My thanks to all of you who took the time to critique my renditions of "How Can I Be Sure". I think I learned a few things from my admittedly flawed experiment.
First off, I regret that I didn't choose a blues as my first demo of the Powerbender tuning. Most people are understandably more interested in knowing how the Powerbender might be applied to their bread and butter blues tunes than to some obscure 60's ballad!
And if my rendition of the tune was flawed, its not fair that people's first impressions of the Powerbender be tainted by that. So my apologies to Brendan.
Secondly, a few people have commented on my tone, or lack thereof in that video. Given that I've gotten very good feedback on my tone in my other YouTube vids, I have to wonder whether the model of harmonica itself (not the tuning), is at least partially to blame. The Powerbender comes on a Suzuki Harpmaster and this was my first encounter with that particular model of harp. I like the sound of some Suzuki's - the Pure Tone especially. But the Harpmaster - not so much. Sounds kind of harsh, thin and metallic in that video and maybe that's partially my own fault, but my other diatonic videos use Seydels and to my ears, those Seydels sound more mellow and warm.
Lastly, I just want to thank you all again. I really don't mind being criticized,
especially by the likes of you all! Harp-l has such an enormous wealth of talent. Being able to get pointers from you all on the nuts and bolts of playing is what makes this place great in my opinion. It's the same spirit that pervades SPAH when I can sit down with somebody like Jason or Rob and ask them directly what I'm doing right or wrong. SPAH only comes once a year, so in the meantime Harp-L is the next best thing. I encourage others to post their own experiments too. I'm always trying to push the envelope on what kind of material our instruments can take on. Sometimes I may not succeed, but I probably learn more from my failures than my successes.
--Jazmaan