Fwd: [Harp-L] minimalist riffs.

[Harp Explorer <harpexplorer1@xxxxxxxxx>]

In interviews, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull has talked about how he did
guitar riffs on flute.

I'd recommend playing along with what you like and getting it down cold
without having to think, and then branching out.

I learned harmonica from a guy whom I greatly admire, and I can do his
riffs and licks. (In fact, in my last lesson when he asked me what I
wanted, he filled the whole cassette with licks, and it was a great
encyclopedic resource for that style.)

But at some point when we were at a music party, my then-partner heard some
guy in another room playing in a style she had never heard before... and it
turned out to be me. She had only heard me practicing the one stuff, but
had never heard where it would go when i stopped just doing the rote
repetition.

There are many great resources for slowing down recordings. It's like
having that person at your elbow, showing you the notes.

Expanding it a bit further, if you want to be able to generate new ideas
rather than just parrot them, I highly recommend doing a search on the
chords for any given song. That will give you an idea of what selective
notes are being changed to get some kind of voice leading as the chord
changes, so you can understand the skeleton instead of just the notes.
Doing what with a song like "Slow Cheetah" might even lead to you
compacting those repeating figures into the first four to six holes, and
since you'd be doing "arpeggiated" chords and figures, you can do more
complicated accompaniments on straight diatonic harmonica.

Leaving the 4-hole solution to the side for those who are interested in
pursuing this even further, one of the more interesting non-harmonica
harmonica courses on this idea is "Funk Using it and Fusing it," a DVD by
Leo Nocentelli of the Meters, and the originator of that style of
syncopated funk guitar. Even if you just pursue his ideas by pulling
one-note lines out of the various voice sections he integrates into one
line, it's extremely funky.

To LA Short: There's no reason for you not to do this, and lots of
information out there to get you on your way. It sounds exciting, and I
wish you luck.

On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM, LA Short <lloyd.arthur.short@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> I'm looking to play some slow soulful blues using only the low end of the
> harp. nothing above hole 4. Anyone got any riffs they could share that
> would help me diversify my sound by losing less. I'm trying to do kinda
> what John Frusciante does on with 4 notes in a guitar but o a harp I stead.
> (Zephyr song is a perfect example of what I mean by milking minimal notes
> for maximum vibe)
> --
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>