Re: [Harp-L] Reading Music, Different Key Harps (was "Re: A couple questions from a beginner")

[Bill <bill.eborn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

When I was playing a lot of jazz on diatonics - I did a full-time further
education jazz course using the diatonic the year before last - I found i
was doing most of it on a Bb which I found best for most of the jazz
keys and quite a few on a C harp and then there was the odd tune Wave for
example which is normally in D which I did on an A.

I found i was better at reading onto the C and Bb but I just couldn't get my
head around the A harp at all.  i found I generally used to learn tunes by
picking them out on the keyboard and then transfer onto the harp by ear
rather than reading them straight onto the harp but I'd use the chord
symbols when improvising but even though I was only a semitone away still
struggled with the A harp, so I'd transpose all the chords up half a step
and pretend i was playing on the Bb.

i did have a try at chromatic when i was on the course, after getting nagged
by the tutors but didn't take it up really seriously until after 2008 NHL
festival where I met Will Galison who totally knocked my socks off, so i
decided to really work at it.  A year later I played with my band in the
concert, footage here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVDCYg_56fE

Lots of work to do I know and before anyone says it because everyone always
does, I know my posture is appalling - I've been playing the harp for more
than 27 years altogether but mostly for myself rather than in public and
it's a really ingrained bad habit that I'm working really hard to address.

When I was on my course, one of things that the tutors really nailed into us
was the importance of being able to play evenly in all keys if you are
serious about learning to play jazz.  If you want to play jazz tunes like
All the Things You Are, or Desafinado or Cherokee for example, which i think
a lot of jazz musicians see as right of passage jazz tunes that you have to
be able to play if you are serious about it then you need to be able to
improvise in awkward keys.

The way I'm approaching this is not to think where the notes are but to use
a combination of my ears and muscle memory to guide me to the right places.
About a month after I started this really intense period of practice i spent
a week staying with a friend who at the time lived in a cave house with no
electricity overlooking the Alhambra in Granada in Spain, she was away
working most of the time, so I spent most of my time sitting on a bench in
the front garden looking at this amazing view, learning to play Fly me To
the Moon picking it out by ear in one key and then in a key a semitone lower
until I could do it in all 12.  I thought it was be a really good tune for
this as the melody starts by using a descending major scale and then changes
to the relative minor i.e C-Am, Bb, Gm etc

With regard to reading I also wondered if you might enjoy this youtube video
of an animated transcription of Coltrane's solo on Giant Steps which I think
really brings this alive.  I think it's also really good to listen carefully
to the chords at the same time as you watch the symbols pass by, to me it
really cements the sound of the ii V I chord progressions as the key centres
change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kotK9FNEYU
Bill