Re: [Harp-L] Popping Popper popping

[michael rubin <michaelrubinharmonica@xxxxxxxxx>]

Okay, I am afraid to post this.

IN MY OPINION:

All three players, Ricci, Popper and Levy are great.  I enjoy them all.

When I listened to Levy's Bela Fleck music and some other music, I did
not think of him as a speed demon.  I was amazed by his ability to
play fully chromatically as well as musically.  Of the three, I see
Levy as the most innovative and musical.  However, when I saw him play
at SPAH a few years back, I was saddened by his incessant speed
demoning.  In nearly every song, including the ballads, he would play
2 nice notes and then blahblahblahblahblah.  When he explainjed his
speed tircks in his seminar, I was saddened to discover he was
actually using a technique that did not include any bending or
overblowing and was a breath pattern that gives the illusion of speed.

Popper has always seemed to me to be the victim of the high school
quarterback syndrome.   All the geeky blues guys who are so much
better than him cannot understand why he gets all the girls.  Popper
is very innovative and musical  and his sheets of sound really create
a feeling of rocking out.  Plus, I love rock and roll.  He is also a
great singer songwriter.  I have also heard him do very melodic music.
 Popper also gets credit for not being apologetic.  He is the speed
guy and he doesn't claim to be otherwise.

Ricci is to me the least innovative and musical of the three, although
I see him as one of the most innovative and musical harp players in
the world.  To me, Ricci answered the Popper-haters call.  What if
someone played as fast a Popper but played blues licks?
Jason does throw in some overblows with great tone and phrasing and
musicality, but basically he is a very fast blues guy.  See  my
previous email for all I admire about Jason.
Michael Rubin
Michaelrubinharmonica.com
On 7/23/09, Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> David -
>
> You're referring to what is often called mouth breathing. In medical-dental circles this just means breathing through your mouth instead of your nose, but harmonica players use the term to describe  pushing air in and out of your mouth with your tongue (and maybe jaw or cheeks) with your throat closed so as not to engage the rest of your respiratory tract. L D Miller and Toots Thielemans also use this technique for very fast runs. Obviously you can't sustain a note with it or create much in the way of tone (though, if you really worked on it, who knows?), but it can be very useful for lightning-fast passages.
>
> I've never used mouth breathing in my playing, though I've experimented with it a little. The difficulty I encountered was that with the throat closed off, the mouth shapes I was getting tended to either bend the notes down or blank them out - my close-ended oral cavity was acting like a tuned chamber that interfered with the vibration of the reeds. For me, the challenge would be to turn a closed chamber into a neutral one.
>
> Your observation on Jason Ricci vs John Popper is also astute. Jason consciously chooses and sculpts every note he plays, no matter how fast he's going, and I get the impression that he thinks first about the notes, then about how to play them (correct me if I'm wrong, Jason). Popper, when he gets going really fast, tends to play sheets of sound, where the overall shape and velocity are more important than the actual notes, and much of what he does is shaped by breathing patterns. Both of them tend to think diatonically - at least by the evidence of what they actually play - without delving as deeply into the underpinning of the harmony as someone like Howard Levy does. (Popper characterized this to me in our 1992 HIP interview, talking about how much there was to explore in the simple major scale.) But then Howard, while he can play fast, is not someone I'd characterize as a speed demon - speed isn't as important to his overall musical energy as it is
>  to Jason or to Popper.
>
> Winslow
>
> Winslow Yerxa
>
> Author, Harmonica For Dummies ISBN 978-0-470-33729-5
>
> --- On Thu, 7/23/09, David Fertig <drfertig@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I saw Jon Popper on tv some years ago and he actually played some blues pretty well for a few bars, but his BT stuff does nothing for me, personally.
>
> Now, a technical question: I saw a fellow once play some fast Popperesque runs and he wasn't using his lungs, but popping or pulsing air with his tongue to actuate the reeds very quickly in and out, is that how Jon Popper sometimes does his super-fast riffs?
>
> <snip>
>
> A recent screening of Pocketful of Soul "45" (pre-release sneak at 45 min of the eventual 90 min flick) had some comparing Jason and Popper, but to my tin ears I hear Jason play gobs of musicality in each passage, whereas in Popper I hear merely gobs of fast notes...
>
> <snip>
>
> But, is that tongue-pulsing technique for playing whole riffs at all common and does anyone do it with rich tone?  And anyway why does this technique seem cheap and gimmicky to me?   Am I really that hidebound?
>
>
>
>
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