Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
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Contact: happyhourharmonicapodcast@gmail.com
Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast
Richard Hunter interview
Richard Hunter joins me on episode 74.
Richard has immersed himself in harmonica ever since he first picked it up at age 15 and has been pushing the boundaries of the instrument ever since. His first release was a solo acoustic harmonica album, composing most of the songs himself and making extensive use of alternate tunings and counterpoint, followed up by a second album along the same lines.
Richard is a true innovator of using effects with harmonica and has created some great sounds using them on his later two albums, including the use of Digitech multi-effect pedals, for which he has created patch sets that are available to download from his website.
Richard is also the author of one of the first harmonica transcription books: Jazz Harp, that was released in the 1990s, becoming a staple publication on many a harmonica players’ shelves.
Links:
Richard’s website:
https://www.hunterharp.com/
Chris Turner:
https://christurnerharmonica.bandcamp.com/album/chris-turner-harmonicas
The Lucky One posts:
https://www.hunterharp.com/the-lucky-one-is-here-check-out-the-songs/
Solo acoustic harmonica tracks to buy:
https://www.hunterharp.com/all-hunters-downloads-in-one-place/#Sbuy
Tunings used on solo recordings:
https://www.hunterharp.com/harp-keys-and-tunings-for-my-recorded-solo-repertoire/
The Lucky One breakdown of each song:
https://www.hunterharp.com/the-lucky-one-is-here-check-out-the-songs/
DaBell harmonicas:
http://en.dabell.co.kr/home/bbs//board.php?bo_table=product&sca=Harmonica
Videos:
Richard’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/lightninrick
Put The Lever Down, from 1982:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnDPNyimg5o
Recent Electric work:
https://www.hunterharp.com/category/audiovideo/?fbclid=IwAR0bozS97Y4lZwKmGk230CmVEknErhY0rEuvEYQ19mOJOqCRMAi84wi3cVk
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/
Richard Hunter joins me on episode 74. Richard has immersed himself in harmonica ever since he first picked it up at the age of 15 and has been pushing the boundaries of the instrument ever since. His first release was a solo acoustic harmonica album, composing most of the songs himself and making extensive use of alternative tunings and counterpoint, followed up by a second album along the same lines. Richard is a true innovator of using effects with harmonica and has created some great sounds using them on his later two albums, including the use of Digitech multi-effect pedals, for which he has created patch sets that are available to download from his website. Richard is also the author of one of the first harmonica transcription books, Jazz Harp, that was released in 1980, becoming a staple publication on many a harmonica player's shelves. This podcast is sponsored by Zeidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas. Hello, Richard Hunter, and welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Are you originally from Vermont?
SPEAKER_02:No, I was born in New York City. I lived in New York State till I was about 12 years old. Well, actually, until I was 18. Then I moved to Boston to attend college. And since then, I've been bouncing around the Northeast US. Vermont was one of my stops for about three and a half years.
SPEAKER_00:Great. So you're another New Yorker. So I spoke to Adam Gussell last time and saying I hadn't had many New Yorkers on. Although I remember since I had William Gallatin, who's also, I think, New York. What got you started playing harmonica? I believe your first instrument was a piano, and you sort of picked up a little after that.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, my first instrument was piano. In 1967, when I was 15 years old, I was playing in a rock band. The name of the band, by the way, was Tiki and the Wambizi Gods. I was sitting behind this ugly, awful-sounding little Japanese organ while the guitar players were up front getting all the girls. And I thought that that was a problem. So I went looking for an instrument that would get me up front. Guitar wasn't going to do it because we already had two guitarists in the band. I checked out a saxophone and I thought it was amazing, but it was also$650, which was beyond my means. And then in the music store, I saw a Hohner display case. And I had recently been at Manny's Music in New York City and heard Paul Butterfield doing an impromptu performance there. And it just sounded amazing. And so I thought, well, that's the thing. I'll get myself a harmonica,$2.50. And that was the beginning.
SPEAKER_00:Great. So the big question is, did it help you get the girls?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I met my wife playing harmonica in a band on Cape Cod in the early... in the early 1980s. So yeah, it helped.
SPEAKER_00:There we go. It achieved that one of the life goals. Well done to the harmonica. So yeah, so you played piano and what did you have sort of formal piano lessons and learn that way first and sort of classical training?
SPEAKER_02:I did have formal piano lessons. I stopped studying classical piano when I was like 11 or 12, I think. I started studying jazz piano with John Mahegan, who was at the time an associate professor at Yale University and the author of a four-part series on jazz improvisation. And I studied with him for about six months to a year, I think. And then I just got into rock and roll and began playing rock and roll with various bands. I wasn't very good at the time, but I got better as I went along. So do you still play piano now? I do. For a long period of time, it took a distinct second fiddle to harmonica, so to speak. Second harmonica to harmonica, I should say. For a long time, I did not devote a lot of attention to it, but I'm devoting attention to it again. And I'm coming up to the level that I was at before I started pulling back in order to have a career in information technology and focus on the harmonica.
