Posted on 06/14/2017 7:06:08 PM PDT by KC Burke
Okay. I have sort of gone nuts with harmonica the last six months. Thinking of the tough job our President has and wishing him well on a nasty day like today, I was also surfing harmonica.
I saw this and thought it was supposed to be about him -- but it has been online for eight years. It's a good duo and I am waiting for a delivery of a new custom harmonica amplifier next week.
Let's hear it for OUR Orange Dude.
Click the source link or cut and paste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmPOnRUDZAE
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Well, I worked the dishroom at Mizzou, and made some $ to buy a $6 harmonica and teach book in 1972. Got good enough to not be laughed at. Fast forward to 1999, and I tried to reconnect with the blues scene. I went to Paul Delays first event upon getting out of prison. Small venue at ZigZag Oregon, but he asked me to help carry in equipment. So I consider myself a roady for him.
Curtis Salgado had a weekly gatherings at Wankers Corner near Portland back then. He was being a teacher. I hadn’t brought my harp, so he let me use his. I told a few that I swapped spit with him.
Good luck on bending notes...
Don’t know if you remember the kid that was a big hit on the Carson show and then toured with Muddy Waters etc, but I get to see Brody Buster this summer. He is supposed to be playing at the Lake of the Ozarks at a new joint. He probably spends more time now as a one-man-band. He won the first prize for that class at the Memphis Blues festival that past year.
Go here:
https://soundcloud.com/the-brody-buster-band
As I mentioned above I have a special amp designed for the harp coming next week so I am cranked waiting to see what I can do with it. Bending was tough on my good harmonicas — I had already let my tongue get involved in my pucker-focus and had to unlearn that and then I found that with my best harp, a Seydel Noble, it was not a tough as on a Soul’s Voice.
I guess I should have ping the only music guys I know as well.
Goog some Paul, real great....
I will. I probably shouldn’t tell you this — but I picked up my first harp in Lawrence — yeh, thats right, I’m one of those.
I would say about 68 I got a Chromatic and an echo harp and messed with them for a year or so with no real focus on getting anywhere with them as I was busy with the world.
No harp or instrument until last fall I saw that those same instruments weren’t a whole lot more then they were back then. Got a good Hohner Chromatic, an Echo harp which is still a simpleton hoot, and a nice Tremelo. Had fun for a few weeks and then the dam broke. About ten diatonics later I am signed up for on-line lessons, seduced by the complexity of diatonics for someone who knows no music, and getting into Mad Dogs, Smokey pocket amps and now into the bigger stuff. Look up the amps being made by Lone Wolf Blues in Louisiana if you want something to think about.
I do love the Seydels but with Buckeye, Shaker, Lone Wolf and others there is a lot of this stuff in the USA now.
Thanks, KC, that was cool!
Last night I watched “Stevie Ray Vaughan, the making of a Texas Bluesman”... awesome! This harmonica duo has the blues down pat!
As with every interest or hobby I become interested in the equipment and tools are as much fun as the hobby itself. I am afraid my learning is suffering because of that.
I read one blog on Harmonica that called it “GAS” (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) and I think I need an antacid.
GAS affects ALL instruments :)
I am now “down” to four bass guitars... have shuffled through quite a few looking for the perfect tone. Now I’m good!
Yes I have that as well.
Every harmonica sounds and plays different. And damn it, those that sound great by a whole lot are three times the cost of the good ones and eight times the cost of the cheap ones. Unless you are going all the way to a stainless steel reed or something equally exotic, this instrument does not last a long time due to the small reeds and the dirty environment of spittle they are subjected to in normal use.
Then there are microphones. How about trying a dozen of those?
Amplifiers are another entire issue since there are very few made for harmonica. So you are looking at a small custom manufacturer.
Then you have to add in delay, reverb, low end enhancement, and all sorts of other dial in effects for that blues sound that can keep up with other amped instruments.
4 bass guitars
2 amps
2 cabs
1 mixer (sold another mixer, amp, mains)
gig bag full o stuff
3 soft cases
2 hard cases
mic stand, various guitar stands....
yeah, I feel your pain. I just haven’t bought my own mic yet :)
Once had a harmonica player that played with our band regularly.. he had a special case for his harps and would NOT let anyone else touch or carry it. A lot of $$$$ invested.
You can get a custom tuned and tweeked Seydel diatonic out of Belgium for about $160. I am sure there are more expensive instruments but I am not sure there are better. If you take the major/minor keys in standard turning that is 17 instruments I believe. You add in country turning and what’s called Paddy Richter tuning and you can get another 25 to 35. That doesn’t even begin to get into the Chromatics which go from 200 to 2000. Then you have the orchestral that a blues player has no need of and you get downright stupid in cost for an instrument that needs an overhaul by an environmental surgeon about every 300th hour of playing or maybe throw it away and just buy a new one.
If you forget and put it in your pocket in a moment of haste, bang a bit of pocket lint just ruined it blocking one of 20 reeds.
Yet, a good musician can get by with a $35 dollar instrument for a dozen songs if need be.
Its like great photographers can take an outstanding picture with a dime store throwaway camera and I am digging in my Nikon bag trying to assemble equipment for another three hours.
I think I told you when we got together in 2013 but my son plays the bass as his passion away from teaching science. He also plays some blues tuned viola.
“The difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys”? :D
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