Harp Surgery – Page 11 – the harmonica player's web site

I Feel Good (I Got You)…[with tab]

February 28, 2012 The Good Doctor

Funkin’ it up on the blues harmonica

What shall we play now? Well, as the late great James Brown put it, whatever we play, it’s got to be funky! Wise words from a guy who learned harmonica as a kid; as well as the guitar, drums, piano, and of course, some hefty vocals.

Harp players are – or should be – conscious of their scope for providing not only a horn line, but a whole horn section on the humble tin sandwich. By this I mean everything from a melody which might otherwise be delivered by a single brass instrument, to a fanfare or complete horn-style fill. It’s all there waiting to be mined. So let’s dig deeper… Read more

Boogie On Reggae Woman..[with tab]

December 31, 2011 The Good Doctor

Stevie Wonder diatonic harmonica

It was 1974. With a string of hit singles under his belt, Stevie Wonder recorded Boogie On Reggae Woman amidst some more reflective compositions for his new album, Fullfillingness’ First Finale.

The song’s title is slightly misleading. This is no Trench Town rasta vibe. There is a reggae skank for reference, but underneath it’s as fundamentally funk as Superstition and just as ground breaking.

For Harp Surgery fans, what makes the song especially interesting, is its infusion of a bluesy piano line and some highly expressive first-position blues harping. Let’s look more closely..

Go Walkabout – Wireless Microphones

September 20, 2011 Greg

Four our final article in the Harmonica Microphones series, let’s ditch that cumbersome mic cable. Many players want to go wireless – fun, because you can go out in the audience and play, dance up on the bar, or simply have more freedom to roam around on stage. Here’s how:

A wireless system always consists of two parts. The transmitter stays with you, connects to your microphone and sends the signal out into the air using radio waves. The receiver is located near and connected to your amp. There are many types of wireless systems available to us. As a rule, you usually get what you pay for. But there are some practical considerations. Read more

Hey There, What’s That Sound? – Microphone Feedback

July 10, 2011 Greg

We continue with the Harmonica Microphones series with some thoughts on the knotty problem of microphone feedback: what it is and how to minimise it.

Feedback is that awful loud screeching, humming and/or whistling sound a system makes when a microphone picks up the sound from the amplifier’s speaker and sends it back to the amplifier for further amplification. Every system (in this case a microphone plus amplifier) has a feedback threshold. Turn the volume up loud enough and feedback occurs. Keep the volume below that point and it doesn’t. Unfortunately we often need to have our volume very close to the feedback threshold in order to be loud enough, and so feedback can come and go as conditions change. But some setups are less prone to feedback than others, and some microphones are less prone than others. Read more

Dave Ferguson, La Vie, Cape Town, 30.Jan 2011

June 6, 2011 The Good Doctor

Check him out now, the funk soul brother

If a sour mash of Alabama 3, Johnny Cash, Son of Dave, hip-hop, dub and fried green tomatoes was used for a whole new ass-kicking brew, the label would read Dave Ferguson’s Lucky No.7 Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

In our interview with The Mountain Of Love, reference was made to a New Blues music pioneered by R.L. Burnside and Little Axe in the 1980′s and 90′s. Here sequencing, sampling, dub and heavy dance beats were bulldozing the conventions of the blues.

Yet amidst the radicalism, two unalienables remained. The pathos of the slide guitar and anguish of the blues harp. Dave Ferguson is the latest settler in this new blues Heimat and an important exponent of the latter. What he does, he does extremely well. He also tackles it single-handedly. We dropped into Cape Town to check out the Lonesome Whistle Blower of New Blues.

There’s No Place Like Ohm – Microphone Impedance

June 4, 2011 Greg

Our previous article in the Harmonica Microphones series mentioned impedance. Here we describe not so much what it is, but what it means to harp players wielding microphones.

The Harmonica Microphone Series begins The microphones we are talking about in this series of articles are referred to as either “high impedance” or “low impedance.” In general, a vintage bullet mic is a high impedance device and a modern vocal mic is a low impedance one. This is not always the case, however. Read more