Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Greg Zlap interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 29

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Greg Zlap hails from Poland, where he played along with black market blues records on his one harmonica.
He moved to Paris in his late teens where he discovered the great French harmonica player, JJ Milteau. Greg started up a harmonica school in the city and has released a number of stellar harmonica albums. Always driven to push the harmonica forward, he has added harmonica to genres ranging from jazz, to electro music, to pop, house music and rock, while remaining true to the foundations of the instrument. 
He toured with legendary French musician Johnny Halladav for ten years, playing a harmonica solo in front of the Eiffel Tower in front of 1 million people. 
Greg plans to start touring again in early 2021 to promote his new album, Rock It.


Select the Chapter Markers tab above to select different sections of the podcast (website version only).

Links:
Greg's website:
http://www.gregzlap.com

Rock It Album:
https://smarturl.it/GregZlap_RockIt

Rock It Tour Dates:
https://bnds.us/uaf0hr
 

YouTube:

Solo piece with Johnny Hallyday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQiV4Yh6V2o

Klingande: Ready For Love song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b-sOuO-a4U

Le Blues du Penitencier song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6azkHB7uVQ

Free Soul song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLaI19erdis

NHL Festival 2013:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCrXy0Tmmhk


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

Greg Slap joins me on episode 29. Greg hails from Poland where he played along with Black Market Blues records on his one harmonica. He moved to Paris in his late teens and discovered the great French harmonica player, J.J. Milton. Greg started up a harmonica school in the city and has released a number of stellar harmonica albums, always driven to push the harmonica forward. He has added harmonica to genres ranging from jazz to electro music to pop, house music and rock, while remaining true to the foundations of the instrument. He's played a harmonica solo in front of the Eiffel Tower to one million people and plans to start touring again in early 2021. A word to my sponsor again, thanks to the Lone Wolf Blues Company, makers of effects pedals, microphones and more, designed for harmonica. Remember, when you want control over your tone, you want Lone Wolf. So hello, Greg Slapinski, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, Neil. Thank you for receiving me. And I know that Slapinski is very hard to say. It's a name from Polish. But that's why I'm called Greg Slap. It's much easier.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, a great stage name. So you're Polish, you were born in Warsaw. What was it like growing up learning the harmonica in Poland?

SPEAKER_02:

It's kind of funny when I look back these years because it was a time where the Berlin Wall was still up and we were in a communist country with not much freedom. For example, you couldn't go to a shop and buy music you wanted to buy. Obviously, no harmonicas in the shops. So actually, my first encounter with music was in Warsaw when I was about 14. four years old and it was in kindergarten. A guy and a lady from the music school came to audition all the little kids. They were playing something on the piano and we had to sing. And my parents received a letter saying that I would become a pianist. So I started to learn piano and I was not really interested. So after one or two years, I was begging my parents to stop. So my adventure with music ended at the age of six. And the second important moment was when my uncle came from a visit to the States and he brought me a present, which was a little harmonica. It was a marine band. And so I took the harmonica out of the box. I remember it was in the key of G, so quite low. And I started to blow in it. Well, it was funny for five minutes, but then I put it in the corner until the day when my uncle said, you have to listen to what the American bluesmen do with this instrument. And then I found a record. I think it was Little Walter's blues with a feeling. And so I heard this incredible sound. So when I heard the sound, I thought, is this the harmonica? I don't believe it. Whatever I do, I cannot get this kind of sound. So it was a fascination. And I started listening to whatever records I could find with harmonica. And I just wanted to get this tone, this sound.

SPEAKER_00:

So did you manage to get hold of some recordings and have some blues artists?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, actually, there was the black market, which was quite useful. So I remember exchanging or selling my Star Wars toys on the black market and buying some records.

SPEAKER_00:

So great. So you're around 14, I think, when you... You got your first harmonica. You were self-taught then, playing with records. Was there much of a music scene, much of a blues scene for you to play with and to develop yourself in Poland?

SPEAKER_02:

No, at that time, actually, I mean, I had no musicians in my family. So this world of music was completely unknown for me. Maybe there was one jazz club in Warsaw. I don't have the memory of going out to a club or to listen to music. Later, yes, I went to some rock concerts. The thing that is very important for all the musicians who start entering the world of music to go and to jam and to play with some public in small places. There was nothing of this. For me, the harmonica was really something secret. I wouldn't play for other people. It was something I was doing in my room.

