Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Brendan Power interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 11

Share episode

Brendan Power is my guest today.
A true visionary of harmonica design, Brendan takes us under the hood of the instrument he has revolutionised with his alternative tunings and new designs, all helping him make some great harmonica music across a range of different genres.

Select the Chapter Markers tab above to select different sections of the podcast (website version only).

Brendan's website:
https://brendan-power.com/home.php

Info on Brendan's tunings:
https://www.brendan-power.com/harpgeeks.php

Brendan's instruction videos:
https://brendan-power.com/vimeo.php

Seydel link to Powernder tuning:
https://www.seydel1847.de/epages/Seydel1847.sf/en_US/?ObjectPath=/Shops/Seydel/Products/10301Power/SubProducts/10301PBA

YouTube clip of playing on Jools Holland show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB6GROiWWL8

Some of the recordings in the episode can be heard here:
https://brendan-power.com/tuneaday.php


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/

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, I'm Neil Warren and welcome to another episode of the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast, with more interviews with some of the finest harmonica players around today. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast and also check out the Spotify playlist where some of the tracks discussed during the interviews can be heard. A word from my sponsor, the Lone Wolf Blues Company, makers of effects pedals, microphones and more, designed for harmonica. Remember, when you want control over your tone, you want Lone Wolf. Really appreciate Lone Wolf supporting the podcast and helping me keeping it going. Brendan Power is my guest today. A true visionary of harmonica design, Brendan takes us under the hood of the instruments. He has revolutionised with his alternative tunings and new designs, all helping him make some great harmonica music across a range of different genres. So hello, Brendan, and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Neil. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_01:

First off, starting your name, Power, a great stage name, but that is your real name, yeah, with Irish roots.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it's actually a very common name on the east coast of Ireland. My grandfather was from the Waterford area. You were actually born in Kenya. That's right, yeah. My grandfather was sent off to the Christian Brothers Order, which is a teaching order. Then he was sent out to South Africa to teach in the mission schools there. He left the order and then became quite a well-known archaeologist, scientist in South Africa. That's where my dad was born, in Kimberley. And my mum, her parents are both Dutch, so actually by blood I'm more Dutch than anything else. And then my dad, they went to university, met up. My dad went to Kenya, and that's where all of us kids were born. I'm the oldest one. I've got two brothers and a sister. I was nine when my family decided to move to New Zealand. Then from nine till about 30, 30 something, I was in New Zealand.

SPEAKER_01:

It's when you were at university in Christchurch, I believe, that you discovered the harmonica by hearing Sonny Terry play the concert.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. Yeah. I mean, I had absolutely no idea who Sonny Terry was or Brownie McGee or even what blues music was, to be honest. My family was Catholic and they're fairly strict about As kids, we didn't have a television growing up. We didn't really, I suppose, have that adolescent immersion in the culture. So I hadn't really been exposed to much pop music or blues music. Certainly didn't know what it was. But a friend took me along to this concert. It was a free concert at the university. So it was really a kind of like a revelation hearing this amazing music, blues, which I'd never heard before. And then hearing the harmonica played like that, you know, by one of the great masters. It was just jaw dropping. The, you know, hairs on the back of neck went up and i was just i was just you know really sort of like a damascus moment i suppose of conversion and just being blown away so yeah next day i went out and bought a harmonica luckily i got sold the right one which is a diatonic 10 hole diatonic started from absolute scratch had no idea what about music or anything and i was already 20 years old by that stage so pretty late starter

SPEAKER_01:

so how was it how was the devil's music

SPEAKER_00:

received back at home i Not too well. I mean, I was at university. I was doing pretty well at university. I did a bachelor's in English and religious studies. And religious studies was not theology. It was just basically a study of world religions. But I did do a master's in religious studies. I got interested in Taoism, the yin-yang, the early Taoism, that sort of Chinese philosophy, and did a thesis on a guy called Chuang Tzu, one of the main philosophers. But halfway through my studies, probably went into there about 18 and heard some theory on probably the third year when I was 20. You could say I went to downhill. I mean, I kept going and I got my master's degree, but I became more and more obsessed with just the harmonica and playing, you know, hours and hours every day. My parents, they became a little bit concerned. And then at the end of my studies, when I thought all I want to do is basically play music, they didn't understand the music and the harmonica is, you know, it's kind of hasn't got a very high status as an instrument. So they were pretty disappointed. And my dad said, look, you know, I can see that you've got this obsession, but Just give it a period of time, and if things don't work out, put it aside and do something. Get a real job, if you like. But sadly, I'm still going.

SPEAKER_01:

you had like most musicians probably you had some early struggles that early time when i think you were you're playing around new zealand and

SPEAKER_00:

oh yeah i was in the bones of my ass you know you know poverty stricken but i didn't care because i was just if i as long as i had some harps and um some time to practice and stuff that was all that i all that worried me i just did part-time jobs um you know shoveling coal and um all sorts of things and also on the dole periodically as well so um you know basically as long as i could keep playing i you know money was It didn't matter. But, yeah, I was pretty poverty-stricken for a long time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so what was it like, those early years playing in New Zealand? I think you had a good scene in Auckland.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I mean, after I'd studied in Canterbury University, I understood that if you wanted to get anywhere in music, you had to go to Auckland. I went up there. I didn't really know. I think I knew one person who was sleeping on people's floors for a while and stuff. But then I lucked into this amazing folk scene there because I was playing sort of blues music I was interested in Charlie McCoy, so that was kind of bluegrass-y sort of stuff. And then there was this wonderful folk scene there throughout the 80s and just some fabulous friends and musicians that I met. but I was also playing in country bands. Like I was in a band called Hillman Hunter and the Roots Group, which is kind of like a country music band playing bluegrass and also playing blues with a great Maori blues singer called Sunny Day and his blues band. So I was playing all sorts there. There was a whole lot going on. There was a thriving live scene, you know, pubs and stuff with live music everywhere. It was just a really brilliant time. It's changed a lot now, but, you know, I sort of, I was lucky to be there at a great time in the music scene.

