Transcript

Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

What you’ve got to start doing to take your harmonica playing to the next level is start listening to harmonica players you like and then this gets really important, what I like to do is listen to saxophone players I listen to guitar players I like because Jimi Hendrix, the best guitar player in the world, again arguably because there is no best. I think he’s the best, but then again I’d be in an argument with someone but Jimi Hendrix didn’t care that he was playing things that a guitar didn’t normally do. He would be like [harmonica playing] and it’s like, that’s not a guitar, that’s an ambulance in Europe and see he was just getting any sound he could out of that thing, and that’s really the epiphany I had was like, why can’t I do that on a Harmonica, why do I have to sound like you know [harmonica playing] which is good, but that’s like what Little Walter would do in the 1940’s, and I was in the 1980’s, this little white kid in the suburbs in New Jersey. Why do I have to sound like an African American gentleman in the post-depression era projects of Chicago. That’s not natural, I’m pretending, I’m pretending to be a bluesy guy. This is something that someone said about the blues which is really wise, the blues is a sound a baby makes when it cries for the very first time when it’s born because it doesn’t know why it’s crying, after that he knows he will be picked up and it’s all show business. You want to cry that first cry, you want to like really just be impulsive, instinctual cries is what you’re at. That means you can be from anywhere, you don’t have to have a string tie like you’re from the Mississippi levees in the late 1800’s or something, that’s not what the blues is. It’s about playing honestly and so what you want to do is make sounds that mean something to you. One of the first things I was trying to play was [harmonica playing] and I just loved the flow of the violin, it let me practice, you know, hitting some notes heavier than others and that gives you a sort of touch about dynamics and when you’re playing a [harmonica playing]. Now someone once told me that any line like that elaborate was supposed to be for a horn like a saxophone or a trumpet and why? There’s no reason why not and other than that as far as technique goes, develop rudiments, you learn just a little pattern you want to play and just get good at doing it well. Enjoy the sounds you’re making on the instrument even if it’s repetitive and redundant. You’re enjoying it. You’re friends can’t stand it, but eventually one day they turn around, “Wow I didn’t know you played that well.” And the thing is they were listening to you learn how to do that the whole time. They were just trying to block it out of their head when you sucked. Let everything be on the table, and I think that’s a great way to sort of aesthetically anyway up your game on the harmonica.

Transcript

Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

I was harmonizing in church when I was 3. You know, my parents realized I was sort of musically inclined, and we’re distantly related to David Popper, this early 20th century cellist. Who was in the 1910s‚ he was a bohemian cellist. So they gave me a cello and gave me lessons and I was horrible at it, and I hated to practice. And when I was 8, they gave me piano lessons, and I hated to practice, hated learning to read, hated being told what to do. Tuba lessons later, give the fat kid a tuba. Sort of goes without saying I was a little pudgy, even at school. And guitar lessons and again hated learning to read. The great thing about the harmonica is there wasn’t any literature for it, or lessons to be taught. You just kind of had to figure it out yourself. And that’s really part of how I excelled at it, that and also the chord structure of the harmonica is very satisfying. When you exhale on a C harmonica you get a C major chord right away. Inhale you get a G dominant chord. All dominant means is that the 7th degree of that chord. La, la, la, la, la, la, la. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 of a major scale, is flattened and that lets you go, laa, laa, laa, laa, laa, laa‚ it lends itself to more of a bluesy thing. That is what a dominant chord transmits, so right away you’re sort of, kind of playing music, something basically pleasing. So basically when I got my harmonica the first day I was going‚ I was sort of playing “Frère Jacques,” kind of right out of the box. You start realizing how many songs are built on these 2 chords to some degree or another. A little fudging here and there. Its basically the structure of a lot of western music is, a major chord with some sort of a dominant chord.

