Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

PT Gazell interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 9

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PT Gazell developed his melodic style of harmonica through playing a range of genres, from Bluegrass, to Pop, Country and Jazz.

After his iconic first album, Pace Yourself, he became a session musician and toured with Country bands before taking a prolonged break from playing due to his frustrations at the limitations of the diatonic harmonica. 

This led him to develop his Gazell Method half-valved diatonic, in partnership with the German manufacturer Seydel.


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

http://www.ptgazell.com

If you're interested in purchasing a Gazell Method diatonic:
from within the US: http://www.ptgazell.com/gazell-method-harmonicas-1.html
outside the US: https://www.seydel1847.de/epages/Seydel1847.sf/en_US/?ObjectPath=/Shops/Seydel/Categories/Products/Specialities/PT-Halbventiliert

PT offers teaching either through the online course at Music Gurus:
http://www.ptgazell.com/online-instruction.html
Or you can email PT if you're interested in one-to-one tuition: info@ptgazell.com

Some of the equipment PT uses:
Audix Fireball V5 mic: https://audixusa.com/docs_12/units/FireBall_V.shtml
Bulletini mic: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/bulletini.html
Lone Wolf effects pedals: https://www.lonewolfblues.com


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/

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SPEAKER_02:

Hi, Neil Warren here again and welcome to another episode of the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast with more interviews with some of the finest harmonica players around today. 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. Quick word from my sponsor now, 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. I welcome P.T. Gazelle to the podcast today. P.T. developed his melodic style of harmonica through playing a range of different genres from bluegrass to pop, country and jazz. After his iconic first album, Pace Yourself, he became a session musician and toured with country bands before taking a prolonged break from playing due to his frustrations at the limitations of the diatonic harmonica. This led him to develop his Gazelle Method half-valve diatonic, important Hello PT Gazelle and welcome to the podcast. Hi Neil. First question, what does the PT stand for in the PT Gazelle?

SPEAKER_03:

It's actually much more innocent and less mysterious than people think. It's actually just the initials of my first and middle name, Phil Thomas.

SPEAKER_02:

I see that you grew up in Wisconsin, in a town called, I'm not sure I want to dare pronounce it.

SPEAKER_03:

It's pronounced Oconomowoc. It's a Native American name.

SPEAKER_02:

From what I've read, that town was quite a good little music scene for a small place.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm sure it's not unlike a lot of other places, but for the size of the community, it seemed to have quite a bit of music, and music being a real important part of the social life there. And I guess we weren't very far, maybe a 30-minute drive from Milwaukee, which had a lot of regional acts come through as well.

SPEAKER_02:

The town in Wisconsin, which I don't pronounce, it wasn't so far from Chicago.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, 90 minutes away. from Chicago, basically two hours from where I lived, but 90 minutes from Milwaukee. So it was a regular stop on the, certainly the blues music scene, you know, all the blues touring acts would, there were several clubs, one in particular called Teddy's in Milwaukee that regularly had people like, you know, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite and James Cott I snuck in at, I was probably only 16 years old, but I would regularly try to sneak in to see those acts. So I got to see a lot of the major harmonica stars of the day early on.

SPEAKER_02:

Did that sow the seeds for your interest in harmonica?

SPEAKER_03:

You know, like a lot of other people, I think I was always taken by the fact that Here was an instrument that you couldn't really see because somebody had it up against their, you know, against their face with their hands covering it. The men that, you know, the players in general that could really play, it was like a magic trick because there was just so much music and so much soul coming out of something you couldn't even see. Some tiny little instrument that was hidden. And I always liked the sound of the instrument.

SPEAKER_02:

You moved to Lexington, Kentucky. What sort of age? 24 or 5, I think. Okay, so you started playing harmonica before you moved to Lexington. Yeah,

SPEAKER_03:

but not much more. I didn't really take up the instrument until I was 19 years old. I had only been playing several years by then.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, and do you remember what made you pick up the harmonica for the first time?

SPEAKER_03:

It was a couple of things. Number one is being exposed to the blues artists that I saw traveling through the Milwaukee area. And number two, from the moment I picked it up at age 19, I felt like I could play the instrument. Of course, it's an instrument that people can make sounds on without any musical talent whatsoever. But I was blessed with a pretty good ear, so I could pick out melodies and pretty much figure out how to play them right away on the instrument and just kind of really evolved that way. I

SPEAKER_02:

believe you dropped out of college to pursue a career in music.

SPEAKER_03:

Actually, it's a little more involved than that. I actually went to university for a year with the intention of doing something in the radio, film, or television industry. But there were so many hundreds of other people at the one university I was at that were trying to do the same exact thing that I thought, am I ever going to be able to get a job with a college degree doing this? Maybe I should take some time off and reevaluate. And that was when I discovered that I could actually play harmonica and decided to try and make a go of that.