SPEAKER_01:

Just talking about some of your early influences, I mean, she talks about Sonny Terry there. And I know you got into Sonny Boy Williamson II. Was there any particular songs that particularly inspired you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I remember Help Me by Sonny Boy Williamson, Rice Miller. You know, all of his stuff just blew me away. You know, he was my guru, really. You know, you could say in some ways it was simpler to learn. I mean, Sonny Terry, there's a lot going on, and he plays pretty fast licks, and I love his playing. But Sonny Boy Williamson has got so much soul. He plays, you know, slower, but he's got so much soul and feeling on every note.

SPEAKER_03:

$100, and I didn't have but 99.

UNKNOWN:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But then I heard Little Walter. And of course, like, as with just about every harp player you could think of, he utterly blew me away. I mean, he was just that, you know, electric amplified sound that he got. And of course, the kind of the other guys like Big Walter Horton, James Cotton, Junior Wells, all those guys, I loved them as well.

SPEAKER_04:

You can call it what you want. I call it nothing but the key.

UNKNOWN:

Hey, look at here. Hey!

SPEAKER_01:

Everyone I talk to on here makes the same point that, yeah, there's a lot of great players, but there's something about those guys, isn't there? All the names you mentioned and a few others about, you know, they just had something, didn't they? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, you could say that, I mean, they've created an entire genre. Those, you know, five or six... especially Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Sonny Terry. They're probably the kind of the key guys in each particular little strand of that blues style. I mean, they've just basically spawned an entire industry and millions of players around the world. If only they'd been, they got the benefit of it, you know, when they were alive.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so as you say, obviously your roots in blues harmonica, and that's how a lot of people get interested into harmonica. What's the great thing about harmonica in more recent times, I know the last 20 years or so, and you're a great exponent of it, is the fact that you can play different styles of music on the harmonica. Again, from what I've read about you, Charlie McCoy was a big influence on you here, and a big influence on you playing melodic style, but also an influence on you retuning the harmonica, and he inspired you with his major seventh tuning to get interested in it. in retuning harmonicas. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00:

That's correct. Yeah. I mean, I was just, you know, looking for records in the bargain bins in Christchurch when I was still a student there. There was two or three tracks on, I found a few of his other albums, on every Charlie McCoy album. He just, you know, blitzed it out there, you know, on some really fast fiddle type tune. I was just blown away by the speed and dexterity and accuracy of his playing. And it was something that I hadn't heard before. Plus, it was in a genre sort of related a little bit to music that I heard before, which is Irish music. Because, you know, growing up as a kid, we had a few Irish records in the house. And I was, after I'd been playing the blues a little bit, I was starting to trying to pick out some of these little Irish tunes. And what he was playing was in cross harp and second position. So you had all the lovely flavor of that, but it had that Irish Celtic feel or that, you fast. So yeah, he just blew my socks off. So yeah, he became a big influence on me. As you say, listening to some of his tunes, I realized that he was getting the major seventh in Crossout quite easily. And I figured, well, you know, they must have done something with that reed. And I'd always been a tinkerer, you know, with everything, bikes and all sorts of things. I got that from my dad, who was a master sort of mechanic and stuff like that. So, you know, it wasn't long before the covers were off and I was just looking at this thing and thought, ah, and figured out if you could fire all the reeds and take weight off and suddenly the pitch rose. So then, bang, you know, had a major seventh. of a harmonica and could do what he was doing and I thought well you know if you can do that with one reed you could do it with lots of other reeds as well and so that that really was the start of my experimentation with alternate tunings just been a fascinating ride I mean I've you could say it's a curse in some ways because you know I've gone through so many tunings where I thought this is the one this is what I'm going to stick with and then and I get spend you know months of tuning up harmonicas and getting them all ready for that and then years mastering the tuning and then you know at some point down the line i have a little um you know i wake up one morning ah now if i did that and did that i could do that then um you know basically it can lead to reinventing the wheel if you like and i've done that about four or five times with my main tuning if you like on the ten hole diatonic um and it's um it's a big disruption to your um to your brain and to your to everything you have to rewire yourself basically But I don't know, I can't help myself really.

SPEAKER_01:

You can't really separate your playing from tunings. And the amount of innovations you've come up with is just incredible. I hope you don't dislike this term, but you could be sort of called the mad scientist of the harmonica world. Is that how you see yourself?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, to me, it seems normal. And I just wonder why other people don't try alternate tunings. Yeah. I can understand why, because tuning is like an operating system. It's Mac versus Windows or whatever, but even more extreme than that. And people, I'm the same with computers. We get comfortable and familiar with an operating system. And to be pushed out of that comfort zone, that sort of nice little rut that we're in and being forced to kind of press different buttons or blow a different hole to get the same note that you've always been getting somewhere else, it's really... People are resistant to that kind of thing. We don't like it. What matters is the music, the notes that you play, the music that comes out. The instrument is really just a vehicle to allow you to play great music or the best music you can. And if the instrument is an impediment to that, one approach is to just kind of sweat and sweat and try and force the instrument to do things that it wasn't designed to do and maybe doesn't do very well. Another way, which I think is more intelligent, is to basically just change the instrument. And then suddenly you've got sweetness and soul and stuff flowing in the right places. I don't think there's one size that fits all. For instance, if you take blues... The fact that people are playing blues and cross-harp is a pure accident. Blues wasn't even thought of or invented by the people who designed the harmonica in Germany in the 19th century. It's a pure accident that a part of it sounds great played in a different key, second position. You can bend the draw notes, and the African-Americans found that. But the top octave, it's got its pluses in Richter tuning, but a couple of things about it really are not very conducive to the style of playing blues that people love to play for one thing the notes you can bend in the top octave first thing is the breathing pattern changes at hole number seven which is kind of annoying and a lot of people struggle up there because the breathing pattern is is different why you know why not change that around if you do that then instead of having your um you know blow notes bending you have draw notes bending which people are familiar with down the bottom so instantly you've got two things that are easier and when things are easier people can play more fluidly and faster and with more, they don't have to think so much so they can instantly get more out of the instrument. And the third thing is that you can actually tune it so that your bends at the top end are more appropriate for playing second position. Because if you think about it, in second position, you've got your one, three, five of the scale, which is whole two draw, three draw, four draw, And they all bend, and that's why you get the beautiful soul in second position. In the top end, you're bending the four on hole number 10, and the one on hole number nine, and then the six on hole number... So you've got these bends that work great in a different key. If you're playing a C harp, they work great in C. But when you're playing a C harp in blues, you're actually playing in G. So your G bends are not really up there. So why the hell not keep the bending concept, but just change the notes at the top end so that you've got the same lovely bends up there as you do in the bottom octave. And then the whole thing flows better. It's more expressive.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_01:

one thing I still, which a lot of people see as a barrier, of course, is that if you do play different tunings and you alluded to it a little bit yourself earlier on is then you've got, then got to get your head around playing those different tunes, isn't there? So how do you get around that?

