Dutchbones, Thank,s for the advice, last week i only played my .A. Seydel and now i can bend all the notes . My goal now is to master the LD. Seydel. (sorry about the cap,s in the last post) BRO.
Good question, what is your target? You ask me point blank like that forced me to think about it.
By July 1, 09 I want have been to my first Jam Camp and be playing some local clubs with a guitar player. Been working pretty hard on the 12 bar chord structure, improv in the 12 bar format and working on variations for the root notes of the I, IV, and V chords.
Short term goals are to continue to add to the blues "standard" songs I know, and am (right now) paying particular attention to what notes the masters use to express each of the chords. I, IV, V.
I know the root notes are 2D, 4B and 4D. But I kind of got in a rut of playing those exclusively and It has my improv sounding stale. Could be it's a good thing. When I get lost I instinctivly return to the root note of the chord the song is in. Doesn't always sound the greatest, but it isn't wrong. Good start I guess , I'm just wanting to branch out from there.
I like to think you'r right. "no time playing the harp is wasted"
That's a simple one Micheal, Do you have a target? Are you getting there at the speed you wanna get there? If not, you'll need to spend even more time on it... Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, there is no such thing as waisted time on a harp... everything you do with it will pay off in some way or another.... just make sure that you stay focussed on what you want to accomplish with your harp in short term and in the long run....
Working on a riff ,a lick, a new song or improvisation. Am I spending too much time on this...not enough? Easy to get lost in all the options and lose site of what I like about the harmonica.
It's a good thing for me to remind myself what Dutch says: "If it ain't fun , it ain't worth doing"
Bro, A and D are good keys to play with, I use mine a lot too... about bending on a Seydel, frankly I don't own one, but what I understand from other people is that its a fine harp, so...it is probably more SENSITIVE than your sp20.... this means that you need to be able to control your bends better than with your sp20.....using less force might be the way to go... advice? spend more time on your Seydel and practice, practice and practice (just make sure it is fun, caus if it aint, it aint worth doing it)
Hope this helps
PS. you might want to lay off all those caps and use them only to ACCENT one or more WORDS in a SENTENCE....if you use CAPS for everything, it is regarded as if you're SHOUTING in the internet world.......
I LIKE MY SP20, AND NOW A NEW SEYDEL IN .A. (the SP20 is way easier to play and bend the low notes compared with the Seydel??? any tips. Newbie???) NEXT TO THAT I LIKE MY SP20 .D. I HAVE A LD SEYDEL ITS A REAL NICE SOUNDING HARP (JUST LEARNING IT, THE LOW NOTES ARE A CHALLENGE) .A. AND .D. ARE MY FAVOURITES FOR NOW... BRO...
I used to like this key or that key but I forced myself to not even think of that anymore. Now I try to 'feel' what ever the song or the mood calls for...if you know what I mean.
I tend to fall in love with one particular key for a while. I push the others aside and take that harp with me everywhere I go. Keep it in my right front pocket and make sure I don't put any coins it there with it. (Can't have a nickle slip under the cover plate)
I'll lick my thumb and rub off anything that shouldn't be there. Do a quick check of the screws to make sure they haven't worked loose...they never do. I don't care for the F. But I rotate the others. Right now it's the D, but I had a thing going with the A for a long time. And G, Wow!
I'm glad that lots of people offered different answers, to what I expected. I expected every one to say the standard c harmonica. It ain't necessarily so. I started with A. i have pretty much all the keys now. I can't play them all, well, though. Each different key requires a different approach, I have found.
If I'm trying to figure out how to play a song that already exists, I reach for a C, I think because that's the key I'm most familiar with.[
But when it's just me and the wind, and I'm playing something I already know how to play, or one of my own compositions, I find myself reaching for an A.
Guess it kind of depends....was hooked on Bb for quite some time, followed by A (most of the stuff a play along with requered those keys and I like the sound of the lower keys) Lately I'm also using D a lot, higher pitch but lots of good songs in A so......
Here's a question I've wondered about as a relatively new (>6 months) harp player -- which key(s) do you use the most in your playing, especially for 2nd position? I know C is the most common for lessons (probably because even the cheapest harps come in C, and sometimes only in C), but I recall from on-and-off years of playing blues guitar that most blues is in E or A, rather than G. So it seems to me that an A harp and maybe a D harp would get more use in actual playing than in learning.
Personally, I prefer A harps because I like the lower tone, and when I get a new make or model to try I usually get an A first. About the only time I use a C these days is when I doing some lesson or other, or playing a 1st position melody/song that's in that key. But I'm curious what keys long-time players (especially blues players) use more often.