Transcript

Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

Soloing is really about confidence and taking charge of a phrase. It’s important to not see it as a harmonica thing. It’s important to see it as a musical thing. People always see the difference between a harmonica and a saxophone. There isn’t one. It’s just different manipulations to make the same kind of sound. You want to make a statement. And, in fact, a good exercise that a lot of soloists do is sing your solo. If you can sing it, you can ultimately play it. Might take a little work to get there, but the important thing is to have the idea of the solo. You can learn all kinds of chops on this instrument, or any other instrument. But if you aren’t thinking it, you won’t say it. We had, again, that saxaphone teacher I was talking about. He had a great exercise for it. He would make us play a joke. And I don’t mean we would play a joke on someone. We would actually musically tell a joke. It was the joke of the plumber and the parrot. Where the plumber’s knocking on the door, and the lady was out. And the parrot goes, who is it? The guy goes, it’s the plumber. And the parrot goes, who is it? And the guy goes, it’s the plumber. And the parrot goes, who is it? And the guy goes, it’s the plumber! And the parrot goes, who is it? And the guy goes, it’s the plumber! And eventually he has a heart attack, and drops over dead right there. And the lady comes back from shopping, and goes, my God, who’s that? And the parrot goes, it’s the plumber. And that’s, like an old joke. The trombone was the parrot, the saxophone got to be the plumber. And I got to be the lady going, my God, who’s that? And, um, you would play the phrase of, iii. You play the frustration. You really try and look at the phrase of what you’re saying. I think that’s more important than any rudiment that you could learn. ‘Cause if you learn the phrase, just like learning a language. That’s really what music is. It’s another language. If you learn to say what you’re saying, you will figure out all kinds of interesting and unique ways to say it. You’ll be instantly original that way. Try and have an idea to say, and you will always find a new way to say it. The way that I’m talking to the camera right now is just like playing a solo. I’m soloing right now. I’m be-boppin’ my butt off, baby.

Transcript

Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

Every diatonic or blues harmonica or folk harmonica, and the term diatonic means in the key of, that’s all it means. Each harmonica, right here, has the tune that it’s in. G harmonica. And this is an A-flat harmonica. As labeled here on the sides so that any tech can know which one will be gone.

So when I want to play in a B blues, I use an E harmonica. A lot of blues harmonica players play that way and they call it cross harp. If I want to play a G blues, I use a C harmonica. That’s a G there that I just played right there.

So, you have all 12 keys. In western music there are 12 tones. A, A-flat, B, C, D, D-flat, E, E-flat, F, H. I have two little ones here that are special. This is the lowest harmonica they make and this is the highest harmonica that they make. You know, I have this G here that is the lowest on the scale while this is an octave higher. Same key, but an octave higher. It just lets you do really shrill things like hang up telephones and freak out dogs. And that’s what that’s for. And then this one here, this isn’t the highest key, D1 which plays in A blues, but they made an extra low D1. And this is kind of a nice, low sex sound sort of like Lauren Bacall’s voice, it’s good for low blues or whatever.

So basically, I travel with 12 harmonicas and an additional 2 for a whopping 14. And that’s basically what you got.

But here’s the problem. These harmonicas go out of tune when you beat them up the way I do. And when they’re out of tune, they’re pretty much screwed. I mean, some people, Howard Levy, that great harmonica player I mentioned, you know, actually, he’d treat the reeds. The result is he’ll have harmonicas that will last him for years. But they got spit all over them. Frankly, I, staining the metal with spit all over them and I break the reeds. I just get a new harmonica because they’re pretty much screwed and I don’t got time to heat treat things and you know, and what are they, like 30 bucks? I just throw them away. And then I started throwing them away to the crowd and then the crowd started expecting me to throw them and then I’m throwing perfectly good harmonicas into the crowd because they expect me to throw them. And that’s why I got so freaking pre-eminent.

