Re: [Harp-L] What are YOU going to do about it?

["Tim Moyer" <wmharps@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pierre wrote:
> The harmonica is a limiting instrument when it comes to "Music" 
> (with a capital M), what piano player would play a piano with a 
> bunch of "missing" notes.

Harmonica is a funny thing.  Most of us share one important 
characteristic, that we became enamored with the instrument because 
we could be musically expressive with very little experience on the 
instrument, and with very little technical knowledge.  I spent two 
years drudging through scales and practicing fingering on piano when 
I was 10 years old, begging my parents to let me quit.  I took up 
harmonica because I could make "music" with it right away.  But like 
anything, "simpler" generally equals "more limiting".  

For those who stick with it, finding solutions to those limitations 
can be very complicated, and we end up doing things in a much more 
difficult way as a result.  Can you imagine any other instrument on 
which you would have to learn 12 separate note layouts, or use a 
half dozen "advanced" techniques just to play all the notes, not to 
mention all the alternative tunings, etc.  

Personally, I love the place I am with the diatonic harmonica.  It 
satisfies the "intellectual" part of my music when I'm working out 
which harmonica(s) to use in which keys and tunings and modes and 
positions for the changes in a given tune.  It also satisfies me 
emotionally when I've practiced something enough to just forget it 
and go with the feeling.  When it works, it's a beautiful thing.  
It's what any musician on any instrument wants to experience.  

I like to thinking of these things not as limits but as challenges.  

-tim

Tim Moyer
Working Man's Harps
http://www.workingmansharps.com/