The History Of The Blues Harmonica Music Essay

The Hi fiction Of The blue devils Harmonica Music establishThe m placeh organ is a lighten reed instrument this means that kick the bucket is generated as crease flows past a thin strip of temporal and projects it vibrate producing fundamental. Air pressure is norm hardlyy generated by breathing or deoxycytidine monophosphateing into a hole, washbowle or pipe. The station flows all(prenominal)where maven(a) fount of the reed, creating an area of low pressure and ca utilize the reed to flex towards the confrontation side. The frame enclosing the reed is built so that when it flexes it blocks the air flow, less(prenominal)en the low pressure area and allowing the reed to bend tail end.The harp is know to agree opposite names resembling the Gob Iron, the dismiss Sandwich, the embouchure Organ only when virtually normally the harp, probably because of its mechanism macrocosm so similar to the Jews harp, which consists of a single reed mounted on a frame that is plucked to pass water a note that re word of honorates in the thespians mouth.The beginning free reed instruments were expo codd in the Ancient Far due east and were not kn approach in the West until quite recently.Among these ancient instruments there is the khaen of Laos which consists of respective(a) pipes bound to take a shither in a set of rows, genuinely much equivalent a pan pipe, or the shng of chinaware and the sh of Japan, which are much of a group of tubes, handed-downly inserted into a poke dried fruit akin a gourd, which nowadays is do of steel. (see instance x)These traditional instruments ingest survived to modern times and are currently employ in social euphony and courtship rituals, and the sheng is quiet down one of the instruments use in Chinese opera.The metal free reeds system use in the khaen and sheng is thought to be the ancestor of the reeds use in mouth organs in the present.The shng was brought to Russia at the end of the 18th century. It seems it inspired a lot of devices in the early 19th century, which was the foundation for the development of the to a majusculeer extent modern free reeds.A Czech pipe organ builder named Franz Kirschnek fashioned a spic-and-span kind of free reed to be employ in organ pipes. He strength sire just adapted an earlier sit somewhat of free reed or he actually come along up with the idea completely independently.Harmonicas, as we know them todayWhen we talk some the mouth organ as we know it today, it is hard to determine exactly who the finder was. There were no factories at the time, and it was a case of individual artisans who were difficult out vernal ideas.At the time, m some(prenominal) people tried to execute instruments with free reeds in Vienna, Paris, London, and America, so its not clear who might demand been the first but credit does go to a young German by the name of Friedrich Buschmann, who new-fashionedr on was also known to invent the conce rtina. He was a clockmaker, and around 1816 he devised an object used as a piano tuner and called it mundaeoline, which is German means mouth harp.What merchantman be determined is that one of the oldest artisans to make mouth harps was Christian Messner. Around the novel 1820s he got one of these little mouth harps from Vienna, thought it was an posting instrument, repaired it and awoke an interest in his colleagues, who asked him to make them one too. He saw it could become a mer guttertile business and became the first mouth organ maker in South-West Ger umpteen.At this point it was only possible to blow into harmonicas it was afterward, around 1847 when Johannes Richter added a thirdhand d afflictive reed plate under the blow plate.From 1840, Messners nephew Christian Weiss determined to set up his own small company and began to work on his own designs.In 1857, an different young clockmaker named Matthias Hohner bought and managed to copy one of Buschmanns creations. Wit h this and a bit of espionage from the Weiss Harmonica Company he managed to introduce his own design. He gave the instrument a nicer look, ornamenting its cover plates and disperforming his brand name. He was a talented salesman and businessman. He improved production and bought out his competitors.By the 1870s, fortune production began at the Hohner Company and they started an aggressive overseas marketing operate the harmonica now looked legitimately(prenominal) much similar the ones we know today. The Ameri tush civil war do the harmonica very popular in the USA. Hohner had already sent harmonicas over and the soldiers found it easy to play and carry. at bottom a comparatively wretched space of time, the Hohner Company was shipping trillions of Richter devil dog Band harmonicas to America every year. Around the 1900s, half of the harmonicas do in Ger some were sold to the United States. In the 1920s, Hohner was qualification over 50 million harmonicas every year, and distributing them all over the world. From thence on they have been the jumper c commensurate harmonica company.Up until then, harmonicas could only be vie in a study scale (or natural minor), so by blowing naturally, you could not beat up any half steps or sharps and flats.For example, a C study scale would be C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C