Harmonicas Are A Little Less Evil
I’ve written before about musical instruments that annoy the crap out of me. I have to admit that I may have to revise my evaluation of the harmonica after watching this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbZXCAcUIfI
Now I’ll need to find something to turn me around on my opinion of bag pipes.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 4:00 AM
12 Comments:
Who knew?! I'm amazed. He makes it look so simple - although I'd pass out from lack of oxygen pretty early on.
(I love the sound of bagpipes.)
I have always loved them and bagpipes are cool, Guy. Get over it.
That was cool. He was obviously doing a thing called "circular breathing" that I learned about not too long ago. It's a cool talent. Not many musicians can do that. I always liked the harmonica. It doesn't take a whole lot of musical talent to play it (luckily for me) and it fits in your pocket.
I think bagpipes are an acquired taste. Like brie or Oprah.
Interesting trivia about bagpipes. They weren't invented by the Scots. Roman Legions used them even before Brittania was part of the Empire.
But I understand why the Romans don't want credit for it.
Having the benefit of being able to play harmonica a little bit, the dfference between that harp grampa plays and the one the guy on the video is playing is like a Stradovarious to a J.C. Penny catalog piece.
That's the secret.
Those pro quality harps are something else.
Beth, you are, after all, a Royal Subject.
Auntie, and you, too have spent a lot of time on the British Isles.
Darev, bagpipes and Oprah, no. Bree, yes!
Through the ages Romans loved to annoy people.
Patrick, do you find that they are usually self-learned instruments? I've never heard of a harmonica teacher. It's easy to show someone the fingering of other instruments, but you really can't show what your tongue is doing. I knew a guy that was a natural. He could play the damn thing the first time he picked it up and he was good. I on the other hand was a two-noter and never got the hang of it. Maybe my tongue was too thick.
The only trick in playing Blues is learning "Cross Harping" as I call it.
Say your song is in the root chord of, say "A", then the harmonica you play is four steps up....a-b-c-"D" in a diatonic scale harp, I believe it is.
The note bending is what is so costly in a good harmonica and what you really pay for, in my view.
I've never met a harmonica teacher either.
A neighbor from my old "hood" used to play the harmonica professionally in a blues band. It was nice to hear him play at night in his garage. Bagpipes give me chills...I usually hear them at funerals.
You know my resolution this year was to make sure that if I do any "cross harping" I have a harmonica.
I, also love the "pipes"
loopster
i feel the same way about tap dancing.
ANNOYING!
Patrick, kind of like a whammy bar.
Ginger, pipes are as scary as the Rebel Yell.
Loopy, what can I say? You're wrong. Pipes are just wrong.
Dalia, Spot on!
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