SPEAKER_02:

So great to see. You thought the prospects making money from playing harmonica was even higher.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I mean, I think like so many of us, Neil, at age 19, we didn't really think through the process. Sure, I'll just try and play harmonica. Let's see if I can make a living doing that.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So, okay, so then you moved to Lexington, Kentucky. Was that with the intention to play music into the music scene

SPEAKER_03:

there? It was, and I should preface all this by saying that even though I was influenced on the instrument by watching a lot of blues artists, I was never that really interested in using the harmonica in that medium, in that genre of music. I... liked it and I to this day still admire people that have crafted their sound and understand the genre and do all the techniques and everything associated with blues harmonica playing but to me I always thought about the instrument more like a clarinet or a trumpet and I think that's Circles back to listening to music that my father liked. And so I was always trying to play the instrument more in that vein and kind of gravitated more towards country and bluegrass and folk music to start with. That's one of the reasons I ended up in Kentucky. I had started to travel south. During the summer months to go to festivals, the bluegrass festivals were in the South, in Kentucky and Tennessee and North Carolina. And I started traveling there to go be more exposed to that style of music and through a series of events that happened. I met someone who owned a recording studio in Kentucky, and he heard me play and said, you know, would you be interested in moving to Kentucky? Because I have a need for a harmonica player in Lexington, Kentucky. There's really not anybody there that can play the style you're playing. And There's many people that come to record and looking for a harmonica on one or two songs. And I struck up a deal with him and said, well, I would be willing to do that. But in exchange for that, what I would like to get is recording time so I can record an album. And that's kind of how the first recording, Pace Yourself, the LP Pace Yourself kind of came to be. At the time, Lexington was a really happening scene, mostly because of this recording studio. That studio had become known for recording bluegrass albums.

SPEAKER_02:

You made the album Pace Yourself. You had quite a beard then, P.T.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I used to have more hair on my head, too. That was kind of the look.

SPEAKER_02:

Just hope you didn't get your harmonica trapped in that beard, but yes, a fine beard.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, I can remember, I actually, back then, when you played harmonica, you basically played a honer and you played a marine band. There really wasn't much else in the late 70s, and they were notorious for not being put together that great. Pulling your mustache or beard hairs together was not uncommon at all,

SPEAKER_02:

man. Yeah, so the album pays yourself a nice mixture of mainly bluegrass album, but with a mixture of some other stuff on there.

SPEAKER_03:

It was funny. It was like a mixture of, yeah, definitely some bluegrass stuff and definitely some Irish and Scottish-influenced sort of things, and definitely a couple of country tunes as well. And I just felt like... through my entire recording and performing career i just play what i think i can perform the best and that the audience will enjoy i don't really think much about concept albums in terms of you know i want to keep it all x or y it's just what i feel like i can actually do the best and make it entertaining for the audience.

SPEAKER_02:

It's interesting that obviously the harmonica is associated a lot with blues, but I'm personally interested in playing a lot of different genres on the harmonica myself. Yeah, I think to check out a different genre of playing for a lot of people listening, you know, it's a great album for that. Tennessee Waltz, I was enjoying playing along with that one.

SPEAKER_03:

Tennessee Waltz is a great, it's such a great tune. It just seems to lay perfect on the harmonica. And I just felt like I could perform that song with enough emotion and grace to do it justice.

SPEAKER_02:

And the song on there, which I really love, and it's been one of my favorite harmonica songs for a long time, is the Flintstones.

SPEAKER_03:

That's probably the most... I don't know. Last time I checked, and it's been a long time since I went to look at what gets downloaded the most off that CD. For a long time, it was a tie between Red-Haired Boy and The Flintstones. The Flintstones, the idea for that I was watching some show one night and Barney Kessel, great jazz guitar player, did the tune. And I thought, wow, I wonder if I could actually play that on the harmonica. And so, you know, the first part is I could do pretty easily. And then I realized that I was missing a note when I had to go to the B part of the song, the chorus part of the song. So Having been largely influenced by Charlie McCoy for the first several years of my playing and realized that Charlie used to get around doing that by switching harmonicas for a phrase or two, I discovered that I could jump to another harmonica and actually play that phrase and jump back. So the practice part was trying to do that fluidly without it sounding like me changing harmonicas. And of course, now I don't need to do that. I can do it all in a harmonica or, you know, there's different tuned harmonicas. And I think just the speed of how fast we decided to do the tune or I decided to do the tune was part of the thing that appealed to people so much. As time goes on, I don't play that. I try not to play that fast anymore. I try to play more about content, more their quality, more than quantity. Back then, it was something to do, and it was one of those magical cuts that just kind of came out.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a great song, and the melody at the first part is great. I love playing along with that. But then you really get into it when you start improvising after you play through the melody.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't believe we did more than one or two takes, and that may have been the first take of it we did. It's just a lot of times that's always the best. You don't think about it too much. So

SPEAKER_02:

the last podcast was with Charlie McCoy. I was talking to Charlie, obviously, about he's very heavily into playing melodic style of harmonica. You say he was quite an influence on you in the early days, was he, Charlie?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, my gosh, yes. I'll tell you when my life changed. I mean, I was already playing harmonica, and I had just learned how to play in second position. And I was still kind of struggling with bending notes, but I could figure out how to bend notes. And I was driving in my car, pushed the button and hit a country station, and I heard somebody playing harmonica. And I knew enough by then that I knew it was in second position, but it was incredibly melodic, incredibly incredibly accurate on the bending, just incredibly produced with the harmonica right out in front as the lead instrument. I almost drove off the road. I mean, I was flabbergasted. And the song was Take Me Home, Country Roads. By the time it hit the second verse... and then heard this player actually playing Harmony with himself too, I was at that point in for all the money in the world at that point. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be able to do what I was hearing. Immediately, didn't even go home, just drove directly to the local record store and asked a guy who has this record out. And he says, well, it's some guy named Charlie McCoy. The next several years were me trying to imitate Charlie McCoy until I could find my own voice. The guy's a good personal close friend of mine. I'm just, I'm really honored to be, just to call him a friend.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, we've been talking around the album Pay For Self, which you released in 1978. So where did that, where did that take you then? Did you, I think you then got an offer to go and play with Johnny Paycheck in Nashville a little while after that.