SPEAKER_00:And how do you think the piano informs your harmonica playing?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I have a much better grasp of harmony and of different keys because I play piano. Lots of harmonica players are familiar with the physical layout of the harmonica without really being aware of what the harmonic meaning of the layout is. And because I played piano, I have a much better idea of that than many harmonica players do. I think, you know, I'm a musician who plays harmonica, among other things. I'm not a harmonica player per se.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think, you know, as harmonica players, we have a slight inferiority complex, you know, about the instrument. And I think, obviously, you can be a full-blown musician on harmonica, absolutely. But there's more of a tendency maybe to not, because maybe you haven't had formal lessons, a lot of people who play. So, you know, I think all that helps, doesn't it, for the education-wise, obviously, playing other instruments, or at least approaching the harmonica more musically
SPEAKER_02:well indeed It's worth pointing out that the quantity and quality of harmonica players overall has increased dramatically since I began playing. You know, there are kids now who've been playing for a couple of years who have learned more than I learned in the first 10 years playing the instrument because they have access to things like YouTube, because there are more harmonica players performing at a professional level in France, in Germany, in the UK, in various countries in Asia, in the United States. states of america in latin america i mean they're all over now and that's a significant change from uh from my youth or perhaps it's simply that uh with the internet i'm now much more aware of what's being done everywhere than i was when i was let's say 20 years old
SPEAKER_00:would you prefer it back then when there wasn't so much competition or do you think you're better off you know the young people are better off now with uh more harmonic players around like you said they're
SPEAKER_02:definitely better off now i mean if you want to learn the instrument It's great to have people around you virtually or in person who understand something about the instrument and can show you something. You know, I had to work really hard just to find people who played harmonica at anything but the most rudimentary level. It wasn't until I got to Boston in 1970 that I found a community of harmonica players who were devoted to mastering the instrument.
SPEAKER_00:So you mentioned there that you'd heard Paul Butterfield, and that's what inspired you. Oh, yeah. Charlie Musselwhite was also... a big influence on you as well.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. I heard Charlie a year or two after I heard Butterfield, and he just completely blew my mind. You know, there's an experience that musicians have. Just about every musician I know has had this experience where they're listening to a piece of music and suddenly they're in a different place. You know, they've fallen through a door in the universe and they're in a different place because of what they heard. And I had that experience for the first time listening to Charlie Musselwhite play Christo Redentor on the Vanguard album, Tennessee Woman, which was released, I think, in 1969. That performance just completely blew my mind. It was the most amazing amplified harmonica I had ever heard. The fact that he was playing this jazz song on the harmonica and making something very meaningful out of it was very important to me. And I just devoured Charlie Musselwhite's music after that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, no, Charlie's great, of course. Here's a quick word from the podcast sponsor, Blows Me Way Productions.
UNKNOWN:Blows Me Way Productions
SPEAKER_01:Hey folks, this is Charlie Musselwhite. If you're in the amplified tone like I am, the best and only place to start is a microphone from Blows Me Away Productions. Check them out at blowsmeaway.com. You know I ain't lying.
SPEAKER_00:You mentioned that you went to Boston and is that when you were getting more seriously into playing and you picked up on the scene around Boston?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I was already very serious about playing before I got to Boston. I picked up the harmonica when I was 15, so it was with me all through high school. And I was very serious about playing the harmonica, very serious about learning new things, very serious about listening to records that had harmonica on them. So when I got to Boston, it was like suddenly I was at an all-you-can-eat buffet, so to speak, where there were tons of harmonica players. And that's when I started hearing about Little Walter. I had been listening to to people like James Cotton and Charlie, of course. Players I was listening to were the post-Walter generation, and I really hadn't heard a lot of little Walter before I moved to Boston. So I was learning a tremendous amount of harmonica lore throughout that entire period.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I believe you met up with an English guy called Chris Turner.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yes, Chris, indeed. That was a fabulous discovery. I learned a huge amount playing with Chris. It was one of the potent influences in my playing because Chris's playing was so different from mine, and there was just so much stuff to pick up. I started writing solo harmonica pieces while I was working with Chris. That's where my piece, Wintersun at Nobska, and my piece, Golden Mel, come from. I wrote those while I was learning how to play the vamping techniques that Chris Turner had mastered. And I met Chris in 1977, I think, just after he had won the European Solo Harmonica Championship. You know, so he was operating at a high level. I was teaching a seminar on harmonica. I forget exactly where. Chris showed up and there had been a listing in the Boston Phoenix, the local alternative paper, from a guy who said, I'm the 1976 European Solo Harmonica champion. I'm in town looking to hook up with other musicians. So this guy in the audience had an English accent. And I said, are you the guy who placed that ad? And he said, yes. And I said, ladies and gentlemen, we have the 1976 world solo harmonica champion in this room.
UNKNOWN:So
SPEAKER_02:And I got together with Chris after the class, and we went back to my apartment. I had a Premier Twin-8 amplifier, which is and was one of the great rock and harmonica amplifiers. And Chris plugged into it and began doing his vamping stuff through the amp. The sound was huge. I was just amazed. And I thought, wow, I have to learn how to make that sound.
SPEAKER_00:This time in Boston, what year we're looking at here...
SPEAKER_02:Oh, this would be 1977.
SPEAKER_00:Great. And so this is when you mentioned a couple of the songs are like Golden Mail, which I think was your first solo composition. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think Winter Sun at Nobsca was my first solo composition. It's quite a bit simpler in performance, not conceptually. It was heavily influenced by Bella Bartok's work. So conceptually, it's a little bit out there. But Golden Mel was conceived as a virtuoso workout. You know, it's not an easy piece to play. Certainly not for me.
SPEAKER_00:So these were what went to be your album, which you released, which is an acoustic solo harmonica album called The Actor Being Free in one act. Yes. Were you developing these songs over a few years then before you put this album out?
SPEAKER_02:Some of those songs were developed a few years before the album was put out. Most of them were developed after I got a grant from the Vermont Council on the Arts. They granted me$400 to make an album, which isn't much, but I figured I could make an album of solo pieces for that amount. And so I started collecting and practicing and writing solo pieces for that record.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I don't think there'd been many, if any, solo harmonica albums out by that stage. Were you aware of others at that time?
