After finishing the midterm portion of my Musical Growth Plan, I realized a few changes needed to be made based on how long it took me to learn what I learned before the midterm. The change that I made was strictly on what song I was going to learn. The song change was from Mary Jane’s Last Dance by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers to Heart of Gold by Neil Young.
The main reason behind why I made this change was because there is a specific type of note in Mary Jane’s Last Dance that no matter how hard I practiced I just couldn’t do and these type of notes is called a bend. From my understanding, a bend is when you shape your mouth different when blowing, or drawing on a note to drop the note down an octave that would normally not be on that harmonica. I can normally bend notes by themselves, and not in song. However, in this song it was a very quick bend that was essential to how the song sounded that I was really struggling with. Therefore, I decided to change it to a more straightforward song in Heart of Gold but more challenging than my first song I learned in Piano Man by Billy Joel.
Heart of Gold by Neil Young is compromised of an intro, and two solos. The intro is quite straight ward and easy, but the two solos are more difficult, mainly because of the transitions between blowing and drawing. When I learn more of this song I will dive into more depth of the struggles I am having, as well as the portions that I am finding easier in learning this song.
To complete my musical growth plan, I still plan on learning 2 more harmonica riffs to bring my total up to 4 by the end of the plan. This is just because if there ever becomes a time where I am able to learn how music connects/flows into one another I will already know some the building blocks to free styling a harmonica solo.
Riley