SPEAKER_03:

I did. I was living in Lexington and, and, a bluegrass artist that was in Lexington also, a very famous one in the bluegrass field called, named J.D. Crowe, went to Nashville and recorded a bluegrass album, but decided he wanted to kind of modernize the sound. So he put a pedal steel guitar on it and harmonica. And of course, Charlie McCoy was the harmonica player. About two months after the record came out, J.D. decided that the public television station in Lexington had a music show, and they decided to invite JD to come and do his new songs. And rather than pay Charlie McCoy, or Charlie may not have been available, I don't know what the circumstances were, but they knew I was in town, so they asked me if I would come and play his parts. Well, I decided to do it, and the steel player... who was actually on the record, was available. So he came up from Nashville to do the show. And it turned out that he was actually playing for Johnny Paycheck at the time. And this guy heard me play and he said, you know, Johnny Paycheck just hired a harmonica player last week and he's not very good. He said, I'm going to, when I get back to Nashville, you know, on Monday, I'm going to recommend that he hires you. And I thought, well, you know, sure. But darned if the phone didn't ring on Monday and I got offered this job and I just took it and moved to Nashville and been here ever since. Yeah, we toured for, I worked for Johnny for about four years and we were gone a lot, man. We probably were, we probably did, oh, in excess of, 220 shows a year. And what style of

SPEAKER_02:

music were you playing with them?

SPEAKER_03:

It was country. One of the cool things about that job was that not only the steel guitar player, but the bass player and the drummer were also very much influenced by Western swing music and had grown up playing Western swing. And so that was kind of my first exposure to Western swing music. And I just fell in love with it. And it made me have to really rethink how I was playing because they wanted to play parts, the steel player and the guitar player, and they wanted me to play one of the parts, like a little section, a lot of arranged, very arranged sort of things. And so I had to really learn how to jump around on different harmonicas to try and do some of that stuff. So it was quite beneficial and very rewarding all at the same time.

SPEAKER_00:

Out here in this night air When

SPEAKER_03:

I left Paycheck, I actually did sessions for a couple of years. And then I went back out on the road again with Mel McDaniel, another country artist. And I worked for him for about three years. And that kind of ended my working as a sideman career. That was kind of like my last Sideman gig.

SPEAKER_02:

Around this time, you decided at some point to stop playing the harmonica.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep. Yeah. In 1988, I basically set the instrument down, Neil, and said, I'm not playing anymore. I'm not playing music anymore. I was very frustrated with the diatonic Richter-tuned harmonica in that I couldn't play what I wanted to play without changing harmonicas. I didn't want to fight it anymore. And I didn't want to compromise what I was hearing in my head. And so I just basically set the instrument down and decided I wasn't going to play anymore. Part of it was because I had been playing in the late 70s and early 80s with Johnny Paycheck and doing Western swing arrangements where I needed all the notes on the harmonica. And I was forced to have to sometimes play... stack up two or three harmonicas and jump back and forth and try and make it sound fluid. Part of the reason was that, yeah, I had been exposed to different sorts of music other than three-chord blues tunes, and the melodies were a little more complicated, and I needed those notes. And I just didn't want to compromise by having to switch harmonicas anymore, and I didn't want to play chromatic. I liked the sound of the diatonic.

SPEAKER_02:

So you had a period of 15 years where you didn't play and you went to get a regular job.

SPEAKER_03:

When I quit playing, I actually came full circle back to being 19 years old and actually started working as an audio post-production engineer for film and television. One of the young film editors that I was working with was doing a documentary on a very famous... music venue here in Nashville called the Blue Grass Inn and he didn't know I played music he had no idea I was a musician but I was helping him do the sound for this documentary and he kept asking me about different names of people because I'm older than he is and I've been in Nashville a long time and I said yeah well I knew him yeah I know who he is and finally he said so how do you know all these people and I said well I used to play music with them and he said So you play an instrument? And I said, well, I used to play, yes. And so he, this is like 2002. So he, while I'm standing there, he Googles my name. And at that time, Google in 2002 was still something very new. And I had never used it and would have never thought to type somebody's name in Google. Well, he typed my name in and a bunch of stuff came up, like whatever happened to P.T. Gazelle? Where is he? I heard he died. So, I mean, there was quite a variety of things in there. And I started thinking, gee, I wonder if I still have an audience. I wonder if there's people that would be interested in me playing. And I went home and I said to my wife, do I still own my harmonicas? Because I had no idea. We had moved. in between that time. And she said, yeah, I know where they are. And went upstairs and came downstairs with a briefcase full of harmonicas. And I went, wow. I started fooling around with it. And the next thing I did was called one of my old dear friends, Jelly Roll Johnson, who's a great player, who kind of took over the mantle from McCoy as far as session playing goes in town here. And I said to him, so I'm thinking about playing again. And he said, well, if you're going to do that, then the first thing you have to do is you have to go to the Spock invention. And he said, I'm going, just go with me. So we went to the Spock invention and I was totally blown away how much the instrument had grown up in 15 years. In 88, when I quit, Howard Levy was just becoming a household name. Okay. And I mean, I had heard a recording of him and realized he was doing something that I didn't understand and that he was able to get the missing notes. But by then I'd made the decision that I was going to quit and didn't care. So I basically missed the whole Howard Levy phenomenon of overblowing and how he was doing things in the next 15 years because I wasn't paying any attention anymore.

