Tag: audix fireball
10 minutes plus of some of the most intense and original live rock harmonica ever recorded. Live performance with looper by Richard Hunter, 2017. Lee Oskar Natural Minor harmonica into an Audix Fireball V mic into a Digitech iStomp running the Swingshift polyphonic pitch shifter, into a Digitech RP500 running the patch set I used to make my record “The Lucky One”, with a Zoom G3 (in parallel) running a Huntersounds patchset. No overdubs; these sounds were the sounds in the room, recorded live on a Zoom H4. I did a little editing to remove repetitions of the main loops without much of anything else happening. Otherwise this is what I played in the order I played it. Dig.
Where “Put the Lever Down” came from
I wrote the lick and harmony on which “Put the Lever Down” is based while I was hanging out in my car at one of my daughter’s skating meets around 1981, playing with a Dorian Minor tuned diatonic harp; I don’t remember whether I recorded the licks on the spot, or if I memorized the piece. I was already in the habit of carrying a portable Radio Shack cassette recorder around with me at the time. However I did it, I had the song’s structure laid out when I went to the studio not long after to record my first single.
“Lever Down” was the one of the first two pieces I recorded with Erik Lindgren producing, in 1982. We recorded to 8 tracks of analog tape, the state of the art in small-studio setups at the time, and the whole thing took 5 hours from first take to final mix; everyone was just on fire that day. Andrew Maness played guitar through a pitch shifter–I think it was a Boss Octaver–and I played harmonica through a Shure 545 (I think, one of the old pistol grip models that unbeknownst to me at the time was one of Paul Butterfield’s favorites) into a Boss BF-2 Flanger and a Fender Champ amplifier, one of the old ones that had a single knob for volume, in that order.
The amp was Erik Lindgren’s; he found it in the garbage in Cambridge, MA one day when he was out on a stroll, took it home and plugged it in, and found that it was working. My guess is that some very angry girlfriend or wife dumped that thing in the garbage, because there is no damn way that anybody who’s ever plugged an instrument into a vintage Champ is going to wittingly dump it on the street.
It was one of my first recordings using an altered tuning, in this case a Dorian Minor tuning (D Dorian minor in 2nd position), played in third position (A Natural Minor in 3rd position) on what would be a standard G harp if we hadn’t retuned it. It was also my most-admired recording for a long time–among other things, it was the theme song for a show on harmonica music titled “The Tin Sandwich” broadcasting on NPR from Worcestor, MA, and it was received with wild enthusiam by reviewers in Boston.
That was then, this is now
I thought of this version of the recording from the start as an update with a wider palette of harmonica orchestration. This version also features the contributions of an excellent band, while the 1982 version only included two human players plus a drum machine. (For all that, it rocked hard, with a raw, furious, mindbending harmonica solo over an implacably relentless, steady groove in the bass via Andrew Maness’s pitch-shifted guitar.) Finally, the idea of a dual lead in the last half occurred to me when I was comparing takes in my home studio and discovered that different takes were mutually complementary–I tended to alternate my phrasing on every take, so when one part was highly active, the other was just hanging fire on one big, screaming note. So this piece includes two big harps chasing each other to the end instead of just one.
In the end, the mix presents a somewhat less orchestrated and more improvised sound than I originally had in mind, and that decision was about making room for the leads–both of which are red-hot by the time the second half is well underway–which might otherwise be smothered in a cloud of harmonicas.
Let’s talk about all those harmonicas. In the meantime, take a listen to the piece. You can hear it at cdbaby. If you use the player below, “Put the Lever Down” is the fifth song on the record, right after my cover of Morphine’s “Early to Bed.”