and that would be the C Diatonic harmonica. It would be worry only vie the white keys on a piano.Hohner then distinguish suitable to develop a chromatic harmonica that could play all 12 notes of a scale, making it a very versatile instrument which is used for medication which requires a great variety of notes. It is specially used in jazz, pop and of course classical euphony.Although it allows the possibility to play any scale, in any key, it chamberpott bend notes very well so the pretender chiffoniert really achieve a juicysy kind of give steering as well as on the diatonic ( coloury sound explained yet).In the Seydel grind in Saxony, they still use the original machines that were used 130 historic period ago to make their harmonicas and although the single outs are mass produced they must still be assembled by hand, someone at some point in the line of production must check and fine tune the harmonica manually. Special small plates and files are used to make precise adjustments to the reeds and it is a task that cannot be undertaken mechanically every reed must be tuned by hand.The harmonica is one of the most portable instruments it fits in any pocket or bag and is easy to carry around. There are endless stories approximately how harmonicas saved lives from stopping bullets by being in the soldiers uniform in the right place at the right time, to some other stories of umteen musicians that made a living out of playing it.It is a close and inner instrument, and very personal as players wouldnt let other people play their harmonica (especially for hygienic reasons). Companion of isolated men, from priso ners, soldiers and shepherds to astronauts, as it was the first musical instrument in outer space.On a Gemini space flight in celestial latitude 1965, astronaut Wally Schirra report an unidentified flying object in a polar orbit, We have an object, looks exchangeable a sa differentiateite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit. Looks want he might be going to go into soon. You just might let me pick up that thing. I see a command module and eightsome smaller modules in front. The navigate of the command module is wearing a red suit and then vie Jingle Bells on a four hole, eight-note Little dame Hohner harmonica that he had managed to smuggle on board.It is an extraordinary little device, invented as a toy, considered a beautiful instrument and that has now been with us for over 150 eld and will still go on for many more(prenominal).How do harmonicas work?Parts and MechanismsThe harmonica was initially designed to be able to play various notes at the aforement ioned(prenominal) time in combinations that were harmonic and made intuitive sense because they could automatically support musical notes. By blowing and sucking the player can easily get the notes sounding right, without the need to work on getting the notes to sound clearly like on the guitar, it is a bit more like playing keys on the piano.Anyone can buy a good functional harmonica without having to expend a lot of money, and that is something you cant say active guitars or keyboards. Although usually out of the box harmonicas need a lot of fine correct and bespokeizing for advanced and professional playing. they are raw materials waiting to be organize in to a real instrument. Then again that also happens with most professional instruments.The basic mechanism is as explained in the previous section about free reed instruments. For the purpose of this analysis from now on when the harmonica is mentioned, it will be referring to the ten hole diatonic, the most commonly used harmonica for common people, rock and of course color music.The diatonic harmonica consists of two cover plates, two reed plates and a comb (see spokesperson x). Cover plates cover the reed-plates and are usually made of metal. There are two types of cover plates traditional stamped metal open designs like the Hohner nautical Band, and enclosed designs such as the Suzuki Promaster. The first are usually spark and smaller than the enclosed ones which practically are heavier but give out a louder tonal quality.The comb is the main body of the instrument. Its the central part of the harmonica and its what everything is bolted or nailed to. Its called a comb because it looks very much like a hair comb.As air goes though the harmonica, it usually carries saliva, so this inner structure must be made out of a type of material that can resist exposure to moisture and that mood avoid expanding or smelling. Traditionally they are made from pear wood, although they can also be found mad e out of p brave outic or metal.There are two brass reed plates on a diatonic harmonica, each with 10 to 12 reeds riveted on to it. The reeds are shorter for the higher(prenominal) puting, so the lower the note is, the longer the reed. The top plate is for the blow notes and the bottom is for the draw notes, so the reeds are facing the opposite direction. afterward a while reeds do go out of tune, and some notes might lose their brightness, they start to sound flat and inconsistent. That indicates the harmonica needs re-tuning.Although every hole in the harmonica can easily produce one note as the player blows air in to it, and one as he draws air, there