SPEAKER_02:No, I'm still not aware of them. Although Keith Dunn, I think, who I used to see playing in Harvard Square back in the 1970s, Keith was one of the guys who convinced me that you should have a harmonica on you all the time and play it wherever you go. But I think Keith did an album that consisted of harmonica solos and harmonica duets with his voice.
SPEAKER_04:So
SPEAKER_02:that's the only one I'm aware of. Other than that, purely solo instrumental harmonica records, I think there are two in existence, and I made both of them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I think there's like a Sonny Terry one, but I think in your approach is certainly unique in the sort of material that you're taking on. It's not a blues album. You know, there's some bluesy stuff on there, right? But it's not a blues album. It's more kind of composition. So I've been listening to the album before this, and I've got to say, it is fantastic. Some great playing on there, Richard. Really impressed with it. And it's available, the individual songs are available by your website as well for people to buy and check out. These are all pieces that you, more or less, all of them you compose yourself. Yeah, some of them are, you know, Like Blue Monks on there, for example, is the jazz song, but most of them are composed by yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So how did you approach composing solo harmonica pieces? Some of those
SPEAKER_02:pieces came to me in a relative flash, practically fully made. Him for Crow. I had a friend named Crow in Vermont, David Levine. He died of stomach cancer while I was in Vermont. And a few weeks later, I was thinking about him all the time. And a walking down the road with a harmonica in my hand, as I usually do when I walk down the road. I started playing and Hymn for Crow basically came into existence in practically completed form within 20 minutes. That's an unusual kind of experience. It happens once in a while. The rest of the pieces, since they were instrumental pieces, they usually began with an instrumental idea. And then I would extend that idea, add additional sections to it. By this time, I usually had an idea of what tuning I would use on the piece. In fact, I would have that idea from the very start. There was one interesting composition process that went into that record. I was practicing a technical exercise on a natural minor harmonica. And at the time, I was recording every practice session I did. because I knew the record was coming up and I recorded every practice session so I could pick up on what was going on with the pieces. And this was just an exercise that I was doing. And suddenly it shifted and became the theme for Rock Heart. And you can hear on the tape of that practice session, the point in time at which the rhythm on it shifts just slightly and you have Rock Heart coming out. And then I did a work on a B section for rock harp. The natural minor harps are really good for that stuff, among other things, because the harmonies, the minor harmonies on the five chord are just very, very sweet, very beautiful. You know, you have major ninth chords and all that stuff to work with.
SPEAKER_00:So, I mean, you mentioned, obviously, that you're playing different tunings. And at this stage, I think that must have been quite early in the, were these Lee Oscars that you're playing the different tunings on?
SPEAKER_02:The act of being free in one act was entirely recorded with Lee Oscar harmonicas. Yeah, I was using the Lee Oscar Melody Makers. I tuned up one reed on a standard harmonica in order to get the country tuning that I used on a couple of tunes. I bought the natural minors off the shelf and used the reed plates from a natural minor combined with the reed plates from a standard harp to make Dorian minor tunings. So most of the tunings I used on on that record were assembled from off-the-shelf Lee Oscar parts.
SPEAKER_00:The information on the tunings that you use are all available on your website, yeah? Yes. So people can check that out. So what do you think about this approach of using multiple different tunings on the album? Can you only play these songs with those tunings? Yes. If people wanted to learn them, say, themselves, they would have to get hold of those tunings to do it justice, yeah?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. There's a fair amount of harmonic motion in those tunes, and it just does It does not sound right if you're playing it on a different tuning. I mean, if you played the stuff that I do on a natural minor on a standard tuning, even something as regular as when Johnny comes marching home, something as traditional as that. You can't play the arrangement that I did on that tune without a natural minor harp. The chords aren't there. You couldn't play it as something with harmony on it on a standard harmonica. Just wouldn't work. Is the chords a big part of that then? Absolutely. We talked earlier about my understanding of the piano. Playing the piano gives you much better insight into what the chords are that you're playing and how they relate to each other. And most harmonica players aren't very well versed in chords. And there are a few reasons for that. First of all, they're playing a standard tuned harmonica on folk type music. You know, that works. The second reason is that they tend to play amplified through bullet type mics and amplified tube amps. When you play a bullet mic through one of those amps, it just mushes the chords that you're playing. The chord is heard as a kind of rhythmic thing, a punctuation, as opposed to a harmonic entity that's got a direction to it.
SPEAKER_00:So this is an acoustic album, right? You didn't use any effects on this album, is that right?
SPEAKER_02:That's right. I wanted to strip it back to the absolute bare minimum. Remember that I only had$400 to record this thing with, so I didn't want to spend a lot of money. of time in the studio experimenting with effects i wanted to have something that worked with one harmonica and one player
SPEAKER_00:all right great and obviously effects is a big part of your playing we'll get into that later but uh you know just interesting that this isn't an acoustic album it's great to hear that side of you because obviously using a lot of effects as well later on so oh yes on the album there's some really killer licks you probably wouldn't call them licks but you know i'm listening to them thinking yeah there's a really nice sweet top end lick there that i'm thinking i have to learn and in every song i'm sort of hearing that thinking yeah there's a really another killer riff there i and try and learn that riff. How did you approach putting those kind of riffs in?
SPEAKER_02:Well, because there are multiple parts going on in those tunes, I tend to think in terms of foreground and background. And once you establish... the rhythmic background, the audience hears it in their head. Like, for example, on my recording on the act of being free in one act of Coming Home Baby, I establish a rhythmic motif fairly early on, and then I can improvise leads over that because the audience still has the rhythmic part in their heads as I'm moving them forward through something more elaborate, something less tethered to the rhythmic line.