The Chord Changes Dictate the Harps
The structure of the tune begins with a fierce rhythm lick, articulated by an amped harmonica in alternating octaves via alternate side of the mouth tongue-blocking, followed by a long solo harmonica solo that never dips below the 5th above the root (A, or draw 4) in the second octave. It begins relatively quietly, and ends shrieking and jumping around in the top octave of the harmonica. The harmony shifts from A minor to B minor before settling on A minor under the solo as it digs in, and for this part of the piece I used a standard G harp, a Seydel 1847, playing in third position (A minor on a G harp) and 5th position (B minor on a G harp) as necessary. I also introduce an A Natural Minor harp here playing chords with big, wet, squawking autowah sounds on the 2nd beat of every measure.
When the harmony settles on A minor, I keep that part going and introduce another harmonica entirely, a Chromonica II. This wicked chordal instrument offers lots of cool variations on scale-tone and passing chords in the keys of C, G, A minor, and D minor, and you can hear it in the background here with chorded rock licks that jump back and forth from A minor to D minor.
After the first extended solo, we enter a bridge. The chords on the bridge are a repeating cadence of D minor, G, and A minor, with a crescendo on E7 at the end, and I play the first three chords on a single Dorian Minor-tuned harmonica in the key of D (equivalent to standard G richter), doubled by the Chordomonica II. The D Dorian Minor tuning is made from a G harp by reducing the pitch of the draw 3 and 7 reeds, the 3rds of the scale in 2nd position, by 1/2 step each. (Pitch reduction can be accomplished by filing the reeds, or by matching the right draw reed plate, e.g. a D minor, with the right blow reed plate, e.g. a G.) This yields a harp that offers a minor I chord in second position, a major IV chord, and a minor V–in this case, D minor, G, and A minor. In third position (A minor on a D Dorian harp) the mode is Natural Minor (flatted 3/6/7), which is perfectly usable for lots of cool stuff. The D Dorian harp I used was a Lee Oskar, and I probably put it together by combining reed plates from a D natural minor (draw) and standard G (blow) harps. I used a Seydel Session Steel A harp in 2nd position to play the E7 chords. On all the bridge harp parts, I recorded multiple layers with different FX; see below for a detailed discussion.
After the bridge, the piece includes an extended two-harp solo over alternating A minor and B minor chords. Here I used a standard Seydel 1847 G harp for both of the leads, using 3rd position for the A minor sections and 5th position for the B minor sections. I also used A Natural Minor and B natural minor harps to provide the same chord hits that I performed with the Chromonica II in the first half, and to play rapidly ascending and descending cascades of chord tones, like a big fireworks plume (albeit a plume that’s low in the mix).
There are plenty of harp tracks on every tune on this record, but there aren’t a lot of tunes where I used 6 different harmonicas, with different tunings, or layouts, or performance features like double slides. (That’s 1 G harp, 1 D Dorian (modified G) harp, 1 A Natural Minor, 1 B Natural Minor, 1 standard A, and 1 Chordomonica II.)
Lotta harps, golly, huh? How do we keep alla those harps from stepping on each other? Well, we use a lotta different sounds from our magic RP500 setup, like this…
The FX on “Put The Lever Down”
The first lead on “Put the Lever Down”–the one you hear in the first half of the piece–was recorded live in studio with the band. I used my workhorse ChampB (Champ amp plus Bassman cab) patch for that lead–I wasn’t sure about using something more effected-up, like with a flanger or chorus, for example, notwithstanding that I recorded the 1982 version with a flanger inline–and I decided pretty much on the spot to go with the traditional blues harp sound. I’m glad I did–I was able to use vibrato and other techniques to get a more intensely emotional sound than I think I could have achieved with a flanger.
On the bridge, I recorded three big chorded parts, two with the same Lee Oskar D Dorian harp–one with the ChampB patch, one with the autowah patch–and a track using the Chordomonica II into a Digitech iStomp running the Swingshift pitch shifter with a sub-octave added to the tone, into a chorus patch on the RP500 for a big, wide lower-midrange sound. Together these tones produce a big, shifting, deep sound that’s intriguing because it keeps changing in multiple ways.
