Musical Ramblings

Isn't She Lovely (Stevie Wonder)

If you asked people randomly in the street to name one song with harmonica, bets are that more often than not they would cite Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely. Sure, it's an old chestnut, poppy and romantic as all hell, but Stevie can make even the smoochiest things sound cool.

The various stats tool that I use for this blog allow me to see which search engine queries point to Harmonica Ramblings, and one query that comes up again and again and again in all kinds of search engines is "Isn't She Lovely" +tabs. Search engines being what they are, the queries point here because there are tabs and because Isn't She Lovely was featured on The Groove Show, but so far, there were no tabs for it to be found here. So, for the first time, I'm going to reverse the way this blog works and provide new potential readers with what they apparently want and don't find on the site.

Here are the tabs to Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely, from his masterpiece Songs in the Key of Life. I'm not a chromatic expert, but what Stevie is playing is mostly the melody (although he plays around it a lot, but you'll have to figure that out for yourselves) and fairly simple. I make the song key an E (at least the version featured on my podcast). Since I don't own a proper font for chromatic harmonica, I built a quick and (hopefully) intuitive tabbing system with excel that shouldn't need any explanation. Enjoy!

Isn't She Lovely (C Chromatic)

A few words of advice on playing this "the stevie way". First of all, Stevie is fond of attacking the first note of the main theme by jabbing it. What this means is that when he starts blowing air, the slide isn't in yet and as he starts blowing, he slides it in. This is what creates this peculiar attack.

Another thing is that Stevie loves his ornementations, so for example on the second line when he goes Ab A B A he's likely to give the slide a quick push to make the phrase effectively Ab A B-C-B A.

Anyway, try it out, and if you're an expert on Stevie's style, please leave comments for the hopefuls and beginners like me!

Important note: It was pointed out to me that I have tabbed this on a barytone or 16-hole chromatic (which is what I normally use) and not on  a normal 12-hole chromatic. I'll correct this when time allows, but in the meantime, you can easily do it yourself by shifting everything four holes down and starting on whole 7.

Le Jazz et la Java (1st and 4th position)

Le Jazz et la Java is a famous song by late singer Claude Nougaro. Nougaro has always been a great lover of both Jazz and Chanson Française, and this song playfully describes how he is constantly torn between the two. For those of my readers who read French,  here are the lyrics:

Chorus:
Quand le jazz est, quand le jazz est là
La java s'en, la java s'en va
Il y a de l'orage dans l'air, il y a de l'eau dans le gaz
Entre le jazz et la java

Chaque jour un peu plus y'a le jazz qui s'installe
Alors la rage au coeur la java se fait la malle
Ses petites fesses en bataille sous sa jupe fendue
Elle écrase sa gauloise et s'en va dans la rue

Chorus

Quand j'écoute béat un solo de batterie
Voilà la java qui râle au nom de la patrie
Mais quand je crie bravo à l'accordéoniste
C'est le jazz qui m'engueule  me traitant de raciste

Chorus

Pour moi jazz et java c'est du pareil au même
Je me saoule à la Bastille et m' noircis à Harlem
Pour moi jazz et java dans le fond c'est tout comme
Le jazz dit "come on" la java dit "go home"

Chorus

Jazz et java copains ça doit pouvoir se faire
Pour qu'il en soit ainsi tiens je partage en frère
Je donne au jazz mes pieds pour marquer son tempo
Et je donne à la java mes mains pour le bas de son dos
Et je donne à la java mes mains pour le bas de son dos

The chorus is in C major and the verses in C minor. Obviously, it's tricky not to switch harp in these circumstances. There is a playable combination in 3rd position, I think, which allows to play both parts reasonably well, but I think it lays a lot more beautifully in 1st and 4th respectively, because they allow a chording which brings it closer to an accordion effect, something that's very much in line with the tune since it's a 3/4 java to begin with.

The tabs are below, but if anyone is interested in sampling Nougaro and hearing this specific tune I have found a compilation of his stuff available on amazon which features Le Jazz et la Java. It's entitled Nougaro, and looking at the track listing I'd say it's a good sampling of his stuff. Über-faithful reader Marc Molino has found a link to a Youtube version of the original. Ignore the terribly sixties video clip, and enjoy and learn the original music !

Misty (3rd position)

Jerry Portnoy, as many of you probably know, is an excellent blues player and a Muddy Waters band alumnus to boot. He has released several solo albums, including Home Run Hitter, which I used to own. Used to ? Well, truth be told, it didn't do much for me. Like many of his contemporaries who have learned harp and paid their dues as sidemen, Portnoy doesn't strike me as a particularly thrilling frontman.

That being said, Home Run Hitter featured an interesting harmonica version of the jazz standard Misty. It's not absolutely respectful of the original theme, and the backing is a little cheesy, but it's still a nice theme, and a great exercise in accuracy to boot. So here's the tab for that track, I hope it's useful.

Love Theme from The Godfather (3rd position)

I love that Nino Rota theme from The Godfather, and it's a great exercice both for third position and for precise bends on the third hole, so here it is.

It's played slow, so there's no need to rush, but it's not blues either, so these bends need to be clean, precise and spot on as soon as you hit'em!

There may be a few glitches since this has been transcribed from memory not from the original but from a Guns n' Roses cover, remnant of misspent youth.  So, sue me!

 

Days of Wine and Roses (12th Position)

A few weeks back there was a discussion on the harmonica mailing list Harp-L about 12th position. 12th is a relatively easy yet mostly unused position on the diatonic harmonica. It sounds very jazzy in a major kind of way, and is certainly a worthwhile addition to any player's vocabulary. I mentioned during that discussion that Days of Wine and Roses was a great tune to start working that position on. I promised that I would post the tab on my blog. Now that I own Fletch, it was only a matter of minutes, so here it is:

 

Windows Harmonica Font

I finally made the decision to acquire the Fletch TrueType harmonica font designed for diatonic by Winslow Yerxa. It's available on the Harmonica Information Press website  for the meager sum of $10. I say meager because I just spent 10 minutes playing with it and it's both very complete and very intuitive. The PDF usage manual is very clear and in-depth.

Before, when I wanted to write up a tab, like I normally do once a year with the harmonica seminars I co-organise in St Aignan, I had to spend an awful lot of time in a graphic software like Corel Draw to write-up readable tabs. Now, I just have to spend 5 minutes in a text processor with Fletch. How cool is that ?

My first impressions are that it's a little bit dense in terms of how close apart the notes are, but on the other hand the  arrows make breathing patterns very apparent, which is cool. One tip for non-US or UK residents like me: make sure you switch your keyboard to US/Qwerty before using the font, cause national keyboards can really mess up the logic of the hole layout.

From now on, you can expect some tabs to appear regularly in this space!