[Harp-L] Suzuki SCT-128 and jazz

["Jonathan R. Ross" <jross38@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is by no means meant to be an in-depth review, but rather a quick
note about a recent purchase.

I just received a Suzuki SCT-128 tremolo chromatic which I bought off of
eBay and I wanted to post my first impressions.

This is quite an interesting beast to say the least.  John Infande has
long made a tremolo chromatic, but the Suzuki is the first mass-produced
one, and has some obvious advantages in terms of overall shape and size
(Infande's play wonderfully and are typically excellent examples of his
craft, but he doesn't have the wherewithal to manufacture reeds and
reed-plates the way a major company like Suzuki does, otherwise his
tremolo chromatics would doubtless be less bulky).  First, the harmonica
is truly stunning to look at and to hold--the curved shape of the covers
is quite ergonomic.  Similarly, the fairly round profile mouthpiece is
quite comfortable with no sharp edges anywhere to create discomfort.
The slider works smoothly and effortlessly and the whole
mouthpiece/slider/slide-plate design is very well done and quite
airtight.  The tuning is not spot-on perfect in the sense of every note
having the exact same tremolo beat nor there being a perfectly even
ascension of speed.  However, that is not an issue because the tuning is
well within tolerances for practical usage in a celeste-type instrument,
where frankly perfection is a nice goal but doesn't really effect the
end result when played as long as the overall effect is not jarring
dissonance note to note, which the SCT certainly does not have.  In
terms of construction, this may very well be the best chromatic
harmonica I have ever seen outside of custom instruments and the very
high-end (Renaissance, Polle, etc...).

As for the sound, well, it is a tremolo chromatic.  The sound is quite
rich and lush while having the advantages of playing exactly as a
standard chromatic would.  Except that it is quite sensitive to breath
pressure in ways which a standard single-reed chromatic is not (or at
least in ways that tend not to be noticeable on a standard chrom).
Thus, if you start a note too hard or such you are likely to in effect
be bending the note.  Except, that unlike bends on a standard chromatic
or other single-reed harmonica, bending on the SCT has the effect of
damping one reed (the rear one, I believe) and thus negating the tremolo
effect.  This is quite a significant find, as given time and practice I
believe it would be quite easy to learn how to control this effect and
thus switch easily between a single-note sound and a tremolo sound by
employing the traditional bending techniques!  That possibility alone
should give anyone a lot to think about in terms of expressive and
dynamic variation within a piece: to be able to switch from straight to
tremolo on any note you want at any time you want.  

As an aside, this would probably be a great practice instrument to
eliminate sloppy technique in terms of note starting--I never realized
just how much I tend to overblow (literally, not the way most harmonica
players use the term) the start of notes on my chrom when switching from
blow to draw, especially when going from higher to lower notes.  The SCT
responds so quickly and with such a noticeable difference in sound
(tremolo verses straight) that it has alerted me to a major deficiency
in my chromatic technique right away.  A plus in my book, especially as
it will help my standard playing and also led me to think that this
could really be used to fully control the sound of the SCT in terms of
switching between tremolo and straight sounds.

A note on where I purchased this harmonica.  I bought it on eBay from a
seller from Singapore.  That was a chance, of course, but one which
turned out quite well and connected me to a harmonica enthusiast from
that country who is getting started in the harmonica retail business.
His name is Patrick Tan and his company is called "Reed Creations".  He
often offers harmonicas for sale on eBay, including ones such as the
SCT-128 which are hard to find or unavailable in the US.  Not only that,
but his prices are excellent, his communications top-notch and shipping
not only fast but gratis on my item.  His eBay name is reedscreationsg
and I would highly recommend him.  

So, that is what I wanted to say.  For anyone wanting a new sound for
their chromatic playing or to investigate a new instrument, the SCT-128
is well worth checking out.  I can easily see it fitting into many
styles of music, from French-tinged Jazz and pop to folk styles where
accordions are common (with their tremolo tuning) such as Tex-Mex,
conjunto, Cajun, Zydeco and many others.  I applaud Suzuki for making
yet another unique product and doing it at a quality rarely, if ever,
seen in a mass produced harmonica.

