Subject: [Harp-L] Never Call Out Stevie Wonder at a Blues Jam

[EGS1217@xxxxxxx]

Jonathan:  
 
That's a shame...I really feel for you, also being a big fan of Stevie's  
music.  I had thought he played that song on a chromatic.   Am I wrong?  So 
perhaps that was another possible reason it didn't lay  well...unless you were 
playing it on a chrom?
 
Elizabeth
 
 To Revolt is a natural tendency of life.   Even a worm turns against the 
foot that crushes it. In general, the  vitality and relative dignity of an animal 
can be measured by the intensity of  its instinct to revolt.  Mikhail Bakunin 
 
 
 
"Message: 1
Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 22:42:27 -0600
From: "Jonathan  Metts" <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] Never Call  Out Stevie Wonder at a Blues Jam
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID:  <001801c7a274$ede607d0$0101a8c0@JONNY>
Content-Type: text/plain;   charset="iso-8859-1"

"This was the valuable lesson I learned tonight.  I called out "Boogie  On, 
Reggae Woman", a funk in Ab with I-IV chords and a II-V  turnaround.  I sang 
the bass line for the rhythm section, and the  keyboardist knew it 
beforehand.  I knew the lyrics fairly well and had  a cheat sheet just in 
case.  I had practiced the harp solo and had it  down fairly well -- 4th pos. 
on a G harp because I don't own an Ab harp to  play in 1st like Stevie did. 
(My version sounds reasonably close to the  original because all those blow 
bends are still there.  You just kind  of move the solo down one hole on the 
harp.)

For all that  preparation, there were so many things wrong with the song that 
I should  have just called it off halfway through.  I forgot to write down 
the  chords for the chorus, so the band just played the head over and over. 
That  made my harp solo sound off-key, because it's based on the chorus, and 
it  probably was slightly off-key anyway because I'm a novice at 4th  
position.  The song has that I-IV progression twice, but I didn't tell  the 
band that, so the vocals didn't match up to the music half the  time.  The 
drummer didn't know the song, and I didn't describe the  percussion well 
enough beforehand, so there was way too much kick.  I  put down my bullet mic 
and played the harp solo into the vocal mic, which  wasn't set up for that, 
plus I'm not used to that style, so I couldn't  really hear myself playing. 
Also, we had no idea how to end the song after  everyone begrudgingly took a 
solo.

So there you have it.  Don't  try to play Stevie unless you have a band with 
rehearsals.  There are  too many things that could go wrong, and in a blues 
jam setting, the  non-blues chord progressions don't go over so well.

Jonathan Metts  "






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