Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
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Contact: happyhourharmonicapodcast@gmail.com
Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
Mathias Heise interview
Mathias Heise joins me on episode 57.
Mathias is a chromatic player from Copenhagen in Denmark. He started out playing diatonic, aged eight, before moving across to the chromatic, with which he was the first player to attend the Music Conservatory in Copenhagen.
Mathias won the World Harmonica Championship in Trossingen at the age of 20 with his own composition, Sudden Ascent. The album containing this track won Mathias the composers competition ‘New Jazz Star of the Year’ in Denmark in 2015. In his band, the Mathias Heise Quadrillion, Mathias is leading the way as a chromatic player in a jazz fusion band.
His most recent album, The Beast, is recorded with the Danish Radio Big Band, with all the arrangements written by Mathias.
He has also appeared on numerous recordings as a sideman and more recently in a duo with a guitarist. Mathias has two new jazz albums coming out later in 2022.
Links:
https://www.mathiasheise.dk/
https://www.mathiasheiseq.com/
Suzuki chromatic bass harmonica:
http://www.suzukimusic.co.uk/products/harmonica/orchestral.html
Clockwork delay pedal:
https://rockettpedals.com/product/clockwork-echo/
Hall of Fame reverb pedal:
https://www.tcelectronic.com/product.html?modelCode=P0CYY
Videos:
Isn’t She Lovely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmd4mKAUDxQ
Spain with Phillip Achille:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gu1kaek-Dk
ShuffleFunk with effects pedal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZKDZolEBVM
Playing in a duo with guitarist Pelle von Bulow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMCOZTgYPzY
HUK 2017: Killer Joe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqFVhUCcS98
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/
Matthias Heiser joins me on episode 57. Matthias is a chromatic player from Copenhagen in Denmark. He started out playing diatonic, aged 8, before moving across to the chromatic, with which he was the first player to attend the Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Matthias won the World Harmonica Championship in Trossingen at the age of 20 with his own composition, Sudden Ascent. The album containing this track won Matthias the composer's competition New Jazz Store of the Year in Denmark in 2015. In his band, the Matthias Heiser Quadrillion, Matthias is leading the way as a chromatic player in a jazz fusion band. His most recent album, The Beast, is recorded with the Danish radio big band, with all the arrangements written by Matthias. He has also appeared on numerous recordings as a sideman, and more recently in a duo with a guitarist. Matthias has two new jazz albums coming out later in 2022. Hello, Matthias Heiser, and welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Neil. Yeah, thanks so much to join us today. And you're from Denmark, yep? That's true. Exactly. I'm sitting here in a Danish city called Willowa. I think you were born near Copenhagen. Is that where you are now, just around Copenhagen still?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a suburb to Copenhagen, on the west side of Copenhagen.
SPEAKER_02:What was the music scene like growing up? What got you into playing? Was it a good music scene in Copenhagen?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely a very nice music scene in Copenhagen. We have a lot of jazz musicians and a lot of jam sessions. When I was getting into music, I had the opportunity to go to a high school that had something called MGK. which is like an advanced course of music training. I went there with the chromatic harmonica actually as the first in Denmark. Later on, I went to the conservatory, but just for one year. After that, I've just been freelancing. Jam sessions here in Copenhagen has been very important for my development as a jazz harmonica player.
SPEAKER_02:I know you also play keyboards. Was chromatic harmonica your first instrument?
SPEAKER_00:My first instrument was actually the violin when I was only five years old. I played that for a couple of years and I stopped. Then when I was eight years old, I was watching a TV show called Guess the Song. This TV show the host of the tv show was playing the harmonica he's called the eminence playing the blues harmonica and that inspired me to pick up my toy harmonica and and try to play some melodies on it and then it turned out i i had some kind of talent because i i was able to play single notes pretty fast and pretty fast i could play some different melodies and that was just a lot of fun also it was a fun part of playing the harmonica that you could get many different kinds of harmonicas and you could wish for harmonicas when you had birthdays and Christmas and stuff like that so it became kind of my hobby and my passion I think for five years I also started playing the chromatic harmonica in the beginning I was mostly playing the blues but I was also overblowing and bending the diatonic harmonica to get some more notes out of it but in the end I had to play the chromatic harmonica to apply for this advanced course of music So I began to play the chromatic harmonica. And actually, after that, I only played the chromatic harmonica. I still play some blues harp, mostly for the fun of it. Chromatic harmonica is definitely
SPEAKER_02:my main. Sure, yeah. So it sounds like then you started playing some diatonic. You were about eight years old, were you? Yeah. Maybe about 13 or so, you picked up chromatic. Exactly. So it's an interesting question, because obviously lots of children, when they learn instruments and their parents send them for music lessons, play something like the violin, yeah, or some sort of orchestration. Yeah, I think it was a good thing to play violin at an early age to get some
SPEAKER_00:experience with the notes and the scales. I didn't like reading music at all. The classical tradition was also a bit too much for me. I needed some more freedom. So in that way, it was a relief to play the harmonica and to play such an intuitive instrument, an instrument that is kind of invisible where you are producing the notes very intuitively. That was very nice for me. And, you of come back to reading music and playing classical music also on the harmonica and both playing a lot of jazz music. It was nice for me to have a break from the violin and just do something completely you know free and just for the joy of it.
