Re: [Harp-L] Summertime on A Diatonic

[Mike Fugazzi <mfugazzi67@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am biased because this is largely my approach, but Winslow just gave the best advice ever on phrasing.  Learn enough about music to know what your note choices are going to be and then worry more on phrasing then specific notes.  Phrasing it was makes the great players great and the frustrated player frustrated.

I am by no means a harmonica stud, and I am at a time in my life where my time to expand on the insturment is limited, but the difference between me as a player my first year on harp and now (year six) is the phrasing.  The notes stay the same, the blues scale is the blues scale, etc.  But phrasing (and tone) are what make me better than before.  

Spend twice as much time listening to music than you do playing it.  Don't just hear it.  Listen to it.  

Mike Fugazzi

vocals/harmonica

"The Mike Fugazzi Band"

http://www.myspace.com/mikefugazzi

http://www.youtube.com/user/mikefugazzi





"Music should be healing; music should uplift the soul; music should inspire. There is no better way of getting closer to God, of rising higher towards the spirit, of attaining spiritual perfection than music, if only it is rightly understood."

-Hazrat Inayat Khan

--- On Tue, 9/30/08, mfugazzi67 <mfugazzi67@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: mfugazzi67 <mfugazzi67@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Fwd:  Re: [Harp-L] Summertime on A Diatonic
To: mfugazzi67@xxxxxxxxx
Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2008, 2:46 PM

--- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Winslow Yerxa
<winslowyerxa@...> wrote:

It was not only Miles' choices of notes, but also his choices of
silences between the notes - I think Iceman will agree on this - that
made his playing effective (same goes for harmonica players such as
Rice Miller, aka Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Jimmy Reed).

Sometimes when listening to someone whose playing you dig, and hoping
to emulate what they're doing, you may get more out of it by listening
to the phrasing, almost as if it were a speech heard from afar, where
you can't hear the actual words but are nonetheless carried along by
the cadence of the speaker's voice. Ignore the actual notes and listen
for where the phrase begins and ends, the direction it goes in, the
pauses and interruptions, how it launches and how it comes to a
conclusion. Once you get the feel of that, you can find your own notes
to create a similar expression, adapted to your "voice" and the notes
that work for you in the context of your instrument and the music
you're playing.

Winslow

Winslow Yerxa
Author, Harmonica For Dummies ISBN 978-0-470-33729-5


--- On Mon, 9/29/08, IcemanLE@... <IcemanLE@...> wrote:

> From: IcemanLE@... <IcemanLE@...>
> Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Summertime on A Diatonic
> To: wasabileo@...
> Cc: harp-l@...
> Date: Monday, September 29, 2008, 6:24 AM
> yes, yes. A lot of great inspiration can be had in
> transcribing Miles' solo
> on this cut and applying it to harmonica. You don't
> have to go for the
> complete  solo - pick out sections that move you. It was
> Miles' choice of notes and
> not  his quantity of notes that made a powerful statement.
>
>
> In a message dated 9/27/2008 8:32:11 A.M. Eastern Daylight
> Time,
> wasabileo@... writes:
>
> I have  been listening to Miles Davis "Porgy and
> Bess" and would love to
> incorporate  some of those ideas on the harp.
>
>
>
>
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--- End forwarded message ---