SPEAKER_00:

Did you manage to get a hold of a few more different keys of harmonicas? No, I

SPEAKER_02:

had just one harmonica. I mean, I had the harmonica in G. The same uncle, actually, he offered me a harmonica book, Don Baker's I learned the blues harmonica, something like this, with a cassette there. So I started working on this book. I could really go more into the technical details of how to bend, and there were really exciting demo versions of the songs that you would learn after following this book. So my goal was to get to play it exactly like it was in the book.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm always fascinated about how you feel now where you were in quite a, you know, restricted way of learning. You know, you only had one harmonica. You only had a few records, one book compared to what's available now on the Internet. So what do you think about the differences? Is there something better about the way you did it or is it just different? You think, you know, having so many resources on the Internet these days and teachers, of course.

SPEAKER_02:

I think that there are no wrong ways of learning. What is important now that anyone can get resources on the internet. So it's really accessible to everybody. I love teaching. So I have this experience that I love with teaching harmonica. I realized that there are people actually who learn harmonica, have very different goals. For some of them, the goal is to eventually play music with harmonica. But for others, it might be mastering the technique. They would never like... to go on stage. So there are very different approaches. For some people, it's more understandable if you teach them in a traditional way, for example, with reading music, and they will like this approach for the harmonica too. So now, for example, yes, you can get everything. But in my opinion, the best way to learn if you want to perform and if you want to become a musician, which is not the case of a lot of people, actually is the most important thing is to listen. There is no better way than to listen to a record and to try to understand what's going on and to try to make mistakes by yourself and interiorize what you are hearing. Because now you have the possibility of taking a very fast song. For example, you can take a Blues Travelers song. I have a songbook of blues travelers songs with John Popper's solos. They are all written down. I don't read music, so it doesn't help me. But also you can stretch the music and to listen to each of the solo in slow motion. So you can actually learn all these incredible solos step by step, but maybe without re-understanding. I don't know if there is a point in doing it, really. I mean, there's always a point of getting more technique and of mastering something. But the best school is to listen and to practice with other

SPEAKER_00:

people. So you then moved to France in the late 1980s. Did you move straight to Paris then? And what prompted your move to France?

SPEAKER_02:

When I followed my mother, who

SPEAKER_00:

had a

SPEAKER_02:

contract in UNESCO, it was quite a surprise. It was the first time I left Poland, actually. So it was my first time in the West, like we called it. There was the East and West, so I entered the Western world. I had this incredible feeling of freedom, actually. Speaking about harmonica, I remember seeing a music shop in front. I was standing in front of the shop and I saw harmonicas, but just one harmonica. You had a lot of harmonicas. The idea that you can actually enter a shop and buy harmonica, it was something crazy for me. This was a blast for me. And the other thing was the record shops. So I spent a lot of time in record shops. And actually, I was looking at the CDs and cassettes, looking at the covers. Whenever I saw a harmonica or a harmonica playing on the cover, I would be interested in this record. So I started buying records and everything was accessible. I remember once I went to the record shop and I asked, do you have CDs with harmonica players? And the guy says, yes, there is one that has just come out. The harmonica player is Jean-Jacques Pilteau. So I bought this CD and it was explored by

SPEAKER_01:

Jean-Jacques

SPEAKER_02:

Pilteau. It was a very important record for me because it was a new way of approaching the harmonica with very modern techniques and especially a modern way of incorporating harmonica in the music. The songs in this record were really arranged in a very popular and modern way and with harmonica as a leading instrument. Later, I met Jean-Jacques Milteau, so the two things, liberty, being able to buy records and harmonicas, And the third thing, which was one of the most important, was that there were blues clubs, jazz clubs, and could go out each night and watch a concert. In Paris, it was the first time I saw a concert with a harmonica player. It was Jean-Jacques Pilteau. I wonder if I stayed in Poland, if I had the same opportunity to stick to the harmonica, to make a living out of it. I don't know. But, well, for me, it was a wonderful thing to come to France and to see this freedom of music.

SPEAKER_00:

So John Jack Milton, he sort of called you his spiritual son, hasn't he? So obviously he took you under his wing a little bit. The harmonica scene in France is quite strong, yeah? So you're able to tap into that and, as you say, start developing your playing that way.

SPEAKER_02:

