[Harp-L] Bonfiglio Grand Canyon Seminar Report

[fjm <mktspot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I went and I'm still rotten at playing chromatic but through no fault of 
Robert's teaching and seminar.  I learned a bunch and I continue to 
incorporate much of what I learned into my diatonic playing.  Just the 
physical act of transcribing scales onto a page was extremely useful. 
Guess what?  Robert employs tab.  There are physically optimal ways of 
playing scales on a chromatic.  There are also the enharmonics, the 
doubled c's and extra f's.  Standard musical notation doesn't give you 
any indication of how to play these notes.  You only see which notes to 
play and the tempo and beat divisions.  Robert's tab lets you transcribe 
the breath direction and hole that a note in a scale will be played in.

People have said that this seminar gives you a lifetime of ideas and 
study and it really is true.  Rob Paparozzi's day of instruction was 
especially helpful to me.  Chromatic is such a different approach to 
playing music.  The dearth of chordal opportunities is difficult for a 
diatonic player such as myself to adjust to.  I think that people who 
started out playing single note in an overblow style would have a lot 
less trouble adjusting than I have.  What constitutes good tone and how 
to achieve it are also completely different in diatonic and chromatic 
harmonica.  I still struggle with playing good single note scales that 
don't sound robotic and have good tone.  Lord help me the Bona Rhythm 
Exercises just arrived in the mail.  Now I'm sunk for life.  I will say 
this; the first half day of the seminar I was ready to head home.  What 
am I doing here?  I can't do this.  I couldn't transcribe the scales 
quickly enough and I was always behind.  Before we'd gotten to the lunch 
break I'd figured out the scales just go up a b c d e etc and all you 
need to know is the starting note in terms of its place on the ledger 
lines and how many flats or sharps there are.  I'm sure this is all very 
obvious to most of you but it wasn't something I'd ever thought about as 
it pertains to harmonica.  I did however get my revenge, when we moved 
to the rhythm exercises it all made complete and total sense to me and I 
watched as others in the class struggled.  Which just goes to show you 
we all have something we can be working on musically and the learning 
process will involve a lifetime.

You could not ask for a better setting.  Having lived a lifetime in 
Arizona I'd never spent more than a long day at the Grand Canyon.  Being 
forced to spend a week there was simply a delight.  Unlike any other 
harmonica event I'd ever been to spouses and significant others fit 
right in with the plan.  It was nice to spend a day working on music and 
then walk out of class and hop a bus and go of hiking until dark with my 
wife.  Not moving my car for the entire week was also fun.  You don't 
really need a car at the Grand Canyon, the buses run everywhere and they 
run late, early and often.  I also liked having only the short one day 
drive to the seminar, no jet lag and not being trapped in an industrial 
park strip mall seminar hotel slum as is often the case at other 
harmonica events.  The food was still problematic but at least if you'd 
planned ahead you weren't totally stuck.  Even the hordes over the 
Labour Day weekend were interesting.  The many ethnicities posing for 
photos with the canyon as the backdrop.  The one woman from the urban 
east practically running towards the east along the canyon rim, 
companion in tow trying in vain to get far enough back so she could see 
the sun set in the west.  We've come all this way dammit!  A lot of the 
Peggy Lee thing, is that all there is?  It's just a big hole in the 
ground, been there done that.  Plenty of people in awe too.  The 
Pandora's moths on the side of the building we were meeting in.  These 
giant dark moths, literally hundreds of them all clinging to the 
building in the mornings when we'd gather before the class.  It turned 
out that this was a very special event, occurring only some 20 some odd 
years in interval.  A case of being in the right place at the right time.

Many thanks to Clare, Daniel and Robert for a delightful week. 
Definitely worth the investment in both time and money.  Initially I was 
puzzled when I learned that Slim Heilpern was  attending for a second 
time.  He'd been to the New York event the year before.  It's especially 
confusing once you figure out what an accomplished chromatic player he 
is.  Hi to Penny.  Of course it all made sense at the end of the week. 
I too would do it all again in a heartbeat.  fjm  p.s. thanks to West Va 
Bob for encouraging me to go