From: Pat Missin Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 21:51:08 Subject: Spot the overblow
OK, it's time to stand up and be counted:
My name is Pat Missin - and I can overblow fluently!
Well, sometimes, anyway! I was recently going through some tapes of my own playing, when I found several solos where I knew I was using overblows, but couldn't tell which notes were overblown. I could work out which notes had to have been played as an overblow or overdraw, but in many cases, I found it impossible to tell purely by the sound of the notes. Judge for yourself - - I have uploaded a snippet (a 10-second .wav file) to the web. I haven't linked it to my index page, so you will have to type in the full url:
This isn't a great example, as the notes fly by pretty quickly and the band are kinging up a lot of noise in the background, but it the only recording I had where I couldn't be accused of covering up my tonal inconsistencies with signal processors - the harp on this track was played acoustically, with a minimum of reverb, eq and compression added to it during the mixdown.
I'm even willing to put my money where my mouth is - the first person to tell me how many overblows I am using and where they occur, wins a copy of Angie Scarr's CD "Danger Zone" (featuring yours truly in a more conventional setting - and if you don't win, I am quite happy to sell you a copy!). I'm confident that it will be very difficult to identify the overblows by their sound, although if you knew what harp I was playing, you would be able to work it out. Of course, I'm not going to tell you what harp I was using, except to say that it is one you can pick up in your local music store (no - it's not a chromatic!).
I await your answers with bated breath (circular, of course).
-- Pat.
PS - No prizes for guessing who doubled on sitar on this track...