In France, there is a great variety of different styles, as we are talking about harmonica playing. So there are great players in very different styles. For me, Jean-Jacques Militeau is a very important figure, because when I met him, I still wouldn't imagine that I would become a musician later. I was playing the harp, but how to do, how do you make a profession out of it? I could not imagine. And Jean-Jacques Militeau showed me that not only it was possible, because he showed it by his example, but he showed that harmonica could be a leading instrument this is what changes everything because actually later on I realized and this is what I say now with my experience the basic thing about the harmonica is that no one really needs a harmonica player in a band so why would anyone call you for recordings because people do not imagine what you can do with this instrument most of the recording sessions I did for years I heard again and again And again, the same thing. I was asked to play like Bob Dylan, for example, because this is a popular way people understand the harmonica. So when you do commercials or something, could you play something like Bob Dylan? Yes, of course I can. My first professional experience, I will tell you this anecdote because it was really fun. I was called to record a commercial and the guy who calls me says, we need a harmonica. It's very simple. There are five notes to play. Just to play the jingle of the company. I was very happy. It was my first professional experience. gig. As I was going to the studio, I thought, all the money I get if I divide it by five, it makes quite a good deal for one note, you know, because there were just five notes to play. Once I was in the studio, well, we started playing and actually it took about three hours of recording because I played the thing and then the guy started, okay, can you play it higher? Of course I can. Can you play it lower? Can you play it slower? Faster? And maybe like this and maybe like that. So we spent three hours and at the end of the three hours they decided that the first take was just perfect I mean everybody knows the harmonica it's the most sold instrument in the world everyone has an image associated to the harmonica whether it's Bob Dylan or westerns it's we the harmonica players who know what you can do with the harmonica we must be creative and propose things because people will not think of it

SPEAKER_00:

well I'm very interested in this you mentioned there about a band doesn't need a harmonica so you've got to show them what the harmonica can do how did you go about sort of exerting your your influence to say i'm the main instrument this is my music you know you know how do you do that as a harmonica player

SPEAKER_02:

For me, from the very beginning, actually, the very important thing was to compose, to create music with the harmonica. Each time I mastered a new technique and I got to a certain point, I was actually converting my achievements into compositions. Like, for example, one of my first songs is a tune called Blues Band Boogie, which is in a lot of playlists actually now on Spotify. And I see that it has hundreds of thousands of streams and it's my first song the sparkle was me trying to to get the bands out of my harmonica

SPEAKER_01:

trying

SPEAKER_02:

to do the bands and the lower notes i came up with with a theme It just said that all that I was practicing and achieving, primarily I was composing. And from this came the idea that I wanted to share this music.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so you're composing a really key part of the music you come up with. So let's get into that first album now. I believe this is your Turnery Madness, yeah? This is your first album in 1997, which Blues Bend Boogie was on.

SPEAKER_02:

This first album actually, I was overwhelmed by all the possibilities, all the styles that you could play with the harmonica. Actually, it was a harmonica player who made me record this first album. It is Marco Ballon, who is a French harmonica player, and he had a studio. So he was the person who proposed me to record this album.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the songs on the album is Paul Le Melieur, which has got quite a spacey effect. at this stage it sounded like in your first album you're being quite experimental with the sounds you're getting out of the harmonica on that song

SPEAKER_02:

I like a lot of experimenting with sounds actually this song was I was quite fascinated by Jaco Pastorius and I thought well if the bass can do licks like this why not the harmonica I like using delay and some overdrive and sometimes I experiment with some other crazy sounds

SPEAKER_00:

yeah so that was your first album and then you started this harmonica school in Paris yeah I think you started in 98 actually when I decided

SPEAKER_02:

that I would become professional I was doing my studies computer science studies which I stopped then I thought what will I do I did not imagine myself spending days practicing harmonica so I thought the thing that I love doing is to share I was giving private lessons so I thought about this harmonica school which I found Founded in a blues club called Utopia. And the idea of the school was to bring people different stages. There were four levels. And so from complete beginners to advanced players. It was organized like a workshop. So you could listen once a week. But at the end of the workshop, after three months, we were on stage. This was the key point of the school. That everything we were learning was directed into playing music live. So even the complete big beginner after three months was on stage with professional musicians to get this experience this feeling of what it means playing and sharing music with other musicians and the public this school was very successful now it's been a few years that I don't give lessons there because I don't have time to take care of the school but I still organize workshops once a year in Spain because I really love this contact with people and sharing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and those workshops in Spain, they're in Roses, which is a very beautiful location. I've been very nearby on that coast, on the northeast of Spain. Yeah, very beautiful.

SPEAKER_02:

We organized it with Juan Pablo Cumejas, who is a Catalan harmonica player, incredible player. It's more than 10 years that we've been doing this, and we have sea, we have sun, and we have harmonica. all day long and concerts every night. So it's a very good experience.

SPEAKER_00:

Are you hoping to run that next year?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, because this year, of course, we couldn't. But next year, I hope it will be possible.

SPEAKER_00:

So, yeah, so Rochelle Pless, she went to your harmonica school. I've had her on the podcast. She may have seen and she sort of first learned harmonica at your school. Yeah, she was

SPEAKER_02:

a kid when she started. And I have a few of my students who became professionals or harmonica teachers. So I'm very proud of this because because it's it's transmitting passion to other people it is a great feeling even some famous harmonica players in France who are very successful and the singer Christophe Malet who is a huge star he's a singer but he uses the harmonica he took classes with me there are some Charles Pazy who is a harmonica player singer he signed with Blue Note record company well there are a few students like this and this is great

SPEAKER_00:

yeah fantastic and you released a live album as a result of the concert that she did here, didn't you? So there's a live album called Greg Time, which is great to hear you live. And so you've got some recordings on there. For example, you play one with JJ Milton, the hooky boogie.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_00:

also one with olivier curio is it he's a chromatic jazz player

SPEAKER_02:

yes chromatic incredible chromatic jazz player The thing about the Greg time, this was something incredible because actually I was organizing a concert each month and the idea was to get a band with musicians that do not know each other. So each time I was calling friends and trying to put up a band for one night and people who do not usually play together, of course, always very good musicians. And I was not... telling them what we were going to play. So it was like a jam session, but that for the audience looks like a concert. Of course, I was doing my set list before, and the idea was to start the songs on the harmonica without telling the band the key that the song is in, without giving instructions about rhythm or the chords, just with simple signs. And it is incredible how we managed to play music which is based on the blues because it is for me the most common language musical language around the world and we were able to play gigs with musicians who have never played before so it's a great great experience for me of how to improvise how to interact with the public when you play things that were not prepared at all you have to open your ears and for every other musician it's the same you listen to each other and there is something magical happens. And for the audience, it was always a great experience. So this was a great school for me, actually.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, great. And so maybe on to your next album, La Porte Diable. Devil's Share. So again on here, some really nice, interesting, you know, experiments in the sounds you're getting on harmonica and really effective. For example, the first track, I think, or the track 1962, has got a very heavy effect and it's kind of like a dance beat. I know you're interested in playing, and you do play in quite a lot of pop songs and dance beats, which we'll get on to later. Is that one of the first dance beats you played against that 1962 song? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Actually, this one is inspired by Miles Davis' trumpet with some chromatic licks and a very strange kind of theme. For this song, I remember I used a kind of dynamic filter. It makes this kind of sound on the notes. So I wanted a really strange sound for the harmonica. And this album, La Part du Diable, was very much influenced by the electrodes scene. So I was really fascinated by integrating electronic elements and combining it with live instruments. This album was about mixing the harmonica with samples and electro sounds.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, a song I really love on the album is Served You Well, where you've got this beautiful tone on the low harmonica with this kind of singing in the background.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_02:

yeah i i really love the mood and again this song it's really blues inspired with some subtle chord changes that make it sound a little bit different there is something different and strange and still the core of the song is about the blues and to this we add some samples so actually this is the kind of thing that I love that you can take something from the roots the way of playing the harmonica can be really rootsy and really traditional but you put it into a different musical context and it becomes a modern song. For me, it's about the transmission. In the music, you learn from the ones that were there before you. It's like a continual flow. I feel connected with Little Walter, for example. What he was doing then, it is very modern. Just you put it in a modern context and the sound he had this time, which was, I think, when you think about Little Walter's The Duke, for example, which was a very big popular hit I think at the time if you were in the 60s and you heard this song for the first time I think it was something very very unexpected and very modern and the arrangements of the song and the sound effects on the song it was very very unexpected and still it was very popular so this is what I'm focused on now how to get the essence of the harmonica and make it audible and make it adapted to the to the audience of our days.

SPEAKER_00:

A lot of people now are trying to play overblows and trying to do quite technical witchery songs, but I think what you do so well is exactly what you just said. You kind of put the harmonica in its traditional setting of being quite bluesy or jazzy, but with a modern sort of twist, or fitting it into modern techniques like modern beats, like dance beats, but also like pop beats and things. And I think you've very successfully kind of pushed the boundaries of the harmonica in the right way by sort of keeping the traditional side of the sound, but kind of modernizing modernizing it, and that's what comes through really well. I mean, going on to your next album, which is the first album I'd heard of you, which is Vorsevy. I really love that album, and I really love the song, is it Nova? That song was my real favorite of yours for some time, and I still love that song very much. So what about that album?

SPEAKER_02:

This album was a kind of twist in my career. I listened to a lot of jazz, and at that time it was in 2005, so there was kind of both Sanova wave. I wanted a definitely jazz feeling to this album. came through the choice of the instruments. So there's acoustic bass, piano or keyboards, drums and me. So no guitar. I wanted this kind of jazzy set to this music. I wanted a record that has more instrumental songs than I usually record on an album because I wanted to get the feeling that you can listen to instrumental music and not be lost. My experience as a musician I remember a particular musical experience for me. At one point, I found the album Kind of Blue of Miles Davis. I don't know why I was fascinated by the sound of Miles Davis' trumpet, but I didn't understand what was going on. And it is an easy album to listen to. But at this point, my musical ear was not ready to accept this kind of music, jazz. I was not ready for this. But as I was fascinated by it, I remember putting my headphones on when I was going to sleep and I had the CD turning all night long in my ears for some time until the day I started to perceive the different sounds, the bass, the harmonies, the way it was played. And suddenly the sound kind of opened for me