Transcript

Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

Songwriting is a conscious effort every step of the way. You have to have a feel for songwriting. And trying to have a decision making process that’s fairly instinctual. Because you can’t be second guessing yourself all the time. But ultimately, you are trying things and you are discovering things, and no song is written the same way. It could be a melody that leads you to a set of lyrics. It could be a lyrical idea that leads you to a set of lyrics, and a melody. It could be a set of lyrics that leads you to a lyrical idea. It could be a set of lyrics or a lyrical idea that leads you to a melody. So you’re always trying to develop new ways and new conversations to have. And see, songwriting involves a dialogue you have. It’s both. I wrote a song last night, because I thought this girl was really cool. And I had a moment with her. And it was nothing more than that, conversation with her on a bus. And basically fantasized about the conversation on the bus, and what that could mean, knowing full well that that’s all it was. It was a fantasy of a conversation on a bus. But that projected in my head, several images that I thought were really cool. And that became a song. Whether or not it’s a good song. Well, again, I will have to sing the song to people that I’m going to work with. And it’ll inspire them, or it won’t. And that’s part of this process of elimination that the song has to survive. A good comedian will make the audience laugh by going, “”I know what he means,”” when they talk about something. If you, if you find yourself laughing at comedy, it’s because you identify with what the guy is saying. Some part of you knows exactly the feeling of falling down the stairs, and the way the guy was talking about. Or, you know, bitches be shoppin’. You know, whatever it is that you’re laughing about, it something that we can all identify with. Same exact thing with songwriting. When Alanis Morrissette screams that “You Oughta Know, it’s not fair to remind me.” We all know that feeling. We all want to scream at the top of our lungs, “”It’s not fair.”” And that’s why it’s such a great lyric. I think that everybody is looking for that connection. I think it makes everybody feel less alone, and I think that’s what the best artistic stuff is. Is when everyone feels a common-ness, an understanding with everyone else. And the only way to do that is to mean what you say, ’cause they can spot a lie. You know, the crowd will always spot a lie. And no one is clever enough to predict what the next trend will be. You have to just be honest. And it’s your only game.

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Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

The way to survive on a tour bus is to protect all of your video games like they are money, because they are. And protect your stuff, like hide it, get like a little locker box if you can and do not tell anyone about it. And then, act like you do not have all that stuff you are not willing to share with everyone, and then try to find their stuff. But they have hidden it, too. Get factions, play people against each other and find out who the asshole is and get them voted off the bus. And then eventually, you get everyone else voted off the bus and then it is all your bus. And then, you kill the driver while he is sleeping, usually when he is driving and then it is all your bus. And then you sell the bus for meat and move on to the next bus.

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Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

How do you make a solo album, well there are many ways to make a solo album. I guess the first way to make a solo album is to be in a band that’s recognized enough that when you go and make an album on your own its called a solo album. Because in a sense, no album is truly solo as you’re going to need to work with a producer. You’re going to need to work with some sort of a studio, which means an engineer and eventually you’re going to need to work with other musicians, unless your going to do all the instruments yourself like your Prince or Frank Zappa. Some people do that and there are madmen, they even do the engineering and all the production. But you can do a solo album pretty cheaply with today’s technology. But it really comes down to, you got to find someone who is really interested and at every point that I’m mentioning every process here, you have got to get someone who thinks, “”Wow this is a good idea.”” So it really comes down to relating to people and communicating with them that their effort are with you and you will be requiring their efforts and they are not going to be a waste of time and all to your mania and glory. My solo album was in collaboration with Jono Manson, who when Blues Traveler first came to New York City. He was kind of the king of the scene that we jumped in on that club scene, the nightingale’s scene. But Jono was a very good friend of mine and we were always looking for an opportunity to do something other than the Blues Traveler, and so that made me doing a solo album a very tasty idea. We named the solo album John Popper and the Duskray Troubadours, which if you think about it, Blues Traveler is a color and a name for travelling performers and what is duskray and a Troubadours, but another color and a description of travelling performers? Not very imaginative if you think about it. I think my next album will be John Popper and the Red Minstrels.

Transcript

Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

I’ll tell you some of the tricks that I knew or made up. You know, I was a kid in the eighties, so of course I wanted to play like Eddie Van Halen. So I started going‚ “Simple 2 inhales and an exhale.”