SPEAKER_02:And you also started playing keyboards. Was that as a result of going for your studies that you needed a second instrument or did you start that before then?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I actually started playing the keyboard when I was 10. I started playing because I bought a little synthesizer and I was a very big fan of George Duke. I was listening a lot to his records and especially his synthesizer solos. So I was sitting actually with my synthesizer and pitch bending and trying to sound like George Duke. Then I went to get some piano lessons at the music school. So it's been kind of on the side of the harmonica for for many years and have also always been using the keyboard as a visual way of, you know, understanding and getting an overview of the instrument. So I'm visualizing the keyboard when I'm playing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, obviously there's a lot of comparisons between the chromatic and the piano. They're laid out in that sort of linear way and quite similarly. And a lot of the chromatic players certainly talked to on here, you know, a lot of them do play the piano. So, you know, what about that relationship between the two instruments? You think, you know, it's pretty critical to, I have that understanding, obviously, from the piano side as well, understanding the chords and that side of things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely. It's just such a wonderful tool to have the piano, both when you're playing the harmonica and when you want to get a visual overview of the scales and of the chords. Also, when you're composing, it's really great to be able to get so much music going so relatively easily. But, you know, Toots Thielemans, he didn't play the piano. He played the guitar and That seemed to go pretty well also. So I guess it's not necessarily the piano you have to play on the side, but maybe it is a good thing to have some knowledge of some other instrument.
SPEAKER_02:And so you had piano lessons, as you say, from the age of 10, but you still didn't have any chromatic, harmonic lessons or any harmonic lessons?
SPEAKER_00:I had some diatonic harmonica lessons also from about age 10, I think. Actually, I pretty much self-taught on the chromatic harmonica. But then when I got into this training course, I had a couple of teachers. There are a couple of guys besides me here in Denmark playing the chromatic harmonica. And I had a guy called Finn Posen. And then afterwards, a guy called Jakob Vindt as teachers on the chromatic harmonica. And then later on, on my last year, I had had a saxophone teacher. He was playing the saxophone and I was playing the harmonica. At that point, it didn't really seem to matter very much that my teacher was playing the harmonica since I was mostly after just learning how to improvise and getting more ideas and concepts for improvisation.
SPEAKER_02:What do you think about the need to have face-to-face tuition? Because obviously you've done both on the chromatic, you said you were self-taught for a few years and then you went to school and you had some more formal training on the instrument as well as obviously piano lessons. A lot of people now, you know, a lot of harmonica players are self-taught, right? And they particularly, it's just an instrument where strongly people are self-taught or they might go to the internet and get, you know, sort of kind of video lessons and things. So what do you think about the value of face-to-face lessons? Do you think that's a critical thing that people should do at least for few years
SPEAKER_00:yeah well it can definitely help it can help you if you have some blind spots and we all have some blind spots the thing is you you can actually find all the information you need when you are sitting at yourself just rehearsing and practicing but you don't know you know you don't know about the things that you don't know you need if i can say that way you know for instance my saxophone teacher he told me something very important about my eight notes when I was there at the first lesson. And I had just never really thought about my eight notes and how much I was swinging the eight notes in medium swing tempos. He said that it was very important to have more even eight notes and then accentuate every second eight note. That kind of knowledge, I probably wouldn't have gotten that if I didn't go to him since I wasn't aware of the concept at all. So in that way, I think it can be very useful to have face-to-face interaction. And then, of course I think especially on the harmonica it's very important that you spend a lot of time on your own with the instrument especially since what's happening with the tongue and the mouth is so invisible and it's something that a teacher can't tell you how to do you just have to work your way slowly into the feeling of it and that's only something you can do by yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Final question on this kind of tuition so another thing when people are learning jazz on the harmonica which typically tends to be chromatic but obviously a lot of people are playing overblows now and playing jazz and diatonic harmonicas you know so what about taking lessons off say a saxophone player as you did you know it's entirely work obviously they're coming from it from a different instrument different techniques and
SPEAKER_00:yeah it was it was a very very nice for me to have that experience because also our instrument is such a special instrument and we sometimes we get a little caught up in the instrument we get caught up in the possibilities and and the limitations. Sometimes it can be very nice to have someone from the outside telling you to do something without taking into consideration that you're playing the harmonica. So he was, for instance, saying to me that I transcribe and learn the bow train solo from Moments Notice composition on the Blue Train album. That is a wonderful saxophone solo and very, very difficult to play in that tempo on the chromatic harmonica. I don't know if I entirely succeeded in playing it, but the process of transcribing the whole thing and playing it as well as possible on the chromatic harmonica gave me immense knowledge and immense value. Suddenly new horizons were opening up on the instrument. So in that way, it can be good to have a teacher who does not take into consideration that you're playing the chromatic harmonica, but just views you as a musician, as another saxophone player, for instance.
UNKNOWN:Bye.
