How I Recorded the Effected Chromatic Harps for My Instrumental Love Song “Deeper”

I released my first recorded version of “Deeper” in 2002-3, when I had just started a series of monthly releases of free original pieces for harmonica. The recording of this song that I made for my record “The Lucky One” represents the first time that this piece was played by a live band, and it’s clear to me that the emotional level is a lot higher when real people are playing the music, together. (Duh.)

This piece is dedicated to my wife of 41 years, Patty. The meaning of the song is that love gets deeper over time. (Or not, in which case I guess it wouldn’t last 41 years. Or it would, and that would be bad. But anyway.) Given that meaning, the obvious thing to do in the arrangement for this piece, whose overall form is repeated twice, was to make the second half literally deeper than the first, and I did that by adding two low pitch-shifted harmonicas to the arrangement.

But I get ahead of myself. Let’s talk about the song and the band first. You can hear the complete recording of “Deeper” from my record “The Lucky One” by using the double right arrow on the player below to navigate to the seventh song on the record, at which point you can listen to “Deeper” in its entirety.

Recording Deeper

The Lucky One Band–Mike Brenner on lap steel, Mark Schreiber on drums, and John Cunningham on bass–recorded the rhythm section for “Deeper” in a complete take in the studio, and there are no overdubs or edits for any of their parts on the record. The performance is stripped down and quietly grooving, with plenty of Mike’s trademark lap steel sounds, like the thick, quivering single notes that fill an entire room with emotion.

I played a Seydel Deluxe chromatic harmonica on that take. I leaned on that Seydel a lot for this record, mainly because its action was smooth and predictable compared to my Hohner CX12, which I used only on “Orphan Black” for its heavier tone. The chromatic was played into an Audix Fireball V mic running into a Digitech RP500, which was configured with a patch that included a Tweed Deluxe amp model and a flanger. As per all the rest of this record, the RP500’s XLR audio outputs went direct to the board.

I discussed with the band the possibility of recording the track with the flanger dis-engaged–on the thought that maybe I might want to try a different sound later–and they generally agreed that it was a better idea to go with the effect. So I did. With or without the flanger, I would definitely have used a patch based on a Tweed Deluxe amp model, one of my favorite Digitech RP amps when I need something to make a smooth, solid platform for an effect. That Tweed Deluxe sounds good with every modulation effect Digitech offers in the RP500, be it pitch or wobbles.

I did not write “Deeper” as a platform for improvisation, and in the studio I stayed very close to the melody for the piece. On the second half I moved the melody up a third, keeping in mind that I’d be adding low harmonized parts in overdubbing.

Overdubbing the “Deeper” Harmonicas

In my home studio, I overdubbed two pitch-shifted harmonica tracks on the second half of the song, using the same Seydel Deluxe chromatic, Audix Fireball V, and Digitech RP500, which connected in this case to my recording software (SONAR X3) via USB. This recording method and chain never fails to produce great-sounding harp tracks (as this record amply demonstrates, of course). The first track FX chain included the RP500 running a patch based on a Fender Twin Reverb amp model paired with a chorus effect, with a Digitech iStomp running the Swing Shift pitch shifter set to an octave down added to the front of the chain. That gave me a warm, clean, low, wide sound for playing the original melody alongside the now-harmonized flanged harp sound. To that I added a third track recorded with the RP500 running the same octave-down-wahwah patch I used to record the sax-ish motif that opens “The Road Out of Here.” On that song I worked that pedal pretty hard; on this one I used long, slow movements of the wahwah pedal to make the sound evolve slowly (and, I thought poignantly) through the long notes that make up the melody.

The end result is a deep, evolving sound filled with yearning and quiet beauty. The individual components of this sound may have appeared on other records–I was using flangers on harmonicas on my records in the 1980s–but the ensemble sound is absolutely new.

Performing Deeper Live: 2 harps will do it

“Deeper” is a simple piece, and you can do plenty of justice to my arrangement with two harmonica players: one to play the flanger lead part, and the other to play one of the two pitch-shifted parts to fill out the low end. (I’d recommend the one with the wah wah.) The sound of the chromatic harmonica is critical to my arrangement, and I’d certainly recommend that both players use chromatics. The one I played was in the key of C, but there’s no reason why a chromatic in a different key couldn’t be used if the player was willing to make the necessary transpositions.

Enjoy playing “Deeper.” I do.

How I recorded the alien harmonica on my cover of Morphine’s “Early to Bed”

I love Morphine–the band, not the dope. I also loved Treat Her Right, Mark Sandman’s band prior to Morphine, with harmonica and vocal ace Jimmy Fitting (now performing with Session Americana in Boston) among others filling out the roster. Both bands featured unconventional instrumentation, Treat Her Right having a three-piece drum kit and no bass guitar, and Morphine winning the most-unusual-power-trio-of-all-time award with its lineup of baritone sax, two-string slide bass guitar, and drums. Much as I like Treat Her Right, it’s Morphine that made me think that if you could make rock and roll with a sax, bass, and drums, you could do it with practically anything, specifically including a bunch of effected-up harmonicas.
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How I Wrote and Recorded “Why Should I Make History”

How I wrote “Why Should I Make History”

Thanks for checking out my series on the harps and FX I used to record “The Lucky One!” If you haven’t heard the rest of the pieces in this series, check the record out on CDBaby.

