Re: [Harp-L] Over Blow Survey

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Robin Willis" 
<I was listening to some Coltrane last night.
>And somehow realized after all these years that on a lot of the atonal stuff
>he was really just noodling around with what a sax can do. It was instrument
>driven. Technique driven. It was licks. 

Um, no, it wasn't.  

When Coltrane got to the atonal stuff, he had already taken the tonal stuff as far as he could.  On "Kind of Blue," you can hear him systematically exploring scale after scale.  It's not noodling.  It's not technique driven.  It's idea driven all the way.

The ideas aren't the kind of ideas that you and I come up with.  But that's the difference between you and me and Coltrane, and I don't mean that in a disparaging way.  He was an artist, he thought in a particular way, and he had the technique to express what he was thinking exactly.  It's different from a lot of other people, but most people never push it as far or as hard as Coltrane.  You may not like it--plenty of people don't, and I can see why. It's not always a lot of fun to listen to.  But it's as far from noodling as you can get.

Regarding overblowing, it's like any other technique.  You use it to express certain ideas in a particular way.  Some people use it more effectively and/or extensively than others.  It's not much different in that regard from anything else you can do with a harp.  At this point, most pros use overblowing at least some of the time, even if they're not making a big deal out of it.  I certainly hear it on Jellyroll Johnson's latest CD, meaning that I hear notes being played that couldn't have been played any other way.
 
It's always a drag when people lead with their technique instead of their ideas.  But it's not the technique at fault when that happens.

Regards, Richard Hunter
latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp