Fwd: re: goal: chromatic virtuosity

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Every key is capable of something that includes chord fragments and 
swing-ish, even Walter-ish phrasing. But it will be different for 
each key.

Of course, you have to get past the idea of wanting it to sound like 
a diatonic - it will a little bit, and with cleverness you can work 
any similarities that present themselves. But the chromatic has its 
own unique coolness - just listening to Stevie Wonder should be 
enough to quell any doubts.

Speaking of Stevie, his early strategy, from the evidence of 
recordings, seems to have been to find a way through the blues scale 
in C, using the slide and the draw notes, with ornaments that 
involved moving into and out of the blue notes (flat 3, 5, and 7 
compared to the major scale) either down or up from the blue note, 
depending on the opportunity that the slide-in notes presented. Then 
he adapted the same approach to other keys - G, E, Bb, F, whatever.

This is very different from the big-chord 3rd position approach that 
developed with Little Walter, George Smith, and others in Chicago 
blues. It's possible to meld the two approaches in third position, 
and some players do.

As you move into the sharp keys - G, D, A, E, B - you find more and 
more that you need to use the slide to RAISE the pitch of a note that 
would otherwise be a semitone flat. Listen to Little Walter doing 
this on Oh, Baby wil give you some ideas. This is sort of the 
opposite of raising the note to a blue note, though most keys will 
present both opportunities. This gives you a chance to jab your way 
into a note - approaching it from below with an ornamental gliss. 
This gives all sorts of opportunities in a bluesy context. A similar 
thing happens in flat keys - F, Bb, Eb, Ab, but it works out a little 
differently, as the scale notes you can slide up to tend to be 
the "structural" notes like the tonic and the 5th and 4th instead of 
the "modal" pretty notes like the 3rd, 6th and 7th. In both cases 
there are still opportunities to work the slide to do things with the 
blues scale and blue notes.

Here's what I suggest.

Start with a key, doesn't matter which one except perhaps in relation 
to your level of comfort and familiarity (be daring!). Get a backing 
track that plays simple 12 bar blues in that key. First, just ride 
the key note - A in the key of A, Db in the key of Db, whatever. Do 
it rhythmically and get through the progression on the home note. 
Make it swing.

What happens when you play that note and change the slide from in to 
out or from out to in? It might sound weird at some times and not at 
others, and some ways of phrasing the change rehythmically will sound 
better than others.

Then, start playing with the notes to the right and left, on the same 
breath. If you're playing in A and A is a draw note, play the draw 
note to the left and alternate it with A. Does that neighboring note 
sound better with the slide in or with the slide out? Does it sound 
better one way during one part of the progression and better the 
other way at another point? Try approaching the note with the slide, 
from out to in or in to out, whatever the opportunity happens to be. 
Can you work cool stuff with the slide without the notes sounding 
weird or not quite right? ALternate the key note with the neighboring 
note, and play with the slide. Do this for the notes on the left and 
on the right.

Now, find your way to the third note of the tonic chord - A major 
chord if the tune is in A major. How can you get from the home note 
of A to that note? Is it already one of the notes you've been 
playing? If it's awkward to get from the root note to the third, can 
you use the neighboring note you just played with as a stepping stone 
between them? Try all the slide in/out stuff, and alternating 
rhythmically with the home note. Try using this note as your new home 
base and alternate it with the holes to the right and left.

You get the picture - identify the important notes in the chord, play 
with each one and with its neighbors, exploring your slide options. 

For each chord in the tune, you eventually want to find the 
pentatonic (5-note) scale that goes with the chord. Like for C, it's 
C D E G A. C, E, and G, are the C major chord, and D and A are 
friendly neighboring tones. This gives you a grounding in feeling at 
home in that key.

Further steps are to build up a relationship with the blues scale and 
its surrounding notes, again for the tonic chord of the key (A for 
key of A, etc.)

>From there, do the same for the IV chord and the V chord in the key.

The above approach works partly on scale and chord materials, and 
partly on just rambling around the neighborhood and seeing what 
connects.

Sometimes it's worthwile to just ramble along the physical 
connections and not worry about what the notes "spell" in terms of 
scale or chord. What if the tonic note is a blow note with the slide 
in? Why not just keep blowing and moving up to the next hole then the 
one after that, and so on, in a long chain? What if you move the 
slide in or out - or both - while moving along? Come up with anything 
good? Sometimes you will. It may even be something brilliant that the 
logic of scales and chords might not have suggested.

If you know your chord theory, look for two-note chord fragments in 
the instrument that match chunks of the underlying chords of the 
tune. For any chord in existence, there will be at least one two-note 
harmony that will either be a part fo that chord, or fit nicely with 
it as some sort of extension of it. Chords might be in neighboring 
holes or they might be several holes apart and played by blocking out 
the intervening holes with the tongue.

This is not the approach of scales and arpeggios. Those help you gain 
fluency, but what I'm describing here lets you get the lay of the 
land in a natural way. This is the stuff that lets you discover the 
cool notes, and the ways of connecting the notes physically to make 
rhythmic phrases, and the slide ornaments and breath combinations 
that add up to relaxed phrasing, which is essential to swing.

Why not focus on one position for a few weeks? If you have chromatics 
in three different keys, so much the better. Explore that position on 
all three harps. This gives you more to work with when you go out to 
jam, so you don't have to say - "Sorry, this is my week for F#, so 
don't ask me to play in D."

There are several ways of adding new keys. One is to choose a closely 
related key that makes use of a portion of what you just learned. If 
you learn D, well, there is a G chord in the key of D and a D chord 
in the key of G - both keys contain both chords. So learning the key 
of G would make use of what you already learned in D. This will help 
with both keys because you'll learn even more about the G chord and 
you'll learn to see the D chord in a new light. These thigns will in 
turn enrich your approach to the key of D.

As for the keys that lie most easily - well, look at somene like Paul 
deLay, who can play idiomatic blues on one chromatic in various keys. 
He might play a C harp in D (3rd), Eb (10th), G (2nd), Ab (9th), and 
maybe even C (1st.) No big surprise that 3rd, 2nd, and 1st, and the 
positions that are raised a semitone from those, are the ones he 
seems to lean on.

As to thinking in keys instead of positions - it's not that big a 
deal. If you're going to play just one key of chromatic, why bother 
with position talk - you don't really need it. But if you're going to 
play chromatics in various keys, then position talk remains useful 
because D on a C harp, B on an A harp and G on an F harp all play the 
same - as 3rd position

Winslow

- --- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Marion.Spiers@xxxx wrote:
Well, sort of anyway. I want to be able to play in any key, but not 
buy a 
whole bunch of chromatics. What positions do you more experienced 
fellows 
find to lay out well for blues and LW-type-swing-phrased songs (and 
still 
have cool chords available)? I have a C and a Bb, and am 
experimenting 
beyond 1,2, and 3rd. I'm thinking I should be able to catch pretty 
much 
every key with maybe one more harp ( a G- cause everyone seems to 
wanna 
play in A minor at the jams- a G would make it simple). What's your 
take? 
I'd like to get to where don't even need to take a diatonic with me 
except 
maybe a couple like A and C for variety. Reason? I like the tone 
better 
with the chromatic, but don't want to sound too "square".  Any of you 
more 
serious chro' gents have some seasoned advice to set me on the fast 
track?

thanks,
kcmojo
- --- End forwarded message ---