Ben Bouman interview

Ben Bouman joins me on episode 81.

Ben is a Dutch blues player who always strives for originality in his playing, partly inspired by his admiration for the playing of Paul deLay. Ben’s current band is The Marble Tones, who took their name from the amplifier company, with Ben helping develop their range of harmonica amps.
Ben also helped Seydel prototype their steel reeds before they released them some fifteen years ago, and he tells us all about polishing and profiling steel reeds, his own business selling customised Seydel harmonicas, and how he helped persuade Seydel in moving over to Compromised Just Tuning.
The Harpgame Is On! is the name of Ben’s self-produced album and he regularly posts YouTube videos, including his recent tuition videos on different harmonica themes.

Links:

Ben’s website:
https://www.benboumanharmonicas.nl

Webshop to buy Ben Bouman custom harmonicas:
https://www.benboumanharmonicas.nl/rapidcartpro/index.php?catalog/all/-/date/1

Marble amplifiers:
https://www.marble-amps.com/

Viola Barends:
https://www.violaharmonica.com/

Seydel festival and harmonica competition:
https://mundharmonika-live.de
https://www.seydel1847.de/seydelopen-registration

Hohner CBH chromatic:
https://chromhistory.blog/2019/05/22/cbh-2012-2016/

Videos:

Paul deLay Harmonica Party:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWepAFBqsN4

Marble Tones band videos:
https://www.youtube.com/@BluesMoose/search?query=marbletones

Ben's Tone in a cup:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063463839653

Viola Barends harmonica orchestra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ7sNeZUAAI

Ben playing Watermelon Man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnEbikuq7sI

Ben playing blues chromatic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNSa7VdKFXw

Ben gear demo recording, including Pignose amp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFrUNKpMx8

The Monkey Speaks His Mind with The Marble Tones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d4HbjTn4EI

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

Chapters

• 1:28 Ben lives in Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands
• 1:52 Started playing harmonica when he picked up a chromatic which his father used to play in a harmonica ensemble
• 2:06 Played chromatic for a few years before moving over to diatonic, with first harmonica a Hohner Blues Harp and started buying blues records
• 2:33 Harmonica ensembles were popular in Netherlands in father’s time due to low cost of harmonicas versus other instruments
• 3:06 Blues artists who influenced Ben and sold all blues records 25 years ago
• 4:01 Ben was a big fan of Paul deLay, liking his originality
• 5:34 Favourite recordings of Paul deLay
• 6:49 Found some excellent live recordings of Paul deLay from YouTube, and the joy he shows when playing
• 7:53 Still working on the Paul deLay recordings
• 8:11 Paul deLay probably developed his original approach to playing the harmonica by listening to jazz horn players, or like a guitar player
• 8:54 Ben also strives to have an original sound, and not play standard harmonica licks
• 9:20 How Paul deLay influence Ben’s playing
• 9:55 Paul deLay died in 2007. He was also a great singer, writer, arranger and bandleader
• 10:46 Likes Paul deLay live recordings best
• 11:39 First diatonic Ben purchased was a Hohner Blues harp
• 12:10 Charlie Musselwhite was another big inspiration and discovering different harmonica positions
• 12:53 Played a little saxophone as an adult but the noise upset the neighbours
• 13:11 Played clarinet as a child for a few months but gave that up when teacher said not to play among with the radio
• 13:36 Joined first band age 16 or 17, more rock than blues, and then another band with brother
• 14:39 Current band is The Marble Tones
• 15:23 Marble Tone is the name of an amp, which is where the band got it’s name
• 16:26 Ben helped develop the prototype of the Marble Amp for harmonica
• 17:08 The range of Marble Amps available for harmonica
• 18:05 Ben uses the Marble Amps Harpwood mainly when gigging
• 18:25 Ben had an amp with a 15 inch speaker designed for James Harman
• 18:43 Likes to turn amp loud as possible before feedback so can play harmonica gently, to draw out the subtleties of the instrument
• 19:16 Uses the Marble Max, the smallest amp in their range, for smaller gigs
• 19:57 Other amps that Ben uses, including a Masco amp, and solid state Quilter Microblock 45
• 20:42 How you play the harmonica and build your tone is more important than the amp
• 21:14 Ben released a self-produced album called The Harpgame Is On!
• 22:51 Likes to regularly record licks and ideas at home
• 23:34 Uses Rode NT1A modified large condenser microphone for home recordings
• 23:51 Also plays in a blues duo called Blue Bridge and value of having a harmonica playing guitar accompanist
• 25:46 Puts a lot of videos out on YouTube of mostly improvised recordings
• 26:15 Recently released a series of YouTube tuition videos
• 26:50 Concept of ‘vocal playing’ is theme 24 from YouTube tuition videos
• 27:37 No longer sings in bands as doesn’t feel his singing is strong enough
• 28:03 Ben has a business selling customised Seydel Harmonicas
• 28:10 Ben helped Seydel’s engineer, Karl Pucholt, develop the companies steel reeds
• 29:31 Bertram Becher asked Ben to test some prototype harmonicas, which had steel reeds
• 30:55 What does Ben like about steel reeds
• 31:34 Ben visited the Seydel factory weekly to test how good the new steel reeds were for customisation work
• 32:16 Steel reeds are good to work with, and more elastic than brass
• 33:05 Need to work harder to remove material when tuning steel reeds
• 33:47 Polishing the steel reeds
• 34:49 Ben also changes the shape / profile of the reeds
• 35:21 Ben sells customised Seydel Harmonicas, with three levels of customisation applied
• 36:33 Cost of Ben’s customised Seydel’s isn’t much more than standard price
• 37:25 Sets harmonicas up for overblows, but only uses overblows a little himself, not really liking the sound of them
• 38:05 Offers free 30 minute lessons to anyone who buys one of his custom harmonicas
• 38:41 Ben’s partner is Viola Barends, who runs harmonica camps and is especially strong on harmonica ensemble work due to her musical background
• 40:27 Ben is involved in the Seydel Mundharmonika festival, which runs every year in Klingenthal, Germany
• 41:45 10 minute question
• 42:18 Teaching technique
• 42:58 Focuses on improvisation rather than melodies
• 43:52 Plays a little chromatic
• 44:04 CBH chromatic from Chamber Huang is favourite for tone
• 45:08 Tone and groove are the main things for Ben
• 45:19 Does some set-up of Seydel chromatics and would like to develop customisation of chromatics
• 46:25 Diatonic of choice is own custom Seydels
• 46:37 Loves the full range of diatonic harps, from low diatonics to making the F harp sound more mellow
• 48:06 Different tunings
• 48:59 Has the ability to remember licks he played years before
• 49:32 Persuaded Seydel to move from Just Intonation to Compromised Just Tuning
• 51:12 Initially lip pursued and then discovered tongue blocking when the internet first arrived in Holland
• 52:57 Likes to use a Pignose amp for home recordings, inspired by Frank Zappa
• 54:20 Microphone: likes a brush crystal
• 55:17 Likes to use effects sometimes, and what’s on pedal board
• 57:22 Plans to develop a harmonica with replaceable screwed on reeds