I can already hear my Mom upstairs going, “Stop that!” because I would do it for hours. But then I learned, you move that up and down the harmonica, that same pattern, 2 inhales and an exhale, and at that time, I’m was like “Wooow, I’m like doing like that thing like Eddie Van Halen does.” Then I started learning a sextuplet pattern. But again like I said, listen to sax players, listen to guitar players, listen to any to anything you hear. Don’t let the fact that they talk about what you can’t do on this thing, throw you, it’s amazing what you can do.

And there are harmonica players, Howard Levy for one, who can do a lot more than I can do. He can play full chromatic scales on this, which I can’t. There are things that I can’t do on this and I just try not to do them as much or I figure out a way to cheat them. And cheating works, cheat as much as you can.

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Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

Well, one way to play fast is, have a very trusting friend hold the harmonica. And then get a Lamborghini, stick your face out of the window and your gonna have to practice this a few times. You want to line your lips up to go right next to the harp, as you drive by. Now, you want to try this at about 10 miles an hour first,gradually increasing your speed to about 40 or 50 and then, I’d just like, go for it. Like, do about a 210 miles an hour just, and that’s all you gotta do.

My point is that, I can play really fast. Anyone can just go…What is it you want to say when your playing fast? That’s the thing. You want to play as fast as you can play accurately. In that regard, harmonica playing is just like shooting something. You can just go, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, but what is it your trying to hit? You actually want to shoot as fast as you can while hitting what your aiming at. And I think music is very similar to that.

Speed should be incidental here. I think that it’s a bi-product of knowing something really well and it’s a nervous reflex perhaps. I’ve seen people who were faster than me, I’ve seen people who were slower than me but, the most important thing is to be saying something. To have a phrase. If you want to be a fast player and to have people noticing your fast, you’re not really trying to do that. You’re trying to have an elaborate phrase. So, be more elaborate than fast.

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Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

What be-bop players do, is, they’ll try and think about cramming 3 notes into every note. Think of a phrase, ba da da da da da da da da. Or da da da da DA, da da da da da da. Take the song, Mary had a Little Lamb. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Ba da da doo, ba da da da da da. Ba da da da da da. Do-da da. Ba da da da da da. Ba da da da. Ba da da da da da. Ba da da da. And see, that’s not really a harmonica thing. That’s more of a music thing. And I think that if you start approaching songs that way, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba. Start going, ba da da da da. Ba da da da da. Ba doo da da, ba doo da da. Ba da da da da. Before you know it, you’re improvising without even thinking about it. And I think that’s a good approach for anybody that wants to improvise.

Transcript

Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

The way to hit difficult notes on a harmonica is you can bend notes lower by inhaling more. And exhaling low notes is harder to bend. You don’t bend as well but, exhaling notes higher that’s easier but inhaling notes on a bend, higher is harder to do.

Howard Levy, that harmonica player I told you about, showed me a trick where if you blow into a draw-hole, that note isn’t there on a harmonica. That note doesn’t exist. You’re bending the draw-hole by blowing into it, which is a cool little thing.

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Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

My best advice to play the harmonica, and I say this because it’s funny, it’s a lot like life: Sometimes you blow, sometimes you suck. You… just do what sounds good to your ears. Just have fun going *plays harmonica notes*. Break up the pattern, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in twice, breathe out twice, breathe out twice, breathe in once, then breath out again. Bob Dylan, who is a poetic genius, is actually a pretty simplistic harmonica player, and he taught a generation is that all you have to do is *plays harmonica notes*. Now I’m not playing a melodies right there. Bob Dylan sort of played melodies, but you can kinda just ham it up and have fun. And as you do that you start to hear things, and really pay attention to what your ears are hearing. And find melodies that you like, and gradually, you start going *plays harmonica notes*. And people around you will be driven nuts by this. They will not be able to stand what you’re doing, but in your mind, you’ll go “Wow, I kind… la la la, la la la.” It’s like humming, but with these chords. And gradually over time you will start to feel your way around the harmonica. You’ll know exactly where things are. When you start to go *plays harmonica notes*. And that’s just making something up off the top of your head. And you can tell as I was playing, you get a little more focused on single notes. That again is just playing smoother, and calmer, purse your lips a little more, focus the air on one whole opposed to more chords. But again don’t let that bother you, don’t let it distract you. There’s a saying that a saxophone player told me, “If it sounds good to you, it’s right.” And that’s the great thing about the harmonica, there’s no pressure. Enjoy the sounds, you’re making. And screw what other people say, at least for the beginning. Eventually if you live in rent control or on someone’s couch, you’ll have to listen to what they say. No problems.