UNKNOWN:

Music

SPEAKER_03:

But I was amazed at how much the instrument had grown up and decided that if I was going to play again, I probably would have to learn how to overblow. And that's the extent of what I knew about overblowing. I didn't even know what it did. I had no idea. So a couple of guys at Spa who remembered me or knew who I was from 15 years prior said, well, let me take one of your harmonicas apart and we'll we'll gap. two of the reeds on hole number six, and then just act like you're going to blow bend at the top of the harmonica, and you'll start to hear how it does it. So I did it, and I immediately did an overblow, immediately. And they said, wow, that sounds really good. And I said, yeah, but that's the wrong note. And they went, what are you talking about? And I said, well, that makes the note go up in pitch. I want the note to go down. I just want to flat the note. And they said, well, no, you don't do that. That's not what you do. So the rest is kind of history about the half-valving thing and how that all kind of went from there. But that was my first initial back in at playing harmonica.

SPEAKER_02:

So let's talk about the half-valving now. I think it'd be of interest to a lot of people listening about exactly how the half-valving works.

SPEAKER_03:

Valve actually is covering the first six draw slots, because what you're trying to do is shut off, as you know, the harmonica. When we blow into hole one or draw in hole one, there's air going through both slots all the time. Even though both notes don't make a sound, there is air going through there. Let's talk about Richter tuning for a second. Because of how Richter tuning is set up, some notes, draw notes and some blow notes are bendable because there is a half step or more interval in between the blow and the draw note. For instance, on hole, what, four draw, blow four is a C note on a C harmonica, and the draw note is a D note. So that means if I draw bend hole four, there's a half step interval that we can make a note. So there's that draw bend on four. But the problem is we move to like hole five, And there is no half-step interval there because it's, what, an E and an F. And we get to hole six and we run into the same problem. We can't get that F sharp because there is no half-step interval to allow us to do different things. So by shutting off the opposite valve, the opposite reed of the one we're trying to manipulate, we can now do a single reed bend. If we put a valve, let's say, on hole 6, on the draw slot of hole 6, I can now blow bend hole 6. Listen. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

So you're now playing the G note on a C6 blow, and you're bringing that down to an F sharp. That's exactly right. but you're lowering the pitch rather than raising the pitch.

SPEAKER_03:

And so I'll stop at this point and tell you the three major reasons why I play half valve. Number one is, logically, it makes more sense to me to flat everything because that's what I naturally learned how to do when I bent notes. Every time you bent a note, and we're not talking about valve bending now, but just regular bending, if it's a draw note, like on hole four draw, I'm flatting that note. So on the top of the harmonica, I'm doing the same thing. Even though it's a blow bend on hole eight or nine, I'm still flatting that note. So logically, not having ever overblown, flatting the note made more sense to me. Number two, I now had access to all the notes. And here's the part that some people get really confused about. In second position or cross harp, you're only missing two notes anyway in the chromatic scale. You're missing what we call the flatted sixth and the major seventh. And I'm now able to fill those in by blow bending hole five and blow bending hole six. I'm now able to fill in the missing notes. That's the second reason. I now have chromaticity to a diatonic instrument. And the third reason, and this probably is maybe the most satisfying reason for me to play half-valving, is I'm able to put shading, coloring, and emotional content on every single read on the harmonica now. Not just some of the notes. What is it that people really like about the diatonic harmonica? Let's go back to four draw. This. This is what people like about the diatonic instrument. That kind of emotional shading or warbling. I'm not really hitting... full half-step bend there, but I'm shading or emotionally portraying that note. And I'm able to do that now on all 20 notes. So I'll do the same thing now on six blow. For me, what it does is it makes the whole harmonica now more of a complete instrument. And I feel like it's more of a, I'm able to emotionally portray portray what i'm trying to do a lot easier when i can shade or color all 20 notes what's interesting about it is when you when you get the hang of this what what what happens is you start to understand where the octaves are on the harmonica because the first thing i try to tell people is when they say well how am i you know what do i need to do to try and do this And the first thing I'd ask them to do is blow bend at the top of the harmonica, which is not a valve bend. It's like holes eight and nine. That's holes eight and nine, and I'm doing a blow bend, which is something we should all be able to do on a regular Richter tuned diatonic. Interestingly enough, holes five and six mirror that. That's the octave below it. So here's eight and nine again. Now I'll drop down to five and six and do that. And then two.

SPEAKER_01:

So

SPEAKER_03:

you start to understand how the instrument is laid out a little better, and it allows you to start to do kind of riffs that you interconnect the phrases.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

yeah like you said that's a really good connection between say the five blow and the eight blow where you've got the same you know you've got it's the same movement isn't it that you that you're used to doing in the top octave there's vowels at the top in the top octave on the blowers, so you can draw bends.

SPEAKER_03:

That's exactly right. So now on the top octave, starting on hole seven, which incidentally is where the pattern changes, right? We go from starting on hole four, we go blow, draw, blow, draw, blow, draw, and then we have to switch to go draw, blow, right? To do the diatonic or major scale. And so the valving follows that concept. So now on hole seven, I can draw bend holes 7, 8, 9, and 10. There's 7, 8, and 9. I'm draw bending down a half step. And what's cool about that, I think the first note that most people learn to overblow is hole 6, which gives you the minor third. And I get that by draw bending 7. And that's a really important note in... blues playing because it's that... That's what really is kind of nice about it. I will say that I don't consider playing half-valved any easier or more difficult than doing overbending. I think they're both really advanced techniques that require practice and And you have to, you know, you've got to practice. There are some benefits for both and some disadvantages for both, I think.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So you don't use overblows at all then?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, not only that, but it's impossible when you put the valve in there because you don't have both reeds interacting.

SPEAKER_02:

I think like a lot of people myself, I've sort of looked at overblows, but I haven't pursued them. And yeah, the six blow one, which generally is the one which comes out easiest, the diatonic, I can use that one.

UNKNOWN:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

I think one of the reasons that I'm not a big fan of overblows is I don't always like the sound of the overblows. They sound a little bit weak, the notes which come out compared to the non-overblow.

SPEAKER_03:

I think I would argue that really, really good overbenders of the instrument, I don't hear it sounding weak. When Howard Levy does it, I don't hear it. When Jason Ricci does it, I don't hear it. When Carlos de Honco does it, I don't hear that. When Jason Rosenblatt does overblows, they don't sound weak to me. It's practice, you know, and you have to be dedicated. And, I mean, look, we're asking this instrument to do things it was never meant to do, okay? It originally was meant to do this.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And that's what it was meant to do with the Richter tuning. And then somebody discovered that we could go...

SPEAKER_01:

Right?

SPEAKER_03:

We could go to cross-harp and we could make it sound more soulful. And then, you know, now we're doing half-valving and overblowing and we're playing jazz tunes on it. So, you know... You have to practice, and I don't think one's any easier than the other.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a very good point you make. Like you say, the people who are good at it, like some of the names you mentioned there at the Overblow Technique, and obviously you and the Half-Life Technique. Like you say, if you're really dedicated to working on it and those sounds are great, then yeah, it does work. But it's definitely a different approach to the instrument. Here's kind of

SPEAKER_03:

how I feel about the two disciplines. I think that the half-valving is better suited to melodic and ballad playing than the overblow technique. I do think the overblow technique is better suited to fast passages and stuff where you don't have to dwell on the overbend as long. And it's just the nature of how we bend notes or how we, because the overblow isn't really a bend. It's a psychoacoustic thing that happens when the two reeds vibrate together, as opposed to what I'm doing, which is actually making the reed bend to curve the air. So I think there's that difference. You know, when I hear, again, when I hear really great overbenders play, it sounds great.

SPEAKER_02:

So this went on to developing the half valve diatonics that you that you were known for and the gazelle method is is the half valve technique uh and this went on to uh so you developed your own for some years and then sadel picked this up yeah and now you can get um the diatonics directly from sadel yeah

SPEAKER_03:

yeah so how how it works is or how it worked was i showed them uh what i what i had figured out about valve material and setup on the harmonica. Because one of the problems with putting a valve in a harmonica or a wind saver, as they're known also, and the distinction there is that wind savers were invented for the chromatic harmonica because there's so many notes and so many slots that if you don't cover some of the notes... the thing would be impossible to play. It would just sound like air constantly. So that's why it has the name Wind Saver. Now, when you take a Wind Saver and you put it in a diatonic, I'm referring to it as a valve because it's an opening and closing device. I'm trying to shut off one of the reeds from vibrating so I can manipulate the other reed and do a note that normally wouldn't be available. The valves... in themselves are one of the things that I looked at because plastic wind savers which is what kind of the standard for a chromatic make a lot of noise and they pop and rattle and that only becomes worse in a diatonic because the chamber is smaller and I thought I like half valving but with it making that much noise could I ever record this way I don't think so you would hear that you would hear it slapping you would hear it Because I like to get in really close when I record. I like a real intimate, right up front sound. So I started playing around and experimenting with different material and finally came up with something that was soft enough to not make noise, but stiff enough yet to function as an opening and closing device and retain its shape. Then I set about trying to figure out how to gap and shape the reeds to best facilitate half valve playing. So that kind of is the, in essence, is what the gazelle method is all about.

SPEAKER_02:

It's interesting because I play a lot of chromatic harmonica. So I understand all the concepts around, you know, what the different notes are and what notes aren't available in diatonic very well. I think the difference between playing it on a chromatic harmonica and playing the diatonic is obviously you get the expression, the bending ability in the diatonic, which is, as you say, something we all love about the diatonic, which is moving from the chromatic. So it's definitely an appealing idea that you can play in this chromatic way and then play, you know, all the notes.