SPEAKER_00:Is the album multi-track with different harmonica parts or is it all played through once?
SPEAKER_02:Every cut on the act of being free in one act is played with a single harmonica in real time. There is no overdubbing. We edited on a couple of pieces. We took, let's say, the third chorus from one recording and melded it with the first and second choruses of another. But there was no overdubbing on that record at all. You're always listening to one player and one instrument.
SPEAKER_00:Great. It's come out great. So you followed this up then with a second act of Being Free, which is a similar approach, although you do add, I think, a guitar player at least, don't you, to it? So on some of the songs, not all of them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I had Jerome Harrison, a fabulous guitarist who has worked for many years with Sonny Rollins. And there was a third collaboration on that record with the singer Susan Catrona, my daughter, who sang It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry while I played a compliment on it. What
SPEAKER_03:year did
SPEAKER_00:this second one come
SPEAKER_02:out? The first one, The Act of Being Free, came out, I think, in 1994. The second Act of Free Being, I think, was 1997. I was a much more skilled player in terms of counterpoint by the time we did the second Act of Free Being.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and again, some great playing and the different tunings used again, and again, all the information that is available.
SPEAKER_02:As of this point in time, by the way, almost all the tunings that I used are available out of the box from major manufacturers. And so you can get a Melody Maker harmonica, you can get a country tuned harmonica, you can get a natural minor. The only one I haven't seen the majors take out yet is the Dorian minor tuning, which is too bad, but you can easily make that by combining a draw plate from a natural minor with the blow plate from a standard harp.
SPEAKER_00:And so Billy the Kid is a song of out on there. That's country tuning I believe and again some really intricate pattern playing on there.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you asked previously whether you could play the pieces on a standard tuned instrument. I have in an emergency, but it just doesn't have the same cowboy feel to it. The difference between the major seventh and the flat seventh is a world of difference.
SPEAKER_00:Another one I picked out is Bella's World, which I was reading that you thought that one worked really well as a solo piece, whereas some of the other ones, you know, work well with having the accompaniment you mentioned has been added to the album.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Bela's World is one of my special pieces. That also is heavily influenced by Bela Bartok.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, a song I really liked on here is How Long Have I Loved You? Really nice. Again, and that's played on a natural minor.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And again, that's an example of a piece that just would not work on anything but a natural minor. I wrote the harmonica part for that completely before I added the harmony to it. And I like to think the tune came out well. It sounded great with a quartet at the Buckeye Harmonica Festival in 1999.
SPEAKER_00:You've got some recordings on your website of you performing at Spa in 1997, which I think a lot of these solo pieces that we've talked about. So what was that like performing these solo pieces at Spa?
SPEAKER_02:It was great. I had an attentive audience. The music was new to that audience. I performed it pretty well. In listening to those recordings, I'm amazed at how fast I was clearly hyped on adrenaline.
SPEAKER_00:You know, when it comes to playing solo pieces like this, you know, were these memorized pieces or are they sort of at least partially improvised?
SPEAKER_02:All memorized. Some of them have room for improvisation in them, but mostly the pieces are through composed, meaning that everything is composed. You know, one of the reasons for that is that when you screw up with a band behind you, you've generally got somebody to keep the stuff going until you recover yourself. But when you're doing a solo performance, if you screwed up, you can't blame it on the drummer. And so I tend to use surefire stuff. Over time, the arrangements change, but at any given point in time, I'm playing an arrangement that's through composed, not improvised.
SPEAKER_00:So your next album is not released till 2016. So quite a gap there. You were still performing and then playing at festivals during this time, but you hadn't released an album since the second act to the lucky one in 2016.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, that's right. There were a number of reasons for that. I was still playing, still working to improve my skills, but I was also getting interested in songwriting, in lyric writing. in singing, which until recently was a very big struggle for me. And there were things going on in my non-musical life as well that made it difficult to maintain a significant presence out there in the world, in the world of performance in particular. When you make a record, you're essentially investing capital in the hope that you're going to get a return on it. You can get a return if you're performing regularly. If you're not performing regularly CDs simply do not sell. So I took a big gamble when I put out The Lucky One, but I was thinking more along the lines of licensing those pieces than I was of performing them with the band. Now I perform those pieces with the tracks that I cut in the studio with that band in Philadelphia. And it's a very nice performance setup. The tracks are a lot more interesting than most pre-recorded tracks because they were played by real musicians.
SPEAKER_00:So for The Lucky One, you Like you say, you developed your lyric writing there, which is really great, by the way, as well. And also, you're well known for using effects, such as using the Digitech RP500, which has got multiple effects on it. When did you start really getting into using effects?
SPEAKER_02:In 1982, I released a single called Put the Lever Down. which was my first recorded use of a flanger. And for years after that, the flanger was part of my kit. I really started getting into effects later on when I had more money to play with effects. 1997 or 8, I went into a music store, a musical instrument store, and I was trying out the gear and I picked up a Digitech RP200, which was a very primitive machine compared to the RP500 that I have in my kit now. But I picked it up and I started messing with it. And I came upon a patch with a pitch shifter in it. And I heard the sound coming out of that thing when I played the pitch shifter and I just picked it up off the floor and took it to the counter right then. That's, I think, when I really started going ape about effects. And I eventually came to the conclusion that I could replace an amplifier on stage and a whole pedal board with something like an RP-355 and then later with a Digitech RP-500. And right now in my kit, in my looping kit, I have a Digitech RP-360 and a Line 6 Helix Stomp. Those two generators, sound generators themselves, put out an enormous variety of tones. It's a lot easier and less expensive to build your kit out of these multi-effects devices than it is to build it out of pedals on the floor.