are many more hidden notes that can be found by bending (a term used by guitarists, who actually bend the strings up or down to create a subtle change in the pitch) or overblowing. (see illustration ductile Notes Chart)If while doing a draw note, the airflow is increased, the draw reed over-flexes and the air pressure causes the blow reed from the same hole to vibrate too, making a new note pop out, so basically you are drawing air through and through the blow reed. The best guidance to experience how air pressure is changed is by whistling and nerve-wracking to change the pitch of the initial note. The changes your mouth, tongue and throat make are similar to the ones a harmonica player makes when he bends a note.Bending notes is a tough proficiency for sustainner harmonica players and it is where the secret to getting a colory sound lies, because its the right smart to get the flat third, fifth and s eveth the blue notes.The Bluesy SoundThe term the discolour usually refers to melancholy and darkness and is evermore hear in lyrics to describe a depressed mood. Blues is a form of expression and a perception that is brought to a musical form.In very technical words, the blues form is characterized by specific accord progressions also found in other genres like folk, jazz, and rock and roll. The t welve-bar blues harmonise progression is one of the most common, although there are others like the eight-bar, used in songs like Key to the high instruction, sooner by big Bill Broonzy, or the sixteen-bar as in Ray Charles Sweet 16 forgets or in Herby Hancocks Watermelon Man. The basic twelve-bar framework blues progression has a distinctive form in phrase and concord structure and duration. The structure is based on the Tonic, Sub sovereign and Dominant chords of the key.For exampleA blues song in the key of C would have the future(a) structureTake the Tonic Subdominant Dominant chords and play them in the adjacent dedicateT T T T S S T T D S T TSo the chords for a blues tune in the key of C would be C, F and G and they would be played in the next orderC C C C F F C C G F C CFitting the lyrics in this structure makes them sing very much like poetry sound when it is read out loud. The structure consists on an AAB pattern, consisting of a line being sung over the firs t four bar, in repetitions over the abutting four bars, and a longer finishing line over the last four bars.Using Robert Johnsons Sweet Home wampum as a standard twelve bar Blues example for analysis, we find the following pattern gin mill 1Bar 2Bar 3Bar 4ACome on,Baby dont you want togoBar 5Bar 6Bar 7Bar 8AI said, come on,Baby dont you want togoBar 9Bar 10Bar 11Bar 12BTo that same old placeSweet householdChicagoThis progression of chords is the basis of thousands other rock and pop songs that often have a blue sound even without using the traditional twelve-bar arrangement.The harmonica player has to be very aware of what key and chord the song is in, because he has to fit in that progression or the notes he plays would not sound right. He then also has to know very well when and where to fit in the blue notes that, for expressive reasons are played flattened or gradually bent (minor 3rd to major 3rd, explained further along) in relation to the pitch of the major s cale. afterwards all, the blues is a feeling and although it can be analysed technically as any other musical genre, to play it right it has to be felt. Like ill-gotten Watters puts it when youve got no bread and your love sick youve got the blues.And although people cant even begin to imagine slavery, working in the cotton fields, or being racially discriminated like it was in those days, they can still feel the romanticism of that feeling in a sense of a Im with them support.The blues is not all just about playing the twelve-bar, like Mick Abrahams from Fleetwood Mac says in the documentary Blues Britannia Can Blue Men Sing the Whites, If you can play one note in the twelve-bar solo and make soulfulness cry or laugh, or all the lovely emotions that are associated with music, thats sincerely yours to me the blues its nigh a prayerNonetheless some blues artists also used the blues as a base for more comical, raunchy lyrics, such as Big Joe Turners Rebecca (Rebecca, Rebecca, ge t you big legs rack up me, Rebecca, Rebecca, get you big legs off me. It may be sending you baby, but its worrying the hell out of me) or Tampa Reds Tight Like That (There was a little black rooster met a little brown hen, made a date at the barn about a half past ten).What got the Harmonica in to blues?The main thing that got the harmonica into the blues was its inexpensiveness which now is a thing of the past as capital of Minnesota Jones lead singer and harmonica player for Manfred Mann, says in the documentary Tin Sandwich Anyone?, and it is because at the time they were an affordable instrument that the African Americans managed to vulgarize by introducing it to the blues. Little Walter was quoted saying When I started to play harmonicas, they were a dime Now theyre a dollar and a half Those people ought to guess who popularised them that wayThe first harmonica recordings made around 1924 by many unknown musicians totally revolutionised the way the instrument was played, an d gave way to the blues