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Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 08:54:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mojo Red
Subject: Comments on the Ode challange

JR,

I completely agree with your assessment.
Absolutely. That dang note just sticks out, no
matter what.

In my own living room attempts at the Ode Challenge
I was somewhat able to mitigate the marked tonal
differences by changing my attack on the unbent
tones.

By amploying a somewhat ~delayed~ or ~soft~ attack
on the unbent tones I was able to make that bent
note sound more in line with the others. But even
then, my wife was still able to point out the odd
note with no trouble at all.

Harpin' in Colorado,
- --Ken M.

P.S. I know this all seems irrelivent and trivial
now, but we gotta start somewhere... My 2 cents.

- --- jrross wrote:
> On the harmonica side of things, I have been
> listening to the Ode challange
> with interest. Not to restart the debate about
> the worthiness of such (some
> of us--well, me--have some issues with the whole
> idea of a challange and the
> criteria which is being used), I do think it
> might be nice to sort of start
> the comments upon what people think of the
> submissions while things are
> still anonymous. I know that I would be very
> hard-pressed to make any
> comments that might not be glowingly positive
> once names are connected to
> the submissions--not wanting to offend. Moreover
> I know others that feel
> this way. So perhaps talking about this while
> everything is anonymous (and
> I both suggest and ask that we keep it anonymous
> for this thread) would be a
> good thing, as it might allow for some more open
> conversation.
>
> Personally, I have listened to the seven of the
> submissions (I'll ignore the
> two non-voting choices for now) which were
> availiable as of last week, and I
> must say that the bent note is really obvious to
> me in all of them. It just
> seems to universally stick out like a sore thumb.
> It seems to me that the
> point Richard had originaly made that even a
> fairly simple song with only
> one bend can be quite hard to play with complete
> tonal accuracy--at least I
> have yet to hear it played in such a way in any
> of the submissions so far.
>
> Both the questions of consistent attack and
> consistent tone seem to be
> unanswered in these submissions. The bends are
> ussually started with a more
> murky and muddy attack than the non-bent notes,
> causing a distinct
> difference between the feel of the start of the
> bent notes and the feeling
> of the non-bent passages. The bent tone is
> distinctly different from the
> un-bent tone in every instance. There is what I
> would call a distortion of
> the tone in the bent notes that is not there in
> the un-bent notes. Perhaps
> the best way to put it is that the un-bent notes
> have a fairly clear and
> clean sound to them whereas the bent note is much
> murkier and with a lot
> more grit to it (indeed, in synthesizer terms I
> might say that it sounds
> like there is a bit of colored noise in the bent
> notes which is not present
> in the un-bent notes).
>
> Also, there are distinct intonational questions
> which seem to arise with
> most of the submissions' bent notes. Holding
> that bend with the same
> intonation for the full duration of the note
> seems to be very hard--indeed,
> the best of the submissions in this regard seemed
> to fudge things a little
> by speeding up the bent notes (not bad strategy
> at all, but somewhat against
> the idea of the test, and it would seem to point
> more toward's not meeting
> the challenge).
>
> Finally, there are differences between all of the
> submissions and some have
> these problems to lesser degrees than others, but
> they are apparant in all
> of the submissions I have so far heard (the first
> seven), IMO. What do
> others think of this?
>
> Hope that this subject is distracting enough to
> help add some
> harmonica-related joy to people's day--and please
> take this in the light of
> loving the harmonica and the Ode and wanting to
> help further both. Perhaps
> listening to the Ode submissions and practising
> it ourselves will help to
> remind that there is beauty and goodness in the
> world when it can seem that
> there is only darkness.
>
>
>
> .()(). J.R. "Bulldogge" Ross
> () () And Snuffy, too:)
> `----'
>

===="When you speak of Walter Horton, the first thing you think of is his tone, that big, fat tone."
- ---Li'l Ronnie Owens

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