Detailed project

The project was born from several wishes: offer in the same booklet, traditional musics from various horizons, facilitate access to it in an educational way, to share my humble knowledges and to put everything in a container pleasant to watch thanks to Jean Michel Corgeron (layout) and Sylvie Ecobichon (graphics).

The product: Video DVD accompanied by a French / English booklet devoted to traditional musics (10-holes diatonic, Richter system or customized). The booklet presents each piece (28 in total), offers the scores, tablatures (Corgeron’s system), and explanations of the main difficulties. You can get an idea here.

Incidentally, you can listen to it like any music CD! The DVD video allows you to watch each recording and practice with the playbacks. You can download (mp3 format) or listen to these Playbacks here. Downloading mp3 will allow you to change tones and the speeds.

The goal: this production is not strictly speaking an harmonica method. It is above all about discovering an often overlooked repertoire on the 10-holes harmonica: traditional music. You will therefore not find in this booklet lessons for doing an alteration, an overblow, or to play with tongue blocking or in chords. You will have no difficulty finding all of this on the web (on my website for example). It's really about enriching your repertoire with traditional musics playable on the harmonica while giving some tips to "overcome obstacles". To make this music affordable, I sometimes modified my harps. Rest assured: the majority of the songs in this DVD are played on good old "Richter" system harmonicas (22 of 28).

What will you gain from using custom harmonicas?

Being able to play repertoires that will never sound without a minor accompaniment or that will be almost impossible to play: pieces in minor, Cajun’s pieces with the style, pieces that are too strident or treble, etc. This may give you the desire to change by yourself the way your harmonica is tuned (up or down a note ; see “Repair / Tuning section”). If you don't want to tune your harmonica by yourself, a site like Seydel's will offer customized harmonicas to your liking. The booklet offers to you all the schems you need. See here.

You will also find in this book how to install a valve for it’s one of the characteristics of my game; this gives it a certain color and allows notes to be reached without overblows.

The special tones and tunings may give you the impression that none of these songs are accessible to you. Actually not at all. No need to own 15 harps to start; you just need two: a richter and a custom; there will always be time to buy other instruments. Today's free audio softwares abounds on the web. They will allow you to change the key, tempo, etc. of what's on offer here and learn the song.

For the most part of this collection, the harmonicas that I think are essential are…

A 10 hole Richter D Low Hohner Thunderbird,

A G Richter

A customized Bb (lowered thirds).

Enough talk !!! Make way for the game ...

The songs on the DVD come from Sweden, Poland, Finland, the Klezmer repertoire, France, Ireland, Scotland, USA, Quebec, or are compositions inspired by these styles. You can find the list here with some video clips.

The musicians: Alain Chatry (accordion, concertina), Olivier Chérès (fiddle), Laurent Jarry (one row accodion), Steve Normandin (piano accompaniment and piano playback), finally, Soane Duthoid (piano playback).

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