[Harp-L] Re: Booker T. Bacharach! XB-Melody Demos

["jazmaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmf273@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for listening Dave!  To me, the notable thing about both those pieces are the double-stops.
  The intro to "Hip-Hug-Her" for instance uses a double-blow-bent-double-stop to approximate Steve
Cropper's classic intro.   Only an XB would be capable of that.

"Hip-Hug-Her" is played in 3rd position.  3rd position on the XB-Melody gives you lots of
jazzy/latin-ish chord options for the blues and sounds nothing like 3rd position Richter.  It's a
really cool and unexpected bonus to the XB-Melody tuning.

The Bacharach mini-medley is played in 2nd position and again there are all sorts of pretty chord
fragments available,  especially when you hit the bridge of "I Say a Little Prayer". I do believe
that 98% of the Bacharach demo could even be played on a standard Melody Maker harp without the
extra XB bends so if you've got a Lee Oskar Melody Maker harp lying around, give it a try!   I
played it on an Ab harp which is why the XB sounds a little warmer.   Lower keys are definitely
the way to go with the XB-40.   But not too low or you'll lose control of the low end bends.