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Harmonica Lessons › Community Forum › Audio & Progress Updates › Blind Melon “change”
Hey all!
I think this song was one of the best things to come out of the nineties decade. And growing up in that time, the harmonica part to “change” has been on my bucket list to learn to play. I could loosely play along with it before if someone was playing it on the guitar but I just recently sat down to try to pick it out note for note. This is what I heard.
I looked for a tab for it to check my playing, but there were too many conflicting tabs which felt annoying😂 so here is my go at it.
Hey Shawn,
You did good to stay with your own ears. I think you picked up the lick and its texture quite good.
It sounds great pal.
Keep on harp in
Udo
Thanks so much Udo! I truly appreciate the reflection. You play a song so much that it feels hard at some point to truly hear your own playing as it really sounds.
It’s like the phenomenon called semantic satiation in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that but it is a very funny experience, like I’ll say a common word that I’ve said all my life and be like… “Is that right?! Why does it sound so weird?! I was talking to a friend about that and she told me that it’s actually a thing so we looked it up and sure enough… semantic satiation. And Am I remembering right that you’re in Germany? I hope my memory serves me right… I looked Up the German translation and I found the phrase, “Semantische Sättigung”.
Anyways, that’s what happens for me after so many hours of playing a song. It starts to trip me out after a bit😂 so like I said I appreciate the reflection! Very grounding🙏
Hey Shawn,
Sounds great to me. How about you record a version with you playing along to the track?
Then listen back and see how close you got… or if you in fact nailed it! 🎶
Then you can go again if you need to.
Mg
That’s a great idea…I’ll try that. Thanks so much Mitch!
Hey Shawn,
I know what you mean by “Semantische Sättigung” – I’ve been there as well.
The things you are playing are sounding meaningless to your own ears, because you repeated them over and over again. For me it helps to play “something completely different” (quote by Monty Python).
When practicing a blues lick and loosing the ear for it, I turn to a traditional song (or the other way around). When practicing I switch to playing – as Mitch explained theses are two different ways to use the harmonica.
You mentioned the 90s and for me the harmonica licks in songs from INXS are standing out. If you listen to Suicidal Blonde you’ll get an idea. I read that the harmonica sounds were sampled from Charlie Musselwhite’s playing and then loaded to the keyboard/synth. If that is right the video shows a player pretending to play the harmonica ;-)
Enjoy
BTW: You remember correctly I am living in Germany.
Hey Udo,
First off I am pretty sure a little Monty Python is a good remedy for most situations…especially when feeling stuck! 😂
And I’m so glad you shared that, I love rediscovering songs from my past where I was unaware of harmonica riffs in them. And that is 90’s through and through! Nice archiving! That was really cool to learn about the harmonica part to that song. I looked to it up just to find out more info and found it on a “top 8 harp riffs”list. Charlie Musselwhite is just the man, I really enjoy his playing. And then I looked up where INXS was from because I didn’t think they were from the states. I didn’t know it but they are from Mitch’s stomping grounds… well at least your country/ continent Mitch.