I’ve been fascinated for years by the paradox that we can mean so much to each other, and yet be invisible to history. That’s what I tried to express in this song. The title can be read either as a serious question or as a sour-grapes comment (as in “why should I bother”). The answer to the question is presented in the fourth verse:

“We all wanna write our names in fire on the sky
“We want someone to know we lived and we died
“We want some kid to say, Man, that could be me
“And be inspired to make history”

Why should I make history? That’s why.

“Why Should I Make History” is the 10th song on “The Lucky One.” Use the double right arrow on the player below to scroll to it and play it if you haven’t already.

How I recorded the harps

The rhythm section for this song was recorded live in studio with Mike Brenner on lap steel, Mark Schreiber on drums, and John Cunningham on bass. I played a throwaway piano part on an electronic keyboard in the studio while I sang a scratch vocal to keep everyone aligned. (In fact, when the rhythm section was recorded, I hadn’t figured out what I was going to play on the harp.)

The first thing I overdubbed in my home studio was a better piano part. I recorded a MIDI track freeform without quantization on a weighted piano keyboard connected to my laptop. I corrected the errors in the MIDI track, editing the MIDI notes by hand, and bounced it to audio using the TruePianos Amber Piano virtual instrument in Cakewalk Sonar, my digital audio workstation. I did the same with the organ part, using the shareware plugin VB3 with a Vox-ish organ setting.

With the keys sorted, I started on the harmonica parts. This was a process of discovery, not just performance–I needed to hear some things before I settled on an arrangement. As per usual, every track was recorded with a Digitech RP500 running my patch set and an Audix Fireball V mic. Most harp parts were recorded with a Seydel Session Steel in C, played in 2nd position (G); one part (the low chorded part described below) was recorded with the same harp playing G and C chords, and a Lee Oskar Melody Maker in D for the second half of the chord structure (D and E minor).

The screen shot shows the eventual lineup of harp tracks on this record (click on the image for a bigger picture); the muted tracks (the ones with big yellow “M”s) are tracks I recorded and either didn’t use or bounced in combination with others.

I wound up with a small set of parts that included:

A harp part with a sound based on a twin reverb amp model and TC Electronics chorus model, pitch-shifted down an octave via the Digitech Swingshift effect (yes, I had another pedal plugged in between the mic and the RP500). That part provides low, subtly modulated “accordian” chords to support the verses. This is the track I played with the Melody Maker.

A low tenor-sax style part, played with one of my standard RP500 patches called “Tenor Sax Wah,” which patch is intended to mimic a tenor sax (duh). This part forms a horn section with a third part, an amped-up blues harp sound supplied by a patch that features GA40 amp and cabinet models for a tough amped tone with a little bit of screech in it.

Another amped up harp part, an overdubbed lead that I put on when Ed Abbiati told me that we needed a new harp intro and solo. I used a variation on my ChampB patch (57 Champ amp model with 4×10 Bassman cab model) with a long delay because it was clear that something traditional was needed for the lead, and there’s nothing more traditional than the sound of Chicago blues harp played through a small Fender amp. The Bassman cab model gives the Champ a little more grunt that it has with the 57 Champ 1×8 cab model that’s also available in the RP500. (In general, the RP500’s 4×10 Bassman cabinet model has a punchy, compressed, darkish sound that works well with lots of different amp models for amped harmonica tones.) I also laid down a bunch of fills with plenty of delay throughout the song on this track, all of which we ended up using. We ended up using the second half of a Tenor Sax Wah track I’d recorded previously for the second half of the solo, right after this one. That little tenor Sax Wah solo, which lasts all of 8 bars, is one of my favorite things on the record.

Relatively early on during overdubbing, my son heard this track and commented that it sounded like Springsteen. I think so too. The harps on this tune combine to give an effect of traditional Americana. A low chorused harmonica evokes an accordian, a low amped harp subs for a tenor sax, and an amped-up harp is the voice of traditional blues. Put it all together and it’s old and new–just like Americana.

It’s not always easy to hear exactly what every part is playing in a busy mix, so let me take a moment to note that I used a range of harmonica textures on this piece: full triad chords in the low register of the C and D melody maker harps for the accordion parts, open 5th and 6ths for the C harp in the low and middle registers on the verse fills and backing, octaves in various places, etc., etc. 21st century harmonica isn’t just about effects, much as we like and use them; it’s about exploiting the full range of textures that a harmonica can provide. It all starts there. If you want to hear the kinds of textures I use stripped down to a solo harmonica playing without accompaniment, check out my groundbreaking CD from 1995, “The Act of Being Free in One Act.”

