Re: [Harp-L] When to Study What?

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Elizabeth Hess wrote:
<In my grand ambition to be a good and versatile harp player, I'm pretty 
<sure that I will do both -- overblows and alternate tunings -- 
<eventually.  But I would be interested to hear people's take on the 
<timing and sequencing  of these choices.  Overblows first?  Alternate 
<tunings first?  Everything all at once?  Forget all the fancy stuff for 
<a while (how long?) and keep hammering the basics?

If you practice enough, you could probably do all these things in a single day. How much time for practice do you have?  The most important thing to do first is to make a habit of playing as much as you can every day.  I would recommend recording your practice sessions and listening to at least some of the recordings to hear what you like and don't like about your playing, which will tell you what to work on next.

Some of these choices you mention above are not mutually exclusive.  You can hammer the basics with alternate-tuned harps, so long as the alternate tunings follow the basic Richter layout (in terms of where the scale tones are located), which makes it pretty easy to find your way around.  This is true of alternate tunings like country, natural minor, and dorian minor, and to a slightly lesser extent for Paddy Richter and Melody Maker tunings. In short, I don't think alternate tunings are necessarily "fancy".  As I said in my notes to this list from SPAH 2009, virtually all the pros I saw at SPAH are now using alternate tunings, and the Richter variations described above are a lot less radically different from standard Richter than a lot of the tunings I heard and discussed at SPAH.      

I don't think overblowing should be anybody's first step on the harimonica, though I suppose someone will give me an argument on that.  I think there are techniques that offer more musical capability that are easier to learn and apply quickly, e.g. breath control, chording and rhythmic tonguing, vibrato with hand, throat, and diaphragm, etc., etc.  There are plenty of great players who use overblowing very little or none of the time, but it's hard to think of a great player who hasn't mastered the basic techniques named above.

Regards, Richard Hunter
  

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