Hi!  Welcome to my music page.  Here you will find a few excerpts from songs that I've recorded - some originals and a couple of covers.
Below, you will find a little background info, links to the songs, some short discussion of the songs or excerpts, a little bit about the tools I've used, and a few links of interest.

Background

After spending much of my life listening to and enjoying a lot of music, I finally got into playing, writing and recording some of my own.  I've always had a few instruments lying around - my 40-year-old ukelele, an old beat-up tenor sax (I played a little clarinet in Jr. High, but it's long gone), my brother's bugle, a soprano clarinet, plastic bongos, maybe even an old harmonica.  But these were just long-neglected toys.  On a business trip in 1992, a co-worker and I were discussing music, and he suggested I join him and another colleague to jam a little.  They were playing acoustic guitars at the time, so I broke out the uke and we played folk songs and country for a few months.  Knowing a (very) little harmonica, I bought a book and a harp ("Instant Harmonica" by Dave McKelvey) and started learning.  At about the same time, I decided to go ahead and get a cheapo electronic keyboard (Yamaha PSR300) to play along in the jams and for the auto accompaniment.  It wasn't long until I realized that the keyboard could be hooked up to a computer for vastly greater possibilities.  Since then I've taken harmonica classes, upgraded my keyboard, learned a lot about digital recording, and eventually wrote and recorded a few songs.  I present them here for no good reason.  The "group" is now heavily into electric Rock n' Roll, and someday we might be good enough to post a "live" recording here as well.  Until then, I hope you enjoy these few offerings and some info on how they were made.

The Tunes

About The Tunes

He's Here - Thanks to Rick Beall of www.bluesharp.org and Jon Gindick (of harp instructional material fame). This was a file Jon kindly put up on bluesharp.org in the JAM section to allow folks to record solo's over and compare notes (pun intended).   I decided that this song would be great for demonstratiung two things. 
1. The pentatonic scale can sound pretty good over country or pop backings. This track seemed ideal for
 it.  How decent can a song sound just by running up and down the pentatonic scale? Well I figured I'd find out. 
2. I sat down and figured out the chord structure for the song. Looking at the chords made me realize I couldn't
do everything I wanted on a C-diatonic, so the second idea was to use a number of differently tuned harps.

I realized that running some pentatonic scales would get old, and the song was lengthy for a solo (by me
anyway), so let's try to throw some different stuff in - chugs, a little tongue-block, a little chording, duo playing,
and some stereo playing one harp off against another, etc.

The chug to start seemed a good way to warm-up on a C Special 20. I tried a few solo lines with bending and
tongue slaps for a little bluesy feel. In one section I liked the riff, so I 'doubled' it an octave down.  I added a second chug on a Bb Special 20 during the 1st F chord measures. I switched to a G Lee Oskar Melody Maker during the second part of the song to get some non-bent A's, and just to make life easier. Also I realized there are some wierd chords on the Melody Maker in the middle of harp, so I thew in some chording with stereo fades just to spice things up.  When the song goes to the Am-D-Am-D progression near the end, I figured a LO A Natural Minor would fit in, so I used that in this section. Other than that, I was switching harp lines in the stereo field, and trying to follow-up different scale segments that sounded good. Added some reverb and echo to taste with Power Tracks audio effects.  Recorded through tie-clip to mic in.

Ule Bule - Another backing track from Jon for the www.bluesharp.org jam.  Tried to get that "Chicago" sound by using a Green Bullet into through a Danelectro BLT slap-echo mini pedal to a Nifty-Fifty amp, then miced the amp with a Shure SM-58 through the mixer to the computer line in.  The sound is fair, but not quite the "crunch" I expected.  The overall solo is a composite of four takes, and I could have done with a few more to get all the licks right.  I plan on trying this one again after a little more practice.  Harp is a Special 20 in C.

Kansas Settee - One of my first harp songs, I finally got a decent solo worked out so I thought I should record it.  Backing was from Band-In-A-Box with a slightly modified ChuckB11 style, and harp was a Special 20 in Bb.  Same recording set-up as Ule Bule but without the BLT mini pedal.