Performing “Why Should I Make History” live: two players will work

The Lucky One

The most important harmonica parts on this piece are the tenor sax-ish harp and the ChampB amped-blues lead, and since they occur together frequently, you need two people to play them (or one person playing a mic into a signal splitter, which then takes the signal to two RPs running in parallel, one with the tenor sax sound and the other with the GA40). If you have two people, the one playing the Tenor Sax Wah parts can also play the accordian-ish parts, since the two never play together. You’ll also need someone to sing the piece, since the harp lines are everywhere behind the vocals, and you can’t sing and play harp at the same time. (Alas.)

This is one of my favorite songs from “The Lucky One,” and certainly one of my best vocals. Enjoy, and get together with a friend to work out some of those horn section lines.

The Harps and FX I Used to Record “96 Tears”

“96 Tears,” the cover song that closes my record “The Lucky One,” is a perfect teenage-stupid song about unrequited love (and self-pity, of course–it’s a teenage-stupid song!). The original is as messy (the organist makes an outright mistake at one point, and the structure is kind of in flux throughout) and distinctive in its own way as “Tainted Love,” another song driven by an obsessive organ lick. I played “96 Tears” as organist in my first band, Tiki and the Wambesi Gods, on several occasions–it’s one of the first songs I ever played for an audience. I have never ceased to marvel that this messy, crazy song appeals to me so much. But I suppose there have been messy, crazy people in my life that strongly appealed to me, too.
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How I Recorded “Vivid”

“Vivid (Hurt and Far)” is the only piece on “The Lucky One” that uses nothing more than reverb and delay on the harmonica, and while there are three harmonica parts on the record, they’re all performed using the same (uneffected) chromatic harmonica in C (a Seydel Deluxe, to be specific–a relatively low-priced, solid performing 3-octave chromatic harp). So how is this 21st Century rock harmonica? Well hey man, you didn’t think we were going to leave chromatic harps behind when we went to the future, didja? Hell no. We need those things whenever we want to make people cry.

“Vivid” is about the pain and beauty in life. The lyrics inform you about the pain; the chromatic harps deliver the beauty. Without the chromatics in the picture, that piece would be sad, sad, sad–vivid, and unhappily so, and without the joy of sheer beauty to leaven the pain.

While we’re at it, take a listen to “Vivid” using the player below. Use the fast forward arrow to take you to “Vivid.” It’s the 8th piece in the set.

The structure of “Vivid”

“Vivid”‘s structure is simple. The vast body of the piece consists of the repeating chords D-G-A minor-G; the chorus takes the same rhythm and applies it to the chords D-G-F-A minor, repeated twice. I originally had something much more complex in the chorus sections, but my producer Ed Abbiatti pointed out to me that it didn’t have to be complicated–I didn’t have to necessarily change, or change much, to make the change work. Keeping that in mind, I rewrote the music in about 20 minutes into the form you hear on this record.

The piece goes to F major for the harmonica solo; one of the things I learned from Bela Bartok is that movement by thirds works very well when you want the changes to be a little unsettling (as opposed to the definitive I-am-here-now feeling you get when the bass moves by a 4th or 5th). There is no V chord per se in this piece; all the A chords are minor, so you get the definitive V-I bass movement without the leading tone that tells you you’re going home. In other words, the structure is simple, but it’s not simplistic.

The piece begins with a single chromatic harmonica playing the signature line of the piece, a simple melody in the key of D. The mode for every D chord in the piece is Mixolydian, a mode in D that works very well on the chromatic harp in C. The harmonica palette expands to include two chromatics on the solo section, and three on the outtro. The rest of the instrumentation is pretty stable from start to finish, so the growing presence of the harmonica is what gives the music its dramatic arc.

How “Vivid” was recorded

As per every piece on “The Lucky One,” the full band–Mike Brenner on lap steel, Mark Schreiber on drums, and John Cunningham on bass–recorded this piece live in the studio while I sang and played rough vocal and harp takes. We overdubbed one of the two chromatics on the solo section in the studio; I did all the other harmonica overdubs in my home studio. Before I recorded the extra harps, I laid down electric piano (via the virtual instrument Lounge Lizard) and organ (via the virtual instrument VB3) in my studio, playing along with the band tracks without the use of MIDI quantization–I didn’t put the tracks on a MIDI timecode grid, I just started playing. Lack of quantization notwithstanding, I recorded MIDI instead of audio, so I was able to correct gross errors in the keyboard tracks before committing them to audio. As it turned out, I played the keyboard parts pretty simply and to the point on every track, and there ended up being not a lot of errors to correct. (Hey, it’s a harmonica record anyway. Keep the keys simple.)

The harmonica overdubs were recorded via an Audix Fireball V into the Digitech RP500 and straight to the board from there, and I bypassed all the FX on the RP for every take. I originally tried one of my clean-amped patches in the studio, but Pete Rydberg, the brilliant engineer for these sessions, told me that the RP was taking too much high end out of the harp, so we bypassed the FX and declared victory.