SPEAKER_02:Quite a lot of people interested in jazz were obviously quite intimidated on it. It's a lot to take on. It's a very technically challenging, difficult music to play. You've got to understand a lot about music theory and different chord structures and scales. So what would you say to people who do want to maybe take on jazz, or at least more seriously than just playing some kind of light standard sort of approach?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, it definitely comes with theory and the scales and the chords. Those are the tools that we're using when we are playing jazz. But it's a wonderful thing to do and what I always try to do and tell people is that you want to be able to improvise without thinking too much about the scales at least not thinking about what scale you're playing at what time but just seeing intuitively all the notes that are available on the different chords and normally you can think about improvisation in two ways you can think about a horizontal improvisation and a vertical improvisation where the horizontal improvisation is going through all the chords with the same scale. So that's kind of what we are doing when we're playing the blues. We're just using the same scale or maybe the two or three scales over the entire song. And that gives us the possibility to develop our musical ideas very intuitively. And then when you play jazz, you play, of course, down into every chord and every chord has its own scale. But what you want to do when you play jazz is to be able to play horizontally through the chords and just having the background knowledge to do it by having these scales kind of in your nervous system.
SPEAKER_02:You've gone off to you're almost entirely a chromatic player now so you mentioned that quite a lot of people do play jazz now on the diatonic playing overblows so is that not that's not something you do you're not still pursuing overblows and you know why did you decide to definitely move you know entirely over to the chromatic?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah well it was actually a tough decision because I really I I loved playing the diatonic harmonica and I was very inspired by Howard Levy and Carlos del Hongo very advanced playing and I was doing the same but also there was constantly difficulties There was always limitations on what you could play on a normal C harmonica, for instance, because if you were to play two overblows after each other, that's almost impossible to do in a legato way. I was getting also a little frustrated with the limitations of it, even though I thought it was a very, very cool and wonderful thing that this is something that is actually physically possible. So for me, it was very nice to have an instrument where these notes were available more easily so i could focus on learning the scales and developing patterns in the scales and developing the jazz language without having so many difficulties on the physical level
SPEAKER_02:yeah and i think a lot of people prefer the diatonic over the chromatic because it's got that more kind of instant power but a bit like a saxophone yeah you can kind of get more crunch out of a diatonic whereas a chromatic's got a cleaner sort of gently sound you can't bend the notes so much you know and so you know do you also prefer the sound of the chromatic for the jazz for that reason or do you think you're missing a little bit of that kind of crunch that you can get out of the diatonic?
SPEAKER_00:I know what you mean and I also would prefer the diatonic when playing the blues but I must say I think the chromatic harmonica has got a wonderful sound of its own like you can bend the notes in the same way but you can still bend the notes a lot and get a lot of expression out of it and you can play double notes like maybe I can illustrate on the chromatic harmonica now but you can kind of get some of the same sound out of it. So I think getting, I want to get a juicy sound and I'm inspired by the diatonic sound in that way. I also like the bright and mellow sound of the dramatic harmonica when you're playing single notes and you're playing more softly.
SPEAKER_02:No, absolutely. And I hope those words do sort of inspire some diatonic players, you know, maybe to consider the chromatic more because I think a lot of people, you know, for that reason, they sort of think, oh yeah, the chromatic doesn't have the same kind of bite as the juice, as you call it, as the diatonic. But yeah, you know, great, yeah. So we're going back then to your influences when you were learning who were you listening to I mean clearly you probably listened to lots of jazz players you mentioned Coltrane they're like a giant of jazz and what about harmonica players besides Howard and Carlos who you mentioned and chromatic players particularly
SPEAKER_00:I was listening to Tillemans a lot, of course, especially some of his early work. There's an album called Columbia Jazz, where he's playing some stunning solos and just really showing how well you can get around on that instrument and playing b-ball on it.
UNKNOWN:B-Ball
SPEAKER_00:And also I've been playing with Stevie Wonder, listening to his solos and trying to get that feel and those spins.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I've got some recordings of you doing the Isn't She Lovely? That's a song you really like, isn't
SPEAKER_00:it? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And it's also a crowd pleaser.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, what about that fast run up at the end? You do play that, don't you, on the chromatic? That's quite a challenging run up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the... Yeah. Actually, it depends on the key. You know, I usually play it actually one half note above his original key and that makes that run a little more smooth.
SPEAKER_02:Right. You're doing it in F then, are you? I think he does it in E, doesn't he? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Great. Okay, so yeah, so Toots and Stevie, yeah, so...
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but also, yeah, I've been listening a lot to Antonio Serrano when I was starting to play jazz. I was checking his videos out and I've been a big fan of his approach to jazz. He's also a big inspiration.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, so you're I think, are you still just 28? Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:until September.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so you're sounding fantastic now, Matthias. You've got a great sound. You're starting at a relatively young age, but you've got to great heights already, so congratulations. At the age of 20, you won the World Harmonica Championship in Trossingen in 2013. Yeah. So what did you play to win there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I played one of my own compositions called Sudden Ascent. It's also our most popular tune on spotify with my band matthias heise quadrillion actually it's the first it's from the first album i ever
SPEAKER_01:released also so
SPEAKER_00:So I had done a backing track at home and then I played that in Germany.
SPEAKER_02:And so great. So then you won that. And did that help sort of launch your career or were you already well on your way by then?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that definitely helped. When I got back, I wrote some of the Danish TV shows and I came into a morning TV show and told the story and played some music there. And also afterwards, it's almost always in the press text, for my concerts that I'm a World Harmonica champion. It is a nice little thing to have when it comes to marketing and when it comes to launching your career. Of course, you should take it with a grain of salt. It's not like Antonio was there, for instance. It is what it is, but I love the festival and it was such a wonderful experience to be there and to meet so many other players because you just walk around here in your own little harmonica world. It's such a shock suddenly to see 200 harmonica players at the same place. It's surreal.
SPEAKER_02:And you did a performance with Philip Achille in 2013 there, didn't you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there was the jam session. We were playing the tune Spain by Chick Corea, so we decided to do it together. That was very nice. He's a great guy, Philip Achille.
UNKNOWN:...
SPEAKER_02:2015 you won the new Jazz Store of the Year in Denmark so you were starting to get more recognition yeah was this on the back of your first album with the Matthias Heiser Quadrillion the Sudden Ascent album
SPEAKER_00:yeah yeah exactly actually that was a composer's composition so you had to send in a composition to get evaluated by a jury and I sent in the same track Sudden Ascent that I used to win the Harmonica World Championship in Germany that composition So you
SPEAKER_02:composed the tracks for this album yourself?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think one of them was composed by my guitar player, but all the other ones were composed by me.
SPEAKER_02:So are you composing on the piano or do you use chromatic as well?
SPEAKER_00:Sometimes one and sometimes the other. It's definitely a chromatic harmonica feature that got me going. It was the slide. You can use the slide to get some pretty nice trills. Like... I was kind of fond of that sound. Then I made up this phrase... and that's kind of what the song is built around. Then in the A part, there's a theme that is a bit advanced, and that was actually composed on the piano, and that was very hard to play in the beginning for me on the chromatic harmonica. So I like to do both, to challenge myself as a harmonica player, and also to use the harmonica as a tool to write some composition that practically you wouldn't be able to write them if you didn't play the harmonica. So I love to... to in that way use the harmonic as a composition tool.
SPEAKER_02:Then are you coming up with melodic lines on the chromatic and then you're adding chords afterwards?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sometimes that's what's happening. Not that much, actually. I've always been a very guy. I like harmonies, and I like chords, and much of the time, the chords are the basic structure of the song, and then I apply some melody, and maybe I then change the chords to fit the melody. I haven't wrote a lot of tunes just with the melody from the beginning.
SPEAKER_02:And you are the keyboard player on the album, because there's a few songs which don't have a harmonic run, so you're playing the keyboard on Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:it's probably 50-50, keyboard and
SPEAKER_02:harmonica in that band. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:definitely. I've been a huge Fusion fan almost as long as I can remember. It was my first introduction to jazz. I remember listening to Herbie Hancock's Chameleon song with the very iconic bass line, do, do, do, do. I was listening to that track every day for a year when I was in eighth grade in my school. I just couldn't get enough of that tune. And also I began listening to George Duke and I'm passionate about playing fusion music. And it was my biggest dream was to get my own fusion band, write my own fusion songs. at that time in Denmark. Now this is probably in 2012 and 2010. Fusion was actually kind of frowned upon. Many jazz musicians in Denmark thought that fusion was bad taste and what you need to do was to play acoustic and maybe free jazz, maybe some rubato jazz, a lot of other ways of playing jazz. But now actually things have turned. So I did my fusion band and now it appears that all those very hardcore jazz bands They've turned around and began playing fusion jazz together with me. So that's nice.
SPEAKER_02:You started a trend, yeah. But it's probably reasonably unique to hear some harmonica, certainly some chromatic harmonica and that sort of fusion sound, isn't it? So I think you probably have got quite a unique position in the harmonica playing world there. Are you aware of any other sort of fusion sort of harmonica players?
SPEAKER_00:No, not in the same way. But Gregoire Marrette, he has also done some things that I would say was in the same alley. you know he's done some things with Pat Metheny and his own group also has some fusion elements although it is more acoustic so that fusion with synthesizers and electric guitar and electric bass and funk rhythms I'm actually not aware of anybody else doing that on the chromatic harmonica.
SPEAKER_02:It gets quite heavy some of the songs doesn't it? You've got some quite heavy kind of rock electric guitar on there so you know are you particularly approaching how you're doing your chromatic solos to fit with that?
SPEAKER_00:That's always It's always been of interest to me to be able to solo and to get a solo going so that it reaches a high point that can match the guitar and that can match a saxophone. That's always been important to me to try to reach those high points.
UNKNOWN:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Part of it is, of course, just being agile on the instrument, being able to play some phrases that are fast and that are powerful. But also what I found out is what you actually need to play with the rhythm group very much. You have to understand your drummer and your bass player and your piano player, and you have to communicate with them. You have to throw some musical ideas at them. So I've been practicing a lot to have a melodic idea and then hold on to it and also to have a rhythmical idea and hold on to that, keep developing those ideas so that they get absorbed by the other musicians. And that's actually how I feel that you reach the highest points of music. It's when you're all working together as a collective to push the solo to new limits.
