Month: March 2007

Harp Tab How Do They Do That? 

Orange Blossom Special – Charlie McCoy [..with tab]

The Good Doctor 24 Comments , , , , , , , , ,

Background

When I heard Charlie’s recording of Orange Blossom Special for the first time, I was utterly stunned at the speed and accuracy of his technique – it is both jaw busting and jaw dropping. In fact it ranks right at the top of the “I’ll never play like that” top 40.

How do you unravel something so fast and complex? First you need to establish the key Charlie’s playing in. Clearly he starts in the key of C and an F harp in second position seems to do the trick. Initially that is. Until the tune takes a twist. Suddenly, as the melody ascends, modulating the same country lick four times, your F harp no longer does the business. Frustration sets in until the tune recommences its cycle and for a brief period you’re safe again.

So what devilry enables Charlie to reproduce this lightning bluegrass fiddle part on a tin biscuit? Is it some closely guarded Nashville technique? Could it be a particular playing position or a crazy tuning? Only one thing to do in such circumstances. Call international rescue. (more…)

Harp Tips 

Glottal Stops

The Good Doctor 0 Comments , , , ,

OK so you’re following some harp tab, or working on a toon, and you encounter repeated notes. Let’s take the start of Amazing Grace as our example. You can start either from Blow 6 – Blow 7 – Blow 7 or, for the more daring, Draw 2 – Blow 4 – Blow 4. New students will often articulate the repeated note using the ‘stop-start’ approach. They quite correctly sound the first of the repeated notes with a soft blow, stop, then blow again to play the repeated note.

While this approach is perfectly fair, for the Beano and Dandy fans amongst us, it’s for softies. It’s too polite. We need to use the Dennis the Menace method and attack it with a hefty glottal stop.

What’s that? Imagine yourself in the cast of East Enders. Try saying ‘Better get some better butter’ with a cockney accent. You’ll need to use four glottal stops to get through and make it sound authentic. Still not clear? Don’t pronounce the t’s. Notice anything? Right – you’re not stopping and starting like a softy, but punctuating from the glottis (the space between your vocal chords). Welcome to Bash Street.

And it’s the same when playing those repeat notes. Breath flows continuously out from, or in to, your lungs but is interrupted by glottal stops from the back of your throat. For an extreme example, check out Junior Wells with Buddy Guy on Hoodoo Man. On the vinyl recording you can probably hear more glottal stop than harmonica! It’s an example of amplified ‘power harp’ playing….and yes I concede it is a classic.

If you find the glottal stop doesn’t come naturally, persevere. It’s actually a simple technique, but one you will have to master to improve your playing. Especially since it is closely related to that elusive throat vibrato we all want to find when we start out.

For the full tab to Amazing Grace click here

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