SPEAKER_00:

Basically, I've probably got seven or eight tunings that I use on a gig, but there's only a couple where I would improvise with them. I've got several tunings which are really good for certain styles of music where I'd learn a tune on them and maybe some variations, but I wouldn't use them for jamming so much. If I want to get out and jam, then Powerbender is my main one on the diatonic, and on the chromatic, I've got another one called Powerchromatic. It's like part of Powerbender, just repeated up the harp. Those are the two where I You know, over the years, I've sort of got comfortable with improvising. The other ones, I think it's quite easy to flip your brain into playing something in a different tuning if it's related to a specific piece, a track or a tune or whatever. I mean, guitarists do it with alternate tunings on the guitar. You know, they... would mostly play standard tuning. But then if they want a different flavor or something for a particular piece, they will use an alternate tuning. But they'll only use it for that small subset of their tunes. It's the same on the harmonica. So you can have just one tuning that you really, really can wail on. And then you can have several others that are great for particular styles. I've got some really out there ones. There's one I use called the Asia Bend, which is an all-draw harmonica. and that's fantastic for really getting a lot of juice out of slower soulful melodies but I couldn't really get around and go to a jam on it very easily. So I tend to sort of have tunings in two categories like that, the jamming ones and then the other ones where they work great for particular styles.

SPEAKER_01:

One tuning I use lots and lots from yours is a Paddy Richter tuning. The Paddy Richter tune is a very good example, isn't it? Just one note change just completely opens up the possibility to play those tunes in first position.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it's just one read change. It's a bit like country tuning. but down the bottom end. It does make a huge difference. It gives you fourth position, becomes really easy, doesn't it? First position becomes a lot easier. And you can still play a great second position on it too. You can play more like chromatic runs easier and stuff. That's a really important note, the one that we're talking about where you raise the three blow up a tone and you get that full step draw bend normally, which is on three draw, and it becomes an inbuilt note. Suddenly it really means you can flow around the bottom end of the harp a lot quicker. I tend to use it for mostly Irish Celtic melodies. I actually don't play Paddy Richter myself anymore. I play what I call Paddy solo. So I've got the Paddy Richter bottom end and then I change the tuning in the top end. So it's more like it's like solo tuning. So it'll go up from hole number four to hole number seven as in Richter. But then I double up the, you know, if we're talking about a C harp, I double up the C note in hole number eight. So the top octave is like the middle octave.

SPEAKER_01:

I think one point I'm trying to get across to people listening here is we're talking about the Paddy Richter just being one note tuned, the major seventh, you know, the country tuning just being one note different as well. And talking about some of your power draw and power benders, which are more or less the same as the lower octave, allowing you to do the bends the same way. I think people are maybe a little bit hesitant to think, oh, I couldn't handle a different tuning. I think the message is here, they're not really that different than what they're already used to, and it's not such a big leap to go across them to try some of them out. Very

SPEAKER_00:

good point, Neil. Basically, for instance, say power draw, you've got the bulk of the harp, your meat and potatoes area, as they call it, whole number one to six is identical to a standard harp. So you don't have to change anything there. And in the top end, once you flick a switch in your brain, you can think, well, oh, this is the same as my bottom end stuff. So I can actually play a lot of similar licks. You've got three draw, four draw licks. Now they're on seven and eight. And you've got your two draw licks, which is now on hole number nine. So you can actually just transfer your licks up, you know, your bottom end licks up the top end there. So once you do that, I think you can, you know, you can cope with these or you can pick up these altered tunings a lot easier than you think.

SPEAKER_01:

I'll put links to your website and to your different tunings available. And some of them are available through Seidel now as well, aren't they? You can actually go and choose the different tunings and customize very heavily on the Seidel. In a way, it's almost like people are a bit intimidated by there's too many options. Would you sum up something in a very quick and easy way around what each one gives you quickly that people can go, yeah, maybe I'll try that one?

SPEAKER_00:

That is a good point. Talking of specific tunings, yeah, I think Paddy Richter, if you want to play folk tunes like dance tunes and all that thing, I think Paddy Richter is a really effective and powerful one. Another one that's used quite a bit is Easy Third tuning, which is not one of my tunings, but people like Rick Epping and Joel Anderson use that quite a bit. I prefer Paddy Richter. There's a note missing in Easy Third, which is problematic for me. But yeah, Paddy Richter for um those kind of tunes if you want to play um blues I think power draw and power bender are really fantastic tunings for, not just for blues, but also for jazz. Personally, my favorite is power bender because it gives you more chromaticism through easy draw bends. And it means you can play, you can modulate into different keys a lot easier than, you know, with say Richter or power draw. On chromatic, another thing that I came up with early days was half valving. When I first bought a chromatic, I realized, oh, I can't bend the notes and what's going on there. So I've pulled the covers off, realized it was the valves on the outside of the harmonica that was stopping me bending them. So I just pulled them off. Suddenly I can bend the notes on the chromatic. But I really liked the feeling of the inside valves because they gave the blow notes more power and more purity. And you could put sort of vibrato and stuff on them. So I thought, oh, I really like that feeling. And I'll try that in my diatonics. So then I started putting valves inside the diatonics. And, you know, that was the start of half valving, which is now quite a popular choice for quite a few people.

