Introducing myself...

["Keith Freeman" <keith.freeman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

May I introduce myself? I'm an amateur jazz guitarist in Holland who has just taken up 
chro (bought my first instrument a few weeks ago) in order to have an instrument I can 
play sustained lines on and add another colour to my jazz quartet from time to time.

I'd never played any kind of harmonica before, and I was put off straight away by the 
inconsistency of solo tuning (particularly the need to go into reverse on hole 4), so I 
decided to try diminished layout, which seems ideal for jazz (and Brazilian) music. 

While waiting for my new Hering 64 to return from a professional retuner (should be 
back any day now) I bought myself a cheap Swan 10-holer and managed to retune it 
myself - it's rough, but it works well enough for me to start learning the notes and 
patterns.

Am making reasonable progress so far. I know more or less where all the notes are; the 
main difficulties are the ones I imagine anyone starting chro from scratch would have, 
namely coordinating blows and draws with the slide, hitting the holes cleanly etc.- in a 
word, physical coordination. I realize I just have to tame my impatience to be playing 
real music and practise slowly! The tuning itself, though, is living up to its promise of 
making all the keys equally easy (or difficult ;-} ). The other night I tried playing some of 
the bossas in the Aebersold Jobim volume in the transposed keys for Bb and Eb 
instruments and found they weren't any more difficult to play (just more difficult to read 
when you start getting into 5 sharps...).

- -Keith Freeman

jazz guitar stuff, including clips at:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/keith.freeman/