SPEAKER_00:So about the Digitech machines that you mentioned there. So you provide patch sets, as you call them, by your website. And I did own these myself and I bought them quite a few years ago now. And so what I found great about them is that you've done a lot of the work to find the sounds that work with the harmonica you know because quite often when you get these kind of multi-effects units it's like so mind-boggling the options the number of options right that you you know you kind of give up before you start so it was great to be able to get you know stuff that you kind of pre-built for you know and to sort of say okay this one works and
SPEAKER_02:my thinking with the patch sets was this gear is cheap it sounds really good and uh it can really expand the horizons for harmonica players so let's put together a patch set with With 25, 50 patches in it, each patch representing a different sound, dozen or so bread and butter blues sounds. Let's give them some farther out stuff. Let's give them some really far out stuff. And I think that the concept is very good. I haven't been able to interest any of the manufacturers of these devices in putting out one that's already pre-programmed with stuff for harmonica players. But I think that that's a next step.
SPEAKER_00:And the Digitech pedals are still available yet. It's just some of the Yeah, Digitech
SPEAKER_02:went out of business for a while, and now they've been purchased. They should be back in business selling cool stuff again before too long. I felt that the multi-effects devices were really good value for money and that the Digitechs sounded really good and cost about half the price of a comparable Line 6 device. So I focused on the Digitechs up front. Later on, I bought a Fender Mustang 3 V.2 amp. which is an amp that I really like, by the way. And I programmed a set of patches for that as well. I've started work on a set of patches for the Line 6 Spider Series amps, and I like the way they sound as well too, but I haven't gotten around to packaging them up and making them ready for sale.
SPEAKER_00:You know, some harmonica purists would say, you know, why do you want all those wacky sounds? They don't sound like a harmonica. But I like the approach of using some effects at least, and possibly more, because, you know, hey, a guitar player's got a massive pedalboard, right? You know, why shouldn't we have a pedalboard as well to provide a variety of sounds? So, you know, what would you say to people who would say, oh, you know, I can't, it would sort of shy away from having lots of effects on the harmonica?
SPEAKER_02:You know, the heyday of Chicago blues harp was 70 years ago, and it's a great style. It's a great sound. Every harmonica player should have that sound in their battery. But, you know, it's 2022. Tom Morello, the lead guitarist for Rage Against the Machine makes sounds that you would never think a guitar could make. And there's nothing wrong with that. And nobody says, oh, Morello ought to take all that stuff off the instrument and sound like Elvis's guitarist. I just don't see the point of ignoring all of the incredible advances in sound production technology that we've had since the 1950s. When I started using the Digitech pedals, I was telling people this stuff, you know, a pedal plugged right into the PA is the wave of the future and it is. You can see from the success of Lone Wolf, for example, that harmonica players are now into using a pedal straight to the board to ease the strain on their backs, to ease the strain on their wallets, and to get a consistent sound from location to location. And it's interesting to me that the most popular pedals for harmonica players are the ones that focus entirely on emulating the sound of Chicago blues from the 1950s. And that's cool. But with modern effects, many more things are possible.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so talking a little bit about a couple of the songs on these next two albums. So the lucky one, it's got a song called Early to Bed, where you've got a very strange effect, which is what I think you call alien harmonica, which is using the pitch shifter.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Early to Bed is a cover of a song by Morphine. Basically, the tune runs on one riff. It's a rhythmic riff that doesn't change through the song. Anyway, there are two harmonica sounds used on it. One is a patch with an octave shifted down and a wah-wah effect on the sound. What I was aiming for was something that sounds like what Prince was doing on the song Kiss. So the other sound effect that I used was called the whammy effect. And the whammy effect allows you to shift the pitch anywhere from two octaves down to two octaves up under foot pedal control. So I was playing a solo on that song and just whacking away with the whammy effect to shift the pitch all over the place. I thought it was kind of spooky. I really liked it.
SPEAKER_00:Another one, which is Put the Lever Down, which you mentioned you'd recorded earlier, but you record it on this album as well. Has this gotten multi-layered harmonicas on there.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. That has two harmonicas on it, and that's the one that I released in 1982 with a flanger on it. In this case, I used two different harmonicas, different effects on both, and I had a great rhythm section behind me, which doesn't hurt at all.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you had, I think this was used on a radio show, a harmonica music show called The Tin Sandwich. It was a theme tune for that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the one that they ran on The Tin Sandwich was the one from 1982. Then moving on
SPEAKER_00:to your your latest album which is called blue future a release in 2019 so this is interesting you know you mentioned the blues a lot though so this is kind of a very heavily based blues album with a kind of futuristic tinge to it yeah so you kind of got an electronic kind of blues uh coming out
SPEAKER_02:yes the uh the idea uh was to use the harmonica in a variety of roles that it's not typically used in in a blues band uh sometimes it's fairly extreme but i tried to to establish continuity with the past as well so you notice for example on the title track Blue Future the lead harmonica is an acoustic harmonica. The device that was used for most of the leads on that record, I think maybe all of the leads except for Blue Future, was the Fender Mustang amplifier, not the Digitech RP500. I used the RP500 to fill in a lot of the backing tracks, like for organ sounds and stuff like that. By that point, I really liked, I did want to have continuity with traditional blues, and the Fender Mustang amplifier gave me more of that continuity. I sell.
SPEAKER_00:Is the Mustang, is that a solid state amp?