SPEAKER_01:

yeah i was talking to i was talking to pt gazelle a few a couple of episodes as well yeah so we talked a lot about half valving on there so

SPEAKER_00:

for me half valving is a gives expression and soul and and whatever on the blow notes but i don't use it so much for playing chromatic notes but yeah pt has really developed it well in that really well in that area and you know plays jazz using those valve bends and you know fair play to them so yeah but just getting back to the alternate tuning so I mentioned the diatonic ones. On chromatic, I use one called power chromatic, which is like the middle part of power bender, but it's also half valve. I've got a chromatic here just as a quick illustration. You can play a chromatic scale. And that's using the button. But now with my power chromatic, I can also go... So, you know, I can play the entire chromatic scale with only one use of the button. So here's... So that's a chromatic scale coming down. And I can play... So that's chromatic. You can hear with the button there. Basically the... half valving with the bends means you can play the chromatic like a diatonic and the great thing is that um you know you've got essentially got two harmonicas in one so you can play um so i just put the um put the slider in there and you can play exactly the same thing but you're in a different key so yeah half valve chromatic i think is a um It's got huge potential for all sorts of styles of music, giving you a lot of expression plus full chromaticism. It's

SPEAKER_01:

very interesting, your approach to chromatics, because to me, the two instruments, the diatonic and chromatic, are almost different instruments. The chromatic, more of a clean sound, but obviously the diatonic has got the bending expression that we all love about the diatonic. You've mixed the two. You've married the two together, so your chromatic is more like a diatonic. Obviously, all the notes are available on chromatic. But you've decided you want that bending expression. Yeah, that's the reason you went and ripped the valves off and decided that. So, you know, what do you see? How would you approach your chromatic playing? Again, a lot of people more traditionally would play kind of what you might call stricter or play more written music where they want cleaner sounds.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I mean, you're exactly right. I mean, basically, I started on the diatonic. And when I picked up the chromatic, I missed my bends. And so I tried to make the chromatic sound more like a diatonic. And that's how I've always done it. You can still play with pure sounds. This is a half valve chromatic. So here's your blow notes, you know. And here's your draw note. basically the two notes don't sound radically different you know even though one is valved and one's not valved

SPEAKER_01:

so how do you not how do you not lose the you know how do you not make them more airy then because obviously that's the point of the wind savers yes

SPEAKER_00:

well basically the chromatic needs to be pretty airtight in all the other respects like your slider tolerances need to be really good so the slider that's a big source of air loss on chromatics is the slider area so you need to have that really sealed well and airtight and also you're with your read gaps on your blow read gaps. Once you take the draw valves off, as you suck on your draw notes, air can come in through the blow read gaps. It's the same on a diatonic. You want to get those blow read gaps as small as you can, where they still will make a sound on a strong breath. So if you reduce your blow read gaps, then you're reducing that air loss that comes about when you take the valves off. And then you can go further. You can do things like embossing on chromatics and stuff, which I do as well. But Basically with a good chromatic and a little bit of adjustment to the read gapping and possibly embossing if you want to go that far, you can make the whole thing sound very crisp and responsive, pretty much the level of a good diatonic. And so

SPEAKER_01:

when would you use a chromatic, you know, a half valve chromatic over a diatonic? Why would you choose that over a diatonic? More

SPEAKER_00:

jazzy tunes is the short answer. I'm just doing a little exploration of a tune called Royal Garden Blues, an old sort of trad jazz tune with Sandy Weltman, who's a great overblow diatonic player. And that's a case in point. I'm sort of wavering between whether I also play power chromatic tune diatonics and whether to use a diatonic or the chromatic. Basically, the chromatic makes it easier to modulate into different keys than the diatonic, even though I can get the bends on the diatonic to get the extra notes. With the chromatic, I've got more options with getting the extra notes. I can just push the slide in and play in a different position. So the short answer is for more jazzy tunes, ones which modulate further away from the home key.

UNKNOWN:

... So,

SPEAKER_01:

If we talk through a few examples of some songs that you do so people can hear you playing the different tunings and what it brings and the sound that it brings.

SPEAKER_00:

I've just started a teaching website on Vimeo. It hasn't got a lot of videos on there, but that's part of my plans for the year is to do a lot more teaching stuff where maybe short clips, maybe even just playing a lick on a powerbender and then explaining exactly what's going on and just a lot more stuff that I will be providing for people who do want to explore them.

SPEAKER_01:

So Eurasia Bend, which is, as you mentioned earlier on, allows quarter tone bends down all on the draw.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right, yes. Yeah, and I love that harp. I mean, it's really quirky and unusual, but it's just so soulful to play. I love playing that harp. So does it only provide quarter bends? Well, when you say quarter bends, it's actually, I mean, a quarter tone, no, it actually provides huge bends. The bends are kind of microtonal in the sense that they go through, quarter tones, but they bend way more than a quarter tone. So basically, for instance, if I'm playing in D, so you can bend your D a whole three semitone. So you can hear the bends going on there, you know, like, and every single note will bend to the next one. So you can choose if you want to, instead of this note here, which is a natural draw note, I can actually bend down from the one above it. So you can choose a bent version of the note instead, which is often the one I will choose because you can then put lovely vibrato on it and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01:

It just sounds like a different instrument. It's incredible, isn't it? That's possibly your most innovative one, isn't it? That Asia Bend one. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

it's so satisfying and fun to play.

SPEAKER_01:

Again, it really opens up, doesn't it, the point that you're doing a show. You're just playing so many different styles of music. To be able to put some of that in, I think you use it on your Bulgarian songs as well, don't

SPEAKER_00:

you? That's another alternate tuning. That's a little bit like power chromatic, but just with one note variation. It's a bit like the Paddy Rick diversion of power chromatic, if you like. It's just one note changed, but then it suddenly gives you those Arabic-Bulgarian type scales really a lot easier.

