[Harp-L] Trust Your Ears!

[Kre Porter <hotreeds@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hellow Fellow Reedheads!


     I dropped by a mostly-rock jam at a local biker bar last night; I hadn't been there for awhile.
Now, like many of you ... I tend to give away harps to kids, and other unsuspecting souls.  Usually, these are Big Rivers, or such.
A couple of weeks ago, while in the Adirondacks, I gave away an F# and a B-harp.  Since I mostly play blues and since most guitarists avoid F# and D-flat is rare; imagine my Murphonic consternation when the guitarist calls the tune in F#!  Now I have been playing for 30 years and yet I had that same gut-twisting panic that I had when I was in my salad days!  I just took a deep breath and noodled (with one hand in my ear ... OFF-MIC!) until I felt it with a "C" harp.  Now I was able to lay an exotic, Middle-Eastern icing on the strange, snaky cake the band was baking onstage!  It worked well and I realized how limited the sonic palette can be with a diatonic instrument in the ubiquitous "cross-harp" (2nd) or "straight-harp" (1st) position!
     This was not the first time, by a long-shot, that I had ventured around the Circle of Fifths; I just wanted to remind US ALL to slow down, put away your papers and charts and trust your ears!  We all use electricity to power our amps and charge our batteries, yet no-one alive can define what it is!  We can talk about what it DOES, and how to channel or control it, yet it's nature is elusive and even the best scientific minds can't wrap around it too well!
You don't have to fully understand something to use it!  I hope this helps someone who is stuck trying to learn a technique, or master THAT SOUND!
It reminds me of the first time I was able to get a decent throat vibrato.  I had been TRYING for, like, EVER to do it.  I never really stopped trying, I just played on anyway.  Then one day ... BAM!  I did it for half an hour until I realized that it was IN THERE, and I would ALWAYS be able to do it AT WILL!

"We do, without doing and EVERYTHING gets done." - Huang Wun Reed (Famous Zen Harmonica master 1278-1320; C.E.)

Trust yourself, trust your ears.  Don't worry about what position it is!  Do you think about what position you're in while in bed?  Why think like that onstage?

"We all have a Divine right to make an ASS of ourselves now and then." - Harold Ashby; Harold and Maude screenplay, 1971

"Argue for your limitations, and SURE ENOUGH!  They're YOURS!" - Werner Erhardt

Res Ipsa Loquitor - Ovid

Have fun, kids!  Don't play your harmonica while driving; you might drop it and get car fuzz under your cover-plate.

Peace, Love and Easy Reeding! - Kre

 		 	   		  
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