SPEAKER_00:

Had you already sort of tried to develop playing jazz on the diatonic? Yes, yes, yes. It

SPEAKER_02:

has always been present. And I worked on jazz tunes. I was very much interested in it. And so in the record Varsovie, I wanted to get this jazzy feeling, but in a pop way, so that someone who is not acquainted with jazz can listen to and take pleasure in listening to it. It has a lot of instrumental pieces on this record with a lot of chromaticism and some overblows. So I tried to put some jazz harmonica playing techniques, but in a way that it all sounds smooth and that you don't focus on the technique, but on the feeling of the sounds.

SPEAKER_00:

The next album of yours was Rob Movie, which I believe was music inspired by film music that you were interested in. I think this really shows about your strength in composition, So you composed all the songs for this song kind of based loosely around film music.

SPEAKER_02:

So after Varsovie, after this album, I was on tour. I played a lot of concerts with the material of Varsovie. So it was much more instrumental. The set I was playing was much more instrumental based on harmonica themes and less on singing. And what I realized that when I was playing the instrumentals on stage, sometimes to get people enter this world, because for general audience, it's much more difficult to access instrumental music than when you sing. Sometimes it's enough to give an image, something to tell a little story. And the song becomes, I mean, you have images in your head, public has images in your head, and suddenly it's not about playing an instrumental song, it's about telling a story. So the next step was road movies for me. I thought about the cinema music. And what is incredible with this cinema music is that you have images that come to your head. And I worked quite a lot with a film music composer called Vladimir Kosma, who made a lot of very important French films with Louis de Funès, with all the classics. And so it is instrumental music, but it's very popular because people have these images in their heads. So I thought, well, about writing an album like a movie score but of a movie that I invent so in this road movies the idea was to take some of the popular music film scores or themes I took a few songs like this and to write the rest of the music so that the general feeling is that you are like in a movie and then it doesn't matter if it's an instrumental song or if someone is singing because the story around it gives you images Imagine, you go to your imagination. I realized that to get contact with public, this is a great thing because people travel with you into imaginary world without asking themselves whether they are listening to blues or to jazz or to a particular kind of music.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's an interesting point. I often feel myself, you can make a harmonica instrumental music, instrumental album, how appealing that is to non-harmonica fans. I mean, to harmonica fans, it's great, yeah, because there's lots of harmonica. So, you know, did that come across well? Was that successful for you? Well, like Turner

SPEAKER_02:

Madness, it's almost, maybe there are two or three songs with vocals, but it's mostly instrumental. Varsovie also is mostly instrumental. It is really funny because when you meet people, you say, okay, I'm a harmonica player. People say, oh, well, that's great. And people ask me, so you do concerts? Yes, I do concerts. And you are alone on stage? So I said, no, I'm with a band. But if I think about it, I've people can imagine and are quite eager to think that if they like your playing, they imagine you doing a show with just you and your harmonica. I think Keith Dunn did a show like this with just himself, harmonica, singing, but harmonica. It's a very complicated thing to spend one hour and a half listening to a harmonica player. But maybe one day I will do something like this.

SPEAKER_00:

So touching on the album Air, which was released in 2011, there's a great video of you playing Free Soul where you're singing on a bridge in Paris. And I'll put a little clip onto that on. And you've got a nice song called Sit Down and Breathe, which I think is too hot.

UNKNOWN:

Let's go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I sit down and breathe. It's a lot of harmonicas. There are maybe 10 harmonicas, 10 different harmonicas playing. Yeah, I used like the chord harmonica, the tremolo, low, high harps, a lot of harps playing there.

SPEAKER_00:

And you're playing all those parts, are you? Yeah, yeah. You've got quite an air theme. You've got a song called The Wind is Rising Oxygen When the Wind Blows. Was that a kind of a harmonica-related concept or the idea of air?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, the concept of the album was to use as much possible instruments that breathe. So, of course, harmonica, but also instead of using keyboards, we used accordion, which is, of course, a breathing instrument, horn section, voices. So it was all about air and making music with breathing, actually. It was also the moment I signed this album with a record company. The idea was to get to a larger audience. So I wanted to integrate the blues sounds and harmonica different harmonica possibilities into something that would sound quite pop and could appeal to a larger audience.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and that sound of her, and you can hear the sounds of the wings of the dragonfly in that air. And then you released a few EPs through the sort of mid-2015, 2017. What reason did you release EPs rather than full albums at that stage?

SPEAKER_02:

The reason really is that I started exploring radio broadcasts, which is a very complicated thing to achieve. I mean, to be played on a radio. I wanted to understand what format, what musical format you should get to be able to be played, that my music would be played on the radio. So I was exploring production methods, how to get modern arrangements, modern sound, and what place would take the harmonica in these songs so that it would not be taken as a niche music. Because when you talk with people who program the radio, you just say the word harmonica, they stop listening to you because they say, oh, harmonica. No, who could hear the harmonica? You are not broadcasted with harmonica. I'm talking about big, popular I managed it with

SPEAKER_00:

my last album with Rockets. So getting on to that album, Rocky, which was released, I think, this year, it's quite a kind of rock-pop theme to it, isn't it? Quite a lot of the songs definitely going down the sort of more rocky side. That was a deliberate attempt to be more mainstream, was it?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, there are a few things. A very important thing that happened in my career was playing with Johnny Holiday, who was a huge star in France. He was like Elvis. And I toured with him for 10 years in stadiums, in the biggest venues

SPEAKER_00:

in

SPEAKER_02:

France.

SPEAKER_00:

So I believe you played in front of the Eiffel Tower, in front of a million people. Exactly. And you did a harmonica solo with Johnny Halliday doing that, yes?

SPEAKER_02:

This was incredible because this guy had the courage and the feeling that when we met, he thought that the harmonica could be a front instrument. No one would imagine before. I mean, you can imagine a guitar hero in a rock band because not a harmonica hero. And Johnny Halliday put me really in front of stage, encouraging me to do solos and stadiums. And there was one particular song, which is called Gabriela, which ended up with a version where I had a solo for, I don't know, five, six, seven minutes where the band stopped and I was alone in the stadium with my harmonica. So you can imagine intensity. It taught me a lot, a lot of things because you have to find a way to do something impressive with your little harmonica. I did a lot of research during these 10 years of trying to get the attention of the public of a big public and how you do it with such a small instrument. There are a lot of different ways of looking at it. First of all, when you go to see a show, you say, I'm going to see a show. You don't say, I'm going to listen to a show. So there's the visual part. When a harmonica player appears in a huge stage, you don't even see the harmonica. You see someone who is there on stage with his hands on the mouth, but you don't see this little instrument. So how you get attention on yourself It goes through your body language, through the movement, before even being heard. And then the second thing is that people do not really know how a harmonica sounds. So when you see this little guy there, you don't see his instrument, but you see an incredible sound. For a lot of people, they don't know where it comes from. Maybe it's a guitar sound, or maybe people don't know. So which way you will play so that people will recognize the harmonica? And at the same time, you surprise them. So there's a lot of things. And well, I ended up understanding that the most powerful thing about the diatomic harmonica and the difference between the diatomic harmonica and the other harmonica, the chromatic and the other ones, is actually the possibility of playing chords, the three chords of the harmonica. You have a C-harp. You blow, you have the C chord. You draw, you have D chord. and you have the D minor chord. So you have three chords. And the consequence of this is that you can play rhythmic parts with the chords, which you cannot play with other types of harmonica. And you can play melodies by using this position of the notes on the harmonica, which is that when you play two notes which touch each other, they are part of a chord, and it changes the sound. This is what happens in blues already. Instead of playing... You can play it. Actually, I'm playing two notes at a time. This is because they are organized in chords, the notes. So actually, if you integrate the chords in your playing, the rhythm, the chords, you can get a really powerful and appealing sound. And this, you cannot get it in another instrument. I understood this and I understood another thing, which is that it's more important how you play, it means your engagement in what you are playing, than what you really play in terms of music you play and this particular solo i'm talking about this gabrielle solo the gabrielle which i recorded on my last album rocket so Actually, if you look at what I'm playing, I'm playing nothing. I'm playing some chords, a few very long notes, but it's nothing. And there is such a great energy coming from this. And I cannot explain why, but people are electrized. People are really surprised by the power of this piece, of this solo. And it's quite basic, actually. So it's interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

So, yeah, as we said, this is a rocky album. It's quite rocky. I think Fred, this song you've got as a current single, haven't you? which is out at the moment and you've got the rocket song and you've got the blues the penitentiary so it's kind of version of house of the rising sun yes so done various collaborations again with pop musicians. Klingande, which is electro music called You're Ready for Love, which is quite poppy, and Madame Monsieur, which is a sort of urban music called Bandido. So you've got quite, you know, involved with playing in the pop scene as well in France now, haven't you?

