Harmonica Thinking

London Harps Event: Steve Wes Weston workshop May 9th

The long time running London Harps meet-up is continuing to put on the occassional workshop and event.  Paul Lamb played for the group last year and just last month American harp player Adam Gussow put on a workshop for delighted fans.

We plan to have some wonderful players appear during 2012 so join us on Facebook and check our blog for updates and to connect with London Harps members. For example, we have just announced that we are hosting an event with American harp legend Joe Filisko in October. So don't miss out if you are in or near London. 

On May the 9th at our new home The Blue Posts, we will be putting on a workshop and performance by Steve Wes Weston and Paul Garner. The big toned Mr Weston is a master of Chicago and Swing blues styles and is considered by many as one of the best players in the world. He is not more widely known outside the UK as he has never released an album.

Event details on Facebook 

Steve plays everything tongue blocked so players interested in that style and big tone should not miss this chance to hear the man up close and to ask him questions about his approach. Paul is no slouch either on the guitar, blending blues and jazz styles to compliment Steve's playing. Hope to see you there! 

Here's a clip of Steve playing in case you're not familar with his music. 

Practise and Play Draw 3 Bends

I've added new tutional videos to both my Critical Bending Exercises and Tongue Blocking series on YouTube.

The two videos are related and provide a way to  practise and then play the first 3 notes on draw 3. I start with a couple of exercises in this video. I have found these useful in developing my own bending techniques and still practise them regularly today. They are deceptively hard to get right. The variations allows you to add more compexity to push yourself.

 

Then I take the idea of moving through the first three tones of the draw 3 to make a 12 bar progression. The bends are anchoured by a simple counter point riff.

This head can be played tongue blocked or lip pursed, however, this is part of my tongue blocking series so the idea is to play the 3 notes on the draw three all tongue blocked. If you can, you are well on the way to being able to utilise tongue blocking to its full potential. Another couple of benefits of this tune are that it  shows how you can emphasise chord changes using particular notes of the parent chord and demonstrates how a note's role changes depending which chord you are on. For example, the draw 3 half step bend is the minor third on the I chord but becomes the dominant 7th on the IV chord.

Either way, this is a cool, cheeky and horn like sounding head that's fun to play.

 

 

Throat Bending

Last Saturday I had a bit of a video tutorial spurt and posted 3 to my YouTube channel.

I want to start with this one which uses whistling to help explain how to start bending notes using the throat. Trying to explain how to bend is notoriusly hard, I certainly struggle. Things get even harder when you get the nuances of the technique. So I'm pretty chuffed with the whistling analogy I discuss in this video (perhaps up there with my feather glass analogy for tone) . No doubt someone somewhere has used this before but I have not come across it before.  If you have no idea what throat bending is or you've wanted to try it but can't seem to get going with it, then this video might help.

Being able to throat bend is a useful thing to be able to do whether you are lip pursing or tongue blocking. Why? Becuase it powers the bend from deeper within your anatomy and helps avoid the sound thinning out. I hear this particularly when people try to play half step bends on the draw 2 and 3 which requires greater accuarcy then say cranking the note all the way down on the draw 4 or draw 2.  On the half steps, there's a tendancy to panic and say "this bend requires more control therefore I must use my lips more". When you do that the sound thins out. Keeping your "bending engine" stable and powering pitch variation from the throat will help you when you what to keep you tone phat and warm. Which for me, is pretty much most of the time.

You will sound like a complete weirdo doing this exercise but give it a try and please do let me know if the analogy is useful!

Lee