From: James Hanson Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 23:22:52 -0500 Subject: Re:Blues, Rags, Hollers & Re:Gindick
Re: Rod T's comments....
The reason I brought up the Glover, Koerner, & Ray album was that I was given the recently released CD for Christmas (I believe the CD has BOTH of the original albums - or most of them - on it, since the CD format allows a longer playing time). I hadn't heard Glover's playing before - on this CD it is entirely acoustic, he cites Sonny Terry as his main influence, and also sounds much like a slightly less polished Phil Wiggins. Actually, though, Rod is NOT disagreeing with me! In my earlier post I said that Glover's book has some useful information, but dates back to the 60's and is out of date. Glover tries VERY hard to be hip in the book, which has a certain period charm.... but I'm sure there are more useful, recent instructional books. If you have the $$, Glover's book is not a waste of money; but if you want up to date instruction, look elsewhere.
Which brings us to Gindick..... (and Keith's comments) I got started on harp (er, the one with reeds...) with one of his books. I thought he did a solid job of presenting the fundamentals. He does teach you how to bend. At least for beginners he teaches purely pucker style, only barely mentions tongue blocking. He's against soaking (Glover FWIW is ambivalent on soaking). One of the more useful parts of his appraoch for beginners is the simplified music theory - not high level, but practical for learning how to solo. When I used his book to get started, I didn't use the accompanying tape much, nor did I work much on the blues riffs he included: I learned a few of the straight harp melodies (Yeah, including "Streets of Laredo", but then I used to live in Texas) and moved on to playing with my Jimmy Reed albums.... (Maybe having listened to a lot of Reed, Muddy Waters, etc. Gindick's riffs didn't sound that bluesy to me - it's long enough ago that I don't remember exactly.)
With any harp instructional material, I suspect it is best to abandon it and move off on your own a little too early rather than a little too late, just practicing the riffs with the instruction book or tape for very long seems very rut inducing! But my "instructional" experience is limited: started with Gindick as described, and a few years ago someone gave me a "vintage" copy of Glover's book (I was mostly beyond it, although there were a few useful licks and rhythms); besides the wealth of info on Harp-L, for my own improvement I listen to records and think "How did they do THAT?" and try to figure it out.... Even if I don't get it exactly, it eventually ends up sounding like ME rather than anybody else! (For better or worse, I suppose.)
