Category: Music (page 3 of 3)

First a little background. Shenandoah was one of the first songs I learned to play way back when I was 13 or 14 years old. I’m playing it now on the same 10 hole Hohner Chromatic “C” harmonica I had back then. I’m using the tongue blocking technique to play single notes.

I found the sheet music for Shenandoah on the Wikifonia.org website. The cool thing about this site is that you can transpose the music into any key. It was  originally in the key of D with two sharps. I have a “C” harmonica so I transposed the sheet music to the key of C.

Notice the music gives the guitar chords. So, I was able to use the Smart Guitar instrument in Garageband on the iPad to create the guitar accompaniment. I set the the Tempo to 68 beats per minute. I then used my Blue Snowflake USB microphone to record my harmonica in a second track. I did it in real time with no editing. This took a fair amount of practice and several tries. I had to learn to play to a metronome and accompaniment. It takes some getting used to playing in time with feeling and dynamics. I used headphones and monitored both the guitar track and the microphone.

Just a little song for for those mornin’ blues. I recorded this on my iPad using its built-in microphone. I created it in MultiTrack DAW with two tracks – one for the harmonica and one for my voice. I had to piece it together from two different recordings. It is heavily edited. It will be a while before I can play and sing at the same time like Buster Brown.

Jim

This is “I’m Gonna Make You Happy” performed by Buster Brown March 1943 at Fort Valley State College, Fort Valley, Georgia. Buster was described as “a wizard of a ‘mouth-organ playah,’ who performes the incredible feat of playing and singing at the same time.”

There’s a honeymoon phase whenever you try something new. The first few weeks you’re enamored and then you realize that this is a long term commitment. It’s easy to drop the ball. It’s hard to maintain dedication once the novelty has worn off. The more you learn the more you realize how much more there is to learn. It’s daunting.

I was sick for the last two or three weeks. So, I laid off playing the harmonica. I’m finding it hard to get back into it. My advice – you have to practice every day. Just do it. No excuses.

I’m putting this one up as a reminder to myself.

Beginning players need a way to practice with a group. It really helps improve your timing and it’s just generally fun. As an alternate you can play along with audio CDs or find free backing tracks on the internet. There are programs out there like “Band In A Box” that let you create your own backing group by inputing chord progressions, but they’re pretty expensive.

Today I’m experimenting with GarageBand on my iPad. It costs only $4.99. Here’s an 8 bar sample.

I’m already familiar with GarageBand. I use it on my MacBook (it comes free). So, it took me no time at all to figure out how to use it on the iPad.

I really love the Smart Instruments. They sound great and make it easy to quickly lay down a few instrument tracks. I first laid down a drum track and then added an acoustic guitar chord progression of C, F, and G. That sounded nice. I played harmonica along with that for a while. Then I attached a small USB MIDI keyboard (the Korg NanoKey) with the iPad’s Camera Connection Kit to see if it would work. Sure enough it did so I added a keyboard track using the external keyboard. I could have used the on-screen keyboard, but it’s much easier to play a real one. Finally I also added a plucked bass using the Smart Bass instrument.

I then used my USB Blue Snowflake microphone to record the harmonica track. It’s the purple one at the bottom. Notice I later edited the track to improve the timing. It was really easy to split the track up into small pieces and move them left and right to line them up with the MIDI notes in the tracks above.

A few things are missing in the iPad version of GarageBand. You can’t import an audio file into a track. You can’t edit MIDI notes, and you can’t change instruments once you’ve recorded a track (like change a piano to a guitar). Oh, well. Maybe in the next release.

Jim

I woke up this morning humming “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and knew I had to try it on the harmonica with a dulcimer accompaniment.

It’s probably way too early in the process to be trying a performance, but I just couldn’t resist giving it a go. It’s pretty rough.

Many moons ago my brother Bob helped me build a dulcimer.

It was a bit tricky tuning the dulcimer to the harmonica. I found it sounded best with an “A” harmonica.

I recorded this in Garageband. I did the dulcimer first and then played along with the harmonica in a second track. I edited the volume of each track and panned the dulcimer slightly left and the harmonica slightly right. I didn’t do a bunch of “takes”. This was just a practice session to figure out how to do it.

Jim

The last couple of days I’ve been practicing with JP Allen’s DVDs and CDs which are great. I’ve picked up a few more techniques including tremolo and wah wah and slide.

Today’s practice is done using my iPad and the MultiTrack DAW application. i discovered that you can import a track from your iTunes collection as a stereo track in MultiTrack. I used Track 22 from JP’s “Getting Campfire Ready – CD #2”.

Track 1 is the CD track and track 2 is my harmonica recording. The original CD track was more than 6 minutes. I shortened it in MultiTrack by copying the track to Track 3, trimming Track 1 to about 2 minutes, and trimming Track 3 to just the last few bars. Notice I panned the CD tracks slightly to the left and the harmonica track to the right. I also adjusted each track’s volume, bringing the guitar down a bit and the harmonica up a bit.

I used my Blue Snowflake USB mic plugged into the Camera Connection Kit USB adapter. I used headphones while recording the harmonica to monitor the CD track (guitar).

I really like using this setup for practice. It’s portable and completely silent – no computer fan noise to contend with. It makes a very clean recording.

Jim

This is fun. Garageband has a bunch of instrumental loops. This is a piano ballad. I doodled around on the harmonica on a separate track using the Blue Snowflake USB mic. I then mixed it down to a stereo mp3 file. Listen for our cockateil, Beaker, singing along with me.

Yesterday Apple announced Garageband for the iPad2. It will have Smart Instruments which will make this kind of recording even easier.