Re: [Harp-L] Re: Dynamics

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Bonfiglio wrote:
> Turning the volume up on a mic does not give
> you the same excitement as playing with power and then having soft
> nothingness in the high register.  The difference in volume in your
> playing makes the music exciting, i.e., dynamics are very effective
> but if you can not play loud, they go away.

This is not really in response to Mr. Bonfiglio's post, as I know nothing 
about gapping, at least as it applies to dynamics.  But I think dynamics is 
a subject worth discussing.

I recall being so excited by the wide dynamic range of the Renassance 
harmonica that Doug and Bobbie invited me to test drive.  Made me wish I 
was a chrom player and that I could afford to buy that wonderful instrument.

The dynamics on the Suzuki Firebreath are significantly more detailed than 
on any other diatonic I've played, though they are not within miles of the 
Rennie.  I have found either four or five clearly different dynamic states 
on it, and I practice jumping between them every day.  I use the Irish 
fiddle tunes in Glenn Weiser's wonderful book for that purpose.

Four or five degrees of loudness are actually alot for me, considering I 
absolutely never play any music with dynamic markings (I never play any 
music with any markings, as I don't read it off a page in the first place) 
and use dynamics in what would be an awfully primitive fashion by the 
standards Mr. Bonfiglio sets.

But I use them.  Using them and thinking about them alot has taught me to 
play the middle dynamic by default so I can go up or down one or two 
notches at will.  I love going down one notch in the middle of an 
improvised line.  It changes the focus like the light in the room changing 
when a cloud goes over the sun outside.  I believe that it forces the 
listener to listen more closely, and there are infinite dramatic uses for 
that shift.

When my mother-in-law died my wife asked me to play her mom's favorite song 
at her graveside.  "Lara's Theme" or the theme from Dr. Zhivago.  I do not 
ever recall liking that music, but I like my wife, and liked my 
mother-in-law, so there was no question that I was going to play the 
request.  When I learned the tune on my lil' chromatic I started to like it 
pretty quickly.  It is nowhere near as square as I had thought it would be, 
and its very simplicity offers amazing phrasing opportunities.

About three hours before the funeral I sat by myself in the Houston 
backyard of a cousin-in-law, lingering on the question of how to play this 
tune.  I had to practice it, first off, dozens of times, because as simple 
as it is, I wanted it to be mistake-proof, and I was not playing my native 
instrument.  As I kept repeating it, I started monkeying with the dynamics 
and started to get a picture of the dramatic structure that the piece was 
going to have.

And then, about an hour in, I found myself crying.  I missed my 
mother-in-law, but I wasn't crying for her.  I had found a dynamic sequence 
that really told a story, a very sad one.  Pretty much by accident.  I had 
never made myself cry that way before.  I tried the same dynamic sequence 
and it made me cry a second time.  I did it over and over, and finally was 
practice Not Crying more than anything else.  And it was hard.  But the 
revelation was just how automatic it all was.  Play song with this dynamic 
sequence and you will cry.

Texas people, at least my wife's people, are not big funeral criers.  But 
when I played it at the gravesite it caused people to sob, and for the 
people, most of whom I did not know, to treat me like some unearthly being 
who could make them cry with a harmonica.  I think a number of them weren't 
all that close with my mother-in-law and were pretty mystified as to why 
they were crying for her.

By that time it was entirely mechanical on my part.  It was like following 
a paint color recipe at a hardware store.  Not that I wasn't moved by the 
situation and the music, but I was actually more moved by the technical 
revelation at that point.

On the subject of changing your dynamics with the mic, I am glad as hell to 
be in agreement with RB.  Moving in and out of a mic, for instance, doesn't 
just change the loudness of your playing, it changes the eq noticeably, and 
that can be really unattractive in the studio, and much less effective than 
using your diaphragm to change your loudness when you're playing 
live.  With the exception of home concerts I never perform in any situation 
where I do not use a mic, though I consistently try to present an acoustic 
effect.  I come closer to achieveing that effect when I'm careful to keep a 
constant distance from the mic and vary the dynamics with my diaphragm.

K