SPEAKER_02:

This is really something I love, is to put the harmonica in a context that people do not expect it would work. And a good example of this is the collaboration with Klingon, who is a French DJ. He has huge success all around the world. And we collaborated on a few songs. One of them is Riva. Another one is Ready for Love, which we wrote together. Ready for love And I learned a lot, a lot from this, how to integrate the harmonica in this. For example, the Ready for Love, it's basically how we worked on it. I improvised blues licks on a house song. This music is called house music, so electronic music. And I would improvise blues licks, and then we would select parts of the improvisation. For example, on Ready for Love, Flingan's original song, the harmonica part I played was shifted in time slightly it gives a great lick great harmonica lick on the song but it's very surprising because the rhythmic motif yes it's it's not the original one i played because it was shifted so you get something really new a new feeling and when we played on stage because i i did a tour with with pingong when he played on stage we played live with the song so i i had to learn my own lick and it was quite a challenge because how did i do it it's really strange to put the stress on this note which is not natural for me but it sounds great and it's just because we would shift the phrase change the place and it gives new possibilities when I listened to this record with this harmonica I've played but which is placed in a different way I realized how you can make your playing richer in a rhythmic way with something that is not natural for me to do so it's this It's very

SPEAKER_00:

interesting. I hope you've, you know, inspired lots of people who, like you say, hadn't really heard harmonicas played in that way. So, you know, maybe pick it up. You're getting it heard in a more popular genre, aren't you? We should hopefully bring it on well. Moving on a little bit here as well, so you've been in, you've got a couple of books and I believe you had a comic strip written about you, didn't you? Yeah, a comic about, is that about your life, this comic?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, yes, this is, it's called Harmonika, so it's written in Polish with a J there. It tells the story of my years in Poland and how I found myself playing on Eiffel Tower with Jamie Halliday in front of one million people. It starts with Warsaw when my uncle gives me my first harmonica and all the way to France.

SPEAKER_00:

Is it available in English?

SPEAKER_02:

No, unfortunately not. Only in French.

SPEAKER_00:

And then you've also, you've released, I think, four tuition books as well. So, yeah, you've got Easy Harmonica Volume 1 and 2, The Complete Diatonic and Chromatic Method. That's not just you. That's with J.J. Mildo and Derek Groman. So, yeah, so you've got various tuition books published as well in your name. So, great to see. So, So a question I ask each time, Greg, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. First of all, I would divide the 10 minutes in two because what I think is it's quite a different thing to practice and to play. Two completely different things. So if I have 10 minutes, I would spend five minutes taking a theme, something I like with the phrase, the harmonica phrase from a song I like. So I would spend five minutes trying to get exactly the tone the bands the timing of the phrase that I'm hearing and there it is very important to be very accurate and to work slowly each note with the perfect sound to get as much into it as possible and then the five minutes that are left I would spend playing so then the difficulty is to forget about practice because when you play you do not practice You should not practice when you play. When you play, you have to be, you have to listen. And what comes out of you is what you already know. So you must, when you play, you must make mistakes. It is important to make mistakes. And the most important is to listen. So five minutes for practicing really accurately every detail and five minutes to play, but let myself go and listen.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a really good point, isn't it? You're restricting yourselves in some way. You need to be able to play more freely. So, yeah, so getting on to talking a bit about gear now. So you're a Hornet Endorsee, and are you still playing the Golden Melodies and the Marine Bands as your main choice of diatonics? Yeah, yeah, I have the

SPEAKER_02:

two models. Actually, I use much more than the Marine Bands now. This is my first

SPEAKER_00:

choice. Are you using the standard Marine Bands, or are you using the crossovers or the others? I use the

SPEAKER_02:

standard Marine Bands. I cannot play on the other ones, actually. actually, because I must play too loud. I don't know. I block them and it's impossible for me. So I don't tune my harps like to Overblows or Marine Band Deluxe and the other ones are really tuned too fine for me because I need to breathe through my harp. I need it to be powerful. If it's tuned too finely, I block the reeds. Nothing comes up.

SPEAKER_00:

It's really interesting. A lot of people on here I speak to are all say they like the old marine bands rather than the sort of new flavours of marine bands. It's really interesting. What about, do you have a favourite key of diatonic?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I kind of like the B flat, which is not

SPEAKER_00:

too low, not too high. Well, one thing you certainly like, you've done quite a lot of recordings on low-tuned diatonics, haven't you? So you like those low-tuned ones as well, don't you?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Bye.

UNKNOWN:

Bye.

