[Harp-L] Fw: Ideas about sounds

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been thinking a lot lately about sounds.  I've said on more than one occasion that a great sound is a great sound forever, and I still think so.  

I've also realized that every sound reflects a number of factors that are very era-specific, like the human environment the artists and audience live in, the contemporary technology of musical instruments and recording, the vocabulary of dominant artists within popular and other styles, and so on.  A sound stands alone, but it also stands as a representative of the time and place in which it was created.

What this implies is that musical sounds in general evolve as the factors above do, and every sound is eventually perceived as being reflective of a prior era and style(s) in which that sound was created and refined.  In country music and blues, this is used to artistic advantage--traditional instrumentation and sounds establish an emotional link to the past while the subject matter evolves.  

When sounds are new, they get a lot of their emotional context--the context that provides meaning for a listener--from the scene in which they appear.  In other words, every sound represents and evokes a scene, like Chicago circa 1952, or Vienna circa 1926, and each scene has its own emotional context.  People seem to be able to respond emotionally to lots of different sounds--as different as Nine Inch Nails and Muddy Waters or Penderecki and Bach--but if a sound isn't part of a scene or style that you're really into, you may have trouble finding the emotional context.  As, for example, lots of people on this list have struggled to understand the emotional context for John Popper's work, which is very different from the emotional context and musical vocabulary of blues. The net result is that it's easier to make a new sound than to make it part of an emotional context that people easily understand and appreciate.

Electronics are an increasingly common denominator for a lot of human activity, including in particular musical activity, and I believe that for the harmonica to be associated with this era in the minds of audiences and musicians, the expression of music via harmonica must include a wider range of electronic sounds. Plenty of people disagree, and they're welcome to do so.  I hope they continue to make great music, for my sake as well as theirs.

All change produces conflict, and there's one false conflict that must be addressed here.  Discussions of gear on this list lately tend to provoke comments about  "manufacturing" sounds with electronics, which is beside the point.  The fact is that every sound made with a musical instrument is a "manufactured" sound, every piece of gear that a musician carries on stage is part of the "instrument", and no instrument ever is the ultimate means of expression, any more than a single song sums up all human emotion.  Every generation has its own technologies, and applying those to the instruments that make music is as natural as music itself.  Jimi Hendrix was a masterful guitar player, but he also spent a lot of time learning to "dance" on his pedals, as he put it.  There's nothing in one approach that precludes the other--nothing in any gear that prevents the user from mastering EVERY aspect of the instrument, provided that the musician is willing to put in the time that mastery of a complex instrument takes.  Indeed, we could argue that musicians like Hendrix whose approach includes masterful playing of a physical instrument as well as masterful manipulation of electronics are doing something more complex and difficult than a musician whose approach is completely "acoustic."  (It would be false--there's nothing more complex and difficult than pulling off a great performance with nothing but an acoustic instrument in your hands--but we could argue it.)

I've spent a lot of time developing electronic sounds to make it easier for harmonica players to experiment with new technologies, and I will continue to do so.  In 2010 I also expect to perform with a band structured around electronic harmonica, and I'll post as frequently as possible to show the results.  

Happy Holidays everyone, and may we all find our muses to be generous with inspiration in 2010.

Regards, Richard Hunter


author, "Jazz Harp"
latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp
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Vids at http://www.youtube.com/user/lightninrick