I recorded the second half live with the band in the studio with the same ChampB setup, but in the end I didn’t much like it. I felt at the time like I was blowing too hard for too long, and the solo seemed to hit a peak early and stay there, which is not tops. By the time I figured that out, in my home studio I had recorded the Chordomonica II parts and the Natural Minor harps, all using various clean reverbed/delayed/chorused sounds, among them a patch that pairs a Tweed Deluxe amp model–nice amp model with a full body that’s not openly distorted–with a TC Electronics chorus model.
All of those parts were intended to provide color and increased intensity as the piece progressed. Maybe they’re mixed a little low for that. The payoff for that decision is that the two lead harps have the freedom to take up a lot of space with lots of movement and color changes in the second half of the piece.
When I decided I didn’t like the second half lead from the studio, I recorded a new one with the ChampB patch. Then I recorded another one with a patch based on a high-gain heavy metal amplifier, which puts a lot of edge on the sound, and a mild chorus effect, which makes a sound that stands out just enough from the traditional ChampB Chicago amped harp sound. I listened to them one at a time, and then listened to them together, at which point I realized that they were mutually complementary. That’s what I sent to Chris Peet for mixing.
I think Chris might already have started mixing the record, maybe even mixing this song, when I sent him the updated solos. Hope not… but all’s well that ends well, though travails did not end there.
A Little More Drama Than Usual
We ended up doing five different mixes on “Put the Lever Down.” In the end I approved the 5th mix for mastering. I listened to the master again just before I sent it off for pressing, and I was aghast to realize that I had approved the wrong mix for mastering! The 4th mix was a lot more dynamic and exciting in the second half than the 5th.
I immediately emailed Ed Abbiati to advise that we needed a new master with the 4th take of “Put the Lever Down.” Ed listened and agree that the 4th take was better. He contacted Alex McCollough at True East Mastering, Alex redid the master for the song with the 4th take that very day, and all was well. Phew.
Performing “Put the Lever Down”
I think that “Put the Lever Down” can be performed effectively by one player–the lead part is the most important one once the rhythm lick that starts the piece has done its work, which is to say by the time the extended solo on A minor begins. If additional players are available, any of the chorded parts played on any suitable chord harmonica instrument would be great, and if two soloists are available, one can do the octave-jumping parts up front, and both can solo together at the end.
Don’t forget that there’s a lot of harmonica technique involved in playing the octave jumps that are the motor behind the rhythm in “Put the Lever Down.” In other words, it’s not just about the FX in this piece. Learn what you can about “corner-switching” techniques. The intensity of the octave jumps in this piece, and the fact that they’re happening on both blow and draw octaves, means that you need a harp that responds reliably at a given pressure level on every note. Lee Oskars are good for that, and I’ve been using Lee Oskars to play this piece for a very long time, especially the bridge.
The key is to make sure that there’s enough difference between the harmonica tones for a listener to tell them apart. To get exactly the same range of tones that I get on this piece, you’ll need a Digitech RP500 loaded with my patch set. But you could get similar kinds of contrasts with a decent amped setup and a pedal effect or two (autowah and chorus preferred, delay pretty high priority too).
The energy in this piece ultimately comes from the wildly driving lick that begins it and the groove that results. The band of Mike Brenner on lap steel, John Cunningham on bass, and Mark Schreiber on drums plays the hell out of it. The harps shout hysterically above the general funky din. What’s not to like? Play this one with your own band.
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
the rock harmonica masterpiece
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
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.
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
the rock harmonica masterpiece
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
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.
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:
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 Richter 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 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.
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
the rock harmonica masterpiece
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
“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.
“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:
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!
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
the rock harmonica masterpiece
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
“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.
The Structure of “The Road Out of Hereâ€
“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.
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
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“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.
Every harmonica part on this song (and this record) was recorded with an Audix Fireball V mic into a Digitech RP500 running my patch set for Digitech RP, 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.
If you liked that, you’ll like these:
the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes
the rock harmonica masterpiece
Get it on Amazon
Get it on iTunes