[Harp-L] Harmo Torpedo

[Leonard Schwartzberg]

Dee;   I had to smile as I read your short letter.   Although I don't particularly enjoy to play Casper, FredFl, nor Mary had....... I sort of play with similar thought.   I concentrate on Blues and enjoy playing  the Bent Notes, enjoy pretending that I've Got Rhythm, and pushing passion, style, and groove into some simple passages.   I love to watch Harp players play, thinking that I'll learn by not only listening, but by watching and duplicating their styles and nuances.   Jason Ricci is definitely a Harp hero of mine.   Wish I could play even one note similar in sound to his ☹     Thanks again.   Leonard 

-----Original Message-----
From: flyingv8 at xxxxx [mailto:flyingv8 at xxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 12:04 PM
To: Chris Hofstader <cdh at xxxxx>
Cc: harp-l at xxxxx; Leonard Schwartzberg <Leonard1 at xxxxx>; dh at xxxxx
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Harmo Torpedo

Hi Chris! I like to listen to some You Tube but I really hate watching harmonica players play. I actually minimize the screen and just listen! One thing I do is try and play a song by memory. There are so many like Old McDonald, London Bridge, Pop goes the weasel, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and tons more. I know it seems silly but I actually consider it a real challenge to play Mary Had a Little Lamb with passion and style! Playing the simplest of tunes in different places on the harp is really fun and it is a challenge. I also have a CD of Televisions greatest hits, The Flintstones, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Gunsmoke, all the classic theme songs that I try and play along with. It's a riot!
Dee
---- Chris Hofstader <cdh at xxxxx> wrote: 
> Hi,
> 
> I really liked the post you sent in response to Leonard’s query. As I’ve said on the list before, my goals are fairly modest, I want to play basic blues and blues-rock and I enjoy jamming on 12 bars with a acoustic guitar player while hanging out in the park or, as we did yesterday, in the courtyard out back of a cafe we enjoy on Haight St. in San Francisco.
> 
> What I especially liked about your post was it’s emphasis on the value of song craft. I’ve a terrific instructor (Tomlin Leckey) but I tend to ignore his lessons showing how to play songs or parts thereof and focus almost exclusively on technique. My rhythm is pretty solid, I can hit all of the draw bends and most of the blow ones, I have all sorts of articulations I use but ask me to play a super simple tune that isn’t mostly parts of the blues scale and I’m at a total loss as I’ve zero of such memorized.
> 
> Tomlin has some lessons that teach songs (I’ve been playing around with his “Watermelon Man” lately and finding it pretty hard which is both good and bad: I love challenges but I’m hoping to learn some simple things so as to be more musical when playing alone), I’ve found a few YouTube videos that Gusso has on his site that look like they’ll be useful in this pursuit but I was wondering if you could suggest other YouTube guys whose stuff I could use to compliment my practicing technique with doing the same for songs? If I find an YouTube lesson useful, I always go to the instructor’s web site or Patreon or whatever and send a few bucks to help support their work. I send Tomlin much more than a little donation every month but we do two private Skype lessons per month as well.
> 
> As I said at the top, my goals are pretty modest. I’m a career software guy so playing harmonica is a hobby and I don’t want to turn it into an enormous use of my time but I do want to sound more musical as just running up and down scales and hitting the right chords in a 1-4-5 is getting kind of boring for me.
> 
> Thanks again for your terrific post to the list, reminding me to ask what my goals are will lead tony learning more and different things.
> 
> Thanks,
> cdh
>    
> 
>


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