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Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 22:22:37 -0700
From: b~-2000.com (Robert Bonfiglio)
Subject: The Old Marine Band Power

The average chromatic student can be taught to play the "Ode To Joy" in 12
keys in a year and the "Ode to Sorrow" in 12 minor keys the same year. On
each note the intonation will be within a few cents of dead on and each
note will have a full range of tonal colors available. After all these
years only Howard Levy can obtain a sort of similiar result on the
diatonic.

But this never bothered me about the diatonic; the diatonic to me was an
axe that had it's place and did another job.

The tone and power bothered me - I think those old players started on leaky
Marine Bands and to get the reeds to sound they learned to blow an a great
deal of air past the reed. This put a spin on the sound that can only be
obtained with high volumes of air; but as I told Rick Estrin when we were
talking about this very thing, if you gap a Filisko really high, you can
get the same spin but better volume and more response.

I gap chromatics VERY high so I can play Harmonica Concerti with orchestras
at full volume and wack the hell out of the reeds. I gap my diatonics the
same way and therefore can push a large volume of air past the reed- this
gives an excitement to the sound that can be achieved no other way, but it
makes overblows difficult; it makes that cute, gliss speed work hard as
well.

Always a trade off - power vs speed!

It can be done on overblows; Howard proves that. The Chromatic can be
funky; Stevie proves that. A work ethic is what is required - I now
practice 3-4 hours a day; when I was first studying with Chamber Huang, I
practiced 12 hours a day. This means that I do not have a great deal of
time to post things on this list - talking about music is not nearly as
good as practice.

Harmonically yours,

Robert Bonfiglio

http://www.robertbonfiglio.com