overblows

[Robb Bingham <robbingham@xxxxxxxxx>]

<I haven't played an out of 
<the box harp in years but if it came down to it I'm
<sure there are  several people that would have no
<problem ie: Howard Levy, Carlos del Junco,
<Jason Ricci, George Brooks, Rosco Selley....
++++++++++++

There have been several posts lately that might,
unintentionally, leave people with the above
impression.

Overblows, once you learn them, are easy, and Howard
Levy has no advantage over, say, me [a somewhat lousy
player- in the grand scheme of things] in playing them
on stock harps. They are almost EXACTLY like a kid
learning to whistle; once learned you wonder what the
big deal was. And, second, a harp either will overblow
or it won't. Levy has no advantage over anyone else.
What might SEEM like a skill/advantage is that, once
you know how to do it you have more confidence about
trying [inotherwords, I can sometimes get a #1 hole OB
out of an ~outofthebox~ harp that someone else
believes impossible, but once they see that it's
~there~, they can do it too].

But this thread starts to make me realize something:
Overblows might very possibly be doomed to
obsolescence and little more than headhunter trophies.
[I've deleted my eloquent arguments concerning
composition/inconsistency in gapping here. They'd just
spark debate over nothing :->]. Suffice it to say: So
long as each harp has to be individually gapped- we're
talking ~modifying the pick-ups on a stratocaster~
more than anything musical.

Not to discount the guys who have built careers
[musical and otherwise] on these modifications, but I
start to wonder at the artificial mythos surrounding
it. 

Consider this my gift to people working on ~acquiring
the gift of overblows~. It's much like making a
duckcall out of a blade of grass. A couple serious
hours lying in the grass and you'll have it. 
Robb


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