My Seydel 1847 Classic Review

So I was facing a dilemma last week as I planned on buying a new harp. I needed a way to decide which harp and which key. One option was to buy another MS blues in a key I don’t have which I had in mind to play around with a low F, but it turns out that there are no MS blues in the key of low F. So it left me with my other option that was to by a relatively expensive harp so I can decide for my self it it is worth it.

I eventually bought a Seydel 1847, in the key of C, so I could compare it to my MS blues harp in the key of C. After five days of hard waiting for my harp to arrive by mail, I finely got it. Unwrapping the harp was a very existing moment, although it always looks like someone sent me a toy instead of a real instrument. In all the harp pictures you see a zoomed in picture of the harp showing it in all it’s details, but when you open your harp, you realize you bought a very small instrument. When you are paying for an harp 3 times you pay for another harp, you have allot of expectations.

My first 5 minutes with the harp was disappointing, while the harp did overblow out of the box, it was very leaky, not just overblows but the entire harp. So I opened the harp tweaked the gapping and arcing of all the reads. The lower reads were all too wide which caused most of the air leaking and where not arched. I always try to close all reads as much as possible and to do that with still maintaining a responsive note you have to arch the read.

Now after five more minutes playing on the tweaked harp, I was totally hooked. The overblows are soft and easy to the point that the great Alex Paclin (also using Seydel 1847 classic) suddenly looks like an ordinary human. The wood of the harp holes is polished and rounded which helps allot when you are doing fast licks. The holes are wider and rounded which feels really good when playing. The harp is thick, which forces you to open your mouth and that produces a very clean fat note. The harp is so air right that I can play real soft to the point almost no air is used. With a slightly more effort I can pop in very soft overblows.

At one point I did contemplated the idea that the harp is good, but my customizing skills have improved so much that I make it much better cause to tell the truth, out of the box it was crappy. I did hear a review here and there which do say that this is an excellent harp, but all of them are not what I expected after experiencing the harp for my self.

I feel that in the 4 days I have used this harp, my technique has improved dramatically. I am playing tunes which really heavily on overblows. Using overblows not just as a passing notes, but as a substantial part of the tune with vibration and even repetitive attacks. I am playing really fast licks with bent notes which feels like I am hardly moving my tongue. For the first time I am starting to have a play by ear map of the harp, which include overblow notes. When I play tunes in different positions, I am starting to feel that I get to the overblows if needed without thinking. I really think that I will have a very hard time playing with any other harp I have.

Compared to my other harps it really feels like the difference between an instrument and a toy. I guess when you pay peanuts you really get monkeys… So that leads me to the decision that from this point on all my harps are going to be Seydel 1847 classic… Paying 60$ on a harp instead of 20$, really does make a difference.

Playing in first position

So I have finally got into first position playing and I sure have allot of thoughts about the subject. I was playing allot lately with the upper octave in cross harp after my seven hole overdraw got better… But I have yesterday started to play with first position and they way that I am practicing is playing blues by ear.

The first thing I started to do is to try to get the blues scale in first position. Only the three draw bent down a half step got me struggling as the rest of the scale was pretty easy. While getting the notes is easy enough, actually playing the blues is harder. One of the harmonica pit falls is to surrender your music creativity to the instrument sweet spots which means playing the easy to do stuff and avoiding the non trivial ones. So I am using the call and response technique by singing a riff that comes to my head and playing it on the harp regardless of the easiness of it.

The next pit fall I found is playing those overblows which are crucial in first position. Getting the 1,4,5 and 6 overblow is really important but I found out that I used to playing cross harp overblows, mainly because in most cases coming from draw is easier for me to get a clean overblow.

So now I am practicing my overblows coming from blow notes. I guess I will not be surprising any one by saying that first position is all about blow notes so it is very important. Sounding bluesy in first position using overblows is real easy and as a matter of fact most of the blues notes are overblows.

As soon as my first position playing will get better I will record a video on it…

Blues jam in D on a G harmonica – Guy Peled

Guy Peled’s Facebook Harmonica Page

Hi Guys,

I wanted to share a facebook page I opened and manage which I keep also publish harmonica related stuff.

Find it here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Guy-Peleds-Harmonica-Page/108091735912095

Guy

Christelle Berthon – Ladies can solo if they want

I guess I will be a little old fashion if I would say that soloing is preserved to man, but I think that I would be safe to say that it is more practiced by man. I guess that there is some element of it that appeals more to the gents. I guess in general there are more men playing instruments than women, so it might be that the previous is a direct result.

I have been following Christelle Berthon for a while, which I think can be entitled the first lady of the harmonica but I had not seen allot of competition on the title to be honest. In any case I wanted to link to a couple of her videos from my blog as she definitely is showing what the harmonica can do.

So here are a few of the videos I liked:

“Whammer Jammer” Magic Dick on Harmonica

I suddenly realized that I haven’t added a link from my blog to the whammer jammer video…. so here hoes…

Cool licks from Sandy Weltman’s lesson samples

Harmonica HipHop – Bad news brown

A new Tinus video explaining how to learn overblowing hole 1

Just came across a new youtube video Tinus had uploaded, which deals with how to learn hole 1 overblow.

Today I learned about “Secondary Dominant”

I love music theory as it kind of gives you a way to categorize things you hear and for me it makes it easy to call upon a specific sound I want to produce. While playing harp in most cases is chord-less in the sense of harmonic chords the notion of chord progressions still can be expressed while arpeggiating. Most great soloists use arpaggiation to emphasize the current chord or in cases to create tension before resolving to a different chord.

One of the most basic tension resolution progressions is going from the dominant chord (the five chord) to one chord which is kind of the ultimate resolution. In the major scale this occurs naturally as a the five chord is a major chord. In the minor scale this concept is very popular as well although the 5 chord is a minor chord which does not do a great job of directing to the one chord and that is why we revert to the harmonic minor scale which actually is all about having the five chord in a minor scale act as a functioning dominant chord (which means a five dominant chord that leads to a one chord).

So to summarize if you have a C major scale the G7 is the dominant chord and if in a chord progression it leads to the C chord, which is the root it is a functioning dominant chord. In A minor which is the relative minor of C the five chord, is the E minor chord, which as said does not sound as good as a dominant chord in terms of tension / resolutions. So instead of playing a normal E minor chord we play a E7 which screams to be resolved to A minor.

Up until here I already was aware of, and have internalized it in my playing (guitar and harp). What I didn’t know about is the idea of “Secondary Dominant” which means that you can lead to any diatonic chord (chord with in the scale) by playing it’s dominant chord briefly which creates tension that resolves to the diatonic chord. So if we are in C major scale and we are playing a C major chord going to a D minor chord progression, we can sneak in a A7 chord which is not in the C major scale, which will lead to the D minor chord.

So applying this technique to your harp playing it means that you can use the A7 arpeggio which is the 3 bent hole step, 4 bent a half step, 5 blow and 6 blow which creates a tension which can be resolved to 4 draw, 5 draw, 6 draw.

Here is a video talking about the concept: