Trills, Ornaments & other fancy-schmancy stuff

[SlideMeister]

What are they?
Which do you use?
Where do you use them?
Where do they work?
Where don't they work?
Which do you want to use?
Which do you never want to use?
yada yada yada

[beads]

Here is one I would like to learn. Once in a while I accidentally catch a very brief chirp of a note before the slide is where I want it. Almost immediately I'm on the correct note. Sometimes this actually sounds nice, other times it's just an error.  When it sounds nice and I try to repeat it on purpose it either sounds like I hit the wrong note and corrected or I miss the chirp completely.

[SlideMeister]

That's an easy one to do (if it's what I think you're describing) The easiest way to use it on just about any note you wish is to push the button (play in D flat on a C Chromatic) and play, but momentarily release the button just before you hit the note. (think "For Once In My Life") You can also use the technique to build more involved ornaments

[Jimmy Halfnote]

That doesn't make sense A.J., and three notes are required i would say, it isn't so easy when it has to be repeated a few times in succession at speed on different notes... if we are talking about the same thing... chips, cuts, clips ,chirps.

                                                      jh.

[SlideMeister]

Of course it does. What are ya gunna make me play it for ya?

[SlideMeister]

Okay, go back and read it now. I just fixed the typo that was in there

[beads]

You both got it. The idea is easy. The timing is tricky. My button finger isn't calibrated right yet. Sounds professional when done right, and just once in awhile in the right places.

[SlideMeister]

"The idea is easy."

Yep! just like remembering, at the last 20 milliseconds, that the note you want needs a button push.

[Jimmy Halfnote]

You both got it. The idea is easy. The timing is tricky. My button finger isn't calibrated right yet. Sounds professional when done right, and just once in awhile in the right places.

 You have to be careful with this Beads,it can change the music's meaning, something you may not want to do.....example.....go from a B to an Eb ,now try chipping in the draw C ( B-c Eb )....now try B-Eb-C then with chips ( B-c-Eb-b-C)...quite a difference don't you think ?
                                                                        jh.

[gvelasco]

Wow. That's a very deep subject. Trills are a specific type of ornamentation, and there are lots of others that have names. Some are specific to the type of instrument and they can only be implied on a different instrument. A trill almost always means rapidly alternating between the note you're playing and the next note in the scale above it. This is usually easy on a diatonic instrument since you only have notes in the scale, but it can be really challenging on a chromatic harmonica depending on which note you want to trill and how you want to do it. You can trill by alternating your breathing really quickly. For that, the next note in the scale has to be on the same hole. So playing in C on a standard C chromatic, you can do a blow-draw trill between C and D, E and F, G and A, and B and C. You can also do a trill by changing holes quickly. (A "shake" in some circles.) When playing in C on a standard C chromatic, you can only do a hole-switching trill between A and B. You can also do a trill using the slide. When playing in C on a standard C chromatic you can do a slide trill between E and F, and B and C.

C-D blow-draw
D-E no easy way
E-F slide trill
F-G no easy way
G-A blow-draw
A-B "shake" between holes
B-C slide trill

Depending on the key, it might be impossible to find easy trills.

Key of D:
D-E no easy way
E-F# no easy way
F#-G no easy way
G-A blow-draw
A-B "shake" between holes
B-C# no easy way

Brendan Power sells "Slide Diatonic" harmonicas that go up to the next note in the scale when you push in the slide. This gives you easy trills and other ornamentation for every note. This is especially nice for the key of D which very popular in Irish Traditional Music and is a bugger to ornament on a C chromatic.

Some ornaments like "cuts", "taps", and "rolls" on uilleann pipes, bag pipes, and penny whistles literally cannot be executed on a harmonica. You can hint at them with grace notes and turns, but cuts and taps were developed to cause separation of notes when you have a constant uninterrupted air stream. Sometimes the cut or the tap doesn't really make another note, or even one in the same scale. It's even less of a note than a grace note. A roll is a cut then a tap. Again, if you can't do a real cut or a real tap, then you can't do a real roll.

You can do grace notes on a chromatic harmonica, but you run into the same limitations that you do with trills. The easiest grace notes are done with the slide, but where you can do that is limited, and might be non-existent depending on the key.

A "turn" is playing the main note, going up to the next note in the scale, coming back to the main note, going down to the previous note in the scale, then coming back up and ending on the main note. So, you're playing five notes in rapid succession like C-D-C-B-C. The only place I can think of where this is even close to easy is B-C-B-A-B where you can use the slide to go between B and C, then do a shake between B and A. I'm sure there are some other easy places in other keys, but I'd have to work it out.

Of course slides on other instruments turn into pre-bends on the chromatic harmonica. This is fairly straight forward but of course bends on the chromatic work best on draw notes, so again we have to plan carefully where to do them while some other instruments can just do them all over the place.

[beads]

You both got it. The idea is easy. The timing is tricky. My button finger isn't calibrated right yet. Sounds professional when done right, and just once in awhile in the right places.