UNKNOWN:

... Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

So getting on to a little bit into your Frankenharps, as I think you call it. So were you a butcher of those poor harmonicas, Brendan? So I think this started when you were young in New Zealand, where you decided to make yourself an 11-hole diatonic. That's right,

SPEAKER_00:

yeah. I mean, getting back to the concept of removing that reverse breathing pattern in Richter tuning, which I always found annoying, I wanted to basically have the same breathing pattern throughout the entire harp, where the blow note is always lower than the draw. And that means I can bend all the draw notes right throughout the entire range of the harmonica. So what I did was get my hacksaw out and hacksaw the reed plate in half at hole number, just after hole number six. So then I moved the blow, this is the blow reed plate. So then I moved the blow reed plate to the right by one hole. So hole number seven, you know, like on a C harp was now in hole number eight. And that meant that it was below the draw note in hole number eight, which is a D. Suddenly you could bend that draw note, you know, which is what I wanted, which is like hole four. So I shifted my entire blow reed plate over by one hole. And that left a gap on hole number, you know, the hole number seven, there was a big gap there. So I filled that with another note. I put another, you know, a note the same as hole number six. There were sort of options what you could have there, but it was another blow note that was below the B note on a C harp, if you like, either a G or an A, which meant you could bend your B draw note, which you couldn't do on Richter. Okay, so I've moved that one over by a hole, the blow note. So now I've got basically hole number 10 is sticking off the end of the comb. So it seems like what a waste of a good read. I thought, well, instead of just chopping off number 10 and keeping it as a 10 hole harp, why don't I chop the comb up? all together and stick another hole on the end to make it into an 11-hole harp. So that's what I did. I used the Special 20, sliced the comb at number 10, grabbed another comb and put the 11th hole on, if you like.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, we talked about doing different tunings, but actually the idea of then start chopping up is incredible. You know, you're taking it to a whole new level. But again, you know, you've done some tremendous innovations. So I'm interested on that one, though. What about the gap between the actual two combs? How did you smooth all that out so you didn't feel it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you just basically got to be careful. I'd use a hacksaw and then I'd use a sander, you know, fine sanding. And by careful sanding and matching them up, those ABS plastic combs just melt together. If you've got the right glue, they actually bond together a bit like a weld. So basically, once you've got your two sides of the comb nice and flat and smooth, then you just put this sort of plastic weld on there and it actually bonds them together almost stronger than they were before. A lot of people don't want to know about that kind of thing, but there's a small subset of people, I guess, who enjoy that I'm a bit of a halfway there. I do do

SPEAKER_01:

some of my own, you know, changes to the harmonica and I'll certainly tune them and I'll certainly emboss them whenever, every time I buy a harmonica, I'll, you know, I'll tune it and emboss

SPEAKER_00:

it. To be honest, I think a lot more people should do what you're doing because a harp out of the box is, you know, it's okay, but it can be so much better once you just put a little bit of handwork in. You

SPEAKER_01:

worked quite heavily doing customization for a while. I think it became a bit too much for you, you know, it's taken away from your playing.

SPEAKER_00:

That's kind of like a battle I've had for a long, long time. When I say a battle, it's a kind of a tension because I do love the customizing and coming up with new ideas. And in more recent years, that's actually developed into using computers, you know, with CAD design and then using 3D printers. And I just got totally obsessed with it a few years ago. And basically, that's just about all I've done the last four or five years with very little playing. But, you know, this year, I've just seemed to have got the buzz back for the playing and doing, you know, less of the work. the workshop stuff. But it is a, it is a sort of attention because I do love both aspects and they're both very creative as well. You know, just making things and creating things, physical things, as well as making, creating music. I guess in some ways that the more steady income comes from the harmonicas. I mean, I come up with thousands of ideas, but only a few of them sort of actually come out as a product. So I've got two strands to my business where there's one where I create the more far out things here using 3D printers and all that kind of thing but i've also got my sort of tunings that are made in mostly by the e-stock company in china and i've got a business partner a good friend of mine in shanghai who deals helps me deal with the company certain harps they're the lucky 13 power draw power bender a few others are made by the company the e-stock company and then they sent to him in shanghai and he just the orders come into me and he posts them out around the world so i never see those harps but they do um they do provide a good steady income which is independent of gigs and all that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01:

One that's been, I think, a big success for you recently has been the Lucky 13. Has that been one of your best sellers?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it is. I mean, it's unique. That's one thing. There's no other harmonica out there like it. And also it gives people, the sales pitch, is two harps in one. You know, you've got your standard harp, you know, your ten holes, and then you've got another lower octave tagged on the bottom. So it just gives you extra cording range.

UNKNOWN:

A bottle of me.

SPEAKER_02:

do

SPEAKER_00:

And I'm keeping on developing the range with different tunings and stuff like that. We're coming up with a Mark II version very soon, actually, which has got some really nice improvements. One of them is a little extension of one of the ideas that I came up with on my custom combs. I call them look dots. They're basically position markers, which are common on stringed instruments, you know, the little dots on the neck, which help people see where they want to go. Because it's a bigger harp, and so it's kind of harder to know exactly where you are on the harp. But these little look dots on the front of the comb instantly give you a reference point and it makes it a lot easier to just stay where you want to be on this bigger harp. We've got all the boxes and the publicity and everything pretty much ready. It's just I need to build up the stock. Also adding some valves in the bottom end to bring out the volume of the bottom end notes, which were a bit quieter than the upper end ones because the reeds are swinging so much more. So there's a lot more air going through the reeds. So a few little things like that, new covers, which are smoother in your mouth. There's just lots of little changes, but we've got to basically have the stock in place so that when we do finally roll these things out and people want to buy them, we won't be saying, oh, sorry, they'll be coming in next month or two months' time. So that's the phase we're at at the moment, just the last stages, really, of getting the stock ready, and then I'll launch it. So the Lucky 13, is that generally a Richter-tuned harmonica? The standard one is a Richter-tuned harmonica, yes. It's Richter-tuned with an extra bottom end, which is identical to your normal bottom end. But I've also got a Paddy Richter version of it. I've also got a power chromatic version of it. I've got a solo-tuned version of it. So the longer format does give you a lot more options So

SPEAKER_01:

running quickly over some of your other innovations before we move on. So you've got the twin harp system, which allows you to play basically two harmonicas and sort of switch between them from a kind of mouthpiece that you, there's a sort of