CS Blues - This was a pretty easy one, and I thank Mike Will (MyQuill, Brassha'per of Harp-L) for the idea.  This is simply an import of Power Tracks Pro Audio (PTPA) Blues MultiTracks #3, with a harp solo audio track over the top. I muted the guitar track between the intro and ending.  I got a little fancy on this one: I played the harp thru a Radio Shack tie-clip mic into a little 15W amp, then miked the amp with a Shure SM58 thru a Mackie 1202 VLZ to the line-in on the sound card. 

The harp was a Huang Star Performer in C, and hence the song was originally called Star Performer Blues.  However, I realized that several riffs were taken from Corky Siegel's "Reed Zone" on the Siegel-Schwall album "953 West" (now available on CD), so I renamed it "CS Blues" in honor of one of my harp heroes.

SLAMTAML! - The unique part of this song was using a Live guitar from a Blues MultiTracks file as the solo.  I sequenced this song starting with drum fill CTRYRK_A and playing in the piano, bass and nylon guitar parts for a few measures.  I then used my favorite "cut-and-paste" method to fill out the backing track, transposing for chord changes where necessary.  I used 3 vox tracks, overdubbing a doubled part and adding a third harmony track.  I like to do live overdubs for doubling the vocals rather than copying and shifting/effecting.  The Live guitar from MultiTracks presented a challenge.  My original midifile contained a sax solo that sounded pretty wimpy.  To goose it up, I wanted to add audio guitar.  I found a guitar solo in Multitracks that I thought would fit, then had to time-stretch and pitch-shift it in CoolEdit 96 to get it to match the song.  Harp solo used a Special 20 in C through a Radio Shcak tie-clip mic direct to the sound card mic-in.

Back Nine Blues - This song used a Band-in-a-Box generated midifile with the Bluehill.sty style for drums, bass, piano and guitar.  I added some steel guitar, and played in a piano solo (with a little post-editing).  The harp solo was a SP20 in C, 3rd position, which I really liked - I will have to work on my 3 pos. stuff.

OCP Blues -  I used both fretless and picked bass (+1ov) and rock organ, all played in, on this rip-off of a Zepplin riff.  Drums were laid in using the rock.dp track fill, and I added a few drum accents.  I overdubbed a doubled vocal, and both were compressed.  Harp was, of course, a Special 20/C.

Stormy Wave - This is my abbreviated harmonica version of "Stormy Weather".  Backing was from BIAB with Cabaret.sty.  I overdubbed the left and right harmonica parts on a Special 20, and added a counterpoint Golden Melody panned slightly right.  All harps in C through the tie-clip.

Ballad of Frankie P - I used a ZZ Top midifile for the drums (5 separate tracks) to get the feel I wanted on this one.  I played in the the bass, guitar, organ, and guitar solo and ahs, then copied and pasted to fill out the backing.  Here I used a Special 20 A harp chug as a comp line, and the solo was midi guitar and another harp track. I also copied and pasted the chorus from the first verse (beat trying to sing it 5 times!)
 

Tools of the Trade
 
 

Links & Stuff

Here are some links and other irrelevant info:

For 10-hole diatonic harmonica, Mike Will's Diatonic Harmonica Reference site is the next best thing to taking lessons. If it ain't there, it aint! For starting on the harp I recommend Dave McKelvey's "Instant Harmonica", and can then recommend David Barrett's "Chicago Blues Harp" or "Building Harmonica Technique". Also, a good starting point for blues piano is David Bennett Cohen's "Blues Piano" (lots of Daves here). Finally, you can't beat Harp-L and SPAH for keeping up to date with what's going on in the harmonica world.

Another site with lots of News and Info on Blues and Harp is www.bluesharp.org, the harmonica portal featuring a daily feed from Harp-L, links to amp and microphone auctions, gigs, open mics, internet blues stations, festivals, organizations, education, harp specific search engines, and more.

PG Music's software is great for an easy and inexpensive way to get into digital recording, and the PTPA forum has a lot of knowledgeable and helpful posters. CoolEdit is great for editing audio wav's.
 

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fssharp@yahoo.com

© fssharp 2002