 You have to be careful with this Beads,it can change the music's meaning, something you may not want to do.....example.....go from a B to an Eb ,now try chipping in the draw C ( B-c Eb )....now try B-Eb-C then with chips ( B-c-Eb-b-C)...quite a difference don't you think ?
                                                                        jh.

Agree. All I know is sometimes it sounds nice, sometimes not. I haven't figured out why yet so I'm not sure when to use it (if I ever master it). So far it is just a happy accident I have sometimes. Thanks for the info, Jimmy.

[SlideMeister]

Nah! You guys just took the difficulty level up about two clicks.   (at least a lot more complected than the simple thing I was talking about ) Of course spanning the effect through two holes are gunna be harder; I'm a simple guy; the chirp thing I was talking about starts and stops on the same hole. Easy peasy! 

[Grizzly]

(Gabriel) "So playing in C on a standard C chromatic, you can do a blow-draw trill between C and D, E and F, G and A, and B and C."

So glad you cleared that up later in your reply; E-E# (E-F) and B-B# (B-C) are prime examples of a trill in one hole, using the slide and the same breath.

Same-breath in adjacent hole, constant slide, is what you call shakes, but are really just trills: A-B (also A#-C slide in) are still the next note in the scale. a shake is two or more notes apart: adjacent holes, same slide.

I hope this clears up some of the nomenclature.

Tom

Beyond that: substituting another ornament for a trill is fine. Pick one that doesn't sound clumsy, and where speed of the ornament isn't as crucial, and Bob's your uncle.

T

[llumagsara]

C-D blow-draw

F-G no easy way

gvelasco

with rigth hand (finger) fixed and moving hca. pressing button with only left hand you can convert

C-D

F-G

in "shake" between holes using draw C and blow F...


good health

Agustin

[The Lone Harper]

Wow. That's a very deep subject. Trills are a specific type of ornamentation, and there are lots of others that have names. Some are specific to the type of instrument and they can only be implied on a different instrument. A trill almost always means rapidly alternating between the note you're playing and the next note in the scale above it. This is usually easy on a diatonic instrument since you only have notes in the scale, but it can be really challenging on a chromatic harmonica depending on which note you want to trill and how you want to do it. You can trill by alternating your breathing really quickly. For that, the next note in the scale has to be on the same hole. So playing in C on a standard C chromatic, you can do a blow-draw trill between C and D, E and F, G and A, and B and C. You can also do a trill by changing holes quickly. (A "shake" in some circles.) When playing in C on a standard C chromatic, you can only do a hole-switching trill between A and B. You can also do a trill using the slide. When playing in C on a standard C chromatic you can do a slide trill between E and F, and B and C.

C-D blow-draw
D-E no easy way
E-F slide trill
F-G no easy way
G-A blow-draw
A-B "shake" between holes
B-C slide trill

Depending on the key, it might be impossible to find easy trills.

Key of D:
D-E no easy way
E-F# no easy way
F#-G no easy way
G-A blow-draw
A-B "shake" between holes
B-C# no easy way

With practice it is possible to do legitimate C-D, Eb-F, and F-G trills. Instead of keeping the body of the harmonica stationary and moving the slide you do the reverse and keep the slide stationary and move the body of the harmonica in and out resulting in what could be considered a combination of a slide-trill and a shake. Regarding blow-draw trills, for me the only practical ones that sound legit are the G-A and Ab-Bb trills on hole 7 using the piston method whereby you use a pucker embouchure and rapidly move your tongue forwards and backwards like a piston. I can only speak for myself and don't want to limit what others can achieve by my own limitations but I find it difficult to use the piston trills on higher notes because the shorter reeds tend to choke up, and on lower notes because it is much harder to get the longer, heavier reeds to respond quickly enough using this method. Robert Bonfiglio and the late Cham-Ber Huang are/were masters of using the piston trill.

While for ME, PERSONALLY, I am a stickler for being able to do everything on a standard C chromatic there are times when you just have to accept that some things like a G-A trill on hole 3 range between very difficult to impossible to make sound legitimate. As such I have actually toyed with taking a different approach for playing traditional Irish music by either using a different keyed chromatic as a transposing instrument (and for me that would mean one alternate chromatic for playing in multiple keys, not a different chromatic for each key), or a standard C chromatic but with some retuned notes to enable whole-tone trills that couldn't be otherwise obtained. My thinking for the latter came about from the recent discussion on the need to learn to play in every key on the one chromatic. It was pointed out that in ITM most tunes are in only a few keys and rarely have accidentals, which means that some reeds that are tuned to notes that aren't in the scales of G, D, or A could be retuned to allow whole-tone trills on a few choice notes while still playing the chromatic the same way you would on a standard C chromatic. You could also have another C chromatic similarly retuned to be flat-key friendly.