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Ben Bauman joins me on episode 81. Ben is a Dutch blues player who always strives for originality in his playing, partly inspired by his admiration for the playing of Paul Delay. Ben's current band is the Marble Tones, who took their name from the Amplifier Company, with Ben helping develop their range of harmonica amps. Ben also helped Seidel prototype their steel reeds before they released them some 15 years ago. and he tells us all about polishing and profiling steel reeds, his own business selling customised Seidel harmonicas, and how he helped persuade Seidel in moving over to compromise just tuning. The harp game he's on is the name of Ben's self-produced album, and he regularly posts YouTube videos, including his recent tuition videos on different harmonica themes. This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world, at www.zeidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zeidel Harmonicas. Hello, Ben Bauman, and welcome to the podcast. Hi, Neil. Thanks for inviting me. So you're speaking to us from Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33

Yeah, mid-South Netherlands, close to Belgium.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36

What's the music like around there and the harmonica scene? What got you into the harmonica?

SPEAKER_03: 1:39

Well, the scene at the moment is like everywhere else, I think. Blues is not the main interest for most people. But when I was younger, I listened to blues only, in fact. But how it started was when I picked up a chromatic harmonica. that was lying at home for my father who was supposed to be the harmonica orchestra but I've never seen or heard him do that and he died when I was 14 so we didn't get time to play but I played the chromatic a few years and I lost a little interest because I didn't know how it worked the chromatic harmonica then I went to a local shop and I just coincidence I think I saw this blues harp and I just bought it because I wanted something more simple it looks simple to me so that's why I bought it and from there I just started buying records in the local record shop luckily they had very good selection of blues records and that's gotten really going

SPEAKER_02: 2:33

just picking up on what you're saying there about your father playing in a harmonica orchestra then so was that something which was quite common in the Netherlands back then were there quite a lot of orchestras around

SPEAKER_03: 2:43

yeah I was told that the main reason was that in a small village the people didn't have the money to buy all the instruments that you need for a real orchestra like saxophones and trumpets and all this stuff so maybe it's was like a poor man's orchestra and they had bass harmonicas and chords and diatonics and chromatics as well but the main reason at least that's really what I was

SPEAKER_02: 3:04

told was money So what sort of influences did you have on the early blues records the usual classic blues guys? Well

SPEAKER_03: 3:12

all the guys from that time whatever I could buy I bought it because I didn't have a clue who was doing what on harmonica and it all sounded nice to me so I just bought whatever was available in the shop and I was stupid enough 25 years ago I sold all my blues records and I had some rare ones but I needed some money at the time and a friend of mine wanted to buy everything I had but if I look back now I would love to have them now but the big names Little Walter Walter Horton Sonny Boy and some more unknown plays but I really can't remember all the names from that time You can't find these albums on streaming anymore Could be but I would love to have a record player now and and the old records again, because it's maybe a hype, but everybody's now buying records. So

SPEAKER_02: 4:01

I know someone that you're a big fan of, it's Paul DeLay. So when did you start getting into him?

SPEAKER_03: 4:18

The first time I heard from him was, I think, 20 years ago. I had a student coming from Italy one week to Holland to study with me because he liked my tone and my way of playing. And while he was there, he was talking about Paul Delay. And all of a sudden, when I started to listen to Paul Delay, I realized he was the one I was always looking for because I loved all the old players, but it never felt good to me when I had to play songs that they played because I never wanted to sound like someone else. I never wanted to copy songs. I listened to them. I analyzed what I heard. I tried it on the blues harp. And then I did my own thing again. And when I read about Paul Delay, I read his biography. And one of his things that he said was, I don't want to be and sound like anyone else. And that really got me thinking. And from there, I started listening to Paul Delay more and more. And as a result, my playing, I won't say it changed, but it felt better to me because I didn't think anymore about techniques that I hear from other players. I was just doing things that I liked most. That's maybe the biggest influence from Paul Delay.

SPEAKER_02: 5:28

So what age were you when you discovered Paul Delay or how long ago was it? 20 years ago, I think. Any particular of his songs that grabbed you initially or an album?

SPEAKER_03: 5:37

Well, not at the time. This guy from Italy who was my player sent me a few mp3s. I had two or three songs that I analysed and I listened a lot to. I won't say I forgot about it, but I was so focused by these songs and his way of playing and then I it triggered me to practice more and more the things that I wanted to play, that I still listened to the few songs, and because they were so complicated to my ears, and it took me quite some years to go back to his recordings and start listening again.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_03: 6:22

Sometimes I listened a lot to Paul DeLay, these few songs that I had. Sometimes I forgot about it, I did my own things. But slowly it progressed to five, six years ago when I started... looking on YouTube what was available from Paul Delay, and I tried to find everything from him. And I'm still analyzing and listening because I have like 10, 15 favorite songs now, but I could name 60, 70 songs that I really like from Paul Delay.

SPEAKER_02: 6:49

You have a batch of live recordings of his, yeah?

SPEAKER_03: 6:51

Yeah, on YouTube, you can find so many live recordings from him. some bootlegs as well but the the thing that triggered me most was there's a video on on youtube based on a harmonica party

SPEAKER_00: 7:08

so

SPEAKER_03: 7:21

And he's doing a show like 30 minutes with just guitar and bass. And he's just sitting there and just enjoying what he's doing. He's smiling and talking to the people and smiling in between. And it's just big fun and so complicated what he's doing. But you can really see his face. He's laughing every second when he's playing. I've seen this video maybe 10, 15 times. I took the sound of it because it was mono only on the left side. It was a very bad recording. So I remastered it, put it on stereo and I'm still listening to these songs and not really practicing but analyzing in my head when he's playing what is he doing. Sometimes I slow down to have a better feel of what he's doing but his timing and his groove and his tone are so different from what anyone else is doing.

SPEAKER_02: 8:10

Do you know where he got this from? How did he develop his sound? Obviously you've read his biography.

SPEAKER_03: 8:15

He doesn't talk about who or what influenced him but I can hear when he's playing chromatic he listens to jazz players he listened to saxophone players but he also sometimes plays things that fit more like a guitar player like the way he's playing a fast lick it's more like he's playing a jazz chord very fast on the harmonica I think he's influenced by jazz players must be

SPEAKER_02: 8:37

Yeah and obviously a lot of harmonica players blues players obviously influenced by the classic harmonica players and that's great we've all got to listen to them but yeah I think as we're getting more and more harmonica players now more diverse you know there is that difference in approach isn't there so I guess That sounds like something you'd encourage.

SPEAKER_03: 8:53

Yeah, but one of the things that I, this is what I heard about when I played 20, 30 years in Holland in different blues bands, that some people told me that I didn't sound very traditional. I never knew what is traditional, in their opinion, and how I should play to sound traditional. And I just kept on playing what I liked most, and I didn't really care if people said I wasn't playing traditional.

SPEAKER_02: 9:20

But did you sort of change your approach, you know, after you started listening? to Paul Delay obviously only 20 years ago. I always felt pretty

SPEAKER_03: 9:27

comfortable but maybe 1% in my head was saying why do not play traditional things like people maybe like better but when I was thinking this 10 seconds later I just started playing my own things again but there was always this little voice in my head that maybe bothered me a little. When I listened to Paul Delay and started analysing and thinking about it this voice disappeared for some reason and I just kept on doing what I was doing and trying to to be better in what

SPEAKER_02: 9:55

I did. Sure, yeah. And of course, Paul DeLay sadly died in 2007 now. Come on!

SPEAKER_03: 10:14

He's not only a good harmonica player, he has a great voice. He's arranging songs, he's writing songs, lyrics. He's doing everything to keep a band going and there's a unique combination of someone can do this all at the same time. To me, that's incredible. When I listen to him, I really hear he's guiding the whole band. There's quite some several live recordings from him. And when you listen to a live recording, you can almost see him like conducting the band when

SPEAKER_02: 10:45

they're playing. Yeah. So you obviously appreciate his live recordings most. Is there an album or, like you say, those YouTube videos of a harmonica party or anything else?

SPEAKER_03: 10:53

Yeah, the studio recordings are also nice arrangements, but it doesn't have this specific feel. When he's playing live, he's just laughing and smiling and doing weird stuff and still enjoying it and people respond to what he's doing. You can see he's really a crowd pleaser in a positive way.

SPEAKER_01: 11:20

piano plays softly Okay,

SPEAKER_02: 11:35

so you're going back to your, you know, your harmonica journey then. So what was the first harmonica that you purchased, the first diatonic? I'm pretty

SPEAKER_03: 11:42

sure it was the Honour Blues harp. I think... That's the only one that was available in the store. And there was a small booklet with it, like five, six pages. That's the only thing that I could find about harmonica playing. This was around 1966, 1967 or so. So no internet, no books, no videos, no CDs, nothing. And so how did you go about learning then? Yeah, just listening to records and even slowing down the records with my thumb to be able to hear what was going on. Maybe the biggest change in my playing came when I listened to Charlie Musselwhite. He had the recording, the harmonica according to Charlie Musselwhite, I think it's called. And there was one song... And it has a saxophone and harmonica solo on it. And I tried to play along with it. And it took me two days to find out it was not in what we now call second position cross harp. It was in a different key harmonica that he played. And later I found out it was in third position. This finding different harmonicas for certain songs kept me busy for a few years because I still didn't know anything about first position, second or the circle of fifth or any theory. So I was still doing it by ear. And did you learn any other instruments

SPEAKER_02: 12:54

at

SPEAKER_03: 12:55

this time or are you

SPEAKER_02: 12:56

just harmonica?

SPEAKER_03: 12:56

No, only 10 or 11 years ago, I started playing saxophone, which I liked a lot, but the neighbors didn't like it that much. So I had to stop after two years or so, but I'm still thinking about maybe trying it again because it It felt good to me. Maybe good to mention, I started playing clarinet when I was eight years old and I played it for two or three months or so. And I had a teacher because I felt really comfortable on the clarinet at the time. I started playing along with songs on the radio. And when I told him about it, he said, well, it's absolutely forbidden to play along with other songs. You have to study the songs from us. And I looked at him, I put down the clarinet and I left. And that's it.

SPEAKER_02: 13:36

So as you say, you know, you're playing with blues bands in the Netherlands. So, you know, what was your sort of journey then?

SPEAKER_03: 13:42

I started in my first blues band when I was 16 or 17, but it was more, we did play blues songs, but it was more rock. I did it for two or three years with these guys that I met. But then I went to the army. I had to go to the army for 18 months and I didn't play much harmonica at the time. Then when I came out of the army, I was... 21 years old. Then I picked up harmonica again and then I went to a band. My brother is a bass player and he was playing in a band and he asked me for a few songs. From there I started joining the band, played harmonica, started singing after a while and I think I played with this band six, seven, eight years or so. Then the band stopped and I went to another blues band. One or two years later I played with them a few years and it was a bit on and off at

SPEAKER_02: 14:38

that

SPEAKER_03: 14:38

time.

SPEAKER_02: 14:38

And recently you've been playing with a band called The Marble Tones. That's your current band, yeah?

SPEAKER_03: 14:43

Yeah, we started in 2001. I met a guy, the bass player and the singer from the band. I met him in a jam session in the local bar and he was playing double bass and within two seconds I knew that's the guy I would love to have in the band. So right away I went to him and said, how do you feel? Do you want to join a band? Do you want to start a band? And we started talking and the rest is history. We still play together.

UNKNOWN: 15:08

Bye.

SPEAKER_02: 15:23

So the Marble Tones is the name of an amp. There's a Marble Tones amp. Is there a connection to the amplifiers?

SPEAKER_03: 15:30

Yeah, because when I asked the bass player if he wanted to join the band, he said yes, but I had to find a guitar player and a drummer as well. And luckily, a woman in the fitness center where I worked, he was married to a man who was a drummer, a very good one. In that time, I was asked by someone else to go with him to a local shop who was building amps close to where I lived. And it turned out to be marble. In that time, I was already struggling with good amps because I couldn't find good amps in that time. But he went there for a guitar amp, a tube amp, hand-built by marble. And when I was there for the first time, I noticed he had a few guitars hanging around. I said, do you play guitar as well? Yes. Okay. I asked him to be a guitar player. And the second question was, do you build harmonica amps? And he said, no. And that's how it started. When we started the band, to honor him, because he built my first harmonica amp, I said, should we name the band Marble Tones? And that's how it started.

SPEAKER_02: 16:26

Great. So did you have some involvement in the design of the harmonica amp that they make?

SPEAKER_03: 16:30

Yeah, because he made a prototype. And from there, we started. He just based it on a Fender Bassman. That was his first amp, because he was doing this for guitar as well. But he modified it. And from there, he started building... specific harmonica amps. In the time I already had bought a Sony Junior amp, I allowed him to have a look at my Sony Junior and he started like building two or three prototypes. And that's how the journey went for us. And I still test amps and we still try crazy things with resistors and capacitors and everything to get the amps better.

SPEAKER_02: 17:07

Right, great. So these are custom harmonica amps, you know, designed for harmonica, obviously. So they do, I think, four types, don't they? They've got the max of blue sonic the the harp wood and the harp master so they're basically increasing in size from uh you know one eight to eight inch speaker up to sort of six eight eight inch speakers so what about i mean i've heard good things about these amps i've never actually tried one so um clearly you like them what would you say about them

SPEAKER_03: 17:31

i know all the amps in detail because i've tested in detail with him and like the eight inch speakers he's now using a special design from jensen special design for marble the blue tone speaker but i think they sent us 12 or 15 different types. And then we started doing double blind tests. It took us four weeks to analyze all the speakers. In the end, we had two left and I played it 10, 20 times, one speaker, the other speaker, still using different microphones, et cetera. And then I said, well, this is the one I like most. That's the one he's using now.

SPEAKER_02: 18:05

Great. And of the four options, which do you use the most? The last kicks I did, I use a Harpwood. So the Harpwood is a four times eight speaker? Yeah,

SPEAKER_03: 18:15

but in the past few years, people can change the configuration. They can say, I want three speakers, maybe three times 10, two times eight, one 10, or I had one amp, a Harp Boot with a one 15-inch speaker designed for James Harmon. That was my favorite amp. But at the moment, I feel comfortable using any Harp Boot amp, and I prefer the Harp Boot. It gives me a bit more headroom. It can be very loud, and I always turn up my amp very loudly on stage, which allows me to play quiet. It sounds a bit weird to most people, but when my amp is just below the point where it starts to feedback, I get my maximum volume, I get my biggest tone, and when I play more quiet on the amp I still have a big tone when you turn down the amp a bit more to avoid feedback or to be not as loud as the amp can be you also take away dynamics of the amp and it doesn't sound good when you play quiet that's my approach to playing amplified

SPEAKER_02: 19:16

sure yeah and what about if you want to use one of the smaller ones you've got the 1x8 or the 2x8 do you use one of those for a smaller situation

SPEAKER_03: 19:23

I once had to use it in the UK for a few gigs because the pops were so small we didn't find place for a big amp and I just take a Marble Max, put it on a bar stool or just on a table to be heard. It was loud enough for a small bar.

SPEAKER_02: 19:47

And I mean, what would you say then about, you know, using custom built harmonica amplifier against other amplifiers? You know, do you want to use the marble amps now? Because, you know, for that reason?

SPEAKER_03: 19:56

Well, I still love the marble amps, but I also use, I use Moscow amps. I use different vintage amps. But at the moment I use a Quilter small transistor amp. It's like a small FX pedal. It's very small. It's the micro block 45. It's a 45 watt transistor amp. And I use in an old cabinet with a vintage speaker. It's so funny when I do a jam session and I have my old cabinet with an old Jensen speaker in it and I have the amp on top which looks like an effect pedal. People always come to me and say, what a beautiful tube sound you have on this amp. And I point them to my transistor amp and they are almost shocked sometimes because it really sounds like a tube amp. But this is maybe what I also learned from Paul DeLay. It's how you play the harmonica, how you... Build your tone with everything you can do to have a better tone. It will make sound any mic better. It makes any amp better. It makes you sound like you. And then it doesn't matter if it's a tube or transistor.

SPEAKER_02: 21:01

Sure, yeah. So a transistor we'd also describe as a solid state amp. I should have said solid

SPEAKER_03: 21:06

state indeed.

SPEAKER_02: 21:08

No, great. Yeah, so yeah, you're using a variety of amps then for your sound. So back to your recording. So you made a self-produced album called The Harp Game Is On. So how did you go about this and putting this together?

SPEAKER_03: 21:20

My first take on this was I wanted to record some songs for students to give them some stuff to practice with. And because I've played all the solos, of course, I could easily discuss how I play them. But when I was busy with that. I found out that people liked it a lot, the songs that I had. I said, well, let me put them on a CD. And it was just some home recording. I was just using the iMac, a good mic, some backing tracks, and that's it.

SPEAKER_02: 21:47

You've got a variety of approaches on there, haven't you? You've got kind of the country of the blues, which is a country harmonica song.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

...

SPEAKER_00: 21:57

You've

SPEAKER_02: 22:06

got a song called Just Mine in which he's third position. So yeah, you were trying to get on different sort of styles of harmonica, yeah?

UNKNOWN: 22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:25

Yeah, it was very useful for my students at that time. But only, as I said, because they liked it so much, I said, well, let me put them on a CD and just a home recording project. But if people want to have one, they can always contact me about it.

SPEAKER_02: 22:40

Yeah, no, some great stuff on there. So, I mean, what about the process? You know, I've talked with a few people about kind of these self-produced albums and, you know, what about that process? And I think it's a great thing to do. You know, what did you learn from it? I already did a lot of home

SPEAKER_03: 22:53

recording and I still do. In fact, when I'm at home and I work on my harmonicas or do anything else, sometimes it's like I hear a lick in my head, I grab a harmonica, switch on my iMac, Reaper is always on, the mic is standing there, I just play. And this happens sometimes 10 times a day, maybe one time a day. Every day I make recordings. Sometimes it's a 10-second lick. Sometimes it's things that I now bring into my theme. Sometimes it's things that I need for my students. So I may have thousands of home recordings, all kinds of stuff. It's always acoustic because I just want to forget what I heard in my head. Sure, yeah. And what microphone do you use for that? I have this Rode NT1-A, but I had it customized by someone in the US. It's almost... like a Fittish Neumann sound now. Put a different element in it and it sounds more open and more natural.

