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/


Find out where there are slow sessions in your area. A slow sessions 
is where trad musicians get to gether to play through tunes slowly so 
as to get a sure footing before trying to play them up to speed. You 
can learn a lot at slow sessions in addition to just tunes - it's a 
hangout for trad musicians. You might want to go just to observe at 
first. That way you can find out what tunes are local favorites, and 
concentrate on learning some of them so that you have something in 
common with other local players.

There may also be local Irish or Scottish music societies. Even if 
it's something like a fiddle club, they may be open to non-fiddlers. 
You may have to negotiate your way past some anti-harmonica 
prejudice, but what else is new, eh? You may actually find that 
people are curious and open about the harmonica.

A few other trad harmonica musicians in addition to Brendan Power and 
James Conway:

The Murphy family - an Irish family of harmonica players who made a 
record on Claddagh that is something of a classic.

James Thurgood - a Canadian harmonica player on this list who plays 
Scots-Canadian tunes from his native Cape Breton. He recently 
recorded a fine CD which he announced on this list.

Donald Black - an excellent Scottish player with a couple of very 
fine CDs out.

Mark Graham - an old-timey player from Seattle who has recorded trad 
with Irish fiddler Kevin Burke and with Open House, along with his 
own American old-timey records.

The French-Canadian connection - French Canadian trad is based on 
Scots and Irish but with its own wild twists, and some excellent 
harmonica players (and accordionists and fiddlers). I'd recommend 
visiting the Virtual Gramophone at the National Library of Canada, 
which has a couple of thousand old 78rpm records online in mp3 
format. Look for players like Louis Blanchette, Henri Lacroix, 
Adelard Saint-Louis, and Mary Bolduc for harmonica players - and 
that's just scratching the surface of the music.

http://www2.nlc-bnc.ca/gramophone/src/home.htm

I can't empahsize enought that listening to just harmonica players is 
too limiting. Listen to whatever music is available in the tradition 
regardless of instrument. Let it seep in, then find ways to let it 
come out through your insturment. Sometime the right instrument will 
be a standard diatonic. Sometimes it'll be a Hohner tremolo or maybe 
an Asian tremolo (different tuning), or even a chromatic or a country 
tuning.

Winslow