Re: [Harp-L] Irish/celtic harmonica



Winslow suggested not to limit yourself to listening to just harmonica players when you're learning tunes. That's good advice. For myself, I learned a lot from listening to players of the concertina which is an instrument very similar to ours. One recording in particular is Mary MacNamara's, Traditional Music from East Clare. (www.marymacnamara.com)
As far as good Irish harp CD's....Xavier Laune from the French group Distant Shores has just put out his second CD, Sunny School Street, which is very good with a lot of nice Irish harp playing. Xavier and his band are staying with me here in Chicago this week and we're having a helluva time! You can check them out at: http://jefperroy.free.fr/DistantShores_accueil.htm


cheers,
James
www.thesprigs.com

From: "Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  [Harp-L] Irish/celtic harmonica
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 17:18:18 -0000

--- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Blunt White" <playharp@xxxx>
wrote:

I am looking for suggestions on CD's to purchase so I can learn some
irish tunes.  Been playing blues for over 30 years and looking for a
new direction.  I have checked out Brendan Power's site.  Not sure
which CD to purchase.  I need an easy one to start with.  Any
celtic/irish style harp players have a suggestion?

==========Winslow says:

I made a similar transition and found a very steep learning curve, in
that the tunes do unfamiliar things with chords and note sequences
and do it all at a speed that in the blues only occurs in short
bursts and sometimes not at all.

Listening to CDs by artists like Brendan Power, James Conway, Tony
Eyers, Donald Black, and others will be very inspirational but may
present some obstacles for someone starting out on this path:

1) the tunes go by very fast

2) the note sequences - the kinds of licks used, if you will - will
be unfamiliar

3) Some of these players (Brendan, Tony) use special alternate
tunings.

Some suggestions:

Get Brendan's beginner book/harmonica combo. There may be a CD with
it. There's maybe a dozen tunes in it - not an overwhelming number.
Brendan is a guy who has been there, done that and gotten excellent
results and his advice is golden.

Lurk on some of the lists devoted to celtic, ITM (Irish Traditional
music), bluegrass, etc. and ask about (relatively) easy beginner
tunes. Most of these can be found on the web for free in notation and
MIDI format and some even in Band-in-a-Box format (BIAB generates
automatic accompaniment in the key, tempo, and style you dictate).

Many players of celtic tunes, fiddle tunes, etc., learn tunes at a
slow tempo first, then speed them up. This is useful when practicing
alone, but there are also sessions where people do this together. If
there is an Irish pub, fiddle club, or any other way that people in
your area gather to share these kinds of tunes, there may also be a
regular "slow session" where people get together for the express
purpose of working on playing tunes at a slow tempo. Get the tune
under your belt slow and you then have a basis for speeding it up.

Don't limit your self to harmonica players in your listening for
tunes and interpretation. They're relatively few in number in trad
genres while there are a lot of fiddlers, accordionists, and
whistle/flute players. You can learn from all of them, just like most
good blues harmonica players listen and learn from guitar and
saxophone in addition to harmonica.

Hope this helps.

Winslow




_______________________________________________ Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l






This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.