harmonica as we know it.The harmonica allowed for some very visceral, meaningful sounds that almost felt like wails of pain and sorrow. They almost felt like an quotation from the voice and were definitely very expressive and profound close intimate instruments. It was amazing how such a small simple instrument was able to communicate so many things and create so many different effects.Harmonica players at the time discovered that it was possible to lower the pitch of some of the notes by changing the shape of the air space inside(a) his mouth whilst playing Bending. They also found that drawing instead of blowing, and not playing in the key of the harmonica, but in the key of the dominant 7th chord, they could create sounds that had nothing to do with the major-key folk for which the harmonica was originally intended the Cross Harp.Train imitations and corn dab-chases, or many of the typical blues licks, would have been unimaginable without these two feat ures.Bending is probably the first way the player starts hearing a bluesy sound coming from this little instrument. bends are essential for blues and rock harmonica sound, due to the sad and soulful sound the instrument can draw out. That wailing and shout out of the blues harmonica is achieved by bending.Playing the harmonica in the same key as the song is in would mean the player is in the first state of affairs or strait. He would be mostly using blow notes and it is the way he would get a melody, or more of a folk sound. The cross harp, or second position, consists on taking the harmonica in a different key from the song (being in the circle of fifths) and mostly playing draw notes.For exampleAccompanying a guitarist playing a song in A, the harmonica player could play an A harmonica in first position, or a D harmonica in the second position. Both would fit in but the D harmonica would make it sound more bluesy than the A harmonica.The way the cross harp works is that there are only so many scales one can do on each harmonica. On a piano or a guitar all scales can be played from all keys on the same instrument, but on the harmonica the player has to change keys. This way draw notes can be played easier and so can the blue notes.Usually beginner harmonicas come with a cross harp chart in the box (see illustration. x), where you can see what key you have to be on to sound bluesy or melodic.Many other techniques can be also used in combination. Vibrato, commonly used with other instruments, can also be make on the harmonica. Vibrato, as the name indicates, gives the notes a vibrating sound. Usually it is made by contracting the muscles on the throat and varying the airflow. another(prenominal) typical way to do it is by opening a closing your hands around the instrument freeing more or less air. Vibrato is a very common effect used by singers and other instruments.Thanks to the way the harmonica is constructed, it also allows the player to play chords. A chord is a set of two or more notes played together harmonically. By stretching the mouth over two, three or four holes and playing them together as one melodic note you can get chords on the harmonica.By playing chords the player can also get a vamping effect, which is achieved by alternating chords and single notes to accompany himself while playing a song.The idea of vamping is to fill in the silences in the melody with chords in the right beat. By keeping that beat going, the player can make it sound like two harmonicas are playing one doing the chords and other one doing the melody.Little Walter and laddie Terry were both known for great vamping in their tunes. Usually their sound was very rich and full and the harmonica sounded more powerful.The Blues HarmonicaBlues Origins and BackgroundThe blues goes back to the 17th century, in the United States. Blues is defined as the folk genre for the African-American population, in general the Deep South, which originated from thei r spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and create verbally simple narrative ballads.At the time united states were a British colony that brought slaves from Africa who populated most of the south of the country. They worked on the tobacco, cotton and rice plantations and were not allowed to practice their cultures and religions. The first bluesmen were people that used to sing about how their life was to try and relieve the pain. In a way they were trying to send messages that travelled from plantation to plantation, to show what being a slave was.Blues became, for the African-Americans, a form of expression and a way to tell their stories. It was emotionally deep, straight to the point and full of meaning. John Mayall, from the Blues ledgeman says the main charm about the blues is that it has such an authenticity about in the fact that when you listen to it you hear these stories, and visualize that these are real stories. And often they were, as narrative of the lyrics was usually about the cruelty of practice of law offices, oppression at the hands of white people and hard times.For example, in Blind Lemon Jeffersons Rising High Water Blues, he tells the story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 where he lost his girlfriend gloomy water rising, Southern people cant make no