SPEAKER_02: 23:50

And you're in another act which is a blues duo called Blue Bridge.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_03: 24:11

Yeah, that's someone I think I met him 40 years ago already. In the time I lived in Arnhem, in the middle of Holland. And he was playing there in the local bar. And the good thing is this guy is playing wonderful guitar, slight guitar. He has a nice voice and he's a very good harmonica player as well. It's on and off with him, but it's always like coming home when I play with him. Because when I play harmonica, he knows everything. where I will go on harmonica because he knows what harmonica playing is.

SPEAKER_02: 24:42

It is always good, isn't it, if a guitar player who plays some harmonica, they're quite nice and sympathetic to this harmonica right now and what you need.

SPEAKER_03: 24:49

Yeah, it's the same with Marble Tones. The guitar player in Marble Tones, he's not the typical blues soloist guitar player who wants to play loud and a lot. He loves playing just nice chords and licks and helping me to do what I love most.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_02: 25:08

I mean, you mentioned there that you do lots of recordings, so you regularly put out YouTube videos of recordings that you've done. I've got you demonstrating your tone using a coffee cup.

UNKNOWN: 25:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 25:39

Got you playing Watermelon Man. Like you said, you often just want to start playing and record yourself.

SPEAKER_03: 25:44

I think 99% of what I do is improvised. I hardly ever practice a lick before recording, because I want people to hear that it's me. And when I play, I still want to be able to pick up the harmonica and play right away what I feel is okay. When you practice it, it's not about how you feel, but how you play it, which feels different to me. And that's why I was always so bad at copying people because I couldn't play the same thing over

SPEAKER_02: 26:14

and over again. So you mentioned teaching, so obviously you're teaching Linda Harmonica and you release sort of YouTube tuition videos. So you've got recently these different themes as you're calling them. So theme number one was using a kind of four bar theme and then improvising four bars.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

......

SPEAKER_02: 26:41

Since then you've been releasing, I think you're up to number 24, the last one I saw. Number 24 is based on basically having a lyric in your head and then sort of playing the kind of lyric.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_00: 27:10

Yeah, I call it vocal

SPEAKER_03: 27:11

playing, refers to what I told before about playing how I feel. When I hear something, a lick, it could also be a sentence or a word or someone's humming. Anything that triggers me makes me play the harmonica. And I don't sing in a band anymore, but sometimes when I'm at home, I make recordings and I sing a little. And from that is feeling, playing what I hear in my head is often maybe a sentence or a feel that I have.

SPEAKER_02: 27:37

Sure, yeah. And just about the singing, what's made you give up the singing as a harmonic player, obviously it's quite a good skill to have.

SPEAKER_03: 27:44

Yeah, but I was never 100% happy with my voice. Maybe my voice was okay, but to my standard, I said, no, it's better not to do it.

SPEAKER_02: 27:54

Yeah, there's a difference, isn't there, when you get a really good singer against, like you say, you can sing, but get a really good singer, you're like, yeah, wow, that's so much better, isn't it? So yeah, I'm with you there. So you do have a business, which is Ben Bauman Harmonicas, where you customize harmonicas, so sidle harmonicas. You were involved with the, when the Idle first started looking in using stainless steel reeds here.

SPEAKER_03: 28:15

Yeah, I think I met Bertram Becker from Seidel. I met him at least 20 years ago. Let's see, Seidel started in 2007 with the Steel Reads, 2008. So I think I met Bertram a few years before. In Klingenthal, there was a workshop from a guy and I went there just more or less like a holidays, but I went to this workshop and Bertram was there as well and we met and talked. He introduced me to the people from Seidel in that time, the The factory was only using the brass reeds. Bertram introduced me to the chief engineer, Carl Puchold, which I always loved. The man, he looks like an old shepherd, but he's very, very intelligent. And he studied everything about harmonica. He went to university. This guy still knows everything about harmonica. And then the factory was broke. Five or six people kept the company going. One of them was Carl Puchold. He was always having typical experimental harmonicas that he made. In his old building from Sadler, he had this all, almost like secret room on the second floor where nobody was allowed to enter. Only the people that he asked to enter were allowed there. And Bertram, shortly after the factory was bought by four people and they wanted to start again, Bertram asked me to come to Karl Puchold and test some prototypes that he had. So we went in a small room that was packed with tools and harmonicas and Carl was sitting there and he was telling a little about harmonicas and we had to test a few things so he handed harmonica to me and I played it and it didn't feel good so I gave it back to him he looked at my face and he gave me the next one hmm it was a bit better but still hmm he gave me another one looked like another model I played it it was okay it still didn't make me smile then he gave me a harmonica I played it literally for one second I stopped I said Carl I will put this one in my pockets and I won't give it back to you and then he started to smile which he doesn't do very often and it turned out this was a harmonica with handmade steel reeds by him I'm not saying it was the perfect harmonica but it fitted my way of tone building my way of breathing my way of playing and I said well this is maybe a thing that you think about for the future as your top model and Bertram agreed because he had the same feeling with steel reeds and this is how it released started and from there they did some tests and they found another company who could make steel reeds etc etc but I was very happy with it So what is it about steel reeds that you like? Well it allows me to get the tone that feels nice to me. It gives me a warm tone when I want it. It gives me a loud tone when I want it. It gives me a bright tone when I need it. I can make it sound like a marine band. I can make it sound like Suzuki, but you will always hear it's me. It allows me to express myself on the harmonica, which I don't have with brass reeds. They always limit me for some reason. I really can't say what it is, but I feel limited. Although I love playing a custom marine band as well, but it still feels different to me. And only when I play on steel reeds, it sounds natural to me.

SPEAKER_02: 31:34

But I mean, as a customizer, as you say, you have a business where you sell custom harps. Do you only do Seidels in your customization or...? Yes, and only

SPEAKER_03: 31:41

the steel reed harmonicas. As soon as they started producing them, I did some tests with them if I could customize them. At the time, I was once a month. I went a week to Seidel when the factory was bought by these four people because they wanted me to test all the types that they have and write a report about it to see what models they should stop selling and which ones were better. But I did a lot of testing at that time to if I could improve the quality, if I could use them for customisation. I found that it felt good to me to work on steel reeds because they're more forgiving than brass reeds. I can really twist a reed and bend it back to a straight shape and it still works without any problem, which you can't do with a brass reed.

SPEAKER_02: 32:30

So you get kind of fractures in the surface of brass reeds, don't you, which really kind of impacts the tuning of things, isn't it? So you don't get that problem with steel reeds?

SPEAKER_03: 32:39

You get the same things, but people always think that steel is very stiff, very solid, but steel is a bit more elastic than brass reeds. That's what Karl Puchol told me and what I hear from different people as well. When you bend a brass reed, bend it like 90 degrees, do it 10 times and it will break. When you take a steel reed, you can bend it 100 times, 90 degrees or more, and it doesn't break.

SPEAKER_02: 33:05

For me, when I'm tuning my own harmonicas and when I do the steel reeds, they certainly feel tougher. I have to take more material off, you know, go at it harder to get the material off and that sort of thing. So what about when you customise them, what are you finding about the differences with them?

SPEAKER_03: 33:19

I found some tools that are really helpful when I work on my reeds and I don't tune with a file or anything else. I use a rotary machine like a Dremel. I don't use a diamond tip or so. It's a tip made from very solid rubber injected with small metal particles. So it gives me a very good way to control how much material I remove from the reed. It's more like polishing the reed than filing away material.

SPEAKER_02: 33:47

I was reading your website about your customization and you do produce some harmonicas where you have all polished reeds, don't you, which you then have to, I think you have to have it a semitone up because it sort of tunes it down to the kind of almost a semitone below, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03: 34:01

I still do it every now and then but at the moment I use more and more the reeds from the Lightning from Seidel because they also polish the reeds. But my polishing is a bit different from what Seidel does. Seidel is taking away most of the material on top of the reed. They remove the milling marks, but not completely. When I polish, I remove all the milling marks because every milling mark is a point where the reed could break. And I polish them down all the way to make them shiny, which means you don't see the milling marks anymore. And to my feel, to my ears, the reed sounds, gives me a bit more open sound because the reed is able to flex in a more natural way to me and also it allows me when I tune them down a semitone I remove more material near the rivet and this is where sometimes the shape of the reed is not perfect to how I would like to have it. The profile from silos are all very good but on some reeds I can see when I use a microscope that the thickness of the reed near the rivet is sometimes it's too thick and it goes down to the tip where it's too thin so then I can even it out by polishing down maybe two semitones. Sometimes I take a reed which is two semitones higher. But it's a lot of work and that's why I prefer now to take the lightning reeds because they're already

SPEAKER_02: 35:21

quite good. So you sell Seidel harmonicas, got three levels, exact, extra and extreme. So this is the

SPEAKER_03: 35:28

different customization levels, yeah? My basic work is embossing the reed slots. Then I work on the shape of the reed, the curving of the reed, the gapping. But I can do it more or less in detail depending on which stage I'm doing. When I do my exact, my exact and my extreme are coming more close together now. In the beginning I did like a 15 minute job on the exact which allows me to do a little embossing, check all the tuning, check all the gapping, check all the shaping of the reed. But because I got better at working on steel reeds, I can do a bit more on my basic models because I'm more used to work with the microscope, I can do more precise work on my extreme harps. So the difference between my first, the exact harmonica and the extreme is quite big, but it is not like hours more work for me. I tend to make my exact and my extra harps better than I did a few years ago, but my extreme is now really extreme because I go so much in detail.

SPEAKER_02: 36:33

What you charge for your customized harmonicas isn't that much more than the side will charge from what you buy directly from them or from other of a shop. So, yeah, what sort of difference in price is there between your customised versions and, you know, the standard price? Well, my

SPEAKER_03: 36:47

exact is only 10 euros more than what Sadler's charging. So I shouldn't work that long on the exact, but I do a bit more work because I think people just deserve a good harmonica and it really makes already a difference when you have a good set-up harmonica. People will notice a difference and I like to have people, good harmonica, and be able to find their own way of playing and enjoy what I'm doing my extra is I think it's 20 euros more the extreme is like 50 euros more it's not based on how many hours and how many work I do I always feel I should charge a fair price for my money cars

SPEAKER_02: 37:24

and obviously you do set up for overblows as well yeah Yeah, so do you use overblows yourself?

SPEAKER_03: 37:30

Yes and no. Sometimes I use them. When I practice, I use them. Then it's more because I may practice different positions and I may practice more melodic songs where I need an overblow. To be honest, I still don't like the sound of an overblow. It doesn't matter if it's Howard Levy or any other overblow guru. There are some people who are really high-level overblow players. But when I hear part of a song with 100 notes and there's one overblow, blow it just pops out it's a different tone to me always there's no nobody can hide the overblow to perfection

SPEAKER_02: 38:05

uh and if people buy some of your harmonicas you also give them a 30 minute skype lesson if yeah so great stuff um so you're still going strong and people can get your customized harps through your website i'll put the link to that on the podcast page and check you out so And so you mentioned that you do some teaching and you've got your YouTube channel. You've also been involved with Viola Barons, yeah? She's a Dutch teacher. Have you done some teaching in some of her camps and classes?

SPEAKER_03: 38:47

No, because she's my partner as well. She started on the, how do you call it, conservatory. She started music. She did piano, vocal and flute. Only by coincidence she was asked to buy a harmonica orchestra in that time to help them because the guy who did it died and they couldn't find someone else. So they asked her, she was conducting choirs and writing music and arranging music for them, but they asked her to come to a harmonica orchestra to see if she could help them. She said, well, I don't play harmonica, but give me six months and then I'll decide if I can do it with you. So she started playing harmonica and went to the orchestra a few times and she liked it right away. And from there it started. This was, I think, 20, years ago or so. But because her approach to harmonica playing is totally different from what I do, I always did everything by ear. I only started with theory 15, 20 years ago or so. But she always starts with people have to learn to read sheet music in the orchestra because you're in an orchestra and you have a bass harmonica, a chord harmonica, you have a chromatic harmonica, first voice, second voice, etc.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_03: 40:11

So her teaching is all based on this. And when she is teaching blues harps, she also has this very structured way of thinking about blues harmonica and how to teach it. All her classes are easy to understand for everybody in the class.

SPEAKER_02: 40:27

And you're also involved with the Seidel Festival, which is held in Germany, in Klingenthal, the Mundharmonica Festival, yeah?

SPEAKER_03: 40:35

Yeah, well, in the time when I met Bertram, they had this festival, but it was more like a few gigs and maybe one workshop one day or two days or so with someone but then Bertram and I decided to do a workshop together and we did it for a whole weekend and from there it started that they want to do more workshops with different teachers and it slowly built up to what it's now so now we have I think seven or eight teachers and we start teaching on Tuesday till Friday and then the festival starts with the Saturday night gig and the Sunday morning blue So in general, we have like seven or eight classes with an average 15 people. They get workshops all day. It starts on Tuesday afternoon. Then Wednesday starts at nine in the morning till five. Thursday, the same nine to five. Friday, nine to one. It's so much fun to do because it's a beautiful location, Klingenthal.

