Re: Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Train Time tab by CREAM... does it exist??? Please Help!!!

mjmeadors@xxxxxxx · Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:27:50 -0500

Elizabeth:

Thanks for your thoughts.  However, I think was I was reacting to was my perception of the writer's clear bragging on himself and name dropping.  If you listen to the song (which I hope you'll do someday), you'll see what I was talking about, in that, it is not something that someone with just a "good ear" will be able to pick up and play in a week, never having played harmonica before.       

However, as to why such a thing would bother me, I don't know.  Maybe it is a weakness in my own personality.  

You're right, he didn't say he mastered it.  He just said he learned it "in its entireity".  That, to me, however, means you've learned, at least, all the breaks and changes and accents from top to bottom.  It's a complicated 8 minute harmonica and drum piece.  If I say I've learned something in its entireity, I don't mean I just know what key the thing is in.  I mean I can play it dead on, very, very close to the original.  Maybe Doug's wording just threw me off and he meant something else.    

Also, I guess I just have the greatest respect for the real thing, and when I hear people (so often) make uninformed claims or put it out there that the real thing was something very simple to achieve, to me, they demean the artist or the piece and the effort it took the artist to develop that talent.  Take, for example, Sonny Terry.  There are plenty of people who think they have his thing down, but they are missing the nuances and the back rhythms, etc.  It's like someone saying, "oh, Sonny Terry, hell, man, I figured his stuff out in two weeks!"  Or someone saying about Jason Ricci, "geez, he just plays a bunch of fast notes, I can do that, what's the big deal?"  Why that bothers me, I don't know, but it does.       

All in all, Elizabeth from Scotland, I'm probably an ass for even bringing this whole thing up.  I admit that.  I'll take the blame and apologize.  Doug, you and me all share a love of the harp and we should always stick together and not attack each other.      

However, if, as you describe yourself, you were a piano prodigy at 4, maybe you and Doug should form a duo.  :)  Again, I'm being confrontational, so I'll just sign off and stop rambling and go learn Traintime in its entireity.  See you in a few months or more.

Best wishes -- (I mean that, not being sarcastic)

Mike
Gainesville

Mike writes:

"You mastered Traintime in a week as a rank beginner?  My guess  is that you, 
at least at that time, didn't know anything about playing  harp and like many 
before you (including myself), only THOUGHT you were  playing the licks 
correctly.  As you may know now, the more you play  and learn, the more you 
recognize critical nuances that set apart the  great players from the hackers, 
and 
you realize that what you were playing  previously WASN'T that wonderful as you 
thought at the time.   

Traintime depends not just on the chug-a-chug rhythm, but on many,  many 
accents shared with the drummer and the dynamics of the song.   THAT'S the song 
-- 
the two instruments.  Just doing the chug-a-chug  and the big draw bend on 3 
and 4 isn't mastering the song.  It's like  sayiing that because you know a 
few words in Spanish, you can speak the  language.  If you sounded like Jack 
Bruce in a week, I hope you  became a professional harp player and wrote a book 
for the rest of us for  whom learning such licks in their entireity might take 
more than one  week.  I'm not trying to be hostile or confrontational, but 
your  comment just struck me in a weird way.   

Mike
Gainesville

-----Original Message-----
From:  mjmeadors@xxxxxxx
To: Harpburns@xxxxxxx
Sent: Fri, 2 Feb 2007 5:16  AM
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Train Time tab by CREAM... does it exist???  Please 
Help!!!

"Wow, this thread brings back some  memories. Train Time is the first song I 
learned on the harp. It was  1971. I bought a harp from a friend for 5 bucks 
my 
senior year in high  school. I saw him a week later and had learned the song 
in 
it's  entirety. By the end of the school year I jammed with Barry Melton and  
the Fish on a cruise of SF Bay for senior grad  night.
Doug"

....I just reread the post to which you reacted, Mike...and nowhere  does 
Doug claimed to have "mastered" the song.  He said he had  learned to play it in 

a week.  He then went on to say that by the end  of his school year...he was 
jamming with friends.  I honestly don't  see why that would bother you so much? 
 I'm certainly no great harp  player, yet can hear a song and many times be 
able to play it in a day,  let alone a week...sometimes the first time out, and 
sometimes pretty darn  well...just as I did the age of 4 (that's right, 
FOUR)..when I played  Scotland the Brave (I'm Scots and was living there at the  

time) in it's entirety on my very first Harmonica, before I'd even  left the 
store.  Then I played every song that I knew (in my limited  4-year old 
capacity, 
of course). 

 I was able to do the same thing on a piano as well, the very  first time I 
sat down at one.   Didn't know the keyboard,  had no lessons, but was able to 
play tunes first time out.....some folks  are born with an "ear" for music.  
That doesn't mean they've  "mastered" all the nuances, the licks...the way the 
songs were played  by their original artists....and I don't believe he claimed 
he  did either.  His post was merely about his excitement  over the song and 
rather innocuous on the face of it, so your reaction  seems a bit over the top. 
 Didn't Winslow  respond to the  original query by explaining that it would 
make better sense to sit  down and practice learning this particular song (one 
I don't  know) from listening to it, rather than trying to tab it out?   Seems 
that's what Doug did.  Maybe he was an  exceptionally fast learner as a 
teenager?  Maybe I'm misreading  why you're upset.  It did read as possibly 
"hostile and  confrontational", but maybe Doug didn't take it that way, and it's  
not 
my place to interpret it as such.  Just my .02 cents and  IMHO (for the 
record).   :)

Elizabeth

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