A geographical i-mic update has just been made, since all the additions to the i-mic gallery today are either from Argentina or from Brazil. I particularly love the one displayed here, made by Flavio Fusuma from Florianopolis in Brazil. It's based on an old Ericsson phone handset, and doesn't it just look sleek?
Step by step i-mic instructions
A few years back, a reader of Planet Harmonica called Steven Dayton designed a flash animation detailing step by step instructions on how to build an i-mic. For various reasons, Steven's flash was no longer online and he agreed to send it to me so that I could host it here. Thanks Steve!
So, without further ado, here is Steven Dayton's step by step i-mic instructions
Have fun building it, and remember to send me photos. I added a few of those in the gallery, by the way!
i-mics from around the world
I have posted four more i-mic photos. The creativity of these people never ceases to amaze me. Here we have a model from Finland, one from Greece, one from France and (I'm presuming), one from the US.
i-mics from Sweden
I have just posted three i-mic photographs in the i-mic photo album. They were sent to me ages ago by Jan Gulbrandsen of Sweden. They include an amazing model based on a bicyle headlamp! Check it out!
More i-mics for the holidays
I dug up all the i-mic photos I've been sent over the years last night. Wow. I didn't think I had so many.
Today is my last day of work. I am finally going to get some rest, if the children allow. Consequently, the day at work is hectic, so I only found time at lunch to post three more i-mics in the gallery. I'll add the rest in the coming days.
I dug up the clean schematics as well, but they're in French. If anyone is knowledgeable on electronics and stuff, could you please send me an email so that we can discuss terminology. I'd like to avoid the blunder from last time and actually use the proper terms in the English language version this time!
Return of the i-mic
In the second issue of Planet Harmonica, alongside a roadtest of various famous or less famous harmonica microphones, I published the schematics of a home-made microphone designed by Michel Triste, a retired electrical engineer who used to be one of Greg Szlapczynski's students.
The success of that particular issue, and specifically that particular feature, was tremendous. Even though it was published in 2000 and is no longer linked to the main page of the dying website, it's still the most visited page on the site. Over the years, I've received many photographs of people's i-mics and I kept them aside preciously waiting for the day when I'd have time to set them up on a page of their own.
Today, I receiced Arnout Deurinck's funky looking pepper mill i-mic and so I decided a photo album of i-mics was long overdue. I salvaged whatever was available online, and this week-end I'll skim through my dusty e-mail archives to salvage many more i-mics.
I also have somewhere a clean, revised schematic that was sent to me, and a no longer functional link to an amazing flash DIY instructions by Steve Dayton. I'll try to retrieve and post these in the coming days as well. And of course, if you have any photos of your own creations you want to send over, please do! This time, I will put them online !!!
The photo album will always be available in the sidebar on the right, so feel free to consult it regularly ! Long live the i-mic !
Back at the Chicken Shack
I haven't been practicing much harmonica lately. In fact, ever since my second son was born, a little over a year ago, I have practically not spent more than an hour a month playing. It's an intense frustration, but there's very little opportunity for me to play in the daytime during week-ends, and evenings are out because it would wake the kids up...
Needless to say I feel like I'm slipping. It's no big deal, 'cause I know that as soon as I get more opportunities, the old mechanisms will get back in place, but it's annoying to realise that you can no longer play some tricky theme you used to be able to play or that you feel winded after improvising 24 bars of fast paced swing.
Anyway, why am I telling you this ? Simply because I'm the singer and player of the jam band during the St Aignan Festival mentioned below, and I want to take it as an opportunity to challenge myself. Since the band will consist of a drummer, a guitarist and a Hammond B3 player, I dug into my Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff recordings looking for some tunes. I ruled out the Captain's "Hot Barbecue", because that would require a lot more practice than I can afford right now, much as I love that piece, and settled on Smith's hit "Back at the Chicken Shack".
For you diatonic players out there, here's how it goes :
I hope the notation is straightforward enough. Anyway, it's not devilishly tricky, but there are a number of pitfalls. First there's the vibrato on the overblow 6 in the second line, which has to be faked if one does not master the art of the diaphragm vibrato (as, alas, is my case). Then there's going straight into overblow 5 and repeating it over the V chord. But strangely enough, my main difficulty working on it this morning was falling back onto the very last part of the theme. Not so much a matter of being able to play it as a matter of hitting it in stride, in rhythm, and at a reasonably fast pace.
Now I was practicing on a Golden Melody Bb, and getting nowhere. Everytime the theme closed, I stumbled. I was getting frustrated, so I dug up my gig bag, a small pouch that holds 8 harps, some of them customised. I took out my Bb T-Bone, tried the very same line, et voila. It worked. Still needs some practice, but I can play it fluidly. On the T-Bone. The reason is simply that since I need less air to make the reeds respond on the T-Bone, I gain an extra millisecond at the end of the one but last phrase, enough time to fall back on that blow 2 comfortably.
And that's as good an opportunity to hail the virtues of custom harmonicas. It often seems to the amateur player like a waste of good money, since a quality custom harp will often go for three to four times the price of a standard issue harp. However, I think that's an error in judgement. These harps are more expensive indeed, but they make you progress a lot faster. An instrument that is more responsive is an instrument that will allow you to attempt things you're not able to play comfortably on a standard instrument, and thus analyse your shortcomings. And that's one of the great keys to progress.
So what's this T-Bone I mentioned? Well, it's a custom hybrid of Marine Band and Special 20, with the covers and reedplates of the former and the plastic body of the latter. It's assembled and tweaked by an amazing harp technician called Tim Moyer. His company, Working Man's Harps produces three basic models: the T-Bone, the Honeycomb (a customised Marine Band with a Honeywax sealed wooden body) and the Soloist (a tweaked Golden Melody). They are each sold at a pricetag of 75$.
I own four or five T-Bones, and they are the best damn harps I've played, bar none. I own several other customised harmonicas, some of them pretty good, but none of them, to my taste, play as well as Tim's T-Bones. Which goes to show, you should always strive to use the right tool for the job. Oh, and as for disclaimers, I don't own stocks in Tim's business, I don't get free products, I'm just a very satisfied customer.
