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

["Bill Hines" <billhines4@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike, I think I know what triggered your response. The post bothered me
a bit too, although I bit my tongue and didn't reply until now. I worry
about posts like that because they can be quite discouraging to someone
new. So suppose this new guy hears that some other dude picked up a harp
and learned train time "entirely" in a week. And a month later this new
guy is slaving away and doesn't have it down. And quits out of
frustration.

Now suppose that the guy who made the boast had "poor memory" as we
(particularly I) do sometimes about our pasts. It's human nature to
embellish one's feats of long ago. And like someone else said, his idea
of learning the song may have consisted of a "close" (often
not-so-close) approximation which was good enough for him to enjoy,
whereas the newbie is a more neurotic type like me who will not say he
has "learned" it until he has the correct pitch/timbre/etc for each and
every note. Again, in either of these cases, it would be a shame to lose
someone who was excited to learn harp. 

As an example of this, back a while ago, I was told I'd be asked to play
with a band on "Move It On Over" and I asked around here and other
places for ideas, tabs, whatever. It was early in the game for me so I
panicked a little. A lot of people said they do it all the time and knew
it cold. When I asked for a short MP3 sample, nobody came through with
it. Then I got one from someone, and I was excited that I had a savior,
and this person who bragged the most about "knowing it cold" sent me a
clip that has not even close to anything in the song (even in the
improvisational sense). You could tell he was trying to do the melody,
but it was way off. Something similar happened when I was asking around
about the difficult runs in Popper's "Run Around". Lots of folks said
they knew it, some even bragged similarly about having learned it "cold"
or quickly, but none came through with a sample for me (and if you have
a computer, it's pretty easy to cut a short mp3 sound sample even if you
have a crappy mic on the computer). I wanted the sample to better
isolate some of the notes with bend-o-meter and slow-downer, whereas on
the "real" track that's difficult to do with all of the other
instruments involved.

So don't leave harp-l, just learn to maybe phrase things a little more
diplomatically even when people upset you and it's all good :^)

Bill Hines
Hershey, PA