Re: [Harp-L] effect patches and their relative level

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Hale wrote:
<... my "Lee Oskar"
<doubled horn sound is an octave down mixed about 60% with original pitch.
<Nice at home. Get's a little lost in the club. Other than volume, what
<could make it "bigger?"

The difference between playing the sound soloed at home and playing it in a club is that in a club other instruments are fighting for the same frequency range.  So other than turning yourself up, the only other option is turning every other instrument that's fighting for the same frequency range down.  

When you play an octave-down patch, you're in the same frequency range as the high end of the bass guitar, the low end of the electric guitar, the snare drum, etc.   Whatever is loudest in that range is going to cut through.  Whatever's less loud won't.  This is why Little Walter's guitarists learned to play their chords low on the neck.  Walter's amplified harp sat mostly in the midrange and up.  If his guitarists had been in the midrange and up too, the harp would have been buried.  (Of course Chicago blues, like any fully formed ensemble music, offers many object lessons in how to position the instruments in specific parts of the full frequency range for maximum aural impact.)  

There are a number of videos on my site at hunterharp.com of performances I did in the last few years with a trio led by Brian Maw consisting of acoustic guitar, djembe (hand drum) and me on harmonica and Digitech RP355.  The sparse instrumentation left an enormous amount of space for the harmonica, and I could use just about any sound I wanted without getting lost.  Man, was that fun.  It ended when Maw decided he had to add a full drum kit and a bass guitar to the group, which made the sound of the band bigger and (unfortunately) much more conventional. It certainly forced me back into a much more conventional harmonica role, because a lot of the frequencies I previously had to myself were now dominated by drums and bass.  

In my solo performances with looper, I assemble sets of sounds for every song, and then I adjust the EQ for those sounds to make sure that there's not a lot of overlap.  The principle is the same: spread the frequencies between the instruments so every one of them can be clearly heard.

In case anyone is interested, here's a link to some of the work I did with Maw.  You can clearly hear how the sparse instrumentation of the band leaves lots of space for new and different harp sounds.

http://www.hunterharp.com/when-you-open-the-door-to-a-new-sound-new-functions-walk-through/

All that by way of saying: if you have to fight for a given frequency range, try to be the loudest thing fighting for it.  Or find a different range to fight for.  (Or fire the freakin' guitarist.  Whatever.)

Regards, RH

author, "Jazz Harp" (Oak Publications, NYC)
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