[Harp-L] David Barrett's Harmonica Scales

["samblancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Merx wrote: "In response to the thought of a scale being worthless, I
beg to differ. That
is like saying that a Piano does not need the black keys or pedals unless it
is part of an orchestra. Scales are the music. Use of scales does, as wild
bill hines mentioned,encourage muscular and mental growth in your search to
be a better harp player."

 

John, I didn't say scales were worthless.  What I said was that presenting a
plethora of scales without a context is pretty worthless.  You might like to
simply play scales as scales but I think most people want a context.  We
harp players are in the particular situation of getting two modes,
mixalydian and Dorian, so engrained in our heads that it becomes difficult
to even think of other modes and/or contexts for playing them.  This may be
easy for you to do but I am willing to bet that 99 out of 100 harp players
would like some exercises wherein different scales are presented in context.
So, for example, a song is played first. Then a harp solo in 2nd or 1st
position is laid over it.  Then a different scale is used to show how that
scale might be used.  This way, the player has something familiar with which
to compare the unfamiliar.  That is how learning takes place.  

 

If you can take the raw tonal information that is a scale and, by knowing
the key of a song, infer it directly to that song or progression then you
are much more of an analytical musician that most harp players.  I can just
barely remember playing Trombone in High School band and being able to sight
read music. We'd have to play the relevant scale for the songs that teacher
handed out as a way of priming us for the practice of that song.  This seems
to be the kind of approach you're talking about and that's what most
students do when they go to music school. 

 

But most harmonica players come to their playing proficiency by a more
instinctual and auditory rout (tab players not withstanding!).  This is
partly because of how the instrument is built and what you have to do in the
way of bending to get a workable set of notes, and partly because of how
most of us come to this instrument.  I doubt anybody anywhere was ever
afforded the opportunity to sign up for harmonica in 5th grade and then got
out of class for 35 minutes a week to sit with an instructor in the music
room for their weekly lesson. That's sort of that classic approach to
learning a musical instrument.  It's really standardized and you can predict
how a student will come to a skill set and how their understanding of music
will play out, given that path.  But it's one way only.  What you have in
the real world is tons and tons of people who have learned their instrument
that way and then a whole crowd of harmonica players who have come to their
relationship with their instrument in much more esoteric ways and by
esoteric I really mean esoteric- by their own individual path.  When you
want to teach people a new thing and you aren't sure how they came to know
what they already know, you present that new thing in the context of what
they already know and let them connect the dots themselves.  This isn't an
inferior or stilted way of learning, just a different way.  

 

I was a teacher for a couple of years and my degree is in education.  When I
got my degree "learning styles" was just becoming accepted in the mainstream
of education and it was all the rage.  What I got out of it is that there
are lots of different ways to learn things and that there isn't a "best"
way. There are auditory learners, tactile learners, visual learners etc. I
think that much of the difference in opinion on this list about the
usefulness of music theory comes out of differences between the more
analytical learners vs. the more instinctual ones.  I would even go so far
as to say that a greater percentage of harp players, as opposed to other
musicians, have some degree of ADD. I know I do.  

 

Any way, I blathered on about this log enough and some shiny something or
other has caught my attention now so... Later.

 

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh