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From: Winslow Yerxa <76450.32~ompuServe.COM>
Date: 04 Sep 96 01:45:16 EDT
Subject: Wim and Jazz Chromatic

TO: internet:harp~arply.com

(The following is copyright 1996 by Winslow Tully Yerxa and may
not be used in any form outside harp-l or its direct online
archives without express permission of the author.)

Wim Dijkgraaf writes a detailed reply to some of my points about
chromatic tuning systems and jazz, and makes several of his own.

My return volley:

1- He points out that Toots and other chromatic players take a
large proportion of their licks from the tuning, instead of
making up melodic sequences that aren't "found" by playing
with the tuning.

His assumption seems to be that it is better NOT to do this,
or to do it as little as possible.

2- He points out that a large numbers of jazz players play in a
non-legato fashion.

His assumption seems to be that this argument negates the need
to find ways to create legato on the harmonica through the
tuning system.

3- He decries the tendency of aspiring jazz harmonica players to
look no further for inspiration than other harmonica players,
none of whom is on a par with the true greats of the music.

While I agree with this, I also think there are valid reasons
to look to other players of one's own instrument. Most of my
reply to (2) contains implied arguments in this direction.

4- He proudly and unapologetically declares pucker embouchure to
be superior for articulation.

No argument in particular from this corner, Wim. But be
prepared to defend yourself from the likes of Bonfiglio and
many others that tongue blocking can produce all the
articulations that pucker can, and with better tone, etc.
You've painted conectric red circles on your back, so get
ready to dodge the arrows!


POINT 1

All players of every instrument play what lies well on the
instrument, and smart composers, if they are writing to the
instrument, do the same. Even Charlie Parker's ideas consist of
combinations that lie easily under the fingers of his alto sax.
Ditto Coltrane and the tenor. You could say that the vocabulary
of bebop, at least on the level of licks and solo melodic
content, consists largely of what could be played on both alto
sax and trumpet - Bird & Diz. Piano and guitar could pick up on
most of this, but clarinet and trombone could not, and these
instruments fell by the wayside in the world of bebop (yes, there
are notable exceptions, by by-and-large this is true).

In an ideal world, all music would lie well on all instruments.
In the real world, what does not lie well on the instrument does
not get played - or is attempted with poor success. I have seen
jazz harmonica players trying to play fast bebop lines in which
nearly 50% of the notes physically would not sound - they were
fighting the physical nature of the instrument to play lines that
did not lie well, and they paid the penalty. Sometimes, even if
the notes will come out, they just don;t sound like much, becuase
they play in a choppy and awkward fashion that is unmusical. An
accomplished musician tries to minimize the awkwardness, or even
use the choppiness to advantage, but there are limits. Trying to
play and Eb7 arpeggio molto legato in 16th notes at 200 just ain't
going to happen. Maybe an alternate tuning will make this easy
but something else hard. Or make everything easy or hard.

You simply can't ignore this problem and pretend it doesn't
exist. Every tuning system will make some things easier and
others harder. And it's perfectly valid to try and find the
things that sound well on whatever tuning system you're using.

What lies well on an instrument can often be traced to the
physical processes - and difficulties - of getting the human body
and the instrument to make the sounds. And the tuning is an
integral part of this.

I have a CD (Messina Madness) by a Joe Messina, a Motown session
guitarist who took up chromatic and also wrote a book of
interval-based jazz exercises. While his approach is interesting
and doesn't seem to take much of anything from Toots or from the
tuning of the instrument, it also doesn't grab me musically - he
isn't inhabiting the instrument, just processing musical ideas
through it. Of course Jimmy Knepper claims that for him the
trombone is just a vessel for his ideas and nothing more, yet
lsiten to his playing on old Mingus sides for some real gutbucket
trombone that doesn;t sound like it would play well on any other
instrument.

I think this is what Barry Bean is getting at when he turns your
discuss of Toots/Pepper to idiomatic licks instead of the tone
question context in which you brought up Pepper's name. In this
context - instrument-speicific idiomatic playing - I think his
points are valid.

POINT 2

Legato and non-legato are both important parts of music, and one
can easily generate a list of important players who make
extensive use of non-legato phrasing -as you did, and it's an
impressive roster of top jazz musicians.

Yet I still maintain that, given a line of music to play for
which no phrasing or articulation marks have been indicated, the
default of assumption among jazz players is that the line is to
be played legato. You can break up the legato, add accents, etc.,
and I agree that not enough has been done in this area with the
harmonica. But Legato is still the starting point.

Also, to go beyond the specific question of jazz practices -
which is more valuable, iron or gold? Both are useful, but gold
is more valuable because it is RARE (yes, there are other
reasons, but this is the main one). Well, on the chromatic
harmonica, legato possibilities are rarer than non-legato. And
legato is needed for many things, in all styles of music.
Therefore it is to be sought after, and to be valued when it is
found. This is why the ability of a tuning to help or hinder
legato playing is always important, no matter what style of music
is being played or what one's personal style tends toward in
matters of phrasing and articulation. If you're missing an
essential part of musical phrasing, you will always be walking
funny to compensate for uneven shoes.

Interestingly, the things that help create legato on the
harmonica are also the things that make some things lie well on
the instrument.

