Fwd: [Harp-L] Corner switching, Toots, and Stan Harper

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Stan Harper at this year's SPAH will be worth watching in this regard.
While not normally thought of as a jazz soloist, he is plenty capable
in improvising over popular material. When I saw him at SPAH a few
years back I was floored by the phenomenal technique he brought to
bear on what he played, and how musical the results were.

Some of the statements TOots has made seem to indicate that he thinks
of himself as someone with relatively little instrumental technique -
he just puckers up and either whistles or plays harp. Within those
confines, I think he sees his achievements as finding what works in
terms of harmony and phraseology (rhythm, articulation, accents, and
phrasing) on the chromatic in the jazz context. I think this is one
reason he is reluctant to discuss harmonica technique per se and will
deflect the conversation to matters of scale and harmony. 

Toots sort of finds the path of least resistance in terms of the
physical aspect of playing the instrument - he sort of hugs the lay of
the land without plowing out hillsides, boring tunnels, or throwing up
bridges - someone like Stan Harper does all these things. It doesn't
add up to anything that will wow an audience looking for amazing
stunts. What it does do is give him a phenomenal command of tools that
allow him to explore more possibilities that would otherwise
physically be out of reach.

The combination of Toots' creativity and Stan's technique would be
even more awesome then either of these guys on their own.

Winslow

--- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Bonfiglio <bon@...> wrote:

Since I studied with Chamber, who taught me corner switching, I happen 
to know that neither Adler, Reilly or Sebastian used corner switching 
in their playing to any extent.  They all jumped.  I will corner switch 
hundreds of times in a single Harmonica Concerto movement.

The only new part of this is I have developed a technique to tongue out 
of both sides of my mouth while using corner switching.  This technique 
keeps the notes in tune even in the high register where tonguing tends 
to bend the pitch.

The big question is - Do I believe that one should corner switch in 
jazz?  Absolutely!  I play blues harp going back and forth between 
tonguing and spit position all the time.  I even sometimes use switch 
corners on blues harp.  What's the big deal.  When you need to leap, go 
out of spit and into switch corners and back to spit. You can learn to 
do leaps over the corners like D-G-D-G-D-G by going left to right then 
up left to right then up left to right.  You can also play A-D-A legato 
by going left to center to right.  Don't get caught in dogmas.  If you 
learn both spit and tonguing, you can play back and forth for different 
passages and you expand what you can do on the harmonica.

Toots uses whistle or spit position only, but in the 70's when I was at 
his apartment, he noticed that I used switching on some passage and 
commented how legato it was.

Our job is to pick up where these guys leave off and go the next step.

Harmonically yours,

robert bonfiglio


>
> <Unless Robert has come up with a radical new variant of this (which
> <he may have, he has certainly become a master of the technique) then
> <I don't know why you would label tongue-switching or corner-switching
> <as "Robert Bonfiglio's corner switching technique".  Larry Adler,
> <amongst others, was known to have used tongue switching and it has
> <been a regular feature of the classical tradition for decades, since
> <before Robert was born.
>

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