Re: [Harp-L] special 20 problems of my own


----- Original Message ----- From: "samblancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 12:52 AM
Subject: [Harp-L] special 20 problems of my own


Hi Folks,



I've been playing special 20s for about three years now, slowly moving away
from my Suzukis, GMs and Blues Harps. Up until now I've had no problems but
as of late I've gone through 3 A's, a G and a C, first by flattening out 2
and 4 draw and then having those same reeds break so that I've had to
replace them. With the G I've gone back to my Golden Melody and it seems to
be holding up better. But since I've been doing a lot of third position on
the G I'm getting that weird chattering vibration on 3 draw wherein a deep
bend seems to shiver and chatter. What can I do about this?

Sam, this usually occurs for most people on their bends because this usually where most players REALLY play those almost two to three times harder than unbent notes, and so they lose control of their intonation and articulation, and playing that way puts a boatload of stress on the reed and most bends really don't need the extra force to make it happen.

As for Bob's comments about playing too hard, well, he's probably right but
it's hard to tell if this is in fact what I'm doing. I've been playing Kim
Wilson's "Low Down" and I'll be damned if I can see a way to play this song
softly and get the tone I want. Sure I could soften up on my draws but the
song would loose all its' balls. Having said that, I really would like to
learn to play what I want to play with less pressure and as I'm sure you all
know it's really hard to do.

Most of the time on that tune and for much of his playing, he's NOT playing very hard at all, but some notes are being played a bit harder (BUT not by very much) for emphasis and tone color variety, much like the way George Smith taught him and something I used to see Big Walter Horton do all the time. This tends to come to light more on the 3 draw bend. Also bear in mind that he uses custom Marine Bands from Joe Filisko (which are $95 a pop), and they do play considerably louder and are far more responsive than anything off the production lines, which allows him to use 50-75% less air pressure than what he used to do with the out of the box stuff he once played before he started using Filisko customs, and even before that, most of the time he didn't play very hard at all. Most of the guys that have a wide range of tonal colors and dynamics like both Walters as an example actually play considerably softer for most of their playing than most people believe, and for most of the great players actually across the board usually don't play most of the time very hard either, with a few notes here and there. The single best example I can think of for learning breath control just for learning tone control, dynamics alone was Big Walter's original recording on "Easy" that he recorded at Sun Records studios in the early 50's.

Another song I've been obsessed with as of late is Little Walter's "Last
Night". I'll play this short solo perhaps 40 or 50 times a day. Really. I
often play it at lunch or in my truck out in front of the coffee place I
stop at in the morning. I urge you all to listen to this song, if you have
it. This is one of the most challenging solos I've ever worked on. You
CAN"T play it hard and have it come out right and yet there is a combination
of throat vibrato and laughing vibrato here that is just excruciatingly hard
to do softly. L.W. plays this song in such a subdued way and with such
control! As I practice it I'm struggling to have the LV and TV work
together and I can feel the back of my throat and soft pallet at the
entrance to my nasal area stretching to get that constant quivering drag he
puts on the whole thing - It's really amazing how hard this to do. Or is it
just me? Any way, playing this solo really exposes the whole soft playing
issue. As I said, if any of you guys have a copy of this song (it's on "His
Best" Cd) listen to it carefully. If you play it hard it just turns into a
completely different song.



Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh

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