There are two things that make any particular bit of music lie
well on an instrument

1 - producing the music does not go against the physical
tendencies of the instrument (the music takes nothing away
from the instrument)

2 - Everything that the music requires can be physically executed
by the instrument (the instrument takes nothing away from the
music)

3 - the instrument adds to the expression of the music - the
combination is greater than the sum of its parts

To evaluate what lies well on any instrument, we must look at the
physical actions, by the human body, on the musical instrument,
used to make the notes sound. Each of these actions, singly and
in combination, will have its own effect on the potential for
speed and smoothness in execution.

On the Chromatic harmonica, there are three basic actions

Change the slide position (IN->out or OUT->in)

Change hole

Change breath - Inhale->exhale or Exhale->inhale

The fastest motion is the one that involves the smallest movement
and does not interrupt the airflow.

Changing the slide can be done very rapidly, involves a movement
of less than a centimeter. There is no danger of landing in the
wrong hole or between holes.

Changing holes to the immediate neighbor is again only about a
centimeter. and can be done with a very small movement of the
hands, with little danger of landing in the wrong place, and can
be done without interrupting the air stream.

Hole leaps (farther than the immediate neighbor) can land in
the wrong place or sound the intervening holes, and avoiding
these problems by pulsing or interrupting the airflow can
make the notes sound disconnected. Tongue blocking can help,
but makes articulation harder.)

Changing breath is the slowest and least smooth way to change
notes. While the small muscles of the hand can move small
distances rapidly to move the slide or the harmonica, the lungs
contain several litres of air. EVen pbreathing from the top of
the lungs displaces at least two litres. The muscles that expand
or contract the lungs are about a foot (30cm) long, there is one
expand muscle and one contract muscle for each lung.

It takes far more effort to get these large muscles moving, and
to get these to squeeze or pull the lungs themselves, and then to
get the air moving through lungs, windpipe, vocal cavity and
finally the harmonica. If the airflow is already moving in one
dorection, this must be brought to a screeching halt - think of
stopping a speeding car dead in its tracks and slamming it into
reverse - and then started moving again in the opposite
direction.

This is why the hierarchy for fastest and smoothest to slowest
and choppiest goes

1. Slide Change

2. Hole Change

3. Breath Change

When Toots talks about trying to stay one the same breath and
working the slide, he isn't just taking the easy way out. He
isn't just exploiting the easy part of the standard tuning for
his own old-fashioned romantic mush. He's using the most assured
*physical strategy* for playing the harmonica. This strategy is
the best for achieving speed and smooth phrasing regardless of
tuning.

This is why the one-semitone-per-hole tuning and Richard Hunter's
whole-tone tuning offer the best legato possibilities - ALL notes
can be both blow and draw. This way you can play as choppy as you
like OR as smooth as you like. At least for notes that don't lie
more than a hole apart. Then you have to sharpen your skills.

I'm not saying that legato is the best way to play at all times,
nor am I saying that speed cannot be achieved with hole leaps or
breath changes. But legato is an essential musical quality in an
instrument sounded by human breath. To reduce the possibilties
for it is to reduce the musical potential of the instrument. And
speed will always be easier to achieve and more assured of
consistency where most of the motions involve short movements of
small physical entities (muscles, air).

The biggest downfall of the augmented triad tuning is that it
offers no choice notes - notes playable as either blow or draw.
With only three blow or draw notes it covers a lot of ground in a
short space - this is an advantage - but the tradeoff is that
there are only six same-breath notes per octave.

The other end of the continuum is the one-semitone-per-hole
strategy. This offers pure legato - if you're only traveling a
semitone. Any bigger interval and you have to tongue block. And
it takes twelve holes to cover an octave. Again, tradeoffs.

Whole-tone scale tunings seems to offer the best compromise
between choice notes - all twelve - and distance covered. The
stacked minor-third version allows the widest ambitus of neighboring
same-breath or even changed-breath notes within the compass of
neighboring holes.

DOUG TATE BREAKS IN ON THE DISCUSSION

Hark, I hear a voice whispering softly. A hand is cupped and
suddenly the voice become loud and piercing. It says,

Didn't you know that "saloon" is the word used by people who
speak *English for what you you yanks call a "sedan?"

Then the voice goes on to say that, since a consistent legato
is not possible for most complete phrases on the harmonica,
that legato should instead be simulated by making every note
equally detached. If they are all similar in articulation, they
will sound smoother together than a group of notes where some
are truly legato (same breath, adjacent holes) and some are
not.

This is akin to cigar acupuncture - being burnt with a lit cigar
in one place will make you forget the pain you had elsewhere.
It's a strategy, but it's a coping strategy to deal with a
shortcoming. It points to other, more sophisticated
posssibilities for using articulation to advantage, but it's not
a true solution to the legato problem. It may fool the ear to a
degree, but I get the funny sensation that it's a tacit agreement
between the listener and the player to pretend that detached is
meant to stand in for legato. Wink Wink. Nudge Nudge. Know what I
mean? Say no more! But it finally answers the question that I'd
wondered about since my teens - why do classical harmonica
players always play with such a detached, clipped sound?

This is getting too long even though I haven't addressed
everything Wim brought up. More later.


Winslow Yerxa
Harmonica Information Press
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