What is harmonicky?
To be clear, I love the deep bends and alot of the sounds the
harmonica can make but it needs to be used appropriately.
To me harmonicky is over use of trills - Head shakes!!! , OBs when not
correctly applied - like "hey look, I'm an advanced player because I
can do and OB", Hand Tremelo, inappropriate use of hand wahs...
That deep throat machine gun style tremolo players use instead of
vibrato. Not being able to articulate notes and instead heavily
bending into other notes especially on hole 3. Honking and quaking
like a duck.
Then there is the severe lack of basic musicianship issues like
playing a maj 3rd over a min chord. Total lack of phrasing. Relentless
and meaningless runs up and down the harp that have nothing to do with
the energy of the music. Not making changes. Making all songs sound
like a blues song when its not a blues song.
****
Daniel wrote:
I have been following with interest this thread. I am from South
America ( live in Canada now) so I did not grow up listening to a lot
of harmonica, especially in the blues context. When I recently "
discovered " the harmonica it was those "harmonicky" sounds that
totally captivated me. Fell in love with it. Now I see that might not
be a good thing after all, LOL . Spent months of daily practice of
those deep bends, second position etc. But hey, I love it.
Anyways, I have question though . Why is it that most of the
exceptional players that have been mentioned, the players that are
taking the harmonica into classical music, jazz ,etc play for the most
part the traditional German Richter tuning ? It seems to me that this
tuning is not conducive to getting away from those harmonicky sounds.
daniel
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