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From: fjm/cja
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 23:14:09 -0700 (MST)
Subject: workshop

Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan a harmonica, guitar duo are in town for the
blues fest tomorrow. As part of the festivities they did a 2 hr workshop
today. I must say the contrast between the harmonic part and the guitar
part was marked. Kenny Sultan seemed to expect that the guitar players
would read some music and know basic chord structure and note names and
relationships. Tom Ball expected nothing of the harmonica audience then
went on to tell them to forget tougne blocking and anything but 2nd
position. You're missing notes, only draw, only the 1st 6 holes really
bend, forget the high end and concentrate on holes 3-6, and draw harder
for the bends. Oh yes, I almost forgot, chromatics can't bend notes,
because of the valves don't you know. When quizzed about overblows Tom
confessed an inability to play them and said only Howard Levy uses them
forget it for mere mortals. Tom's an excellent player and he uses the
entire harmonica well, I'm confused as to why he spends so much of his
workshops lowering expectations and telling us why harmonica is a limited
instrument. The thing that really struck me was the lack of a harmonica
culture if you will. The guitar guys all had a lot of common ground.
there was a way they had all learned and the language was standardized.
Almost as if they were musicians. I've never met anyone that started
playing guitar because they thought it would be easy. They usually hear
music and want to learn to play it. Seems normal enough. When asked
how to learn harmonioca Tom suggested listening to records over and over
again until you could play them. Yes, it's the way I learned but it took
a lot longer than if someone had shown me a trick or two along the way.
This lone wolf, secret society method of learning harmonica doesn't seem
well suited to broadening the horizons of the instrument. fjm