SPEAKER_02:It's a computer chip driven amp. So in that sense, I guess it's solid state.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So yeah, so great, great album, a really good modern take on the blues and some fantastic lyrics on the album as well. You've got a song called Disconnected Blues about, you know, kind of feeling disconnected to the kind of world of social media and that sort of thing. And Blue Future is a song where you're singing the kind of homage to the blues, but kind of pointing the blues to the future as well.
SPEAKER_02:Give up your black hat bone Throw away your mojo too send little john the kangaroo home he can't do nothing for you and if we tear the whole thing
SPEAKER_04:down
SPEAKER_00:So you have some really good lyrics on here and the lyrics that you wrote, yeah?
SPEAKER_02:Thank you very much. I work hard on the lyrics. Over time, I revisit them and tune them up a bit. I'm told that Leonard Cohen spent seven years writing Hallelujah, so I'm not afraid to take a while to write a song.
SPEAKER_00:Right, it's funny you should mention Leonard Cohen because I was listening to a couple of songs thinking you sound a little bit like Leonard Cohen on some of the songs. Yeah, like I said, I've been working on my singing for a while. So he's So you spent a lot of time learning your singing. Have you had singing lessons or anything like that? I
SPEAKER_02:did take singing lessons, yeah. You know, I've been singing since I was 15 and I've sounded like, you know, awful since I was 15. When you spend that long trying to do something and it's not working, you're doing something wrong and you haven't figured out what it is. And that's when you absolutely must see a teacher.
SPEAKER_00:You know, it's great. And I've talked about singing on the podcast a lot about, you know, obviously it's harmonica play We all really wish we could sing, those who don't. So yeah, it's encouraging to hear that you're happy you've got there now and your singing's to a place that you're happy with after putting a lot of effort into it.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. I just wish I'd taken lessons when I was 20. But then again, I was happy just to be playing harmonica at the time.
SPEAKER_00:And so on these last two albums that we've just talked through, your website contains a great blog. And in this blog, you go into great detail about how you record the songs, the harmonicas you use, the effects you use. It's a tremendous amount of information on pretty much all the songs, right? Because you wrote these blogs as you went through, yeah? So it's a great resource to be able to go and check out exactly what you did in all these songs
SPEAKER_02:you know i felt like uh when i recorded those songs i was showing what could be done i'm not at the point in my career where i consider it essential to keep trade secrets you know and so i'd rather spread the knowledge about how i did this stuff than have it disappear when i disappear so to speak
SPEAKER_00:so great so yeah so you released those two albums and then um you know since then you're still you know you're still active you're releasing quite a few videos of you playing and And you've got you playing Cruisin'. You're putting out these videos of the last year or so as your sort of output. Yeah, I'm cutting
SPEAKER_02:back on posting my music to Facebook because I'm concentrating right now on creating music for licensing purposes. And I'm working with a very skilled guitar player and we're putting together tracks to be used for commercial purposes. The people who license that stuff do not like to hear that you've been playing it on YouTube for a year.
SPEAKER_00:So another thing which I know you're very keen on is you know, you like to push the role of the harmonica in the band, you know, not just have it as a kind of soloist kind of instrument, but, you know, trying to put layers in and have rhythmical stuff, you know, partly using the effects you're playing, partly using, you know, your approach to playing the harmonica as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely. I get a certain amount of static about that from some musicians who aren't used to hearing a harmonica playing a more central role in the band. But, you know, I think back to Magic Dick. One of the innovations of the Jay Giles Band was that they put the harmonica right into the rhythm section. I talked to Seth Just, the keyboard player for that band, and he said, yeah, we knew we were doing that. It was a new role for the harmonica. Instead of just cruising above the band, the harmonica was in the rhythm section, driving the rhythm section. That was a new role, and it impressed me. You know, in order to keep harmonica players, including myself, employed, I think it's a explore new roles for the instrument in the band.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it's interesting because obviously as harmonica players, in many ways, we're told not to overplay. We're kind of scared of overplaying because then you're playing over the singer and it gets a bad name for the harmonica. So how do you approach it in a way that you're not seen as overplaying and playing all over the singer and that sort of thing?
SPEAKER_02:You pay very careful attention to where in the music the harmonica is fitting. Like, for example, if you're playing an organ part, That's cool. Are you playing it in a register where it's not conflicting with the singer and the guitarist? I talked about foreground and background before. And the first rule of background is... reinforce what the other players are doing, don't stick out in front of the band. One of the ways to approach playing accompaniment is to lock on to something that another one of the players is doing, like the bass line or a rhythm guitar part. Another way is to listen for a place where there's enough space in the music for you to put an accompaniment part. This is where having a multi-effects device or a set of pedals really helps. Because it's much more exciting for everybody if when you're doing these accompaniment parts, you can switch up the sound of the harmonica so it doesn't all sound like a harmonica playing accompaniment. So is it quite heavily based on the effects you're using when you approach it this way? It's more based on what I can play and how the effects change the perception of what I'm playing for the audience. I mean, I play in certain ways. When I'm using an envelope filter, for example, you know, a waka-waka box, the first thing I'm thinking is, what's the rhythmic pattern I want to play on the harmonica? And the second thing I'm thinking is, how do I want this waka-waka thing to cut through?