The duo and trio harmonica parts work beautifully together on this piece, and I’d like to be able to claim that I planned it that way–that I wrote them all out and played them from a score, conscious of every note’s relationship to every other, genius that I am. In reality, I improvised all those parts, one after the other, and it was only by chance that I played them back together and discovered that they weaved in and out of each other’s lines in a very pleasing way. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart. I made a point of playing every part with a full tone, and articulating those scalar lines cleanly throughout. The model for this sound is chamber music, not blues, although there are certainly some blue notes in these lines. The clarity of the articulation is part of the beauty that offsets the pain in the lyrics.

What I did plan out for this piece was the sound of the harps at the end, where two chromatics are playing partial chords (A-D, B-D, C-E, B-D: draw 3-5, draw 4-5, blow 5-6, draw 4-5), supported by an organ playing deep triads, and the third chromatic plays a rising line against them, culminating in a final heartbreakingly beautiful high D. THAT’s vivid. I tried a diatonic in various registers for those chords, but in the end the chromatic was the harp that made it sing.

Performing “Vivid” live

There’s no electronic magic in these harmonica tracks, and they stand apart and above from the band, so the only way to perform this stuff is with at least two, and ideally three, players armed with chromatic harmonicas. I suppose a diatonic player could substitute for one or more of the chromatics, but said diatonic player would have to commit to playing very cleanly and classically, i.e. without much blues in the sound, if any. Said diatonic player would also have to switch harps, or do some fancy overblowing, when the harmony switches to F on the solo section. Did I mention that chromatic harps really work better on this song, at least if you want it to sound the way I made it sound?

If you’ve been following this series of posts on the songs from “The Lucky One,” you’re beginning to catch on to the big idea this record represents: with the range of sounds available to harmonica players in the 21st century, there’s no need any longer to assume that a band needs a maximum of one harp player. Two harmonica players or more can easily configure their sounds so that they add a wide range of colors to any band. Two harmonicas can substitute for an organ, a rhythm guitar, a horn section–it’s all there now, and there’s no reason any longer for the harmonica to be a lonely standout in the midst of all those big electronic instruments. The harmonica IS one of the big electronic instruments now.

Enjoy “Vivid,” and take the opportunity to check out this record again. Hey, maybe even buy a copy! I’m just sayin’.

The Harps and Gear I Used to Record “50 Grand”

“50 Grand” is the only piece on my record “The Lucky One” that has something close to a standard 12-bar blues structure. I broke up the 12-bar form with a vamp that includes a cool harmonica horn section, and the lyric structure–unlike a typical blues–does not repeat lines. So it’s a blues, but it’s not quite a traditional blues.

You can hear the full version of “50 Grand” using the player below. “50 Grand” is the third song–use the fast forward button to scroll to it.

As you can hear, the harmonica work on this song is all about the blues. The piece is dedicated to Charlie Musselwhite and Little Feat, and you can hear the former in the harp fills and solo and the latter in the groove and the arrangement.

The rhythm section on “50 Grand” is the same as every other song on the record: Mike “SloMo” Brenner on lap steel, Mark Schreiber on drums, and John Cunningham on bass. To that I add a whole lotta harmonica tracks, all recorded with a Seydel Session Steel harp in Bb played in second position, a Audix Fireball V mic, and a Digitech RP500 running my patch set:

A harp pitch-shifted an octave down, another pitch-shifted an octave up, and another using my ChampB patch (Fender Champ amp model plus Bassman 4×10 cabinet model, the same one I include in every one of my RP patch sets) for the horn section;

A harp running a rotating speaker patch for an organ sound; that’s the wobble sound for this song;

A harp running an autowah patch for squelchy chord hits on 2 and 4;

Another harp running the ChampB patch that just chunka-chunks away with a tongued rhythm, down low in the mix, to juice up the drums a little; that’s a trick I learned 37 years ago from Don Brooks; and

Still another harp running the ChampB patch, which plays all the fills and the solo.

That’s seven harp parts in this piece. Wow! In performance, I think you can get by with two–we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Recording “50 Grand”

In the studio, I recorded fills and a solo live with the band while I did a scratch vocal. I ended up keeping the fills and recording another solo in my studio, using the same ChampB patch. The great thing about using the RP500 with a direct line to the board (either audio or USB, take yer pick) is that every time you record with that patch, you’ll get the same sound. So you need to overdub a phrase or an entire solo later? No problem.

I laid in the horn section, organ, autowah, and chunka-chunk parts in straight passes (more or less) in my home studio, connecting the RP500 via USB to the Sonar software I use for recording. The solo was the most demanding part of this process, because, well, y’know, I like my solos to sound good. Or better yet, great. It took me a little while to decide that I wanted to re-do the solo I’d done in the studio, which was really pretty good, but did I mention that I prefer great? Once I decided to re-do it, I recorded the first two choruses in one pass, and the third in 2-3 takes.

Then it was on to the vocals, which is another story for another time.