SPEAKER_02:Certainly one thing I've heard you do with it, which is definitely not something you do all the time, but you do use some effects, don't you? Does that help in the sort of fusion? Well, that Shuffle Funk is a song you've done a YouTube video on, when you've got some effects. Are you using effects in this way or at all for the Fusion particularly?
SPEAKER_00:It's actually a relatively new thing for me to play with effects, but I'm very interested in it right now. And I think I have a nice pedal board now. I've been developing it for some time and I had to understand which effects did what and how they sounded on the chromatic harmonica because you're using guitar pedals. Some of these pedals actually don't work very well together with the harmonica. Some do and some don't. don't. It's a process of developing your pedal board. But now I'm very glad with my pedal board. I've got an octaver pedal, I've got an auto-war pedal, I've got reverb, and I've got delay. Then I've got also a very nice limiter pedal. The harmonica is a very dynamic instrument. When you're playing fusion jazz, it can be a good thing to have a consistently powerful tone. It can be a good trait to give some of the dynamics band up in return, and in return and get a more consistent, powerful tone. That's what the limiter is doing.
SPEAKER_02:Sure, yeah. So you're more interested, like you say, you think you're going to be releasing some more music with use of effects with the chromatic. Yeah, definitely. That's going to happen. Yeah, I'd be interested to hear that coming out. Yeah, so great. So then you did your second album with the Matthias Heiser Quadrillion, which is Decadence, 2017. So first of all, what's a quadrillion?
SPEAKER_00:Large number. Very, very large number. I think it's maybe 10 to the power of... I should know that since it's my band, but please don't hold me up on it. But it's a very, very big number. between our musicianships, they become more than the sum of our parts. You know, that's kind of the intellectual idea behind the name.
SPEAKER_02:So the title track, Decadence, you know, I've got, again, there's some quite heavy guitar on there.
UNKNOWN:And I think...
SPEAKER_02:Electroshock is on there, which has got a nice eerie atmosphere. Is that using any effects, the Electroshock one?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we're using a lot of delay and reverb on that one. I think also some chorus, actually. Those weren't pedals, they were just added on in the mix.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, sure. Is that something you've been very involved with then, with the albums to the post-processing?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely. We are a band that likes to post-produce our songs and to experiment with different effects and different ways of mixing the music and the sounds. So we are very interested in that, all four of us. And it can also be a bit tricky. We have strong opinions and it's a very democratic band. So sometimes the discussions go on for quite a while before we come up with the results.
SPEAKER_02:But you mix in the albums yourself, then you're not... Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so this is a big band, right? So is this quite a well-known big band in Denmark?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's the Danish national big band, almost. It's a Danish radio big band. And we have, of course, a national broadcasting service called DR, Danish radio. I think it came about as a kind of effect of my title, you know, that composition I won, Young Jazz Star of the Year. The prize, if you can say it like that, was that you've got to have your song played by this big band. And I also did back there in 2015. I knew many of the people in the big band and I became friends with the producer in the big band. He just proposed that we should do a collaboration together. It was only my second time writing big band arrangements. I wrote all the arrangements for the album.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I was going to ask about that. Exactly, you wrote all the arrangements. So you wrote all the arrangements for all the different instruments in the big band, did you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. I take it you've never done that before, you know, writing for all the... I mean, how many instruments did you write for?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they have... It's kind of a large big band. They have five in the saxophone section, five in the trombone section, and five in the trumpet section. And then you have guitar, keyboard, and drums, and bass. So that's quite a big band. It was a big project for me to do, and I spent a lot of time writing those arrangements. But it was also a fascinating world to kind of experience. And afterwards, I've been writing also quite a lot of big band music. So it's definitely something that will follow me, I think, in my career.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, and I think you were just 25 when you wrote these compositions. So yeah, fantastic. Thanks. And the album was nominated for the Best Jazz Album Awards in Denmark. Yeah. Yeah, great. I noticed on Spotify now you've got a couple of singles released at the moment. Are they singles which are coming out on a new album?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, those are singles from the third album of Quadrillion, our band. It's coming out in June, the whole thing. So right now we have this tune called Bad Luck as a single.
UNKNOWN:Bad Luck
SPEAKER_00:We also have a ballad called Soft Mind. That's very nice to finally be able to release these songs. We've been working on them for a year. We are slow in the band when it comes to releasing music because we work so much in the detail.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you like to perfect them. Great, yeah. So it's interesting now. Quite a lot of people are taking this approach, aren't they, that they're releasing singles on Spotify. And then, like you say, it'll sort of gone to be an album. So do you think that helps in the new streaming world to get a bit more recognition for the songs to release them as singles.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's definitely very important that you do this. Because when you want to get your music out on Spotify, you have to get onto the playlists. You know, those playlists that Spotify make themselves. And the only way to get considered is to release either an album or a single. But when you release an album, I think you can only push three of your songs to the playlist. So when you release them as singles, you get extra shots. at pushing your music into the playlists. And of course, this can be the make or the break of your music since if you get on, for instance, Coffee Time Jazz, your song will quickly get maybe two or three million streams. Whereas if you don't get into any playlists and you're not a very big name with millions of followers, your songs probably won't get as much attention.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So as well as your own albums, so you've got three albums out of your own now and only one coming out in June you've also done lots of recording with different people as a you know sort of session sideman playing chromatic harmonica which is great so what about the difference with that being you know working just as a sideman on other people's recordings?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, I love both. Of course, it's just such a privilege to make a living out of playing this instrument every day. And when I play on other people's tracks, it's a wonderful challenge to find out what the track needs and to express the emotions that are needed on this track. Sometimes you need an impressive solo. Sometimes you need something more deep and emotional. And I also love experimenting ending with the different sounds you can get out of the harmonica. You know, my own projects, of course, what I'm most passionate about, writing music myself and getting the result that I want, realizing the artistic ideals of my own. That's, I guess, always something you are passionate about.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, sure. But one thing, chromatic harmonica seems to be quite appealing to the female singer. And so you've done some songs where you played chromatic harmonica on some female singing vocalists. You've done Can't Buy Me love jazzed up version of the Beatles song with Kristen Korb done one with the Hungarian singer Nicoletta Sochi is it a song called Smile so So yeah, there is something about the chromatic, isn't it, which kind of goes nicely with the female vocals, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely. There's an affinity in some way. I guess they are both bright. Female vocalist has also got some of that crisp that the chromatic harmonica has. Yeah, it's a nice match. I think so.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, definitely. But it's not all you've done. I mean, there's some really good recordings I found. So I really like the one, the Martin Fabricius, a really excellent album called Out of the White. You got some great playing on that one.
UNKNOWN:Yeah. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:The funny thing is that he was my first teacher of music theory, Martin Fabricius. So we go way back, and I played on, I think, two of his albums, actually, with his vibraphone, drums, bass, harmonica quartet.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so that's a nice one. And then you're playing on an album by Aaron Deedy, who's a Danish singer-songwriter. This is a song called Keep On Loving You, which is quite a pop album, isn't it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:He's a very famous singer here in Denmark, Jan Didi. He did some great songs in the 90s and also in the 2000s. That's kind of a soul pop funk thing that we did there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, some great stuff. And again, nice to hear the chromatic in that setting as well. Lots of great collaborations. And a list of which is on your website. I'll put a link to that. People can find it. I think it's on the homepage, isn't it? We show the collaborations. Yeah. So great. And recently you've been playing with a guitar player called Pelle von Bülow, is it? In a duet?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's actually pronounced Pelle von Bülow.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks. You're doing a song called Minority Major, which I really like. But actually all those tracks which you've got on YouTube are really great. So is this a duo you're playing in recently? Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:we've kind of found each other in the last couple of years, me and Pele, and it's definitely the best functioning jazz duo I've ever played in. We are a very good match, both we think in the same way rhythmically and harmonically, and so it's very, very nice to play with them and to explore the possibilities of the duo format where you can kind of just be very free and do whatever you want and you know that your duo partner has got your back no matter what's happening. So that's great.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I think a lot of blues players, you know, you hear a lot of blues duos and people, the diatonic players like the freedom of a duo because they've got lots of space to play harmonica. With a chromatic, which most of your music is instrumental, right? You don't have vocalists on your own music so much and there's a little bit of vocals. You know, you've got an extra challenge there, haven't you, to fill all that space with a chromatic in a jazz way and have a very long extended solo. So how do you approach that on the chromatic when you're playing in the duo?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that is a point of consideration because you don't want people to get tired of the sound of the harmonica. And I'm lucky that Pelle is actually a great solo guitar player. And sometimes I also comp him. I play some piano and then he plays melody and plays a solo. It's a matter of song choice, I think, to choose different songs with different vibes. So, you know, you can choose Fats, straight ahead jazz song and then maybe you can play a ballad maybe you can play a latin song maybe then we'll play something where I start out solo on the harmonica maybe then we'll play a funk tune with some effect pedals on the harmonica so I try to mix it up as much as possible so that people hopefully keep on listening with curiosity
SPEAKER_01:music Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:sure. And so are you still performing with him? Is that something you can continue with?
SPEAKER_00:Definitely. We are performing a lot. It's nice and easy. We just drive in one car and then we can reach every jazz club in Denmark without any trouble.
SPEAKER_02:And you don't sing at all yourself, do you not?
SPEAKER_00:No. Sadly, my voice is not very well equipped to sing. I have tried, but it's very, very difficult for me. And I just decided to spare myself the hustle of trying.
SPEAKER_02:So you mentioned that you've got some TV work over in Denmark. So do you get any sort of soundtrack work or anything like that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I sometimes get some recording of movies and soundtracks I'm lucky to get invited to play some live gigs often. I've been playing the Christmas shows. There's a harmonica needed. They're calling me. And actually in Denmark, we have a composer called Ben Fabricius Bjerre who wrote a very famous song for the harmonica. So that's also lucky for me that I've gotten to play this song a couple of times on TV.
SPEAKER_02:You're the go-to chromatic player definitely in Denmark.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Do you do any teaching at all?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I do some teaching. It's not a lot. I have a few students. I try to fit them in when I have the time. But I am very busy playing and composing and arranging, so it's not so much.
SPEAKER_02:It's good to hear that you're busy. Yeah, great. Good for you, yeah. What about festivals? Do you regularly appear on festivals around Denmark or Europe? I know you've certainly been to the UK at the Harmonica Festival in the UK in 2017. Beautiful version of Killer Joe with a double bass, I I recall. What about, you know, you get to many other festivals?
SPEAKER_00:Of course, Copenhagen Jazz Festival and Aarhus Jazz Festival. Those are the two main ones in Denmark. I'm going to play there. We've been touring sometimes with my band Quadrillion. That is kind of one of my goals to get even more out internationally. I would love to come back to UK and I would love to play some more in Germany also. I've been to Sweden last week with a big band, which was wonderful up in the north of Sweden. But I just love coming out and meeting new people and playing for different audiences all over.
SPEAKER_02:And so a question I ask each time is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it kind of depends on your level, I guess. If I had 10 minutes... I would take out a jazz standard. I would apply some different improvisational concepts to the jazz standard. Also, when you're starting out, it's just very important to play your major scales, to play all 12 major scales, and to play also your chords, playing the major triads and minor triads. You just have to kind of massage that structure of the harmonica and of the notes into your system, into your Do you have a particular practice regime
SPEAKER_02:yourself? It sounds like you're pretty dedicated to practicing and playing different techniques and scales. Do you follow a practice regime?
SPEAKER_00:Actually, I have structure, but I don't follow it that much. My interests are shifting. I have maybe 50 recordings on my phone of different concepts and different licks and lines that I would like to practice and I would like to transpose into different keys. When I practice and it's most fruitful, I think I take a song and then I apply different concepts to this song and I feel my mind is expanding the possibilities of improvising on this song is expanding. And this is a wonderful thing. And the reason why I've got 50 recordings is that I never really get onto the bottom of any recording because every time I start working on it, I get new ideas to new concepts that I then have to record.
SPEAKER_02:So we'll get onto the last section now and talk about gear. First of all, your chromatic of choice. I think I was seeing you playing a G48. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:definitely my favorite. The wooden body that you like, is it? I enjoy the wooden body very much. Also because... My tone and my playing style is quite forceful sometimes, so I like that the note gets a little more warm, a little more full-bodied with the wooden comb. When you have the metal comb, it's a more piercing sound, which also can be very nice and crisp, but I like this compromise between the crisp and the warmth.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, when I thought Greg were on the podcast, he did talk about how he formulated the G48, so if you haven't heard it before, it's quite interesting to hear him talk about that he worked a lot on it you know he's really particular about getting it right he was really pleased with it so that was good yeah he did a good job so what about diatonics you do still play some diatonics do you so do you do you have particular favorite diatonics
SPEAKER_00:yeah I like the melody those those with the red chrome. Also, I actually just enjoy the Horner Pro Blues app.
SPEAKER_02:Great. So do you play much diatonic? Do you perform with diatonic now? Is it more just something that you like to play with on your own?
SPEAKER_00:I don't really use it when I perform very much. I'd use it to do some recording when people want the sound of a diatonic harmonica. And also I just, yeah, played on my own. And it's nice to bring with you when you are going somewhere. You can just have it in your pocket and you can play a little song and a little blues and people get happy. So it's mostly for the fun of it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So in the chromatics, are you just playing 12 holes? yeah okay and are you playing all your chromatics in the key of C
SPEAKER_00:yes for the moment I recently have thought about purchasing a key harmonica in a lower key I heard Antonio doing it and it sounds quite cool but also I just bought the bass harmonica the chromatic bass harmonica that low register sound that I like it's a Suzuki model
SPEAKER_02:so are you planning on what maybe using that on recordings
SPEAKER_00:yeah yeah definitely I'm gonna use that in some way thing is You know, it's not a regular bass harmonica because it's a chromatic bass harmonica. It's the same size as a normal chromatic harmonica. And it's quite responsive. Of course, the low notes, the very low notes are just harder to play because they're bigger. So you can play very fast down there. But in the top of the bass chromatic harmonica, you can actually play some nice fast lines also. It's called the Suzuki Sirius S48B. What about, what embouchure do you use when you're playing? I use pocket technique. I just form my mouth as if I were to whistle. Then of course when I play octaves and I play double notes I use the tongue to block different holes. You can both play for instance hole 1 and 2 and hole 1 and 3 and you can play hole 1 and 4 and you can play hole 1 and 5 to
SPEAKER_02:get the octave. So do you do that a lot where you're splitting different octaves as you you just described there, rather than doing the full octave.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I do that a lot, yeah. And I try to use them both as harmonies sometimes when other people are playing, but that's not so much. But also just as an effect when I'm playing, I like to play double notes. And when you're able to block out some of the middle notes, you can get more possibilities over the harmonies.
SPEAKER_02:So what about equipment-wise? You know, microphones and amplifiers or PAs?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I use actually just the Shure 58 original. It's very important that it's not a beta model because they have a very sharp middle tone, upper middle tone, and you don't want that on the chromatic harmonica. I think it's 2 kilohertz. That's the painful spot of the harmonica. That's always that place that I EQ down and the Shure 58, it has got a nice response and a nice It doesn't over-amplify those nasty hertz on the harmonica.
SPEAKER_02:Do you use one with a volume control or
SPEAKER_00:not? No, but I have my pedals so that I can control the volume down there.
SPEAKER_02:So are you playing just through PA each time, or do you carry around an amp?
SPEAKER_00:I have an amp in my car, but it's mostly as... there isn't a PA. If there's a PA with monitors, that's perfect. And that's also a reason why I got the pedal board is that probably many harmonica players will recognize the situation where you have a PA system and then you're playing your harmonica and the sound from the monitor is totally dry without any reverb. And I can't stand playing without reverb. It's like I don't get inspired. It's just a complete mess for me. I've tried too many times to play without reverb because the sound in didn't have the time to root out the reverb to the monitor. So now when I play my pedals, he just gets the signal from me, and that means that the sound that I hear is the same sound that the people hear out in the audience.
SPEAKER_02:Sure, yeah. We touched on the pedals earlier on, so another question on that. Like you say, you're using guitar pedals, which is generally what's available. Are you finding ones that are particularly working for the chromatic against ones which are working for the diatonic, do you think? I guess you probably haven't tried them too much on the diatonic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've definitely tried them mostly on the chromatic but i remember when i was playing the diatonic distortion pedals were actually functioning quite well they don't function well on the chromatic i think it doesn't help the sound in any way to get distortion so but i think the outer wah is very nice and i think that that also works very well on the diatonic both on the chromatic and the diatonic
SPEAKER_02:what about your reverb and delay pedals are you going for the kind of boss ones or have you found particular ones that you like
SPEAKER_00:i've got a delay pedal called clockwork which is a pedal with some possibilities, but it's not too advanced. And then I've got the Hall of Fame reverb pedal, which I like very much. It also has a mash function. So when you press down the button, it will expand the reverb and, you know, make almost a wall of sound out of your harmonica. So if you play, for instance, four different notes, they will all hang in the air and create a harmony. I use that a lot when I'm finishing tunes, mashing that button down.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's great, you know, It's great to someone like yourself really innovating the use of pedals. Guitarists have been using them for years, right? So we've got to compete with them. So yeah, it's definitely good to make use of them. So what about when you're recording? Do you use any particular setup, any particular microphones? It sounds like you're obviously very involved with the recording process. You're not just leaving it to the studio to set it up for you?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I actually also use the Shure 58 when I record. I don't like the sound of a condensator microphone. And I have also tried some different microphones with band instead of just the dynamic and don't really like them either. Actually, I have yet to find a harmonica microphone that's better suited for the chromatic harmonica than the Shure 58, which Tudor Steelmans was also using all his life. So I guess that's kind of a match made in heaven.
SPEAKER_02:So when you're playing and when you're recording, are you always holding the SM58 in your hand?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's an important part of it. To get exactly that proximity sound, you know, the The sound of the harmonica can get a little thin in the air if you stand a long way from the microphone. I want the fattest possible sound of the harmonica.
SPEAKER_02:When you're recording, do you not find that sometimes the hand noise and breath noise gets picked up for recordings, or is that not a problem for you?
SPEAKER_00:That almost never happens for me, because I guess the microphone is covered by my hand, so the breath from my nose is not getting into the microphone. and it's very very rare that i kind of clash them together the the microphone and the harmonica since i have a grip where they are separated by my fingers
SPEAKER_02:okay and then final question then so um we've touched on it already but you know your sort of future plans now you've got the new album coming out in june it's like that you're looking to get out playing i'll take it in uh things are opened up pretty well now in denmark are they
SPEAKER_00:yeah yeah we are we are lucky here in denmark things are completely open now i i'm also releasing i hope this year and my first jazz quintet album. I have a very nice jazz quintet coming up with Pelle von Bülow. He's my guitar player and then a piano player and a bass player and a drummer. So I'm composing tunes for that and also arranging some standards. And I hope to release that album at the end of the year and hopefully get out touring with the band.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's superb, yeah. So hopefully we'll look forward to you playing across Europe and hopefully in the UK, but I'll have to make it across Copenhagen at some point. So that'd be brilliant to see you you're playing so thanks so much for joining me today Matthias Heiser
SPEAKER_00:thank you Neil it was a pleasure
SPEAKER_02:That's episode 57. Thanks so much again for listening. And thank you to Rasmus Bro Jorgensen for his donation. Remember to check out the website on monicahappyhour.com. And also remember to check out the Spotify playlist, which contains most of the tracks mentioned during the interviews. You can find that by searching for Happy Hour Harmonica podcast on Spotify. So it's just over to Matthias to play us out with his new single coming out on his new album later this year, Soft Mind.
SPEAKER_01:so
UNKNOWN:Thank you.