SPEAKER_00:

slider on it, is there? That's right. Yeah. It's a sort of little holder that you can put two harmonicas of your choice behind, and they could be two different tunings. They could be set up differently so whatever harmonicas you want to throw in there I mean the standard one would be to make something like a mini chromatic where you have like a C harp and a D flat harp in the back and then you've got a mini chromatic I mean there are some problems with any harmonica once you get your mouth further away from the reeds you get this thing called Helmholtz resonance coupling which it's a technical term for basically what goes on in the resonant frequency of the chamber which is your vocal tract plus the comb chamber, all the stuff between your throat and the reed has got a resonant frequency. And then the reed itself has got its own resonant frequency when it's just played. And sometimes those can come into conflict, especially in the top end of a harmonica. If you've got a big chamber or a long chamber, the resonant frequency of that chamber, the pitch of it is lower than the pitch of the reed, the high reed in the harmonica. And what can happen there is that you get this interference between the two of them. And the reed can be forced to play in a suboptimal way. It goes flat for one thing. It plays flat. And in extreme cases, the reed will just stop working altogether. I've also made double chromatics where you've got two chromatics being the same kind of thing. And in the very high notes of, say, a C chromatic, C double chromatic, it makes it really... problematic so the long and the short of it is that you you work these things work a lot better with lower keys you know like on a diatonic so if you have something like your lower key diatonic up to up to about a whole c but you don't want to go above the whole c i mean this happens on any harmonica i mean for instance um the xb40 that are recapping some brilliant design they have the same problem because your mouth is further away from the reeds um so you know when you get hot in the high keys it just won't work it's one of those things it's about it's an immutable natural law a bit like gravity you can't get away from it yeah so the the twin the twin you know the slide a switch harp i call it with the slider um has that issue to contend with but some people just love it because it does give them the option to kind of get keep their blues harp sound but also get all the chromatic notes just by pressing a slider

SPEAKER_01:

yeah and you uh the the slide diatonic which is one of the ones i own of yours as well which is either tuned to the the patty richter tuning which The slider bass, where you've made a new mouthpiece for the bass harmonica. I bought one of those as well. I play a bit of bass harmonica. I'm not a real expert, but that really revolutionized playing the bass harmonica. Instead of having to switch between the two different parts of the bass harmonica, just having a slide on there is an incredible innovation.

SPEAKER_00:

yeah they take they took months and months of work you know just about everything you're talking about um the process of getting it to a point where it's actually something workable and and um it's hugely time consuming um but yeah so over the over the last as i say four or five years i've just done a huge amount of that and um you know it's all been fascinating and um you know i've produced some harmonicas which um have pleased a small number of people you know like say someone like ross garan just loves the um slider bass yeah they're kind of niche harmonicas i guess most of them. The Lucky 13 is not a niche harmonica. That's definitely a mainstream harmonica, but a lot of the other ones you're talking about are more niche harmonicas for people who, you know, a small number of people.

SPEAKER_01:

Another thing you're really interested in is using technology to enhance the what you can get out of a harmonica. And you've got some YouTube videos, which again, I'll put a link to about how you can use all the great apps on an iPad to get all these different sounds and synthesizers. And there's all sorts of, you can get amp modelings, can't you, on iPads and plug mics into that. And you got interested in playing looping, using these sorts of things. So you want to talk about that for a little bit?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, actually, that's something that I am really into at the moment. At the moment, it's, yeah, sounds and effects. And I'm having all this time and all my gear just set up there. You have the time because it does take a lot of time exploring this, that, and the next thing. I've been into looping for quite a long time. I love looping. The iPad in particular is an amazing music machine. It's extraordinary, the incredible apps and stuff that are in there that allow you to do all these amazing things. I mean, looping, for one thing, there's an incredible app in there called Loopy. It's just something on your screen, but it's way better than the looper I've been using for a long time. And there's another thing called sort of real-time pitch to MIDI conversion. This is something I've been fascinated. MIDI sounds are, you know, it's a whole new world. You know, that's the kind of digital sounds that people have been playing on keyboards for a long time. And also some wind synths like the E-Wii and stuff. So one way to get that is with a MIDI harmonica. And there's one called the DM-48, the Leghome DM-48, which is awesome. And I love that. But there's some issues with it. You can't bend notes on it like a normal harmonica and stuff. So I've been trying to find a middle way, you know, where you can use a... to MIDI converter. And just recently, things are getting to the point where that's getting more usable. There's an app in the iPad called MIDI Guitar 2, which is obviously designed for guitarists. But you can plug your mic into it. And as long as you play cleanly, you can trigger all these MIDI sounds quite well with very few glitches. And that opens up a huge new world of incredible sounds. And I'm just loving exploring that. So we were talking about the bass harmonica bit before now you've got you can actually play the bass on your normal harmonica you don't have to have a bass harmonica because you've got a midi bass sounds and so you can be playing but you know the sound coming out can be an awesome bass patch about three octaves below where you are it sounds awesome so it's just so empowering this midi midi world and it is getting possible now to trigger it using standard harmonicas

SPEAKER_01:

Again, maybe at this time, a lot of people are interested in home recording. It's something that, you know, I certainly dabble in and I do reasonable amounts. Again, it's a bit like we were talking about earlier on. It's almost too many choices, isn't it? It's almost, there's so much stuff out there, isn't it? It's what do you focus on? So I think your videos are maybe a good way in for a harmonica player to look and say, well, some of these, these are some of the things that work, yeah? And, you know, a bit of a, you've done some of the work for us. We can look, the loop is a good example of the app there. So they can go and check out. But I mean, anything else, you know, quickly to summarize what you do and what's

SPEAKER_00:

possible. I realize that it is a very daunting area. And that, again, takes a huge amount of time. And for instance, even just finding what are the good apps to use. As I'm going along, I'm exploring as I'm going along and finding new things every day myself. But when I do discover and find something that's really good and user-friendly, when I get the time, I make a video to show what I've done. And then that will short-circuit the learning process for people who want to explore the same thing. And as I say, I've got this new teaching site. So I I put up a video on YouTube sort of demonstrating things. But then if people do want to explore it in much more depth, you know, with an on-screen recording of the iPad screen where they can see exactly what's going on much more easily, they can go to my teaching website.

