[Harp-L] Bonfiglio Grand Canyon Seminar Report



I went and I'm still rotten at playing chromatic but through no fault of Robert's teaching and seminar. I learned a bunch and I continue to incorporate much of what I learned into my diatonic playing. Just the physical act of transcribing scales onto a page was extremely useful. Guess what? Robert employs tab. There are physically optimal ways of playing scales on a chromatic. There are also the enharmonics, the doubled c's and extra f's. Standard musical notation doesn't give you any indication of how to play these notes. You only see which notes to play and the tempo and beat divisions. Robert's tab lets you transcribe the breath direction and hole that a note in a scale will be played in.

People have said that this seminar gives you a lifetime of ideas and study and it really is true. Rob Paparozzi's day of instruction was especially helpful to me. Chromatic is such a different approach to playing music. The dearth of chordal opportunities is difficult for a diatonic player such as myself to adjust to. I think that people who started out playing single note in an overblow style would have a lot less trouble adjusting than I have. What constitutes good tone and how to achieve it are also completely different in diatonic and chromatic harmonica. I still struggle with playing good single note scales that don't sound robotic and have good tone. Lord help me the Bona Rhythm Exercises just arrived in the mail. Now I'm sunk for life. I will say this; the first half day of the seminar I was ready to head home. What am I doing here? I can't do this. I couldn't transcribe the scales quickly enough and I was always behind. Before we'd gotten to the lunch break I'd figured out the scales just go up a b c d e etc and all you need to know is the starting note in terms of its place on the ledger lines and how many flats or sharps there are. I'm sure this is all very obvious to most of you but it wasn't something I'd ever thought about as it pertains to harmonica. I did however get my revenge, when we moved to the rhythm exercises it all made complete and total sense to me and I watched as others in the class struggled. Which just goes to show you we all have something we can be working on musically and the learning process will involve a lifetime.

You could not ask for a better setting. Having lived a lifetime in Arizona I'd never spent more than a long day at the Grand Canyon. Being forced to spend a week there was simply a delight. Unlike any other harmonica event I'd ever been to spouses and significant others fit right in with the plan. It was nice to spend a day working on music and then walk out of class and hop a bus and go of hiking until dark with my wife. Not moving my car for the entire week was also fun. You don't really need a car at the Grand Canyon, the buses run everywhere and they run late, early and often. I also liked having only the short one day drive to the seminar, no jet lag and not being trapped in an industrial park strip mall seminar hotel slum as is often the case at other harmonica events. The food was still problematic but at least if you'd planned ahead you weren't totally stuck. Even the hordes over the Labour Day weekend were interesting. The many ethnicities posing for photos with the canyon as the backdrop. The one woman from the urban east practically running towards the east along the canyon rim, companion in tow trying in vain to get far enough back so she could see the sun set in the west. We've come all this way dammit! A lot of the Peggy Lee thing, is that all there is? It's just a big hole in the ground, been there done that. Plenty of people in awe too. The Pandora's moths on the side of the building we were meeting in. These giant dark moths, literally hundreds of them all clinging to the building in the mornings when we'd gather before the class. It turned out that this was a very special event, occurring only some 20 some odd years in interval. A case of being in the right place at the right time.

Many thanks to Clare, Daniel and Robert for a delightful week. Definitely worth the investment in both time and money. Initially I was puzzled when I learned that Slim Heilpern was attending for a second time. He'd been to the New York event the year before. It's especially confusing once you figure out what an accomplished chromatic player he is. Hi to Penny. Of course it all made sense at the end of the week. I too would do it all again in a heartbeat. fjm p.s. thanks to West Va Bob for encouraging me to go




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