SPEAKER_02: 41:34

Yeah, and that's held in September, yeah? I think it's the third weekend. Great, yeah. So that's running this year. So people who are interested could check out that. Again, I'll put the link on to the podcast page so people can find that. A question... I ask each time, Ben, is if you had 10 minutes of practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing? If I only have

SPEAKER_03: 41:52

10 minutes, sometimes I just go to a harmonica case, I close my eyes and I pick up one harmonica without knowing which key. Could be a low key, could be a higher one. And I just sit down and play. It sounds simple, but that's really how I play. I hardly ever practice. I may, for the marble tones, we have a structure in the songs. Sometimes I need to open a song, then I do my opening lick. From there, every gig, every song is different when we play. and that's still how I play. When I teach, I do the opposite then. It's really about techniques that I do that I demonstrate by using licks that we repeat and repeat and repeat until they get their breathing right, their tone building right, the embouchure right, everything. But when I play, and I said it about my home recordings, I just sit down and play. It's not the best answer, I guess, but that's really how it is. piano plays

UNKNOWN: 42:49

you

SPEAKER_03: 42:58

I don't play songs.

SPEAKER_02: 43:28

Great, yeah,

SPEAKER_03: 43:43

so you always keep it original and fresh. Yeah, it's good. Well, I hope I can do that, but it feels right to me. That's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_02: 43:52

And what about any chromatic? Have you gone back to the chromatic or are you just diatonic?

SPEAKER_03: 43:56

No, I still play chromatic every now and then, but I just use it in the marble tones. To be honest, I love the sound of the chromatic still. I have this CBH 2016, the chromatic from Sean Behuang. You know the black one with the... button on the lower part of the harmonica?

SPEAKER_02: 44:14

Yeah, I've seen it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 44:16

I love it so much because Viola played it. We did some recordings for Viola. She has a few CDs that she's using as well. She plays classical music on this CBH and to me it sounds like a bass clarinet. It's difficult to describe. It has to me like a wooden tone which is unique for a comedic harmonica. I love the sound of the 16-hole CBH. It's maybe because I started on clarinet when I was a I still love the sound of a clarinet, but I prefer the sound of a bass clarinet. And it's very close to this chromatic sound. I've played all the chromatics from Seidel, and I love them all. When I really want to record something with the beautiful sound on a chromatic, I go to the CBH Chromatic Harmonica. Only because of the sound. My way of playing, my way of listening is always about sound. Tone and groove. These are the two main things that I teach to everybody. Tone and groove. Without a good tone, it will never sound okay. Without a groove, it sounds boring. That's my approach to harmonica playing.

SPEAKER_02: 45:19

And so you do customize Zeidel chromatics as well, don't you? So people can buy those three as well. I

SPEAKER_03: 45:24

don't really customize them. I take them apart. I check everything. Maybe I polish the slide. Maybe I look at the spring. Maybe some details. I look at how the gapping is. If it's even, I look at the valves. If they are glued straight on the reed plate. All these things to make sure everything is okay with the harmonica.

UNKNOWN: 45:47

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 46:02

Maybe one of my goals for the next years will be to build up a chromatic using less valves. So I will go to my embossing and see what I can do with chromatic without valves and maybe half-valving it. I'm not sure. It's one of my things that I want to do in the coming years.

SPEAKER_02: 46:21

And so getting on to, you know, talking about gear now in the last section. So clearly now you just play the idle harmonicas apart from the CBH chromatic you just talked about. You're using your own custom... zydlers i take it yeah yeah and i know you like to play all sorts of different ones that you like to play the low zydlers as well you've got one of your theme videos on a low b flat and so

SPEAKER_03: 46:59

that, those low ones. Yeah, well, I love the low ones, but to be honest, one of my coming themes, I can already tell this on the podcast, is when I play on the F harmonic, just the regular F, which for many people is way too high and too shrill, but I recorded it with just a little cupping, tried to make it sound more mellow just by changing my embouchure and my breathing technique, and I want to show people it doesn't have to sound as shrill and as aggressive as most people think the F can be so I like the whole range of harmonicas I like a low C I like a low B flat I like a low low F but as soon as I pick up a harmonica and I started playing it I adapt to what a harmonica can do also because of course I test harmonicas so many times without thinking I just adapt to a harmonica when I play on a low low F my embouchure changes instantly and the same when I play on a standard F my embouchure is different from on a low low F and this goes for without thinking so I love the whole range but I couldn't say there's just the low harps that I like most it's everything

SPEAKER_02: 48:06

Yeah and you've also got another video of you playing a Dorian tuned harmonic Yeah So you like to play with different tunings

SPEAKER_03: 48:28

as well Yes and no. It's more like a fun part to me. I know I can do some double stops on different tuned harmonicas which sounds a bit weird to some people and sometimes I just want to surprise people by doing something unpredictable on the harmonica which they've never heard or which is maybe new to me. Sometimes I do something wrong on a harmonica to my ears and when I listen back I think well it might be fun to use it in one song next year or so. I have maybe One good thing, when I play a lick, it's stored on my, I call it my internal memory. When I put on a home recording that I maybe made 10 years ago, I can play one-on-one with that recording. 99 of 100 times I can do it. Because I seem to remember all the licks that I've played, which is, I never

SPEAKER_02: 49:19

realized I was good at it. Talking a little bit about tunings, you know, the types of tunings. So I understand you like the compromise, just tuning. So is that when you're doing your harmonica set up is that the tuning you normally go for or