SPEAKER_01:

Just talking about some of your awards, you've won a few awards in your time. You won... Spurs International Harmonica Player of the Year in 2011. And you won in 2012 with Tim Eadie the Best Duo Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Tim and I were, you know, he's a phenomenal musician, as you know, and we were touring together for two or three years quite intensively and put out a couple of albums. That was a real honour to be given that. We played at the Radio 2 Folk Award thing on television. So yeah, that was great.

UNKNOWN:

piano plays softly

SPEAKER_01:

I'm talking about you doing quite a few TV appearances. I saw you played on Jules Holland. I watched that you're playing the Dingle Angle on Jules Holland. How was that? Wow,

SPEAKER_00:

that was pretty... It just came out of the blue. I mean, we only got told... Yes, I think it might have been on the day because basically there was another band there. I don't know who they were, but they couldn't do it. And I'd sent in, you know, my album Tradish. And basically, I think they needed a fill-in act, you know, very short notice. So they gave me a ring. I think it was around sort of 10 or 11 in the morning. Can you come in and play tonight on the Jules Holland show? So anyway, by that stage, I knew Tim Eadie and also Lucy Randall, a brilliant Boweron player. So I rang them up and they were free that day. It was a very fraught journey i had this ancient uh car which was um uh radiator was boiling and we had traffic problems and all sorts of things but we just got there in the nick of time to stumble into the studio and and do it so i remember that day as being very very stressful but um yeah we did it

SPEAKER_01:

that's a great performance it doesn't come across across that way it looks very slick when you're playing so you didn't have much time to rehearse them beforehand

SPEAKER_00:

no

SPEAKER_01:

pretty

SPEAKER_00:

much do it yeah and they wanted me to walk around the studio but what they didn't realize is that you know with the harmonica you can't see what you're doing so once you get away from your monitors or whatever away from the other musicians I couldn't actually hear what they were doing so well to lock in with them you know with most instruments you can see what you're doing you know on a guitar you can look at your fingers or a piano with the harmonica unless you can hear yourself well you might end up being playing on hole number six instead of hole number seven which is a disaster so that was quite stressful as well because they wanted me to walk around and it wasn't so easy from the sound side of it

SPEAKER_01:

yeah well I saw you walking around I know it's a great it's a great video I'll put a link to the video I hope it's a great one. There's plenty of other videos of you playing, of course, around, including at Walmart. I was watching you play a little bit. So you've done quite a lot of session work. There's quite a lot listed on your website. You played with Sting, no less. So how was that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that was amazing. I mean, that was not long after I came from New Zealand. You know, I sent off my cassettes, as they were at that time, to various places, heard absolutely nothing, you know, for about six months. And, you know, London is a very expensive place to live. I was pretty much ready to go back to New Zealand, to be honest. But then suddenly I got a ring in a Sting once. So, you know, from total nothing to someone, an internationally famous star. So, yeah, that was pretty cool. That was kind of like a fairly short phase of about a month where I played on a track on his records, Ten Summoners Tales, and I played on one track called Something the Boys Said. And then I went out to one of his beautiful homes near Salisbury and playing with these incredible musicians, Vinnie Colliuter and David Sanchez and Dominic Miller, you know, sort of world-renowned musicians. I played on another video there that Larry Adler played on on the record, Shape of My Heart. So Larry Adler played it on the record, but I think he was ill and he couldn't get out there. So I played on that as well on a video. So yeah, that was great. And then we did Top of the Pops, which was miming. Sting had a solo, a single out, whose name escapes me now, but it had a bit of him playing some very basic little harmonica stabs on it. So I mimed to Sting's harmonica on there. We did the same thing in Paris. So it was about a month of high-level stuff, and then basically they'd moved on. They went off on tour, and I was back to pretty much where I was before. But it did lead to all sorts of other things as well. So it was great.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, fantastic. And you played with a few other people, Shirley Bassey and Paul Young, and you played on a few movie soundtracks, Atonement, which was an Oscar-winning soundtrack. So did you get

SPEAKER_00:

anything for that? We went to the party. I mean, the guy who won the Oscar for the soundtrack was the composer, of course, but he threw a nice party for all the musicians and everyone involved. So yeah, that was great. I've got a photo.

SPEAKER_01:

In the UK, for UK listeners, you also played on, you played with Billy Connolly. People have heard him around the world. But for UK listeners, Alveda's End Pet, you played on. There's a very famous show here in the UK.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, that was a buzz, you know, because I love that show, actually. I really enjoyed it. So, yeah, I played on one or two of those series, and that was fun. So when I was in London, which was basically from 92 until 2002, I did quite a bit of session work there. Moving out to Canterbury sort of coincided partly with changes in the music industry as well. I mean, there's a lot less session work of the old style going on these days because if someone's got a laptop at home, they can do a lot of that stuff just and fly it in. So I still do some session work that way where people call me up and say, can you play my album? And I never meet them or whatever, but I play on some tracks. But yeah, it's not the same as it used to be where you would go into these very, very expensive studios in London itself and work away. You're great at diversifying your income streams as a musician I think that's a really important point to make for any young harp players listening. Try and diversify. I mean, you can do that in various ways. You can play more than one instrument, for example, you know, get really good at some other instrument like the sax or the guitar. So you're not just reliant on being a really good harp player because the harmonica has got a very specific characteristic sound. And if you're playing in a band, you know, people aren't going to want harmonica on every single song, unless it's your band, of course. That's again where this pitch to MIDI can be amazing because you can actually sound like another instrument with your harmonica using pitch to MIDI software. Secondly, if you can master other skills like customization and stuff like that, then you can have another income stream where you can customize harps for other people and make money that way. Yeah, so definitely diversifying your skills is really a key to having a long-term career in the music business. Teaching, of course, is another one. If all you can do is play a really good harmonica, you're going to, no matter how good you are, you're probably going to find it pretty tough.

SPEAKER_01:

One question I ask each time is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10

SPEAKER_00:

minutes doing? Oh, just whatever I'm into at the time. You know, again, I couldn't say anything specific, but if I'm into Chinese music, it would be a Chinese thing. If it was into effects, I'd be playing with them. So yeah, I couldn't say anything specific except what I'm going to buzz on for that at the moment. I've never had a practice regime. I mean, a lot of people practice scales and all this kind of thing, but I've never been one of those.

