In one of Maria's posts, she mentioned a harp solo genre section added to the site. I have been thinking of this for quite a while. Here are my two cents.

I think it is the harp solo that turned most of us on to harmonica and not the completely tabbed song. For some it was long wailing blues riffs, others it was folk solo's a.k.a. Dylan and so on.

I think this site's popularity would exponentially increase if a section was devoted to tabbed solos, seperate from the tabbed songs. There is nothing out there that does this and fewer books,,,Actually,,,,a good book idea, eh,,,FAMOUS TABBED SOLOS FOR HARMONICA

There are already some blues riffs among the big pile that could be moved right away as a start. I think the request list might have to be split off as well somehow. With all this said Nick,,,I realize this is a labor of love for you and not profitable, so I tread lightly with these ideas.

I think this could be easily addressed with a new Genre. That is a small thing. Most postings are the vocal portion of songs. Background harp and solos are not a big thing here, but there is no reason that they shouldn't be addressed.

chibluesteve wrote:

> I think this could be easily addressed with a new Genre. That
> is a small thing. Most postings are the vocal portion of songs.
> Background harp and solos are not a big thing here, but there
> is no reason that they shouldn't be addressed.
>

The main reason they aren't "big" here is because it's hard to indicate rythm, tempo, etc. in a tab. If you can recognize a song by it's lyrics, those help to establish all of that based on what you remember the song sounding like. If it's a familiar tune, sometimes the notes alone are enough, but if not, well, the actual sheet music or a sound file is necessary to play it properly. Unfortunately, not everyone here has the time or the resources to create and host sound files, be they midi, wav, mp3, or whatever; and likewise, the same is true for scoring out the tune as sheet music.

Well, my philosophy is to "keep it simple sweetheart." So, I'm with Steve in that simply adding a new genre would be the easiest way to address harp solo's. Also, harp solo could be added to the titles like this "Dillon's riff (harp solo)."

One thing that would be nice is if we could sort and search by genre. I realize many of the songs got lumped into "general" when things were first started out. And, it would be nice if people went back and editted the gendres of the songs they summitted way back when. But, even without that... it would be nice to search for say, all the "holiday" songs listed. Earlier this week I had to scroll through all 970-some songs listed to find the holiday songs I wanted.


~always Maria.



Post Edited (12-19-05 13:39)

pcguyiv wrote:


> The main reason they aren't "big" here is because it's hard to
> indicate rythm, tempo, etc. in a tab. If you can recognize a
> song by it's lyrics, those help to establish all of that based
> on what you remember the song sounding like.

That's no different than a regular tab. You just can't print out a tab and expect to play the song properly if you don't know the tune, melody, when to hold a note etc. However if you do know the tune, then the tab helps you play it by letting you know what hole to play and how to play it. Blow suck bend etc.

A solo tab is the same thing. We already know what the solo sounds like because we have a recording of it, normally an mp3 file but don't know the notes to play. The solo tab isn't going to tell you every little musical detail on how to play it but will at least give you the notes. Once you know the notes, replaying the mp3 over and over will give you the idea on how to play the tab.

Solo tabs are never going to be the entire song. They're only intended for small sections of the song when a harp is used as accompaniment normally as a solo part after a verse.

zephyrazure wrote:

> ...One thing that would be nice is if we could sort and search by
> genre. I realize many of the songs got lumped into "general"
> when things were first started out. And, it would be nice if
> people went back and editted the gendres of the songs they
> summitted way back when. But, even without that... it would be
> nice to search for say, all the "holiday" songs listed. Earlier
> this week I had to scroll through all 970-some songs listed to
> find the holiday songs I wanted.

If you go to the search page and select a genre from the bottom of the page and click on list genre you will get just a list of the tabs in that genre. The other thing you can do is on the song list page you can click on any of those headings and it will list all of the songs in that order. So if you click the genre heading it will group all of the songs in the same genre together.

As for the new genre, it is very easy for me to add one so I added a new genre called Solo that can now be selected from the list.

oh duh... that's too easy. Why I didn't see that before, I don't know. lol That does make searching a specific genre soo much easier. (grin)))

And thanx for putting up "Solo"... that will help alot of people, me thinks!

~always Maria.

I hope it does, anytime anyone thinks a genre should be added just post it and in the forum and I can add it.