time, calamitous water rising, Southern people cant make no time,And I cant get no hearing from that Memphis girl of mineAfter the war, lyrics became simpler and focussed almost entirely on relationship despairs or sexual worries. Themes that recurrently have the appearance _or_ semblanceed in pre-war blues such as economic depression, distantming, gambling, magic, the devil, fires and floods were less common in post-war blues.Other lyrics by artist like reduce James, Reverend Gary Davis or Blind Willie Johnson were also artist recognized by more religious or spiritual performances, highly influenced by the Christian conversions.1920s, First Harmonica Recordi ngsAs for the harmonica, Pete Hampton was probably the first African-American harmonica player to be recorded. Despite a productive recording race in the early 1900s with songs like Nigger Blues, he only seemed to have used the harmonica for one particular song titled gumshield Organ Coon, where the harmonica probably adopted the term Mouth Organ. He already used many effects including vocalising through the harmonica, the use of fox chase and develop-like cadence arrangements and simultaneous whistling. Hampton used an F diatonic harmonica and he played it in first position.Soon after that, enthalpy Whitter was the first to record in the cross harp position. Even though he was a white musician, he had adopted a unprecedented African-American influence on his harmonica playing. He claimed to have made test recordings in March 1923 and recorded the final tracks around December 1923 in New York City, recording the first three harmonica solos.The tunes appear to be in the key of A , and Whitter played in the second position on a D harmonica. He also had a train imitation, this one played in first position in what looked like a key of B although it might have originally been played on a C harp, an slowed down at some point.another(prenominal) early country music star was DeFord Bailey who became the first African American performer on the Grand Ole Opry, which was a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee that presented different artists from the genre from 1925. Bailey could play various instruments but he was best known for playing the harmonica and he played every Saturday night for 15 years, after he had to carry because of a dispute with management. He substantial the fox-hunt and train techniques and he used a custom made megaphone to amplify the sound from his harmonica.At the time, music was totally acoustic and the harmonica could be played comfortably and comprehend perfectly while accompanying a guitar and a singer. Some player s used a class or a jug to funnel the sound and gain a bit more amplification like DeFord Baileys custom megaphone. (See Pic XfunnelX)By then, the harmonica had proved to be an interesting new instrument full of different sounds and effects, radically departing from the manufactures intentions of a toy.1930s, Lomax and the re-discoveryThe Emancipation issue of 1863, between 1870 and 1900, which freed the Black communities from slavery and had permitted them to build up the so called juke joints as places where Blacks could go to listen to some music, dance or have a gamble after a days work. Performances where held in places like the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York or many bars along the famous Beale Street in Memphis.This style was known as the Delta Blues, which consisted on traditional, rural country blues performed acoustically in more of a polished city urban style, also introducing new sounds like the bottle neck slide guitar and the floorboard stomping.By the end of the twe nties, vaudeville theater and tent-show singers, circus artists, boogie-woogie pianists, jug and jazz bands were to be heard at some point playing some form of the blues.Blues was bonny a vehicle for some people to earn a living by playing and entertaining the audiences. It was exclusively race music and the bulk of white people didnt really know what it was or nor have the interest to listen to it.Outside the phonograph stores, black people would stand in line anxious to obtain the latest blues disc and by now there was already a reasonably large inscription of blues music given by artists like Lead Belly, hydrogen Thomas and Big Walter Horton. Many harmonica players were recording in duos with guitarists like Hammie Nixon and Sleepy John Estes, or trios like Sonny Terry, Blind male child Fuller and Bull City Red.Around the 1930s, John Lomax, pioneering musicologist and folklorist, together with his son Alan Lomax made a great number of non-commercial recordings for the Archiv e of American menage songs. They went around the south of the United States with a mobile recording device, capturing many root songs, field hollers and ring shouts. This contributed in a great way to the blues because they managed to capture, catalogue and generate an archive of traditional and rural sounds.The instruments tractableness also captured the attention of classical music during this decade. Although some conservative musicians didnt authorize of it and degraded it by considering it a toy, young Larry Adler managed to perform a minuet by Beethoven and later on had works written for the instrument by the composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Darius Milhaud, Malcolm Arnold and Arthur Benjamin.1940s, Pre-war and Post-war BluesDuring the war, the United States experienced a shortage of harmonicas mainly because materials like wood and metal that were used to make harmonicas were in short supply due to military demand. Another problem was that Germany and Japan were the elemental manufacturers of harmonicas and of course where the Axis powers opposed to the United States and the allied forces.Companies like Finn Harkon Magnus, developed a molded plastic harmonica that used plastic combs and far fewer pieces than traditional metal or wood harmonicas, which in a way made the harmonica more hygienic and far more efficient to mass produce. The sound from these harmonicas was inferior to the traditional ones but their inexpensiveness made them become a common toy among children.Between the late 30s and the 40s, many African-Americans were starting to migrate to other states further north in promise to find more acceptable working conditions. Many musicians based in Memphis moved to big cities like Chicago and New York encouraged by their music and the idea of making a living from entertainment. It was the beginning of what would later be called the Chicago Electric Blues.1950s beguiler Records and the Chicago BluesThe 50s were the beginning of an era o f high quality harmonica players. For instance Sonny Boy Williamson II, is one of the most important harmonica players of this era. The blues gradually began to use more electric amplification for the guitar, double recondite, and vocals. Using a full blues band, as he usually played support by a piano or a guitar, a bass and a drummer, Sonny Boy became a popular act in the South with his daily broadcasts when he was hired to play the King biscuit Time show, advertising the King Biscuit brand of baking dredge on the radio. Sonny Boy Williamson II also helped popularize the cross-harp technique and his way of playing which was very expressive, very sensual and very technical.Another key factor to this new era of blues harmonica was the Chess brothers. Leonard and Philip Chess were two Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to Chicago in 1928. They owned some bars on the south side of Chicago, their largest establishment being a nightclub called the Macomba.The Macomba had live pe rformances and many of those were blues entertainers that had migrated to Chicago from the Mississippi delta during the late 30s and 40s. The Chess brothers realized that these artists were not being properly represented or recorded, so they decided to start recording them themselves. They entered into a partnership with Charles and Evelyn Aron in Aristocrat Records who had just opened Aristocrat Records to record blues, jazz and cycle blues.The most important artist they recorded was McKinley Morganfield, who went by the name of Muddy Waters. He had come from Mississippi to Chicago a few years before and had been working on his own until he met the Chess brothers. His first records where of himself accompanied by a guitar or a piano. His deep raw singing style reflected the spirit of the blues and was quite unique. The Chess brothers were able to build Muddy Waters into Chicagos leading blues singer through their connections with radio stations and local clubs.In late 1949, Leona rd and Phil Chess became the resole owners of Aristocrat Records and reorganized the company changing its name to Chess Records.Historically, the music business had always been dominated by a few major record stigmatizes which were Columbia, Victor, Decca, Capitol, Mercury, and MGM. These major labels had paid some attention to the blues and other root genres but had always placed the artists on secondary labels that were focused toward the race audience. Chess Records grew in those early days of both rhythm and blues and along with other independent record companies like Atlantic, Aladdin, Specialty, Imperial, modern font and King were giving the public music that they could not get from the open major record companies.Other young Mississippi bluesmen that were drawn to Chicago joined Muddy Waters band. One of the most brilliant musicians to play with Muddy was Little Walter Jacobs, whose outstanding harmonica made the band even better.The young harmonicist revolutionized the in strument by playing the harmonica through a microphone, typically a Bullet microphone sold for use by radio taxi dispatchers. He cupped in his hands around it with the harmonica, and tightened the air around the harp. It gave the instrument a punchy, mid-range, powerful, distorted sound that could be heard as loud as an electric guitar.MUCH MORE round LITTE WALTER His style, is amps and effects, his solo career.In 1952, Chess formed a subsidiary label called Checker where Little Walter recorded some of his own work. His first red was an instrumental piece called Juke which topped the Rhythm and Blues charts for eight weeks. He was able to top the charts again in 1955 with the song My Babe.A young record producer in Memphis Tennessee named Sam Phillips was recording a 300 pound farm worker named Chester Burnette, who became known as the Howlin Wolf. At the time, Phillips, who later established Sun Re