Performing “50 Grand”

So there are seven harp parts on this record. Hmmmm… I doubt that I will frequently see seven harp players on any stage, for any reason, playing this song included. However, the most important harmonica parts on this piece are the organ sound and the lead. It might be nice to have a third harp player to cover one or more of the horn section lines, but you’d get a pretty good horn section sound with one of the players covering the low octave and the other covering either the high octave or the normal range blues harp. (Or two of any of those parts, assuming one player equipped with two RPs running in parallel, or with a single multitimbral pitch shfiter such as a HOG or POG from Electro-Harmonix. Easy enough if you have the gear.) With three harp players, you could cover the whole section. Because the sounds are right at your feet with the RP500, the harp players can just switch back and forth between sounds as needed with a footswitch press. Easy. Get a harp-playing buddy and start working those parts out!

While you’re here, take another listen to the record, and maybe even go buy it!

How I recorded “The Road Out of Here”

“The Road Out of Here” is inspired by Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne—I think of “Highway 61 Revisited” by the former and “Redneck Friend” from the latter. In style and to some extent theme (one verse is about lyin’ and cheatin’) it’s some kind of Americana, if we think of Americana as including stuff that’s never been done before, like for example the sounds I used on the harps on this song.

The harmonica arrangement for this piece includes four distinct sound setups on the Digitech RP500, playing a variety of parts and roles as the intensity of the arrangement builds. Two harp players could cover just about every part of this arrangement live, provided neither one of them was singing; once the harp gets going, some kind of harp is going until the very last note.

“The Road Out of Here” is a great piece for understanding what this record is all about, because I bring the harmonica layers in one by one throughout the piece, and you can REALLY hear what each layer is adding to the sound of the band. I said in a previous post on the sounds I used on this record that my favorites tend to fall in certain categories: wah, pitch shifted, wobbly, and so on. I use all of those types of sounds, plus some very traditional amped up blues harp, to get the message across on this very intense piece of message-rock.

Before we go any further, dial up “The Road Out of Here” on the player below (it’s the 9th track on the record), and give it a listen. Then come back here and the notes below will make more sense. I repeat: this song includes at least two sounds that no harmonica has ever made on a record before, and you’re going to get a better idea of what it sounds like from hearing it than you will from reading about it. Really.

Checked it all out? Great. Let’s talk about it.

The Structure of “The Road Out of Here”

“The Road Out of Here” is a 20-bar form; the only chords in the form are I (E), IV (A) and V (B7), but it’s obviously not any kind of standard blues form. The odd-length form is inspired by Dylan, and by my producer Ed Abbiati, both of whom tend to insert phrases of unusual length into their songs. (“It Takes a Lot to Laugh” being the object example in Dylan’s case.) Every iteration of my form is preceded by a 4-8 bar vamp on the tonic chord, which in this case is E, and these vamps are the stage from which I launch each new sound in order. All the harmonica parts are played in second position on a Seydel 1847 in the key of A, and all the harmonica sounds are created with an Audix Fireball V mic into a Digitech RP500 running variations on my patch set for Digitech RP. All but a couple of harp parts were recorded direct to the recording console in the studio via the XLR outputs on the RP500.

Building the arrangement one harp (and verse) at a time

At the beginning of the piece, the bass and drums are vamping by themselves. They’re joined by a harmonica with a heavy amp model, an octave-down pitch shift, and a wah-wah, sounding like some kind of distorted, amped up tenor sax. I recorded that part in the studio live, playing along with John Cunningham on bass and Mark Schrieber on drums. The first vocal verse has occasional support from that instrument; I especially like the part where the chord changes to A and I do a filter sweep with the wah by breathing out on a chord while I slowly push the footpedal down. In general, the wah-wah allows me to make that sound change constantly, because it makes different overtones resonate as I push down on the pedal.

You can hear that on the second verse, where I’m playing a chunky chorded rhythmic figure using the same sound setup; this part was recorded in the same pass as the figure in the intro. The effect here is to make the rhythm part sound like something deeply organic–a bear growling, maybe. This is another example of how the organic quality of breath in the sound of a harmonica is so attention-grabbing and powerful.

On the vamp before the third verse, I introduce the wobbly sound for this piece: a sweeter amp model with a vibrato effect attached. The overall effect is that of a bright 60s-style combo organ like a Vox or Farfisa. With the organic low-octave wah-wahed chugging going on next to it, it’s a very full sound. This part was recorded via overdub in the studio, immediately following the take in which we recorded the rhythm section.

As per my discussion of “Double Lucky,” putting harmonica layers into different octaves is a very useful way to keep them from jamming themselves and everything else up. On “Double Lucky” I used a Low F harp alongside a harp pitched an octave higher. On this piece, the low-pitched harmonica sound is created electronically. I like the electronic approach especially when you want the resulting sound to be somewhat degraded or distorted, or when you’re planning to add even more FX to the sound. In this case, the added effect is a wah-wah, and beginning with a more distorted, lower-pitched sound helps keep the wah wah from pushing the whole thing into feedback.

Help! It’s Godzilla!