SPEAKER_02:

I love the sound, but for recordings only, because I found on stage it's very difficult, unless you play acoustic with just a guitar or something. They are very difficult to go through the... So it's very difficult to make the sound on stage. I have a little story about the Marine Band and Golden Melody, if you're talking about gear. The basic thing is that the Golden Melody are tuned so that the notes are more in tune, they sound, how do you say, they are tuned correctly, the notes, each individual note. So when you play melodies, you are in tune. The marine band, certain notes are tuned a bit lower so that the chords sound better. But when you play melodies, some holes, for example, the five draw or the three draw will sound a bit low. And this impression will be amplified when you change the key, when you change to change the position. So as an example, I played with Vladimir Kosma and Symphonic Orchestra. And there is one tune I played. It's a tune in F. So I played this theme on a C harp, which is, I don't know, the 11th position or whatever. So F on the C harp. And when the solo came, I was playing in the second position, so on a B-flat harp. After some time, I thought that the solo was not bright enough and was not explosive enough for what I wanted to do because B flat harp is a bit low for me. So I thought, well, let's try something. And I will play the solo on the C harp. So to keep the same harp, I play the theme on my C harp and the solo in F on my C harp. And so we are playing symphonic orchestra, everybody with musical And my solo starts... And it's completely out of tune. It's horrible. And so we finish. I get a big applause from the audience. But of course, there are classical musicians on stage, so they all have good ears. And so the director, Vladimir Kosmak, has good ears. So after the gig, I go to see Vladimir and I say, Maestro, you heard what I did? He said, oh, yes, I heard. And so I said, I have two choices for the solo. Either I do like I did before, so I take my B flat harp, it will be in tune, but it will be lower, so less effective. Or I do like I did right now, so I take the C harp, I will have a higher sound and I will be able to do more explosive phrasing, but it will be completely out of tune. And he answers, yeah, do this, it's better for the public. And I was shocked. But this guy thought that the show is more important than to play in tune. And it's a great composer. So this is what I'm doing. I'm playing a lot of energy on the C-harp with great phrasing. And it's out of tune. And people love it. The audience loves it. And nobody cares, actually, that it's out of tune. And this is an important lesson.

SPEAKER_00:

And what about using different tuned harmonicas? Do you use any different tunings?

SPEAKER_02:

Not really. I've experimented with different tunings but I don't really find the use to do it. The last tuning I did was that I didn't have a marine band in high G so I tuned my F sharp marine band into high G but with a classical tune. That's what I recorded I recorded Ready for Love on my album on a high G marine band that I tuned myself because I didn't have one from the factory.

SPEAKER_00:

And embouchure-wise, do you pucker or tongue block?

SPEAKER_02:

I play exclusively tongue blocking. I cannot play pucker. I don't know how to do it. So overblowing and bending and all this, I do tongue blocking.

SPEAKER_00:

And what about amplifications of microphones?

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so this is another thing. I don't use amps because it's like a lottery. It's heavy. You have to bring it with you. And in each place, it sounds... different so so i abandon i don't i don't use amps when i play electric harp i play through my pedals and into a di so directly into the sound system but no no amp

SPEAKER_00:

No amp at all? That's interesting. So always through the PA, through your pedals?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And what sort of pedals are you using?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm using basically... a delay and overdrive just two pedals most of the time this is the base I always put when I play electric I put a little bit of overdrive yeah I have a lone wolf heartbreak for overdrive and TC electronics delay now on my pedalboard I have only these two these two pedals

SPEAKER_00:

yeah useful pedals so even when you're playing with Johnny Holiday on a big stage you're not using an amp and you're using the pedals are you? no

SPEAKER_02:

with Johnny

SPEAKER_00:

I there was an

SPEAKER_02:

amp and I had a clean mic and I had a there was an amp hidden somewhere under the stage because it was all on a big volume I use it because they thought it's cool to have an amp music

SPEAKER_00:

And so last question then, Greg. Thanks very much for your time. It's just your plans. You've got a tour planned for next year to promote your album Rocket. You're going to be touring in France, Belgium and Switzerland. So obviously, depending on how we go with the pandemic, obviously you'll be back out playing early next year.

SPEAKER_02:

The tour is ready, because we were supposed to start in May this year, but it's all postponed. But we already created the show, and I'll be on the road with the four-piece band, bass, guitar, and trance, and me. And actually, we are playing all the songs of the Rocket album, and a few other tunes, like the man with the harmonica... I'm looking forward to this and I'm crossing my fingers so that the situation and the things calm down and we can still do shows next year.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's hope next year gets a return to normalcy. So thanks very much for joining me today, Greg Slap. It's been a real pleasure speaking to you. Thank you so much, Neil. It was a pleasure. That's it for episode 29. Thanks again so much for listening. If you haven't checked out Greg Slatt's music, I implore you to do so. You can go along to the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast, Spotify playlist, and hear lots of his tracks on there. And once again, thanks to my sponsor, the Lone Wolf Blues Company, making great purpose-built effects and amps for harmonica. Greg, play us out with Nova.