[Grizzly]

"With practice it is possible to do legitimate C-D, Eb-F, and F-G trills. Instead of keeping the body of the harmonica stationary and moving the slide you do the reverse and keep the slide stationary and move the body of the harmonica in and out resulting in what could be considered a combination of a slide-trill and a shake."

Hey, Lone Harper, thanks for mentioning this! I've used the technique before, but forgot it until you brought this up.

These are great posts, people. Keep cranking them up a notch or two. There's no such thing as too much information. Use what you want, learn something new. ignore the rest.

Tom

[Gatty1010]

"Instead of keeping the body of the harmonica stationary and moving the slide you do the reverse and keep the slide stationary and move the body of the harmonica in and out"

It does take time, practice and patience, but this is a good and easy way to practice and get this right. Difficult for people who move their lips all around harmonica keeping the harmonica stationary. So first they need to come out of this habit and start pushing the harmonica left or right depending on the next note in the sequence.

Thanks Grizzly for bringing this up. Great thread for learning and experience sharing.

[Gatty1010]

I try to repeat it on purpose it either sounds like I hit the wrong note and corrected or I miss the chirp completely.

I have faced this issue while playing a tune and I had G ->Bb but before getting Bb I was supposed to touch A. I would land perfectly on Bb after G. There are too many things happening. It is change of breath, hitting the slider button.

It looks so simple today to do this with repeated consistency, but it did require a lot of patience and practice to get this right. Memory muscle builds this precision, but this takes time.So have patience,

[gvelasco]

With practice it is possible to do legitimate C-D, Eb-F, and F-G trills. Instead of keeping the body of the harmonica stationary and moving the slide you do the reverse and keep the slide stationary and move the body of the harmonica in and out resulting in what could be considered a combination of a slide-trill and a shake.

Wow! I hadn't even thought about that. What an interesting...and difficult...technique.

-=Gabriel=-

[beads]

using the piston method whereby you use a pucker embouchure and rapidly move your tongue forwards and backwards like a piston....... Robert Bonfiglio and the late Cham-Ber Huang are/were masters of using the piston
[/quote]
James Conway, an Irish player in Chicago, calls this "using your third lung". He is another master of the technique. With practice you can also breath through your nose while doing this if you need to grab or expel some air.

[Grizzly]

"Instead of keeping the body of the harmonica stationary and moving the slide you do the reverse and keep the slide stationary and move the body of the harmonica in and out"

It does take time, practice and patience, but this is a good and easy way to practice and get this right. Difficult for people who move their lips all around harmonica keeping the harmonica stationary. So first they need to come out of this habit and start pushing the harmonica left or right depending on the next note in the sequence.

Thanks Grizzly for bringing this up. Great thread for learning and experience sharing.

Age is the O. P.

T

[streetlegal]

Well instead of trying to achieve whole tone trills, which aren't really in the design of the chromatic harmonica, why not 'trill' (I suppose I really mean alternate) with other notes - chord tones - which may be more readily available ? C-E-C - alternating tonic with third from the major triad or D-F-D alternating second with fourth. But be careful - it may make you sound like one of those two tone car horns. 

[Grizzly]

Because a shake is not a trill?

Subbing one ornament for another, especially in Baroque music, works well. But in any genre, it's best if it's in keeping with musical style or feeling. It shouldn't seem out of place.

Tom

[Edvin]

Brendan Power sells "Slide Diatonic" harmonicas that go up to the next note in the scale when you push in the slide.

...

Some ornaments like "cuts", "taps", and "rolls" on uilleann pipes, bag pipes, and penny whistles literally cannot be executed on a harmonica.
...

A "turn" is playing the main note, going up to the next note in the scale, coming back to the main note, going down to the previous note in the scale, then coming back up and ending on the main note. So, you're playing five notes in rapid succession like C-D-C-B-C.

...

I like trills! Half-step or whole-step ones. Other ornaments as well.

Gvelasco mentioned Brendan Power's Slide Diatonic, which Brendan uses to great effect in his albums. The downside is that it really mostly work in a single key.

If you also like trills, but want to keep the instrument chromatic, there's an alternative approach which I use and which I'm hoping to soon make a thread about in the Alternate Tunings forum.

Here are some teasers (played on the same instrument, of course!)

https://cloud.fripost.org/s/pb9kizTrZPcSd5q (Improvised in an oriental D-based scale. Some noise in the background, but I'm happy with the ornaments.)
https://cloud.fripost.org/s/2Rx8tef4zxb7GSE (Something like the "turns" Gvelasco talks aboiut, in natural Bm. No noise.)
https://cloud.fripost.org/s/ydd8BtWJAkfYsaA (Short chromatic clip in Am. All notes but Bb used. No noise.)

[OhioMusicalSawMan]

I'm a sucker for this kind of playing. Being a trumpeter, double and triple tonguing comes naturally to me on the harp. It is so fun and amazing what one can do with tonguing on a harp. The note bending is still elusive for me though after 15 months of harp