SPEAKER_03: 49:32

yeah that's because when Seidel started again in 2008 I think 2007 they I did this quality check on a lot of harmonicas and at that time the people who tuned the harmonicas in the Seidel factory they just tuned to just intonation because that's the old school way of tuning harmonicas by ear and they all were trained in listening to just intonation instruments And to my ear, when you tune the five draw in minus 29 cents, which is a quarter note, to me it sounded... too much off when I hear this. It's almost like the reed is starting to break. That's the feeling that I got from hearing the five draw when people play it. And when you bend it down just a little, it's almost like a semitone down. So it was way too much for me. And that's when I started doing some research on how to tune harmonicas. And I found several websites and tuning schemes that I had. And one of them was to compromise just intonation tuning for second and position and since 95% of the songs is played in second position I said well maybe this one is good for Seidel to introduce but then I had to really almost fight with the people at Seidel to convince them that that's the way to go with harmonicas but when you tune your harmonicas all your life to just intonation and your ear is all the way focused on how it sounds it's difficult to use another tuning they really couldn't work with that in the beginning so Seidel took over this tuning that I advised and that's still what they do and so embouchure wise which embouchure do you like to use? I started with Pucker of course but when I started playing harmonica I didn't know anything about it so I just played single notes and that's it but I heard on the records that I had the old records that there was something going on but I think it took me at least 20-30 years before I found out that there's a different way I didn't know it was called tongue block but I noticed when I played on several holes and I did something with my tongue, I could more or less play like the old players without still knowing what it was. I only found out about what it was when I bought my first computer. I had a 256 MB laptop, one of the first laptops for sale in Holland. And the moment that internet came in Holland, I went to my laptop and I found out there was Alta Vista, this search engine that they had at the time. So I typed in blues harp and Alta five minutes I got a website coming up five minutes later the second website so I stayed up all night just looking and reading and oh and this and oh and what's this so I stayed up all night printed everything because I didn't know how to save the information so I had thousands of prints after a few weeks and I was just reading and reading and reading and that's where the journey started again for me and then I learned how to use tongue block and how to sound different when I tongue block but I I still pucker when I think I need it, but I think I've now come to the point where I just play, sometimes I play tongue block without thinking about it, sometimes I play pucker and I mix it whenever I want, whenever I need it.

SPEAKER_02: 52:51

Great, and we've already talked about obviously the amps that you use, but one I wanted to pull out is you've got a video of you playing through a Pignose amp, which is a sort of small kind of busking sort of battery amp.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

... Thank you.

SPEAKER_02: 53:17

Another solid state amp that

SPEAKER_03: 53:18

you really like, yeah? Yeah, that's one of the first amps that I bought for home recordings. And I really don't know, but I think I bought mine in 1970, 1975 or so. They were just on the market. And what I found in that time, that Frank Zappa made a lot of recordings using a small Pignose amp in a huge studio room. And they had several mics, one close to the Pignose, one on the ceiling, one at the wall. And that was the sound of Frank Zappa at the time I said well if he's using that it should be a good amp and I bought one it turned out it's very very nice for harmonica like my Quilter amps at the moment they have a nice mellow feel tone to it but of course it depends on which microphone well not really the microphone but how you cut the microphone and how you use your embouchure in combination with the microphone that's also one of my things that I teach a lot how to work with the microphone and how to use it to make to make a good tone

SPEAKER_02: 54:17

on an amp sure yeah so yeah it's a great little practice amp and you mentioned microphones there so I think you use a crystal JT30 but a few other things yeah yeah my main mic

SPEAKER_03: 54:27

is a JT30 it was a Hohner Blues Blaster but all the pain is taking off the volume control was removed and some years ago I bought from someone in the US I bought a brush crystal element and the brush crystal is not as aggressive as the aesthetic crystal but it's a very warm big sounding crystal but still when you open your hands when I hold the microphone with one hand almost no cupping I still have a good tone but it doesn't get as shrill as a crystal can be sometimes a huge range from very dark bassy sound to very nice open acoustic tone so I can do anything I want with my tone and translate it to a good amp tone but before that I always played with the Shure Control Magnetic which I thought was the best for me at

SPEAKER_02: 55:16

the time And you do like to use effects, don't you, when you're playing?

SPEAKER_00: 55:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 55:36

what

SPEAKER_03: 55:37

sort of effects are you using on those well on my pedal board I have my kinder anti-feedback I don't use it as anti-feedback it's more like for some reason when I turn up the middle knob just a touch everything seems to get more responsive without being over responsive but when I just breathe in the harmonica very gentle my tone comes right away there's no no lack so it's not my anti-feedback but it's just my my help to have my attack like I want it and then I have my It's called El Pescadoro from Nocturne Brain. The preamp part is pensive for a guitar player. And it turns out that this is very helpful for harmonica. So I use it as my, I call it my tone shaper. It's like opening up my whole range of frequencies easier. It seems like the kinder that I use, it just makes me feel that everything I do on the harmonica comes out the way I intended it on the harmonica. And the rest is just fine. I have a delay. I have an Ottawa effect. I have this Hammond organ effect. And on my preamp, I have reverb as well. That's basically what I use. And the rest is just fun. I have a vibrato that is combined with my Hammond sound, and I can speed it up and slow it down. But I don't really need it. But it's just for one or two songs. I just like to have it on the pedalboard. When I want to use it and when I think it's the right moment, then I will use it. I have gigs where I hardly use any effects, so it's not that I have to use it all the time, but I just like to have fun with it. But it depends on how the audience responds, how we play, where we play, and then I decide now I will use maybe this effect or not.

SPEAKER_02: 57:20

Yeah, it's nice to have some variety sometimes. So yeah, so great. So just last question then, Ben, just to wrap up now. What's your future plans? What are you planning on doing this year? Well, working on a good

SPEAKER_03: 57:31

chromatic harmonica, and I'm thinking about making a special setup on Seidel 8047 lighting. I'm thinking about, I will buy the reed plates, the reeds, and use screws on it, so no more rivets. And then when someone buys this harmonica, I have some special... things that I can do with the reeds that I learned from Karl Puchold, from Seidel, the chief engineer. He told me a few things that people did like 100 years ago to the reeds. I want to translate this to this new harmonica with all the reeds are replaceable. So people buy the harmonica and get the reeds that they break most as a spare reed and they can easily switch the reeds themselves.

SPEAKER_02: 58:11

So thanks so much for joining me today, Ben Bauman. Thank you for

SPEAKER_03: 58:14

having me. It was a really great joy

SPEAKER_02: 58:16

to talk with you and to be allowed to talk this much about harmonica. Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. Thanks to Ben for joining me today. That harmonica with replaceable reed sounds like an exciting development. And thanks to Peter Roo for the latest donation to the podcast. I really want to keep the podcast ad-free and these donations really help me do that. Please check out the podcast website at harmonicahappyhour.com where you can find links to all the great stuff that Ben's talked about and links to his playing. We'll sign off now with Ben playing with his band The Marble Tones with the great title The Monkey Speaks His Mind. The Monkey Speaks His Mind

UNKNOWN: 59:02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 59:49

is mine.