The big explosion happens after the third verse, when we hear the opening riff again, and then the words “floor it,” and Godzilla shows up at the party—or at any rate, the biggest block chords ever heard on a harmonica do. The RP500 setup here is one with a Blackface Deluxe Reverb amp model topped off with plenty of gain and a distortion box, run through a Whammy effect with the depth of the whammy set to a major second. With this setup I can play E, D (by shifting the E chord down a whole step), A, and G (by shifting the A chord down) chords on an A harp as massive power chords, and that’s exactly what I do here. I recorded that part as an overdub right after I finished recording the wobble sound.

The section is topped with Mike Brenner’s skyhigh lap steel licks, and a VERY simple harp line (one note, but lots of expression) played through my standard ChampB patch for the RP500 (and every other RP down to the 250), which consists of a Fender Champ amp model coupled with a Fender Bassman 4×10 cabinet model—in other words, a pretty traditional amped-up blues setup. That part was recorded in my home studio with the RP500 functioning as a USB audio interface to the computer.

Everything chills out after that, then rapidly builds back up to a repeat of the big chorded solo. The piece ends with the chorded harmonica blasting away by itself for a half minute or so. I did that specifically to make the point that on the road out of here, harmonica make big, nasty sounds just like everybody else. I recorded an ending like that in the studio when I recorded the chorded stuff, but I redid it in my home studio in order to extend its length. By using the same patch in my home studio that I used in Philly, I was able to get a perfect match on the sound of the original and overdubbed parts.

In performance: Easy with two harp players

There aren’t many places in this arrangement where more than two harp players are playing at once—the exceptions are at the ends of each of the chorded solos, where a traditional amped blues harp sound comes in on top of the chorded harp and the chugging pitch-shifted wah-wahed harp. The traditional lines consist of one note, sometimes bent, sometimes not, so maybe you could hand it off to one of the occasional harp players in the band. (Every band has one, it seems. Most of them can handle playing one note.) Otherwise, you need one harp player to play all the pitch-shifted single note and chugged stuff, and one to cover the wobble sound and the chorded solo.

In case no one remembers, this harp arrangement was previewed in its entirety on this blog when I put up a recording of me playing this song with a looper. It worked with one musician, sounds even better with six.

The sound of this song is so big and tough that it’s easy to think there’s more happening here than a few big, bold harmonica parts. But that’s what’s happening here. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be two harp players in a band instead of two guitarists. Get your friends, get my sounds, and get going.

The Harps and Gear I used on “Orphan Black”

“Orphan Black” is the theme song for the BBC series of the same name (which is about a bunch of clones, in case you didn’t know). The piece was written and produced by Amon Tobin, who (if you’ve heard the original) is pretty deep into electronica. As a theme song, the piece didn’t need to evolve for more than 45 seconds or so, and Tobin’s original has exactly two chords (G major and E b major), which change back and forth every measure for the duration of the piece. In that brief span he delivers two major motifs and a lot of memorable timbre and texture changes.

I was inspired by the simplicity and drama of this piece to record it as a jam with the Lucky One band. We all spent a few minutes watching and listening to the theme on Youtube, then we talked about it for a few minutes and went to work.

My version of the piece is almost two and a half minutes long. I didn’t change the chord structure, so the drama in this version comes from the steady build of harmonica parts, the yearning struggle of the alien-voice lead harmonica as it climbs higher and higher, and the growing intensity in the rhythm section, especially Mark Schreiber’s drums. I added two supporting harmonicas and a Fender Rhodes-style electric piano to the mix, but otherwise the song sounds exactly the way it did when we laid it down in the studio. I think this was our fourth or fifth complete take on this song.

As per previous comment, every harmonica part on this song (and this record) was recorded with an Audix Fireball V mic into a Digitech RP500, and from there straight to the board (in this case via the RP500’s XLR audio outputs).

Check out the clip

To hear the clip using the player below, hit the forward button (double arrow pointing right) until you get to “Orphan Black,” which is the sixth piece in the set. Then hit play, and enjoy!

How it was done–the harps

The clip begins just after the point in time at which the chromatic harmonica shifts over to the diatonic harmonica that carries the lead from there to the end. This diatonic is a Lee Oskar harp with a standard Richter-tuned draw reed plate from a C harp (i.e., a reed plate that delivers all the notes of a G7 +9 chord) coupled with the blow reed plate from a G natural minor harp, which gives you all the notes of a C minor triad over a three octave range. This setup provides all the notes needed to solo over both G and Eb chords (with the caveat that the ones that are missing–like, for example, a Bb to go with the Eb chord–are pretty easy to get via bending). It also gives us a lot more power in the lead than a chromatic harp can supply. I tried a previous take on this song with the band using the chromatic throughout, and it didn’t have the scream I needed for this piece. I found the diatonic–which I hadn’t remembered until then–in my extended harp kit. (I brought somewhere around 85 harmonicas to this session, including multiple chromatics in different keys and every diatonic I own.) It’s another example of the importance of the esoteric harps in my kit. I may only use some of my harps every five years or so, and that’s exactly when nothing else will do.

