Category: Jam Session
Have you heard of these? Some schools make the kids play the cheap ones, yes, but they are really cool as lead or rhythm instruments for jazz and reggae, you can even play classical flute or recorder / violin music on them.
What it is, it's a wind instrument but the keys are a piano-style keyboard. It's got free reeds like a harmonica, but you blow rather than suck and blow like a harmonica.
Here's how most people get turned off: keyboard players trying to play it, so they just blow into it and then play the keys, making a rather dead mechanical sound. If you have any wind experience, or want to get it, you learn to do what wind players call articulation, which improves the clarity / separation and tonal quality of the notes.
Outside the U.S. they're supposed to be more popular. I'm getting the Hohner Performer 37 from Amazon.
Range is f below middle c up to f above the c at sixth octave on the piano (2 cs above middle c). Hammond makes a 44, which goes from the c below that all the way up to the c above the F I just mentioned, but a lot of jazz players are using the 37.
They come with two mouthpieces - a tube so you can set it down, or your traditional horn mouthpiece so you hold it with one hand and play it with the other. I played these 20 years ago and found the horn mouthpiece to allow for better articulation and tone, while the tube is good for softer chorded stuff.
Anyway, anyone else have these?
I have downloaded some sheet music from Bard for a few different instruments so I can make it work, and hopefully fix up some probably very sloppy technique at this point. Yes, I did the empty nest thing and went out and bought me something to have fun / fuck around with for no real reason other than that. lol.
And the wife has always been more than agreeable to any musical exploits of mine, she likes that stuff, so I've not had the problem many musical people I've known have had in the relationship department. When we get back to the city, she wouldn't even mind if I joined up with a band. I'm old enough to not be that serious about it anymore, no snobbery at all left over from my youth, it's just gonna be something fun to do.
Would love any pointers on the technique / articulation front though, since this place is just crawling with pros and serious musicians. lol
There are a lot of good Youtube vids on melodicas just look up melodica on Youtube. Some of the recordings make it sound a bit more sharp, I guess is the word. And some people don't articulate well so again, you get that mechanical and lifeless type of continuous sound like the old electric reed organs from the 70s which my poor mother was forced to tolerate.
But the real thing really played, is like any other wind instrument, subject to your use of the diaphragm and you can get some nice tone and dynamics out of it.
Ok here are a couple of vids that showcase what this instrument can do:
Two melodicas playing Flight of the Bumblebee
A sort of improve piece on Melodica
That one's kind of a virtuoso also.
My Funny Valentine which showcases the melodica in a solo horn type role, better horn articulation.
Some jaz improvisation on the melodica again emphasizing good breath technique.
And some fun stuff, a mix of 90s tunes good articulation also and a mix with drum machines mainly, a lot of known 90s stuff.
Anyway there's even classical stuff done on these things, they're not that big, even the biggest ones, and quite the versatile instrument whether monophonic solo stuff or doing reggae chords or what have you.
Flight of the Bumblebee is two people, by the way. Or maybe it's just VegasVipistrelle playing two of them, one with her hands and one with her feet.
Oh, my, major circular breathing going on there, I'm sure. I don't see where the melodic player in Bumblebee can even take a breath. Amazing. I may have to learn a similar technique if I want to play Celtic and Appalachian reels and jigs on mine. I've always wanted one, and just recently acquired it, but it's an ancient one, and some of the reeds may need to be filed, as they're out of tune. I'm not sure I want to do this myself. We'll see.
I've wanted to learn circular breathing also, and feel the melodica will be the perfect instrument for me to learn it on, seeing as my primary background is keyboards.
So this is what I've read on the technique, though would love it if people who do this would speak up. Again, this place being crawling with professional and amateur musicians who most undoubtedly surpass me by quite a bit.
So the trick is towards the end of a single breath, you puff out your cheeks to contain what remains of the air, then use your cheeks to continue feeding air into the instrument, and at the same time draw air through your nose to replenish your lungs.
I've learned the bit about breathing through your nose so as not to take the instrument away from your lips to breathe, but I don't have this kind of cheek control yet. lol
This sounds interesting! sounds peetty complex, though lol!
Honestly, if you play and you sing, you will be miles ahead of how most of us keyboardists were when we started. Or, I should say, if you play and you also play wind instruments. In other words, you would do a lot more with it than you probably think now. Especially with you having a classical theory background.
Well mine came today. I'm gonna be spending some serious off-work hours working on some chops again and see what I can get going. It's fun to have access to one again.
Well last night I spent an hour playing around and trying to dust off some old chops see what I could get back. It's really surprising me how much of it has come back. Plenty of work to get up to speed, sure, but it's a lot of fun. Maybe at some point I'll do a SoundCloud of myself, though I don't have fancy equipment just an iPhone. Maybe in my garage or something kind of echoy.
