Re: [Harp-L] re: Les feuilles mortes -- playing correctly

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

I agree that not doing it because you "can't" is lame from a musical
standpoint and doesn't help with the public perception of the
harmonica. (Although it can be fascinating to hear how players of the
diatonic accordion and the 9-note Scottish and Northumbrian bagpipes
sometimes both simplify and compress melodies to fit their instruments.
A tune can be very changed and yet remain recognizable.)

At the same time, it often does make musical sense to get rid of
unimportant and fussy details and focus on what is really important in
a tune, and the greatest interpreters seem to have a wonderful sense
for this. Louis Armstrong was known for taking good tunes and making
them great by simplifying and thereby strengthening the melodies. This
is completely aside from his gifts as an improviser. The great
embellisher was also a great de-embellisher.

This sort-of-middle ground between delivering the melody as written and
either totally it dumbing down or running off into improvisation is a
good area of study for anyone who wants to be a convincing interpreter
of melodies.

Winslow

--- martin oldsberg <martinoldsberg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> For a good long while I thought I played "The shadow of your smile"
> correctly (no quotes), but no, I did not. I cheated, unknowingly.
> (Played in 4th it requires a whole note on a hole 1 OB, if I memory
> serves, which most of the time is out of my jusrisdiction.)
>     No crime. But sometimes (diatonic) harp players -- fo reasons to
> well known -- avoid certain notes: not for embellishment (cf. Miles
> D) but "just because they can´t". 
>     No crime therein either, but I´d say -- and I may come of like a
> busybody here -- that it´s not a bad thing to learn how to play
> "What´s new" more or less as it´s written, before entering on
> improvisations. 
>    
>     A diatonic player I heard who did "Stardust" without the third
> note, 1st time in the refrain ("Sometimes Iii ...), came of bit
> crippled just because of this tiny admission. It probably influenced
> me that I knew the reason (tricky OD hole 7), but nevertheless, the
> tune demands that staircase (b-c-c#-d). These kinds of omissions also
> reinforces, among those with musical interests, the wide-spread
> impression that the (diatonic) harmonica is not a real instrument.
> (Therefore anyone who can make a convincingly un-Dylan like sound of
> it is immediately hailed as a "virtuoso". And, I may have said this
> before, pardon, I once read a critic who considered Bryan Ferry a
> "harmonica virtuoso" ... This virtuoso thing is the tail side of not
> recognizing the instrument qua other "conventional" instruments.)
>     
>     Learn the tune and then improvise, would be a good general rule
> to the aspiring player. Not written in stone, of course, the point is
> to make something that sounds, interesting, beautiful or whatever is
> yr aesthetic.
>    
>    But I gotta disagree with Iceman here, in an amiable way, I hope:
> there is a non-subjective dimension to music (most spelled out in
> what we call classical: improvisations on, say, "The moonlight
> sonata" could force you right off the stage in certain contexts) that
> is in no conflict with interpretation/ improvisation. 
>    I´m aware that here is a distinction between pedagogics and
> performance. But not to put to much of a spin on it, would a, say,
> two note performance of "Autumn leaves" really be a performance of
> "Autumn leaves". (In A min, shift between E and F, that could get you
> through the chords, I think.) There is some sort of continuum here
> where it drifts away from "Autumn leaves" to something akin to "Based
> on ´Autumn leaves´. Even in jazz most players feel the need to state
> the melody at least once, pretty much as it´s written.
>    
>     In "Autumn leaves", omitting the raised 4th has no considerable
> effect on the melody, as Winslow´s examples convincingly demonstrated
> and I thank him for that. However, my petty remark at the outset was
> prompted by another Yves Montand version spinning in my head where he
> does sing it the other way, I´m pretty sure, but as I said then (I
> hope): no big deal.
>    
>      And yes, Miles plays "Autumn leaves" just great. If required he
> also could have played a Lawrence Welk version of it, maybe in his
> sleep. (He would not have done it awake.)
>     
>     It´s a very beautiful song, one of the all time best, where
> perhaps Johnny Mercer´s translation doesn´t really catch the elegant
> sentimentality of Prevert´s original lyric ... but that´s for another
> list.
>    
>   Martin
>    


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