SPEAKER_03:

The two other things I would say, Neil, is that when you have valve, you're not really taking away anything you can currently do. You can still do everything you could do before. You could just do more. You're adding the ability to do additional blow bending and additional draw bending. The other thing I will say is that it does slightly change the tone of the harmonica. If you've got the chromatic harmonica sitting at one end of the spectrum of the sound tone, and you've got diatonic and chromatic at opposite ends of tone, when you put valves in the diatonic, you slightly move that tone of the diatonic a little towards a chromatic, maybe about 20%. And it makes it a kind of a hybrid sound, but I guess it just depends on what genre and what you're trying to do. If I was playing nothing but hardcore Chicago style blues and wasn't interested in getting the additional notes, I wouldn't have valves in my harmonica because it changes the tone a little bit. But for what the style of stuff I'm trying to do, I like the sound personally.

SPEAKER_02:

It's all about having different you know, tools in your kit bag, isn't it? Like you're saying, if you want to play music and definitely if you want to play jazz where you need to be able to get these extra notes, then you need that. But yeah, if you're playing blues, yeah, go back. Just pointing out for people listening, if people want to check out the half-valved, again, Seidel will do the two makes and the 1847 in the session steel. So if anyone wants to check out and pursue the half-valved, I think that's probably the best place to start. Because these are good quality working. You don't get these problems with popping, I take it, on these diatonic. No.

SPEAKER_03:

The way it works is pretty much anybody outside the United States orders them directly from Seidel. Anybody in the U.S. pretty much orders them from me because it just the difference in shipping and the difference in, you know, value added tax and everything. It just economically makes more sense. Plus, the people in this country get the added feature of me going back through the harp one more time. I generally do that just kind of an extra QC step.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, brilliant. Yeah, so I think, you know, I'm interested in talking more with you and that I should check out one of the Seidel ones because, yeah, again, it's certainly something worth looking into, particularly if you're interested in playing more melodic and more complex music.

SPEAKER_03:

I think if anybody, you know, everybody could very easily just visit my website, which is ptgazelle.com, and you can listen to samples of the last six CDs I've put out to hear what half-valve playing sounds like.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, I'll put a link to your website on the page for the podcast for sure. So getting on to some of your albums then. So once you'd mastered the half-valved diatonic and you'd built your own initially, you came out, after your break from playing harmonica, you came out with Swinging Easy and Hitting Hard, which has got a lot of jazz tunes on, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Mostly a lot of swing tunes that I'd been playing around with for years and trying to do on two harmonicas and could finally, you know, do on... one harmonica, stuff like Robin's Nest and Just You, Just Me, No Not Much, which is kind of a workout on the instrument. Yeah, I mean, that one was something that I was pretty proud of, you know, to come out with two years after I had started playing again. Because honestly, the whole first year, I did nothing but practice. I knew what I wanted to play. But you can imagine after 15 years, I didn't have any chops anymore. So I had to learn how to play again, basically.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So what about your transition to playing jazz on the diatonic?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I'm not a scale player. I'm not a theory or studied musician. I play entirely by ear. But I think what I did was, I had to tune my ear to listening to how jazz tunes are basically put together and kind of anticipate where the changes are going to go. Much like we learn how to play three chord blues tunes, we kind of get a feel for when the changes are going to happen and what they're going to be. So it's the same kind of concept. It took me a little while to understand how the songs were constructed. And then it took a little while to kind of get my head around the phrasing, how I wanted to phrase things and how I wanted to actually improvise. Because I first started to play and try to do country licks mostly. over jazz changes and yeah they would work but it just didn't quite fit the genre right then i you know you have to kind of listen to other players you got to listen to jazz players and go okay so i kind of get his approach to how he would play over these changes and let's see if i can kind of you know do that

SPEAKER_02:

and then you did an album with uh with brendan power who lives here in the uk new zealander of course how did that come about

SPEAKER_03:

Actually, because I started playing half-valved, and Brendan is the guy that actually came up with the idea of arranging the valves on the diatonic in the manner that they're in now. Valves have been around a long time and old vaudeville guys used to put one or two valves in a diatonic and knew about this just so they could get an extra note, you know, and everybody would be amazed and they would never tell anybody what they were doing. It was all a big secret. But Brendan came up with the theory of putting it on the first six draw notes in the top four blow notes. We kind of discovered each other and really liked our playing and he said well why don't we do a cd and so it kind of evolved from there

SPEAKER_02:

great to see here two harmonicas on there and dill pickle rags on there which is a song that i love so uh

SPEAKER_03:

yeah he did so well on that tune man it's just amazing it's one of my favorite cuts on that cd

SPEAKER_02:

Is he playing all chromatic on that album?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, he's playing half-valved chromatic, and I'm playing half-valved diatonic. We thought it would be cool because he was really trying to push, at the time, push the concept of doing half-valved chromatics, where he gets extra bending capability because it's not fully valved. He's a mad scientist, that guy.