The other harps used on the piece include a Hohner CX12 chromatic in the key of C, which briefly plays partial chords on G and Eb to begin the ramp up, and diatonics in the keys of C (to play the G7 chord) and low Eb (to play the Eb major chord). There are other ways to get those chords, of course, but when you’re playing chords over extended periods of time, breath becomes an issue, and I chose these harps so I could play the G7 chords on the in breath, and the Eb chords on the out breath. Because every chord was exactly one measure long, this harp-switching approach to the chords meant relaxed breathing, in and out, for however long it was needed, without stress on the player or the instrument. It also gave me the widest possible range of chord voicings for both chords.

About 40 seconds or so into the piece (just before the beginning of the sample, which is a 30-second slice of the entire piece–sorry, can’t stream the whole piece on a cover song), the chromatic harp plays the note G above middle C in eighth note triplets; then I repeat that motif with the Lee Oskar diatonic, this time with a distortion added to the tone, and the chase is on.

How it was done–the FX

I used two setups on the Digitech RP500 for this piece. One is the patch I used for the supporting harmonicas: a tweed deluxe (cleanish) amp model with a phase shifter effect. I used this patch for a harp part that included tongue-switched alternating octaves on G, and for a part with tongued rhythms on the G7 and Eb chords. I used copies of the first part in places, which I figured is a permissible technique for a 21st century jam. The phase shifter imparts a kind of snaky, slithery sound to the chords that retains the organic breath sound of the harmonica, very appropriate for a piece that began its life deep in the heart of electronica.

The other patch–the one I used for the lead–includes a harder-edged amp model coupled with a pitch shift of an octave up. The final touch here is the addition of the Tube Screamer distortion model. The chromatic harp uses this sound without the distortion to begin the lead. When the diatonic harp arrives, I hit the switch on the RP500 to kick the distortion in, and the temperature increases by at least 50 degrees. The sound is utterly alien, and the higher it goes the more certain we are that we are hearing something very, very different to the norm. I originally developed this sound, without the distortion and with the RP500’s LFO used to create a vibrato, on my arrangement of Michael Nesmith’s “Sunset Sam.” It was pretty clear when we started to play “Orphan Black” in the studio that the vibrato was just getting in the way, so I took it out. I had already programmed the distortion in on a different occasion. It only took a moment to change the sound to make it the centerpiece of this song, and now it’s preserved in my RP500 and on my computer, maybe forever. 21st century rock harp indeed.

The supporting harps for this piece were overdubbed in my home studio using the RP500 as the computer audio interface; the lead harp you hear on this song was recorded live in one pass, playing with the band in the studio. That’s the way I like it (uh huh). Mike Brenner plays one of the two major motifs from the Tobin original, half-notes on the roots and 5ths, throughout the piece. It’s worth noting how much sheer sonic space one note from Mike takes up. That is some phat shit for sure. John Cunningham’s base lays in the whole notes, and the piano (and harp) add in the eighth notes and eighth note triples that take the groove from relaxed to heated, with lots of color and fire from the drums. This was one fun jam.

Performing Live

There are only three harmonica tracks on this piece, and two harmonica players using RP500s can easily cover the parts where they count most. One harp player can do the supporting parts–which are all about chords–using the Tweed Deluxe phase shifter patch and standard tuned harps in C and low Eb, playing draw chords on the first and blow chords on the second; the other can handle the leads with the octave-up distorted setup. You’ll definitely need to construct the same Lee Oskar major-minor harp that I used for the lead–you can get a Lee Oskar standard tuning in C, another in G Natural Minor, and do the reed plate swaps in 10 minutes. If you use the plates to make two harps instead of just one, your second harp will be a dorian minor in G, where the draw chord is a G minor (7 and 9 too if you like), and the blow chord is a C major triad. I like that tuning a lot. It’s great for lots of blues and rock. Try Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again” with that harp and tell me if you feel like using anything else, ever.

If you’ve licensed my RP500 patch set, you’re in luck. I’m going to provide every one of my RP500 licensees with a copy of the patches I used on every song in “The Lucky One.” If not, check out our store if you want these sounds in your own songs.

The harps and gear I used on “Double Lucky”

As a rule, most of the pieces on “The Lucky One” have somewhere between three and five harmonica parts in the mix. “Double Lucky” is an exception, with only two harps, and I think its simplicity makes it a good place to start my series on the instruments and FX used on the record. Don’t worry–we’ll start on the more-complex stuff in the next post in the series.

“Double Lucky” is a Double Blues

“Double Lucky” is one of the hardest-rockin’ tunes on “The Lucky One.” The piece is structured as a double blues (24 bar) form in the key of C, with vamps on C between repetitions of the form. The chord changes on the first half of the form are C/C/C/C/Eb/Eb/C/C/F minor/G7/Eb/Eb. The chord changes on the second half of the form are the same, except the last two measures are on Ab instead of Eb. This form has the same harmonic rhythm (i.e. the timing of the chord changes) as a standard 12-bar blues, but the usual I-IV-V blues structure has the IV chord swapped out for a flat III chord, and the turnarounds are substitutions too. Because the traditional 12-bar blues form is so familiar and strong, the song is still recognizably a blues (and the structure of the lyrics reinforces that impression, with two repeated lines followed by a response line in each verse).

