Gig

Ok so last night was back to the pub for a gig! Great fun and especially brilliant as my darling wife was able to come. I got a nice compliment from the man who at the last gig said he couldn't hear me. It turned out that this time he could and he loved it!

The slight disappointment of the night was that my overdrive pedal broke. I plugged the battery in and there was no life at all in the thing. So consequently, the Harp Shield was no use whatsoever! I plugged it in anyway just to get some use out of it (although I guess, in actual fact, I was really just draining the battery).

Anyway, I've decided to use my birthday money on a Zoom G3 module. It's for guitar but according to the harp site I read, it can be used for harmonicas too. I'm excited at what it may do. I am not going to get the overdrive pedal fixed since this module should be able to do all that and plenty more besides. I am unsure whether the Harp Shield will still be required, I think it will, but we'll see.

On the practice front I've been trying some of Lee Sankey's exercises for improving 3 draw bends and working the major scale in 1st position all the way from 1 to 10 blow. I try to practise on different harps (usually A and F) to get used to how the technique needs to slightly change according to the pitch of the instrument.

Lastly I am going to try and work on We Wish you a Merry Christmas in 1st position (Start 2 draw). The lower octave needs both a 3 draw whole step bend and a 2 draw whole step bend. The upper octave (start 6 blow) is taking me ages to get my head round!

Chromatic

I've been spending much of this summer practicing my chromatic. I play piano at church sometimes and have church music books at home so I've been working my way through some of those songs. I am improving slowly and am getting better at playing in different keys. I still find it very hard to judge big jumps (4ths to octaves) but that's what practice is for! Breathing can be surprisingly tricky, depending on the key, because sometimes it involves a lot of draw notes.

Also I have become pretty good at the 12 blues scales page I've been working on.

Birthday gig on Saturday

So we are playing a gig for a 50th (I think) birthday party on Saturday. As a result I have been trying to squeeze some practice time in. I've taken old songs from the set and worked them through. The surprising thing is that despite having played them many times before, I've never really worked out a harp line. So it have been very useful to sort things through. Now I have a fairly simple but decent part for Black Magic Woman, In repair, I will Survive and A better Man. Also I have worked out the solo/fill thing to This is the Life but I doubt we shall use that on Saturday. I've decided to largely leave the AC/DC thing alone, just the odd 4/5 draw here and there. So that's the state of play today.

Chromatic woes

The next two gigs are next weekend. We are going to do a version of Talking Heads' And She Was. Good song but it goes through 3 keys. So I picked up the chromatic I bought at Christmas time and...

...found it really hard. Sure it can play in any key but trying to establish where I IV and V are between 3 different keys was a huge headache. I am going to persevere because it will make a difference to the song but I need time to go wrong a lot.

Watch this space.

Practice makes...

Been practising like billy-o ready for a gig on Thursday night (a work night!) in front of the mayor of somewhere or other. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play with the band due to family commitments. I hope that Thursday comes off!

I wish myself luck!