Re: [Harp-L] Quiet Progress

["John Kerkhoven" <solo_danswer@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tim Moyer writes:


> There are a bunch
> of up-and-comers who will pick it up while they're still beginners,
> and won't stop to listen to conversations about whether or not to do
> it, they'll just quietly master the process and move on.
>

He is spot on.

I'm taking a few lessons from a young guy here in Montreal (Pascal
Veillette) who is in his early 20s and as a suggestion for practice he said
I should try playing each major scale on a single harp, told me that he does
this by going up a semitone each time -- C scale, C#, D, Eb etc. -- and then
demonstrated this, running nearly flawlessly through the first half dozen or
so major scales, starting with C -- and pretty quickly too, I might add.
When he plays, he can move easiliy between scales and keys. I was reminded
of previous posts (iceman, I believe) where the message was: forget about
the positions and learn the notes. I was asking Pascal at one point where we
were, what position we had landed on -- we had moved from third to fourth,
but he said : D-minor, harmonic minor, don't think about the position. Learn
the scales, know where the notes are, and learn to move around the harp.
(That ain't the whole story about playing chromatically, but it's part of
it.)

It's a new world, friends.

The only thing I can think of for a good comparison is computers. When I
finished high school, the first Apple IIs were making their way into homes.
Now ... well just look around. It's not that computers are so wonderful and
great, but that youngsters are as at ease with them as I was (I'm 41) with
the telephone at their age. Getting a hanlde on a computer is not as easy as
learning to OB -- okay -- but a young musician interested in harmonica is
entering a world now where so much ground has been broken. Where will it
lead? Only time will tell. But the following is one indication.

I went to a show here in Montreal a couple of weeks ago. It was a benefit. A
local chromatic (and diatonic) player (Levy Bourbonnais) is off to South
America to teach underprivileged kids there how to play harp. At the show,
you could contribute $10 to buy a harp for a South American. The harps were
there -- you bought it and put it in a suitcase. (One of the less expensive
Suzuki's, in case anyone wants to know -- bought in bulk, and probably sold
on this occasion at cost.) A nice concept.

The show was remarkable. Bourbonnais played a set with another fellow on
banjo and guitar -- quite astoundingly, I might add. Then there was a harp
quartet including my instructor, Veillette, on bass and chord harp,
Bourbonnais on mostly chromatic, another fellow playing diatonic, and a
fourth guy blowing into a homemade instrument that looked like a small
barrel with four holes that provided bass notes. When they got going, they
cooked.

Later, there was a trio of Bourbonnais, Veillette, and a percussionist named
Ganesh, I believe, who could do more with a single hand-held drum about the
size of a tambourine than most people can do with a kit. Do I exagerrate?
Well, they played a pretty cool tune in some kind of 19-something timing
....

The evening ended with Bourbonnais playing electric chrom along with another
pair of musicians stepping in on standup bass and drums.

Who knows what kind of music people will be making with the harp in coming
years?

Looks like the sky is the limit.

Cheers,

John