[Harp-L] OB's/Intonation

[<alliance@xxxxxxxxx>]

Wow . . . looks like I'm back just in time for the 'fun' stuff . . .

 

After perusing some of the comments . . . I think my good friend Rosco makes
a worthwhile point in that instruments like trumpet are and always have been
rife with 'intonation' issues . . . Does that mean that you as listener like
to hear them when they happen???  I, for one, am not particularly enamored
with bad intonation from a trumpet, or any other instrument. But when I hear
them, I put it into context of what the player is trying to do etc. . . .
and sometimes it ain't no big deal, and sometimes it is . . . 

 

Now, addressing my good friend Chris' throwing out the tired old "you can't
do it" challenge . . .c'mon Chris,  that's not necessary, helpful, nor
addresses the point . . . I think we can all agree that an ugly overblow is
no more useful than any other flat or badly intonation-ed note . . . 

 

My 'opinion', and I stress that it's my opinion only, is that improvising on
the diatonic is ongoing work in progress, and each and every one of us that
is attempting to do it has to deal with the reality that it sometimes is
going to present 'issues' . . . I think it's fair for listeners to decide
whether or not it's their 'cup of musical tea.'  

 

But at the same time, comments like the original poster's suggesting that a
player should just play a chromatic or a piano pretty much miss the point .
. . If "I" (for example) wanted to play or 'hear' chromatic or piano on a
particular piece, then that's the instruments that I would choose.  The
diatonic, however, is a completely different instrument with a very
different 'emotional' range . . . and if we as a community going to want to
express a certain piece in that emotional range, then we're going to have to
continue to try to address the 'issues' that are out there to address . . .
which sometimes will result in less than optimum results . . . 

 

Trust me, if Howard Levy wanted to sound absolutely gorgeous, playing all
sorts of very ambitious music on diatonic, absolutely flawlessly . . . he
could do it . . . Howard, whether you or I like it or not, however, is one
of those people that absolutely refuses to accept barriers, and he
relentlessly challenges himself to play ever more challenging pieces in
harmonicas keys that are ever more impossible to pull off . . . 

 

He, like the rest of us trying to incorporate the 'overbends' (I prefer
Winslow's term), is a work in progress, just as Louie Armstrong established
to the trumpet-playing universe that you could play lyrically in the high
registers etc etc, so Dizzy could, many years later, deal with all sorts of
'intonation' issues as he attempted to improvise in unheard of ways on that
very same instrument in those previously impossibly unattainable registers.
. . 

 

Comments???

 

Regards,

 

Paul Messinger

Chapel Hill NC