Re: [Harp-L] What's a scale really mean anyway?

["Splash" <celtiac@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "samblancato" <snip>
Blues harmonica, on the other hand, was something I could really get behind.
I could feel what I was playing and still can even though it's all by ear
now.  What an interesting schism.  I wonder if this is common among
musicians.

Sam Blancato, Pittsburg
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I started my musical career at about 4 when my grandfather gave me one of
his old banjos.  A Vega tenor open back.  I remember learning my first song,
I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf lover.  Out of a Mel Bay book, if I'm not
mistaken.  I got pretty fair at that instrument so much that I was invited
to the "musicales" that my Grandfather and his buddies held weekly in the
music room/hamshack.  I might have been about 6 then.  I learned songs such
as On Green Dolphin Street, Buttermilk Rag, Bill Bailey, Oh When The
Saints...

Then there was my very very short stint as a bagpiper... I joke that I had
to give it up for health reasons, they were going to kill me if I didn't
shut up with that damned thing!  But I digress...

In the early-mid 60's My Mom became friends with Les Brown and a number of
members of the Band of Renown and I got a great Jazz education growing up.
Les Brown's band was the house band for Jackie Gleason's show down in Miami
Beach and a number of the guys spent time at our house playing cards and
drinking etc. (quite a bit of etc. too, but I was supposedly too young to
know about that stuff.)  Also my Dad was involved in things that gave him an
insider's knowledge of when the greats would be in town, playing at either
the Fontainbleu on Miami Beach, or the Diplomat in Hollywood, and where they
would be playing afterward.  It was the era of segregation and these guys
weren't allowed in the front door of the hotels and had to stay across town.

So after the show they would go to the 'hood' to jam until the wee hours. I
was about 10 years old when I would sit in these smokey rooms with my Dad
and we would listen to Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles
Davis, John Coultrane, B.B.King and others that I can't remember.  I
remember Sammy Davis Jr. once playing cards in our back room with members of
the band.  Jackie Gleason would stop by on occasion.  That's what our house
was like back then.

I learned tablature on the banjo and guitar but didn't learn to read music
till I got to Junior High School Chorale and composing classes.  I learned
to sight-read too.  Then one day a family friend gave me a C-Melody
saxophone and I was in the groove.  I quickly picked up a flute and started
taking weekly lessons on both sax and flute.  My knowledge of scales and
modes previously learned in Chorale and composing classes allowed me to
rapidly progress to the point where I had a decision to make.  Was I going
to pursue a classical music career reading music from a piece of paper, or a
popular music career having fun?  The choice was easy.  I wanted to be a
Jazz musician.  Besides I was already playing by ear almost everything I
could listen to on the record player.

During high school I played 5-string banjo after switching from tenor, and
guitar for a few years with some friends and it was just natural for us to
start a Rock and Roll, Rythm and Blues band.  Actually, though I didn't
realize it at the time, we were a fusion band.  A fusion of Bluegrass, Folk,
Rock and Roll, Rythm and Blues, and Jazz.  We even turned a few standards
into Reggae when we felt like it.  By then a friend had turned me on to John
Mayall and Canned heat and I discovered musicians like Howlin' Wolf and
Robert Johnson.

Suddenly, that "toy" harmonica that I had been playing around with took on a
much more serious attitude.  One day I was goofing around and accidentally
bent the 3 draw and I was hooked.  In our band, two brothers played trumpet
and trombone and I played the sax and we worked out horn section
arrangements to all our tunes.  And when the time for the harp solo came, it
was pure improvisation.  That education really allowed me to understand the
horn hiding inside the harmonica.

The days of reading the music off a piece paper were gone.  I entered a
place of inspiration.  And that's the only way I can play now.  It comes
from somewhere else it seems, just flowing through me to everybody else's
ears.  And when I'm in the groove, there's no better feeling on earth.

I still have all that technical knowledge locked away somewhere and I
believe the understanding of the keys and modes and time signatures,
progressions, sharps and flats etc. are a valuable part of my musical
toolchest, and certainly help my songwriting greatly, but it's completely
under the surface.

I prefer to play every song from the heart, every time, instead of off some
written page.  Once I learn the tune, reading it off the page is just too
sterile for me anymore.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.  Doowop doowop doowop
doowop.

And although not everybody gets it, there are still people in the audience
who can tell when you're "givin' it up" and when you're "mailing it in."
And there are some times when alot less means alot more.  The trick is
knowing the diference.

"Sometimes nuthin's a real cool hand."  --  Paul Newman (Cool Hand Luke)

PEACE
Scott
Believe in Magic!