SPEAKER_02:

He certainly is. And then you did Two Days Out in 2011, which I believe was nominated for

SPEAKER_03:

Grammy. Yeah, it made the initial round of Grammy nominations. And that was a departure for me because I'd always wanted to see what it was like with a full band, meaning not only bass, drums, and guitar, but piano and some brass instruments as well. Man, that one turned out well. I really liked that project. There was some cool tunes on there that i'd wanted to record for a long time like there is no greater love and love is here to stay and best things in life are free i mean you know they were just in oh the very thought of you And just the way it worked out, I ended up playing a lot of really low-pitched harmonicas. You know, there's like three or four there I play a low D flat. Man, just the richness of how that blended with the muted trombone is just... I'm just really happy with how that project turned out.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I was going to mention about your low D flat. You don't get many low D flats around. Is that something you had to buy specially in for the album?

SPEAKER_03:

No. You know, I mean, when we made the decision with Seidel, when we made the decision to put out a Gazelle Method line, they asked me, you know, what about keys? And I said, well, what's available? And they laid it out. And I said, well, I think we ought to line a harmonica's audit cover from low C up to regular F. And so, I mean, the low D is just part of that family. And yeah, I love it. I love low D.

SPEAKER_02:

So if someone was going to buy one of the Gazelle method ones, which key would you recommend initially?

SPEAKER_03:

And that's a great question. And I always tell everybody what I would initially get would be an A flat or an A or a B flat, mostly because those three fall right in pretty much the middle range of what's available key wise. You know, if you think about it from low C up through F. And that way you get a good taste of being able to control the low notes without too much trouble and being able to control the high notes without too much trouble. And you kind of get a better feel for not only stainless steel reeds, which it's a departure from brass until you get used to it, but you also get a feel for what it's like to control the valves and what it's like to have that range of notes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's interesting you should say those keys, because I think a lot of people would probably plummet for the C.

SPEAKER_01:

It'd

SPEAKER_02:

probably be easier to get your head around what the scales are and what the notes are on the C. Something like an A-flat, you play a jazz song, say, in second position, you're playing an E-flat, then that's okay for jazz, but maybe for other stuff it's not so common a key to use. So interesting. Right.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't think about it that way as much as I'm always thinking more in terms of somebody jumping to a half-valved stainless steel harmonica. To me, an A or an A-flat is just going to give them a better feel and just kind of get them in the groove of how to use the harmonica and what it's like to play one, as opposed to what key they can specifically use it on or what song they're going to be able to use it on.

SPEAKER_02:

One thing I want to mention on your website, which is a great resource, which also Charlie McCoy does as well, is you give all the keys that you're playing, which is fantastic, particularly for some music like yours, where, you know, maybe it's not so particular. It's quite a lot of low tunings and things to be able to go and see exactly what you're playing is a brilliant resource for people to check out on your website. If they're interested in, you know, learning, playing along with some of your songs.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah I think it's a good idea you know and especially in the last couple CDs that I've put out because I'm playing a lot in there's some stuff in third major position there's some a lot of stuff in fifth minor position so you know rather than fumbling around I mean it's all that stuff used to be a big secret you know people used to closely guard all that information but I don't feel that way. And I think most people don't feel that way anymore. It's, you know, it's an information age now. Yeah. And not only that, but all my CDs, with the exception of Pace Yourself, all my projects also have mix minus versions available with them as well that people can purchase because it just means that the harmonica is not on it but the track is there and so you can learn you can learn the song by listening to the full production version and then go to the mix minus version and you can play along you know i mean i think it's a great idea

SPEAKER_02:

yeah that's a superb idea yeah that's available on your website too isn't it people buy those directly

SPEAKER_03:

all my music is purchasable on my website as either a physical cd or as a download either you know the mix minus or the full production

SPEAKER_02:

One thing I noticed as well is there's a few Beatles songs on your albums. I take you're quite a Beatles fan then.

SPEAKER_03:

People always say, you know, do you listen to other kinds of music? Because all my albums, you know, the last five albums have all been kind of jazz influenced. But man, I like a lot of kind of music. I mean, you know, I like Beatles. I mean, gosh, I mean, how could you not like the Beatles? I feel quite lucky to have recorded a couple of them.

UNKNOWN:

piano plays

SPEAKER_02:

Then you released a madness to his method.

SPEAKER_03:

That was another thing that I, on the back of my mind, always wanted to do. And that was record with a lap steel player. Just kind of do stuff in unison, but an octave apart. That also was in the initial round of Grammy balloting, that particular CD. There's a couple of jazz standards. There's a couple of Louis Jordan tunes on there, which I, another guy that I really admired.

UNKNOWN:

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SPEAKER_03:

lap steel and the harmonica just seemed to blend really well together.

SPEAKER_02:

Your latest album is this Loft Sessions, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that one came out last year. It's just a bass player and myself and a guitar player from the Czech Republic. While he was here, we laid down these tracks and we actually did it in my loft here at the house. Thus the name, The Loft Sessions. And it was something, again, it was something that I wanted to do for a long time, was do something without drums and have it seem real intimate and just real personal. And I think we managed to do it. There's several ballads on there, which I really like. I Wish I Knew and Angel Eyes. A couple of up-tempo tunes and one real famous jazz tune called Stolen Moments. I'm pretty happy with that project.

SPEAKER_02:

So what's it been like being the band leader?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, as you can imagine, it's a lot more gratifying and you're more in control. And at the same time, there's more headaches involved with it. But I think overall, it's been very gratifying because I'm totally in control of the choice of material. I'm totally in control of how I want to portray the material. Yeah, I... I dig it. And so

SPEAKER_02:

you don't sing yourself, do you not?

