From: Joe Terrasi Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 16:04:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Acoustic/Amplified (was Re: DC Blues Festival)
At 07:04 PM 9/11/96 +0100, j~im.enterprise.net wrote: > But the same sort of difference can be acheived without a mike >(totaly acoustic) by creating a tight cup or playing 'open'. So, I >think, by your definition, someone playing totaly acousticaly, but with >their hands cupped around the harp is playing amplified?
I was basing my distinction mostly on the sound created, and I don't agree that a tightly-cupped harp without a mike sounds anything like amplified harp.
One concrete example of *how* it sounds different is volume. When you're playing without a mike and make a nearly perfect cup, you "catch" a lot of the sound and decrease your overall volume. With a mike it's just the opposite - you get louder.
But that's not the MAIN reason they sound different to me - they just *do*.
I guess in the purest sense that "amplified" refers to any playing that is miked, but colloquially among harp players, it usually refers to *that* "Chicago" sound. It's also fair to say that there are a lot of tonal variations to amplified harp. I think of Big Walter's or Junior Wells' (later years) sound as "amplified," but it's a far cry from the type of sound of a Mark Ford or Paul Butterfield. (Before I get jumped on, I know that there are probably cuts of *both* types available from any of the guys I mentioned, I just mean their "typical" or "signature" sounds!)
