On Mon Jul 6 16:31:18 1998 CDT, Don Wyatt wrote: >anybody have David Barrett's Complete Classic Blues Harp cd/book and >Jerry Portnoy's Blues Masterclass?
In my opinion these are the best two beginner/intermediate-&-beyond instructional materials. You can't go wrong with either. Why not buy one now and get the other one next pay day.
And here is what I think... (BTW I'd call myself a beginner/intermediate player)
Portnoy uses more CD-based material - very little is written down. He teaches tongue blocking early on. It might be frustrating if you can't tongue block but once you do then it is magic! 3 CDs is great value although he does use some of the CD space to explain things that other teachers would put in a book. The last CD is mainly songs to play along with. Because of his CDs now I nearly always play the notes above hole 4 using tongue block. And I get some really great blues rhythms and tongue slaps going with his techniques.
Barrett uses more written material and gives some great examples to play and starts with single notes. His written stuff helped me to visualise some of the theory (but that's me). Also have a look at Barret's other book called Building Harmonica Technique. It has a few almost-identical chapters as Complete Classic ... but it is also a great book/CD. I learnt a lot of useful theoretical stuff from Barrett's books. The CD for BHT is more like a personal lesson(s). The CD for CCBH has more specific examples to follow especially riffs and 12 bar riffs. When I want to impress my friends I usually play a riff or 12 bar blues that I learnt from Barrett's CCBH book.
And I think you'll need an A harp for Portnoy and a D harp for Barrett.
If I had to choose one book/CD to take on a desert island ... I couldn't choose! Get 'em both ... eventually.
Lately I have been using a lot of Jon Gindick's stuff. His "jam session" stuff is great but it is only on tapes (no CDs available yet).
Don't forget harp-l archives they are useful for instruction (about a year ago I learnt to bend from a harp-l post).