I wrote the double blues form after I finished the lyrics for the piece. (I’m finding lately that it’s a lot easier to write the music when I have the lyrics in hand, but maybe that’s just me.) I came up with the vamp lick–of which I admit that I am truly proud and grateful, ’cause it is one hard-rockin’ riff–a few weeks before the session when I was driving down Packsaddle Road in Tetonia, Idaho, jamming away on a Seydel Session Steel A harp. As soon as I played that lick for the first time, I pulled the car over, took out my iPhone, and recorded it. Before that, the tune consisted of the double blues structure, period. But that vamp upped the energy in the tune by about 5000 percent, and when we heard playback on the first take in the studio it was obvious that it was meant to be. So know how to access the voice recorder in your smart phone, and don’t let those inspirations get away from you!

Two, Count them, two harmonicas

I wanted to play a chorded harmonica part on this song similar to what a rhythm guitar might do, but it’s impossible to play C, Eb, and Ab chords on any single diatonic harmonica. This is where the Digitech RP500, or your favorite pitch shifter, comes in. I set the RP500 up for this song using Gibson GA40 amp and cabinet models for a big, gritty tone, and to that I added a pitch shifter with a shift of a minor 3rd up under footpedal control. (I could have simply used the Mod FX on/off switch on the RP500 to kick the pitch shifter in and out, and assigned the footpedal to something else, but I felt more comfortable using the footpedal.) When I play a C chord (on a Low F Suzuki Manji in this case) and engage the pitch shifter, I get an Eb chord; when I do the same thing on an F chord, the pitch shifter bumps it to Ab. Add octaves on F and G, and every chord in the form is covered.

I used the Low F harp on the vamp sections as well as the double blues. That wasn’t necessarily the original plan, but when we started running down the tune in the studio with the band, it was immediately obvious that a standard (high) F harp didn’t have the sheer power needed for the vamp lick. You can hear the sound of the low F harp on the vamp here.

“Double Lucky” rhythm harp

The only other harmonica used on “Double Lucky” is a Lee Oskar Natural Minor in the key of C, played (like the Low F) in 2nd position. That’s the harp I used on the solo, and it’s processed through the same GA40 patch on the RP500, without the pitch shifter.

You can hear it here, with the rhythm harp, which plays throughout the tune. You can hear the rhtyhm harp play C and Eb chords in this sample, the latter courtesy of the pitch shifter.

“Double Lucky” rhythm and lead harps

Whenever you use two or more harmonicas on a tune, it’s important to give each of them its own space in the mix. (I’ve heard recordings where the artist chose to overdiub two or three harps in the same register with the same amped tone, and it sounds like somebody falling all over himself.) The standard C Natural Minor harp is pitched an octave higher than the Low F, and that gives both harps plenty of space to do their respective things. An alternative would be to apply a different effect to each harp, but that would produce a less-bluesy sound, and I wanted something more traditional in this case. (Granted that neither a Low F or a Natural Minor are exactly traditional–those instruments didn’t exist in 1950, and you certainly never heard either one on a Little Walter recording. But the basic approach to the harps on this song is obviously all about the blues.)

Recording the parts, in studio and at home

The Low F rhythm track was recorded live with the band in the studio, using the dual XLR audio outputs from the RP500 direct to the board. The solo was recorded in my home studio, using the RP500 as the audio interface to my computer. I actually recorded a scratch solo in the studio with the band using a standard F harp, but after reviewing it I decided to switch harps for the overdubbed solo. The C Natural Minor is based on an Eb scale, and it’s better suited to the changes in “Double Lucky” than a standard F in 2nd position.

The solo is pretty complex and high-velocity. I recorded the first half in one pass, and the second half phrase by phrase to make sure it was played right, working out the lines as I went along. The mix engineer added some delay to the lead harp to give it that gee-I-like-this-big-ol’-stadium sound, but otherwise the harp parts on this song sound exactly the way they did when I laid the tracks in. That’s one of the really, really great things about recording direct with the RP500: you can be confident that you’ll get EXACTLY the same sound on every part you record with a particular patch, no matter where or when.

Two harp players is enough to do “Double Lucky” live

And that’s the harmonica story on “Double Lucky.” Two harps, one RP500 setup, lotta big tones and drive. It should be obvious at this point that this piece could be played exactly as recorded by a band with two harmonica players, one to play the Low F rhythm part, the other to play the lead. (Ideally the lead harp player can also sing.) So get together with a harmonica-playing buddy and work it out!

And take a minute to drop by CDBaby and hear samples of the rest of the songs on “The Lucky One.”

“The Lucky One” is here! Check out the songs!