RE: [Harp-L] Tongue Blocking?

["Bill Hines" <billhines4@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wow, I just listened and some of that sounds a *whole* lot like Jason
Ricci, particularly on his new album. Check out "Kick It" and "Going to
California" and tell me there aren't strong similarities (as well as
other songs). So does Jason have a Japanese nom de plume like
Rooty/Headley? BTW, Jason is primarily a puckerer (*please* let's not go
there again!). As far as the embouchure, I'm no expert like the others
on this list, but particularly in the beginning I'm hearing the typical
tongue-block techniques of slaps and chords around the single notes.

Anyway, if your kid likes this, definitely get him to a Jason Ricci
show, he's on tour around the US (www.jasonricci.com), he'll go nuts.
Get him the new album (Her Satanic Majesty Requests...) - the songs on
is sound much like this but some are very rockin'. Or have him listen to
some of the clips at the web site or better yet burn him a CD of the
full shows on www.archive.org. And get ready to start spending some $$
on harp stuff, but for a great cause, keeps kids busy. Good luck to him!

Bill Hines
Hershey, PA

-----Original Message-----
From: harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Bob Laughlin
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 3:42 AM
To: harp-l
Subject: [Harp-L] Tongue Blocking?


Anyone here ever hear of Nubuo Yagi, or Ryuichiro Senoo, of Japan? They
played harp for the band "The Seatbelts", a group put together for the
Cowboy Bebop series of anime (Japanese animation). 

My seventeen-year-old son has asked me to teach him how to play harp,
and he played a sample of these guys, and I'm teaching him all <I> know,
but I don't use tongue-blocking, just "pucker", except when doing
octaves, and from what I'm hearing, there's something they're doing that
cannot be done without using tongue-blocking techniques.

The cut I'm referring to is "Spokey Dokey", off the Cowboy Bebop
soundtrack album. 

My son created a link to it on his website. Here's the link:

http://dmlcomputers.com/soffish/misc/seatbelts-spokeydokey.mp3
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