When Pixies Growl

Got a Humes and Berg #112 in the mail. It isn't at all the sound I expected but it is a sound I'm sure I can use. Basically, it sounds like you are growling even when you aren't growling, and it seems to make it easier to growl when you do growl.

It's almost too much, though. With the #112 and the Home Depot plunger, I've got wah-wah, plunger vibrato, lip vibrato, growl, multiphonics, flutter tongue, slurs. And it starts with a dirty tone. Of course I'm not good enough yet to do "true" growl or shakes. But that's still a surfeit of options to ornament a melodic line.

And on the supporting hand; I'm all for ornaments and articulations and variations in tonal color. That's one of the things that's attracted me to live instruments over canned sampler patches.

But at the same time it is too easy to get lost in fancy techniques and not tend to basics. I have this nagging feeling that the great plunger mute players achieved their emotional power in part because when they landed on the note, they landed dead on.

Me? I'm not terribly on pitch even without a mute. All mutes drag you off pitch, and some mutes fight you as you are trying to slot. The #112 is no exception. Covering the bell completely with a plunger only adds to the difficulty. Seems to me it is going to be a couple more weeks of rehearsal before I can record this particular piece.