SPEAKER_01:

So we're moving to talking about gear now. So first of all, which harmonica do you play? Now, clearly, we've talked a lot about your harmonica. So which harmonica would you say? Which brand, maybe? Or which tunings are your favorite? To be

SPEAKER_00:

honest, I can't give a straight, quick answer to that. In my gig bag, I've got Suzuki's, I've got Hohner's, I've got some East Tops. Probably those three would be the, you know, selection of those ones would be the ones that I use. But many of them are hybrids, you know, Suzuki replates on a CX-12 comb and that kind of thing. So probably those three brands. Do you have a favorite

SPEAKER_01:

key of harmonica? Again, because you play different tunings, this might be a different answer for you. I guess

SPEAKER_00:

lower key diatonics I prefer, you know, like low F is very nice. Probably low F to C diatonics. I prefer them to

SPEAKER_01:

the higher ones. So overblows, I assume given that you play a lot of half valves, which aren't possible to play overblows, you don't play overblows at all, do you not?

SPEAKER_00:

I never play them in actual, you know, my playing. I mean, I use them for testing and for demonstrating things for people who do play overblows on unvalved harps. I play all half-valved harps and... Overblows are not possible. And also I've never been mad on overblows, to be honest. The only, the only time I like overblows is when they, you can actually do more than with a standard harp. For instance, I made something called the overblow booster. So if you can stop that, the lower note in the overblow hole, either, you know, if you take your covers off and just stop it with your lips, or you can put your finger over the, um, the blow read, suddenly your overblow can really, really be sexy and loud and strong. So in that sense, I do like the sound of overblows then, but on the general harp, um, unless it's by some extraordinary player like Howard Levy or, and with an amazing Joe Felisco harp. I mean, there are more and more players who can do them well, but in general, I've never liked the sound of them compared to a bend. So, you know, I'd always change my harps to get the same note with a bend of some sort. And embouchure-wise, you're a puckerer. Yeah. To start with, I had no idea about that kind of thing back in New Zealand. And I started playing with the lip rolling method for about a year or more. And eventually, I just can't get these things that all the blues guys were doing and figured out something was wrong in my mouth. I suppose I must be doing something wrong. So I tried the pucker method. Yeah, suddenly I could do a lot of that stuff. And so I've stuck with that. I have tried tongue blocking once or twice, but never got good enough to stick with it. And also, it seems like a backwards step in some ways in terms of speed and dexterity. So I've stuck with the lip-pursing method.

SPEAKER_01:

And amplifier-wise, again, maybe a bit of a different question for you, but do you have a favorite amps?

SPEAKER_00:

I've always gone with the sound effects, affecting the sound and then putting it into whatever there is. I mean, at the moment, I've got a really nice amp that I use, which is a Bose amp, but it's a clean amp. It's kind of like a combo vocal instrument amp. In terms of a valve amp, I did have a tiny little Fender Champ for a lot of years, which was really nice. And I've got a few small amps, but mostly I'm interested in... doing stuff with electronics to change the sound and then putting it into wherever I am, the PA or whatever. Well, I feed my mic into a multi-effects unit or the iPad or whatever and change the sound there, yeah. And what about your favorite microphone? I really like Greg Heumann's Blows Me Away mics. I've got a whole bunch of them. The Bullettini is really nice. The Ultimate. So the Bullettini and the Ultimate, it's 58, is it, or 57s? Those are the main ones that I use. But I also love to use cheap little lapel mics. You can buy them for 10 quid or whatever, tiny little lapel mics, and put them, and you get a lovely sort of hand cupping sound. And another mic that I've just been experimenting with recently it's called um PCM mic and these are those kind of like mics that people use for video conferencing it sits in the middle of a table you know people just talk and I've got a few couple of those and they're pretty they're really awesome if you put them in your hand and start and play with them yeah I love experimenting with mics probably my favorite would be the tiny little um lapel mics but often they are not so practical they don't have a volume control and they can be more prone to feedback and stuff like that

SPEAKER_01:

Again, maybe slightly different for you, a question I ask is around effects pedals. So I think you've already touched on this. You like to use a multi-processor effects and then maybe the iPad for that sort of thing. So do you use any specific effects pedals beyond those?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I've got a little thing that I've had for a number of years called the Korg Pandora, which is a multi-effects pedal. Well, it's not a pedal on the floor, but it's a little multi-effects unit about the size of a cigarette box, which has got huge amounts of sound in it. And then that goes into another beautiful effects unit that on your mic stand i'm really into stuff that um you can put on your mic stand you know i don't believe in floor effects i think it's a silly idea for harmonica players i mean we've got a free hand so we should use our hands to um manipulate that sound it's far more accurate than stomping on knobs on the floor that's for guitarists really as far as i can see so yeah basically i mount everything on my mic stand and i've got this really nice mic stand um device called the tc helicon voice live touch which has got all these um lots of lovely effects plus um harmonies and stuff like that and then underneath that that I've got a little mixer and now I'm incorporating the iPad into that setup so everything's on a little sort of waist height stand so you can just do everything with your fingers there and change settings really quickly.

SPEAKER_01:

Last question obviously now we're in pandemic time have you got any future plans coming up any tours planned or any recordings in mind for when things open

SPEAKER_00:

up? No it's a short answer I mean basically we just don't know how long this is going to last once it is safe to you know if there's a vaccine or something like that and it's safe to travel I'd love to go back to New Zealand see my family and maybe play some music there I mean there were a few things in the pipeline for this year spa and the Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival but they've both been cancelled now beyond that who knows

SPEAKER_01:

yeah well I'm sure you'll come up with some more wonderful innovative things during this downtime that you have at home Brennan so we can all look forward to that so yeah thanks very much for speaking to me I could literally speak about harmonicas with you all day long but we'll have to leave it there so thanks very much Yeah, really nice to talk to you. That's it for today, folks. Once again, thanks to my sponsor, the Lone Wolf Blues Company, providing some great effects pedals and microphones, all purpose-built for the harmonica. Be sure to check out their website. Brendan, players out.