Anyway the tube vs. mouthpiece is quite interesting for experimentation. I'd recommend getting one to anyone who is interested. If you have keyboard background, be aware your muscle memory won't work quite right because its keys are smaller, so doing octaves and the like is pretty easy to over-reach. I'm just gonna hit up the old classical and jazz bop exercises to get the muscle memory down again though.
Leo, Melodica is a pretty awesome instrument. I don't have one myself, but have played one, and have had generally good experience with Hohner products, I had a hohner accordion which was excellent, and have a harmonica with a half-step-up button, which I still haven't learned how to play. Though Accordion is great, and I think I saw a 37-key melodica at thinkgeek.com for about 20 dollars, so I may just go ahead an get it.
How long did you play the melodica? What forms of articulation did you try? I mean either tonguing or use of the back of the throat like a cough, the way harmonica players do, and I have heard flautists also do.
Anyway am still experimenting with both for different reasons. You can really tell the difference though, if you hear a recording where someone is only paying attention to the keying and not the articulation with the tongue and throat. I have been working on that with the exercises, since that is easy to fall back into seeing it has a keyboard.
I also read somewhere that if you position the hand on the end of the keys rather than closer to the middle, you can get more control out of your playing especially quickly.
I'm thinking about downloading the two and three-part inventions by Bach from Bard, so I can practice on some of those, the right-hand portion, in order to better articulate. Using the tube instead of the mouthpiece I will at least be able to sight read. And yes, you profesionals, don't laugh I know many would scorn us who are only using the basics like the inventions for this, but I haven't played this in 20 years, or piano seriously at all in 9 or 10 years.
Anyway I like the tone of the Hohner because it's fuller. I know many online talk highly of the Suzuki models but they sound less round, if that makes any sense. More like the old electric reed organs from the 60s and 70s.
Well I haven't read serious Braille music in a couple decades, made more difficult by using a single line display. And I've forgotten some of the intricacies, like the way they show patterns of 16th-notes as 8th-note notation. Blah, it's like the Chinese kids who come to America and forget all the Chinese characters they're no longer using. I can still pass for writing things down but trying to read serious music as I used to is proving more challenging.
Well, honestly, it would be less so if I were looking at a page rather than a single line by line. Anyway, laugh all you want college music students, I'm admitting it straight off.
Omg. I have a melodica as well, and absolutely love it. I'm more of a singer though, so I don't tend to articulate as much with the tongue or throte. I just use the principals I use for singing in terms of diaphragmatic movement and breath control/support and the like. I do use vibrato on it though, especially when I play the Largo from Bach's Harpsichord Concerto in F minor.
Oh boy, here we go, probably one of those that can really make it sound like a jazz horn! Wow! I've heard your kind on Youtube and am duly impressed.
Do you use the short mouthpiece or the tube attachment? I have been using tube lately but both produce slightly different sounds.
I prefer the short mouthpiece, actually. I feel more, erm...connected to the instrument, as it were. I can record a sample of what it would sound like if i were to play like that and post it up here if you like. Might even give you some technique hints and stuff for dynamics.
That'd be awesome.
alright. I can just uploading to dropbox and paste a link here.
I'm admitting here and now I haven't played mine in a couple weeks, I'm really working on the ukulele a lot now. Plus I can play that while she's falling asleep even, which is really quite nice. But I have a lot further to go on it than the melodica, because my main stringed instrument had been bass before and that was 20 years ago. And you don't need callouses for keyboard instruments.
true that.
Okay, Leo. Here's a recording I made of myself playing melodica. it's not the best I've done, but here it is for your enjoyment/education or whatever else.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11820918/Melodica%20Improvisation.mp3
Nice. I like the classical undertones to this also.
It's quite nice, and a diversion from the likes of Jukebox66 on Youtube, as great as that guy is.
Oh how I would love to get a hold of one of those Andean Melodicas made by Suzuki which use pipes instead of reeds and sound something akin to a sopranino recorder but the pipes are metal, I believe.
Anyway nice going with this. I'm very much enjoying it.
Oh, and did you rig a pickup on that, or how did you mic it?
Nope. I used an app for my ipod called voice band and the ipod's internal mic. nothing else.
I've had my melodica for a while now and I love it. A question for you more experienced players, though. Can anyone explain to me how to bend notes? Or is that even possible? I've read somewhere that it was possible, but the details on how to do it weren't the best.
Not real possible not like a harmonica.
But, to get a slight bend, if you're blowing hard and really get behind the note, say doing a jazz solo, just raise up on the key with your finger till the valve starts to close and keep up the wind pressure. You have to practice with it a bit so you don't make the valve cut it off. But it's a bend / choked valve sound which can be gravelly and cool in the right context, but not at all as full a bend as a sax or a harmonica.
There's a thread on bending melodica notes here:
http://www.melodicaworld.com/forums/topic/bending-notes/