[Harp-L] re: The singing barbarian

[Jonathan Ross <jross38@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

All quotes are from Winslow's post (why doesn't my spellchecker  
recognize "Winslow"--it's a fairly literary name...stupid computers,  
programmed by twenty-year old's whose idea of the classics is a  
Trekathon...that reminds me, gotta set TIVO...:) :

"While intonation may or may not be a killer issue with playing the
diatonic harmonica chromatically, the issue of timbre deserves some
perspective."


Agreed.  That said, intonation is a very important issue, and often  
it has been the "killer" of some otherwise nice performances.

An aside (unrelated to anything Winslow wrote) because it's come up  
before.  The fretless bass does, of course, have intonation issues.   
However, the comparison with the harmonica is not a good one because  
of the range of the instruments.  Humans are much more forgiving with  
regards to bad intonation in the bass range than in the treble range,  
IME and IIRC.  I have a good example of this, but it's too in depth  
for the list, really--it would require a long explanation of pipe  
organs to begin with.  I think a better comparison would be between  
like-range instruments, such as the violin.  How important is  
intonation in violin circles would be of interest--and how important  
within various genres.  Back to Winslow's post:


"It's true that differences in timbre among bent, overbent, and default
notes cannot be entirely blended."


Glad to see we agree there.


"But does that invalidate their musical use?"


Of course not.  I have never argued in any way shape or form that it  
does.  Rather, I have argued it means that the issues of when, where  
and how they are used is of great import, and not something to be  
just ignored as if it doesn't exist.


"Not all music requires consistent timbre. Even in classical music,
music has been written to exploit timbral inconsistency."


True, but it's a huge field.  One of the trends of European art music  
over the centuries encompassed by the term "classical" was towards a  
smoothness and even-ness of timbre within instruments as well as the  
move away from instruments with large amounts of inharmonic sounds  
(bray harps and so forth).    So what works for a baroque piece in  
terms of timbre difference probably won't work for a high-Romantic  
piece.  Probably not coincidentally, another major trend was towards  
increasing chromaticism and harmonic complexity within a piece.


"In the early 19th century, trumpets and French horns were still
diatonic instruments with gaps in their scales. There were no finger
keys. All notes were produced by a combination of embouchure, mouth
resonance and breath pressure. There were wide gaps between the
available notes, and a scale was possible only in the upper registers.
For instance, on a C-horn (I'm not making this up, by the way) you
could perhaps play C, E, and G, but D and F were missing. "


True, and were thus used in limited contexts.  Look at the difference  
between what a Mozart expects from a horn than what a Wagner  
expects.  Both composed wonderful music for the instruments (well,  
significant--I'm not a Wagner fan), but the type of music was  
different and the instruments were used in different ways.  To me  
that seems a more germane point for this subject.


"However, horn players figured out that if you stuffed your fist in the
bell of the horn, you could change the pitch and thus get the missing
notes. <snip> Composers didn't sneer. They liked what they heard, and  
wrote music
that exploited the tonal contrasts. "


Right--they wrote music to exploit the differences.  Similarly, blues  
musicians wrote music to exploit those differences on the harmonica.   
But, that's not really the discussion.  The discussion is almost  
never about new genres and new musical style being developed.   
Rather, it's about playing in rather old genres and styles which  
already have a long history.  We're not talking about Ornette Coleman  
radically altering the conception of what music is, we're talking  
about playing the standard repertoire of things like mainstream or  
even post-fusion jazz.  Hell, even fairly "out" projects like the  
Flecktones and Trio Globo are still well within the norm of the jazz  
world (and, notably, I do tend to like how the harmonica is used in  
those contexts).


"(By the way, diatonic horn players did not show up for the gig with a
wagonload of horns in different keys. They had a box of crooks - coiled
lengths of tubing - that fit between the mouthpiece and the body of the
instrument. The crook would put the horn in the desired key.)"


A neat fact, which gets back to this issue: they could play more than  
just the normally available notes, but they chose to use crooks to  
match the instrument to the piece and vice-versa.  That's different  
from the idea that you can just play the diatonic "chromatically"  
without regards to position, key or anything else--again, what got me  
to write the aside that then started this thread.


"Blues certainly exploits dramatic shifts in timbre, and so does jazz,
though it also uses the smooth surface."


Agreed.  However, the key part is when you have those shifts and how  
they work in the song.  If you can't control those and ignore when  
they do occur, then the results tend not to work, IMO.  That's my  
point: not that you can't use the timbral differences between  
naturals and accidentals, but that if you don't consciously know  
where and when to put them, it's not going to work.


"Now, I'm known for trying to play ballads on a duck call, so you may
want to take what I say with a grain of salt. But it seems that if
there are multiple timbres associated with multiple note production
techniques, then why not embrace the fact and use it in a musical way?"


Agreed.  But that's not the same as the "chromatic diatonic" idea  
first proposed in this thread--to which I responded.  That idea was  
that there are no such timbre differences (to say nothing of  
articulation, phrasing and yes intonation).  The key phrase in what  
you wrote, as I read it, is "a musical way".  Of course, the  
definition of that differs for each listener, but unless it's even  
agreed that such issues do exist, how can they even be discussed?


"The result may sound barbaric, but barbarians can sing beautifully in a
barbaric way. That barbarism can be cultivated and refined while still
remaining barbarian."


I'm not sure what you mean.  If it's that you can find ways to use  
jarring sounds in context, of course.  If it's that you can alter the  
musical standards of genres to embrace such, well, probably not--only  
a handful have ever done that (Armstrong and Kirk come to mind) in  
any genre, and usually they were inventing or re-inventing the very  
genre itself.  Again, the discussion isn't really about radically  
altering the musical landscape a la Sun Ra, but rather working within  
pre-existing fields.  As I said before: if playing no natural notes  
in nth position is how one wants to play their own music, fine--if  
you can make it work, brilliant.  But, if you're trying to do that  
when playing over typical Rhythm changes, well...


"I agree to some extent with JRR that there's an element of wishful
thinking at times, where harmonica players engage in the fantasy that
fully chromatic playing creates seamless consistency of timbre. For
some purposes, it is desriable to smooth out the contrasts to the
extent possible. But it's even more important to acknowledge and make
use of the contrasts that inevitably occur."


Which is what I've been trying to say: to know when and where to  
emphasize, when and where to hide and when to simply avoid the  
differences in timbre and such when using bends and overblows to  
create the notes not inherently available in the instrument.  Thus my  
advocacy of not only those techniques, but also alternate tunings,  
harp-switching (of all types) and so forth.  I think that the more  
tools in the bag the more those choices can be made for musical  
rather than technical reasons.

Of course, we may differ on what the best choices are, but unless we  
agree that the issue even exists, then there's no grounds for  
discussion.  That's my main goal: to get the very issue acknowledged  
(again, unlike the part to which I responded casually).




 ()()    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
()  ()   & Snuffy, too:)
`----'