SPEAKER_00:So another big thing that you're known for is writing the book Jazz Harp. What year did you write it? I
SPEAKER_02:wrote it in 1979, and it was published, I think, in November of 1980. I
SPEAKER_00:did own this book when I was younger, and I think a lot of harmonica players did. So yeah, it was a great book. And basically, it was a book of transcriptions of, well, some of it was harmonica, but some of it was other instruments as well, right? And it was some jazz transcriptions, but also some sort of rock as well, yeah? So it was a combination of jazz and rock. So I think initially, you'd written this as a book called Harmonica for Musicians, and it was much longer, and you had to sort of cut it down to what was the collection of transcriptions, which is what it came out as.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I went to visit the publisher, Jason Shulman, at Oak Publications in New York, and Harmonica for Musicians was like, I was inspired by Paul Hindemith's Basic Training for Musicians, which is a very fierce book. Basic, yeah, right. Anyhow, Harmonica for Musicians was a couple of hundred pages long and had a very stern tone to it. You know, do this, do that, do the other thing. I went to visit the publisher with my wife and Jason Shulman said, well, we don't want this book, but we think you could write the book we want you to write. And I was all set to say, well, stuff it, man. And my wife said to me, my wife said, oh, Richard, isn't that wonderful? And I said, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. That's, you know, that's the best thing since Swiss cheese. Sure. So I ended up writing a much shorter book. And as Jason Shulman kept telling me, a friendlier book.
SPEAKER_00:And I think at that time, you know, transcriptions weren't that common, right? It's one of the sort of first transcriptions which was coming out for harmonica.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. I did the transcriptions in standard notation and in arrow notation. You know, I think that was a good thing to do. But really, I think that harmonica players should try to learn to read music. You know, it helps a lot if you plan to make your fortune as a studio musician or even playing with an orchestra. Not that a whole lot of harmonica players are into that, but I'm thinking of Philippe Achille and some of the other modern players. The parts that they throw at harmonica players are very rarely difficult parts. But if you can't read music, you don't find that out.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, yeah. I And it was a great book. Yeah, I mean, as I say, I think a lot of harmonica players own that book then. So you sold quite a few of these, did you? Did it make you a little bit of money at least?
SPEAKER_02:It made me a little bit of money. Let me be clear about this. Books for audiences like harmonica players who do not number astronomically don't make you a lot of money, but they do help you establish a reputation.
SPEAKER_00:And it's a great thing you got down there as well. As I say, I certainly knew who you were back when I was a teenager and got that book. So great. So talk Talking about chromatic harmonica then. So you do play some chromatic harmonica. I think the first one you recorded was In a Sentimental Mood, which is a beautiful Duke Ellington song.
SPEAKER_02:My favorite song.
SPEAKER_00:Was that the first song you recorded on chromatic?
SPEAKER_02:I guess it was. It was my first full-blown release. I didn't use chromatic on any of the singles I released in Boston. I played a lot more chromatic than I recorded. I had done a series of classical pieces with a trio in Falmouth, Massachusetts when I was living there. And I studied jazz on the chromatic. It's not something that I record or perform with frequently. I mean, I do know how. But I don't do it all that frequently. The diatonic just seems to suit my temperament better.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but you've got a song I think played on chromatic on your Lucky One album, Vivid.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, vivid is played on the chromatic, but so is deeper. Deeper is a nice ballad, vivid is a nice ballad. You know, if you want to make them cry, play it on a chromatic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely. It suits the ballads, doesn't it, so well, the chromatic, those nice slow ballads. So a question I ask each time, Richard, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?
SPEAKER_02:I tend to focus on one technical element in my playing that I want to improve, and I'll practice that for 10 minutes. And I do that, you know, I do 10 minutes of practice fairly frequently. You know, it's amazing. If you do 10 minutes of practice six times a day, you've got an hour of practice in. So the first thing I would do is tend to focus on a particular technical issue, maybe a breathing issue or a movement issue in a particular passage, or the head for Little Walter's Juke. And I just practiced that for 10 minutes. And then as I moved through the day, as I got more opportunities to put in 10 minutes, I might work on a piece of old repertoire, something I've been playing for a while. And then I'll spend 10 minutes working on a new piece of repertoire and so on and so forth. So take those 10 minute chunks and focus on one thing during each chunk.
SPEAKER_00:So we'll move on to the last section First of all, about the harmonicas that you play. So I noticed looking through all this wealth of information you provide that you pretty much seem to play every harmonica going. Is that that's clearly an approach that you've taken that you wanted to try them all out and record with them all?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I feel like for my own purposes, I want to know which harmonicas work really well with my playing. I want to know how they compare to the competition. And I like to share that information with people as well. Right now, I'm very impressed by DeBell Noble harmonicas. They're really good value for money. They seem to hold up really well, and they come out of the box playing very nicely. I'm also a fan of Seidel harmonicas. Some of the best instruments in my kit are Seidels. I'm not as crazy about Hohner harmonicas as a lot of players are, but, you know, maybe there's something about honers and blues that really goes together. And most of the well-known players out there are essentially focused on blues. In my case, blues is about 25% of my repertoire, although everything I do is influenced by blues. And I do have just about everything. I've got mangies. I've got the bells. I've got honers. I've got Brendan Power, Lucky 13s. I like them a lot. You know, I've got a bunch of different stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, great. Yeah. So like you say, it's great to try them all. So, I mean, we've talked about tunings a lot already. So clearly you use a whole host of different tunings. I mean, you know, you're still buying bought tunings or do you do some retuning yourself as well?