Transcript

Hi, I’m John Popper, lead singer of the band Blues Traveler. I also play harmonica, and am arguably one of the best in the world. But thank God, there really never can be an actual best, but I’m damn good. I’m gonna teach you a few things about the harmonica.

There’s several positions on a harmonica. Again, we’ll start with a C harmonica, ’cause it’s easiest to remember the transpositions. If I’m using the tonic, la la la la, la la la. La la la la la la la. That’s melody, right? Tonic means “la” in that song I’m singing, the bottom, what feels like the bottom is the tonic. “La” becomes what they call the one. And that means 2 is, la la, 1, 2. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So there’s 8 notes to a scale. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. This is just basic code for music. So if I’m playing in a major scale, in a C harmonica, I’m gonna use as C as a tonic, which sounds very major-y, and like a folk instrument. Now, if I wanna play blues, I’m gonna use the G as the tonic, so I can get that flat 7. And that’s what blues harmonica players do, largely. And again, these are all relative, as far as, it’s not the only thing blue players do, and it’s not the only think folk players do. ‘Cause you can be a folk player, and still play that second position. You can be a blues player, and still play that first position. There’s even a third position, where, if you’re playing with a C harmonica, you can be using a D Minor, and that means. And that’s a very minor-y sounding thing. And there’s even other positions you can do. Like, I always liked the Phrygian Mode. See, each mode or scale, the first, the major one, da da da da da da da da, is called an Ionian Mode. And the one with that bluesy one is called a Mixolydian Mode. And these are all named after islands in Greece, where the various tribes played songs that favored these modes or melodies. And that’s really all this is, is just, different lingo for different scales that support different chords. So a Phrygian Mode would be. Now that’s playing in a C harmonica, I’m playing in the Key of E. And then there’s one for if I really want to be super minor-y. I use a C harmonica to play an A. You have to be really sensitive to use that one. The most popular tends to be the second position or first position, if you’re a folk guy or a blues guy. Or a polka guy, I guess, for the first position. But don’t let any of these things throw you. Again, if it sounds good, it’s right. And these are just ways to communicate with other musicians. You wanna know what key the other guys is playing in, so you can pick the right harmonica to use.

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Blues Traveler was some friends of mine in high school, and we were all musically inclined and decided to become a band. We wrote our own songs and jammed out a lot in our drummer’s parents’ basement. Decided to sort of arrange the offer that all of our parents made to sort of fund us if we went to college, in a very lucrative way were we all sort of went to college one way or another in New York and really just kind of skipped class and rehearsed a lot and figured out how to support ourselves playing music, and once we did, we quit college and made a go of it as a band and just kept going. Eventually we were playing various places like the Nightingale Bar, which sort of led to us playing wetlands. And the people we went to college with would come and see us play, and we developed a following, and also friends from high school would come and see us play. It wasn’t long before we were playing at Barnard Campus, where the son of Bill Graham (David Graham) saw us play and told his father about us. And he was about to graduate from Columbia University and get into the business with his dad, and his dad thought it would be good to manage us; and it was about that time that A&M Records was seeing the crowds we were drawing just on word of mouth and decided to sign us to a contract, and we’ve been going ever since. I think we are working on our twelfth album, eleventh album, something like that. I think we just totaled like thirteen million records. We’ve got six platinum records and maybe a gold or two in there, and it’s been, it’ll be twenty five years next year of us doing basically that.