On a totally unrelated topic, I noticed these two quotes in the
archives:

Smokey-Joe said:
>were eluding to is modern jazz. In THAT idiom, you can do whatever you
want >to do, BUT (and a very big but), this is what killed jazz. Going
too far >out into orbit before your second stage afterburners have fully
ignited, >can lead to a premature loss of altitude and an eventual
crash. It doesn't >take a rocket surgeon to see it.

I would like to point out that, first, Jazz seems to be alive and doing
quite well lately, thank you.  Norah Jones and others have brought a
form of jazz firmly into the mainstream--Herbie Hancock has a CD on sale
in Starbucks!--and more experimental forms are actually thriving (see
the many mergings of Jazz and electronica now taking place, as well as
the revival of funk-based jazz and such).  Secondly, if jazz was killed
there are many who might argue that it was the hidebound traditionalists
who rejected new sounds, new styles and such who took the creative
energy out of the music.  In many ways it could have been argued that
jazz had indeed "died" in the mid-90's or so when it seemed to have
ossified into a single post-bop idiom.  But, the current scene actually
speaks to a thriving, non-classicized genre which is branching out to
find new ways of expressing itself.

Perhaps better for a jazz list, but frankly if we want the harmonica to
be accepted in jazz, then I think it would be better to look for it in
the parts which accept new sounds rather than the parts which only
accept what has been done before.  Which leads to the second quote:

Mark Russillo writes:
>More to the point, just last month, when Downbeat's reader poll came
out, I >looked at the categories like I do every year - vocal,
keyboards, sax, >trumpet, guitar - everything you'd expect - except
harmonica.  Oh sure, >Toots is listed as #1 in the Miscellaneous
category right above Bela Fleck >- but that's not good enough for me.  I
want us to have our own category!

To be blunt, a worthless goal.  It will never happen because jazz, for
better or worse (see previous paragraphs) is somewhat fixed in terms of
musical format.  Harmonicas, banjos, mandolins, ukuleles and other
instruments will never have as many players nor as central a role as the
traditional instruments of the medium: sax, trumpet, piano, drums, bass,
even Hammond and vibes.  One reason is that there will always be
hundreds of saxophone players who have a much easier "in" to the jazz
world than any harmonica player, even Toots.  Just like their will
always be hundreds of violinists to every Bonfiglio (and in both cases
I'm underestimating the number of traditional instrument players).
Musical genres have expectations, and what instruments are part of the
genre is one of them.  Every now and then a new instrument can come
along, but it is rare and usually takes a larger musical movement to do
it (such as the addition of mallet instruments to the orchestra in the
Romantic period, or the addition of the Hammond to jazz in the 60's
"cool" period).  Perhaps the harmonica will find such a thing onto which
it can piggyback into the jazz mainstream, but I doubt it.  Even though
the jazz scene is more varied than ten years ago, or twenty, it is still
one which tends to be slow to accept new things.  Synthesizers have been
used prominently in jazz for nearly 40 years, but last I checked they
almost always get pointed out as something alien in reviews and I didn't
notice a downbeat category for them.  If it took significant artists to
get them there, well, it's hard to be more significant than Herbie,
Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul to name three.  But they still aren't fully
accepted (let's see, with Wynton Marsalis as head of Lincoln Center will
there be a "fusion at Lincoln" program on PBS anytime soon?).

Much like the person who once expressed a wish to see a harmonica
section every bit as big as the violin section in orchestras, it is a
pipe-dream.  Perhaps a nice one, but no more than that.  I'd like to the
Cincinnati Music Hall rebuilt and the organ re-created as it originally
stood, but that won't happen either.  So, I focus on what can happen and
leave the dreams for sleep.



 oo    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
()()   & Snuffy, too:)
`--'