how to call the band for chromatic
Thu, 06/24/2010 - 18:27
Hi, Winslow, I actually have two questions for you, how do you bend a five note octave? I have only heard George Smith and Kim Wilson do this, I am a TBer, and, assume you bend like a diatonic, that is, hump the tongue. My second quest
ion is, how do you call the band for a William Clarke style of groove? It is usually a 12 bar blues but, I think they leave out the 5 chord at the end and just stay on the one. Any example of his off the "Rockin' the boat" are good examples. Thank You. Pete Grissim
Pete -
By a five-note octave I'm assuming that you're talking about a five-hole spread with three holes blocked out in the middle. This applies to most draw octaves on diatonic, and to all octaves on chromatic. I first heard William Clarke doing this and then later noticed that Dennis Gruenling and even Jason Ricci do it as well. They may all have picked it up from George Smith, but I don't know that for a fact - it's just a strong common point of reference for William, Rod, and Dennis.
On diatonic, it helps that the high note in the draw octave (Draw 7, 8, 9, or 10) doesn't bend while the low note does (3,4,5, 6). So you can pull pitch down out of the left corner of your mouth and get that beating sound from the note being out of tune with its octave-higher partner. And yes, you bend with a tongue block the same way as with a pucker - create a constriction point by humping the tongue, then tune it by changing the size of your mouth chamber.
On chromatic it works the same way. Even though both notes may bend, they will bend by different amounts, or one may bend and not the other because your mouth is tuned to just one of the notes.
For a 12-bar blues verse with no V chord at the end, you could just say something like "Stay on the I chord at the end of the verse, no turnaround after the V-IV-I." I'd specify the "after the V-IV-I" part because some people think of the V-IV-I part itself as the turnaround, while other (me included and most jazz musicians) think of the turnaround as the "treading water" part at the end of the verse where you could just play the I chord or you could cycle through a few additional chords just to keep things from being too static.