SPEAKER_03:

On A Method to the Madness, the two Louis Jordan tunes I'm singing. I do a couple other songs in my live show that I sing. I don't have a big range, and I try to pick my spots so that I can pull it off convincingly. I don't really consider myself a great singer. If I'm careful, I can get away with a couple things here and there.

SPEAKER_02:

And would you have any advice for other bands, maybe young bands coming up?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, it's getting tougher, you know, and of course with the pandemic, it's even tougher. You have to have six revenue streams, you know, not just playing live, not just whatever. I mean, you've got to figure out ways to kind of make money. You just have to be very flexible and inventive these days.

SPEAKER_02:

We touched on chromatic harmonica a little bit earlier on. So you don't play chromatic harmonica at all, do you not?

SPEAKER_03:

I don't anymore. Years ago, I did a little bit, but it was always, it had to be rehearsed and it had to be memorized. I'd never really got the hang of improvising on a chromatic.

SPEAKER_02:

A question I ask each time, if you had 10 minutes to work on the harmonica today, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_03:

Regulating breathing. Learning to relax and regulate your breathing because most people tense up and get too involved and try to play too hard and it's just no you're having to work way too hard to make any sound on an instrument that shouldn't be that difficult to do

SPEAKER_02:

and any particular tips of how you would do that

SPEAKER_03:

it all starts with relaxing if you're relaxed then your diaphragm is open and then it's easier to inhale or exhale it all kind of starts there for me

SPEAKER_02:

Teaching-wise, I know you have an online tuition available through Music Gurus, which is linked off your website.

SPEAKER_03:

There's two courses. There's a beginning course and an advanced course. The beginning course basically just covers basics of how I go about playing the harmonica, you know, talking about regulating your breathing and where the notes are on the instrument and just good posture and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, and some exercises and some songs to learn. And then there's an advanced course course that deals with half-valving. And you get the chance to learn a couple of tunes and you get to understand the concept behind how to play half-valved. And do you offer private teaching as well?

SPEAKER_02:

I

SPEAKER_03:

do offer private teaching and do that with either Skype or with Zoom.

SPEAKER_02:

So first of all, which harmonica do you use? I think that's a pretty obvious answer. So yeah, I take it you exclusively use the Seidel Gazelle method harmonicas.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I play the 1847 Silver Gazelle Method. I play exclusively half-valved. Another one we touched on earlier on, but do you have a favorite key of harmonica? I would say A-flat is my favorite key. I just like the tone of it. I like where it sits in the register of available keys. And so many jazz tunes are written in E-flat. I just like that key.

SPEAKER_02:

different tunings i i think the uh the gazelle method harmonic has come in paddy richter and country tuning as well yeah

SPEAKER_03:

i do that for customers it doesn't come manufactured that way you could you could obviously special order it from from sidle that way if you wanted use those tunings much yourself i i never use them i play strictly diatonic uh richter tuned

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, because of the half valve technique and the way you can bend. I mean, would you see any advances to using the half valve ones in those two tunings?

SPEAKER_03:

In the paddy, I do. In the country tuning, I don't, except that some people like the choice of being able to blow bend six or just have that note available as five draw and bend down to the note that was originally tuned to. And what about your embouchure? I'm strictly a pucker player. I do octave splits depending on what I'm, you know. I mean, I do that stuff, but it just depends on what genre of music I'm playing and what I'm trying to portray. Mostly I'm a pucker player because I'm playing melodically and I want a really clean, accurate sound.

SPEAKER_02:

And you don't really need the effects of tongue blocking, do you? Not

SPEAKER_03:

for what I'm doing, no.

SPEAKER_02:

Not for what I'm doing. And what about your amplifier of choice?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I normally just play through the PA. I have a Fireball V microphone that I really like, made by Audax. Pedal-wise, I have a delay pedal and I have a reverb pedal. And I try to control my own sound and they just pass the signal through the PA. Now, I do have a 1971 Fender Champ amp. that I love, and I play it through a harp attack pedal made by Lone Wolf, and I use a bulletini microphone with that. And there's a couple of bands that I work with sometimes here in Nashville, and I get to play that amp with that dirtier sound and do all those other kind of techniques and warbles and stuff. But not very much. In my own shows, it's mostly clean right through the PA.

SPEAKER_02:

But you like to play a bit of blues as well sometimes.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

So final question, just obviously we're in pandemic time now.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, all my gigs in April, May and June got tanked early on because of this. And basically nobody is booking right now because nobody knows what's going to happen, unfortunately. So, I mean, I was supposed to be in Sacramento, California today. And then I was coming home and next Tuesday I was supposed to go to the Czech Republic for two weeks for a tour. Right now, I'm gigless. I mean, I hate to say it, but that's kind of the way, that's the reality of it. And until people start to actually be able to go to music venues with X amount of people, it's going to be difficult.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thanks very much for talking to me, Peter. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you and get a real insight to your approach to playing the diatonic harmonica.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, thank

SPEAKER_02:

you

SPEAKER_03:

very much.

SPEAKER_02:

That's it for today, folks. Final word from my sponsor, the Longwolf Blues Company, providing some great effects pedals and microphones, all purpose-built for the harmonica. Be sure to check out their website.