Stevie wonder what kind of harmonica

Stevland Hardaway Morris, better known by his stage name of Stevie Wonder, is one of the few exceptions to this rule. Born six weeks premature, and with retinopathy of prematurity, leading to permanent blindness, Wonder had few of the advantages of life enjoyed by many child prodigies, especially those in the classical oeuvre. Although Stevie is, perhaps best known as a keyboard player, vocalist and songwriter, the harmonica has featured heavily both in his own work and in his contributions to the recordings of other artists.

In both of these hits, Stevie Wonder displays his trademark harmonica style: virtuosic without being self-indulgent. Throughout the s Stevie Wonder matured as an artist, touring with bands such as The Rolling Stones, and developing a sound that was quite distinct from his early Motown work.

From a playing perspective, Stevie overwhelmingly favours the chromatic harmonica. Unlike the more ubiquitous diatonic harmonica, commonly used for folk music and the blues, the chromatic harmonica has a full range of notes, by dint of more holes up to 16, rather than 10 and a slide, which raises the pitch of each hole by a semitone. The primary downside of the chromatic harp is the additional difficulty in learning to play it.

Circular breathing, as commonly practised by classical wind instrument players, is a necessary skill, due to the chromatic harmonica generally requiring a greater amount of air to produce its wider range of notes. Harmonica artist, Randy Singer has noted that Stevie manipulates the slide forcibly, whilst using a significant amount of vibrato to achieve a shifting effect. This is mixed with a fluttering effect from his use of the tongue to achieve his trademark sound. Although Stevie now mainly plays a custom made Huang harmonica, many of his recordings feature the Hohner Chromonica Super Players wishing to attempt to replicate his sound will find this a good starting point, as it offers the necessary four octave range at a competitive price point.

A slightly cheaper alternative is the Hohner Chromonica 64 , which features similar construction but replaces the silver mouthpiece surface of the Super 64 with nickel. Even when he plays a single note, his way of approaching or leaving it with a slide in pitch, similar to his singing approach, his vibrato and his tonal coloring make him both instantly identifiable and widely imitated by other players. His melodic vocabulary is also tuneful, relatively simple and therefore easily recognized, as is often the case with famous instrumental soloists whatever instrument they may play.

Details of how he uses the mechanics of the instrument, such as the ornaments he adds with the chromatic slide, add to his highly personal and easily identified style. He isn't playing the melody but rather creates a new melody that is just as interesting as the vocal one.

His harmonica is reminiscent of the human voice, but it does things and reaches pitches that even Stevie's amazing voice cannot achieve. Like the best guitar solos, you can almost sing along with this harmonica solo, and even though it gets away from you at some point, you will come back into it when you can because it's irrestistible.

You can experience this same phenomenon in "Alfie" from the "Eivets Rednow" album, which is my second-favorite Stevie harmonica piece. On the list above, only the key of F is played on the chromatic mostly with the slide in. This is by no means a complete list, and even this short list shows that Wonder is instantly recognizable in any key, even on the diatonic harp, which has no slide at all.

So I think we can safely say that it's not the keys he plays in that make him distinctive. It's true that Stevie uses the slide in a distinctive way, but that's not about the key he's playing in.

It's also true that many harmonica players have imitated Stevie's slide work, which is pretty easy to imitate, without being able to sound like Stevie for more than a few bars which is enough for most studio work, of course, but not enough to fool an audience for long. And like I said above, the slide thing doesn't explain why "Boogie On" is so distinctively Stevie. There are a few things that make Stevie so unique: 1 His harmonic sense. Stevie always seems to choose notes that bring out the highlights in the chord changes he plays over.

His harmonic sense comes through even more strongly on his compositions, where the chord changes tell amazing stories.

Like Toots Thieleman, Stevie has a very personal tone though nothing like Toots's, of course. A personal sound is something that great players achieve, regardless of their instrument. Eric Clapton has a personal sound; Lester Young had one; Stevie's got his. Asking "How does a player get that personal sound? In other words, it's easier to appreciate it than to explain it. Stevie tends to play his notes marcato, meaning slightly separated, and he often ends his notes with a trailing vibrato that's very emotional.

Stevie goes for a big finish on his solos. I could go on, but those are some of the highlights. Summary: Stevie is so distinctive because he has a unique, remarkable musical conception. His harp playing is one of the things that he uses to express that conception, along with his singing, his compositions, and his orchestrations in general.

Let's not forget that in the s and s Stevie also practically defined the sound of synthesizers in pop music. In those decades, there was hardly a musician in the world that wasn't listening closely to Stevie Wonder. I still laugh when I think about Paul Simon accepting the Grammy for "There Goes Rhymin' Simon"; his first words to the audience were "I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder for not making a record this year.

The way he plays and the technique he uses is important, sure, but what he feels and express through the notes is simply unbelievable and really unique. The solos have a structure and a progression very different yet very similar. When it comes to melodic songs i.