SPEAKER_02:I do a little bit of retuning myself. If I'm making a Dorian harmonica, I will retune the two reeds that have to be retuned by myself, mainly because all I have to do is put a little bit of blue tack on each of two reeds and I've got the tuning.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But otherwise, I use country harps. You can buy them out of the box. I use natural minors. They're out of the box. I use melody makers. They're out of the box. I use standard tunings. They're out of the box. I even make some extreme tunings, like combining the draw plate from a standard harmonica with the blow plate from a harmonic minor. Not harmonic minor, natural minor. That's a really cool harmonica for certain types of chords. progressions but in general yeah if I can buy it I'll buy it you know I don't want to have to spend three hours tuning a harmonica
SPEAKER_00:you know how do you find switching between the different tunings I mean personally when I do it you know I kind of find that they work for a particular song and I know how to play that song on the tuning is that how you approach it yourself or are you just familiar with them enough
SPEAKER_02:well the first thing I do is figure out what kind of scale I need for the song because that's going to that's going to choose the tuning for me in general. I mean, I still have a number of choices. If I'm going to play in a Dorian minor, for example, I could use one of my Dorian minor harps that gives you that scale in second position. Or I could use first position on a natural minor. But the first thing is to understand what scale or scales I'm going to need. And then I'll choose the harmonica based on that. Do I have a lot of trouble switching? Not so much. I don't use really rat Yeah. Yeah. And
SPEAKER_00:what about using
SPEAKER_02:overblows? I use them. You know, I don't have harps that are set up specifically for overblowing, but I do use overblows. Some of the runs I do on diatonics are absolutely built around the overblows in those runs. If I was better at overblowing, I'd do more of it. But generally speaking, I prefer to start with a harp that's got a scale that's going to work on the tune as opposed to counting on overblowing to fill in all the gaps.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And what about your embouchure? Are you tongue blocking, puckering, anything else?
SPEAKER_02:For single note runs, I use puckers as a rule. You can obviously tell from the stuff on the act of being free and the second act of free being that I use a lot of split tongue on the solo pieces. I'm not so much using it for the Chicago slap type thing as I'm using it for counterpoint. So when I try to do the tongue blocking thing for blues, I can do it, but I keep trying it compared to my pucker thing that I'm very familiar with and I find the pucker to be more useful for me and to sound pretty much the same. You could probably tell if you listened to two minutes of my stuff whether I was using a pucker or a block, but I don't think it would be easy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and equipment-wise, obviously we've talked about, you know, you use the Digitech pedals and the Line 6 and the Thunder Mustang arm. So what about microphones? Again, I think from reading through your blogs, et cetera, you seem to use quite a host of microphones as well. I
SPEAKER_02:use a few
SPEAKER_00:different mics.
SPEAKER_02:I use the Audix Fireball V with the Digitech RP500. They seem to be just really well suited to each other. And I use a bulletini mic for anything that's supposed to be bluesier. And in particular, I have it plugged into the 9-6 Helix. But I've also used it with the Mustang, and I like that a lot. I had a Silverfish Silver Bullet, and I liked it for blues. It was a little bit screechier than the bulletini. I don't mean more feedback prone. I mean, it had a little bit of more upper middle frequencies in it.
SPEAKER_00:And I liked it a lot, and I lost it. Great. And sometimes you use a wireless mic. Oh,
SPEAKER_02:well, I use all my mics wirelessly now. Every time I plug one back into a cable, I'm reminded of how often I used to step on cables. The wireless setup doesn't change the sound of the mic. It just means that you don't have a cable running from the mic to whatever you're using to amplify it.
SPEAKER_00:No, you don't find there's any delay in getting the signal out. It's immediate, is it, the response?
SPEAKER_02:Not audible delay. To me, that means that if there's a delay, it's in the neighborhood of five milliseconds, give or take. And that's nothing. Five milliseconds is the equivalent of somebody playing five feet away from you. So that's not a noticeable delay in the sound.
SPEAKER_00:And again, talking about your setup, you've got lots of information on your website and there's blogs around the different rigs that you use. And you also use this, is it... Is it Joyo?
SPEAKER_02:The Joyo American Sound, yeah. I have a lightweight pedal setup that I take to pick up gigs and to jam sessions. And that has six devices on it. A pitch shifter, a delay, the Joyo, a vibrato, an envelope filter, and a reverb, which I consider the basic food groups for harmonica. And the Joyo is what makes the amp sound in that setup. And I think it's a perfectly usable pedal for 40 bucks.
SPEAKER_00:So you're using these pedals in instead of the sort of multi-effects units like the Digitech?
SPEAKER_02:Well, yeah, you know, I like to experiment with different gear. I happen to have a few pedals lying around of various vintages, and I thought, let's put it together on a board and see what it sounds like. And it sounds good, and it's easy to pick up and transport, and I take it to a lot of gigs.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, it's great being so
SPEAKER_02:portable, isn't it? playing harmonica over them. So that's what I'm thinking of for performance going forward. And of course I can bring other musicians into that mix if I like. I don't have any plans to travel in the immediate future, but we'll see how it goes. We'll see how the original solo stuff plays with audiences in various venues, and depending on how well it plays, I might very well get out there on the road.
SPEAKER_00:Sure, yeah. And so if people do want to check you out, you're playing around your local area now, which is, again, the northeast of the U.S., yeah?
SPEAKER_02:Northeast Connecticut, specifically Fairfield County, Connecticut.
SPEAKER_00:Great. So people can find you playing around the area there, can they?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, brilliant. So check you out and check out your great website. Yeah, so thanks so much for joining me today, Richard Hunter.
SPEAKER_02:My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. And be sure to check out the great range of harmonicas and products at www.zidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zidel Harmonicas. Thanks so much for Richard for joining me today. What great innovations he's brought to the harmonica. Be sure to check out his recordings. Thanks so much for listening again. Remember to check out the podcast website on monicahappyhour.com and if you occur to make a donation to help with the running cost of the podcast then you can do so there. I'll leave you now with Richard playing a song from his Blue Future album Mercy, Mercy, Mercy Me.
UNKNOWN:Thank you.