Mystery man (Throat Vibrato taught my Michael Rubin)

[chris3]

This video from 5 years ago just popped up on my YouTube feed. It’s actually a good lesson in vibrato, differing from Luke and JP’s ‘coughing’ technique by achieving vibrato with fast bends. It’s definitely worth a watch if you haven’t seen it but the big question I’ve got is: just who is the chap in the video? It was posted by harmonica.com but I’m only aware of JP and Luke as harmonica.com teachers

Harmonica Vibrato Lesson (Cool Technique!) (youtube.com)

[Slim]

Its Michael Rubin (he even says his name at the start). He does a lot of chromatic lessons on YouTube.

– Slim

[chris3]

thanks for that Slim. I guess what i meant to ask (but failed spectacularly) was not what his physical name was but ‘who’ he is, as in, is he a previous instructor of Harmonica.com given that he has posted lessons under the harmonica.com umbrella.

[Luke]

@chris3 Yeah Michael Rubin has done quite a bit of stuff for Harmonica .com over the years, and this vibrato tutorial has been the most helpful to me of any that I’ve found on YouTube, as I mentioned in this post:

Howlin' Throat Vibrato & Howlin' Wolf

I was texting with my friend Justin tonight (whose also a professional musician and a good harp player) and we were joking around about how the throat vibrato technique has been ever elusive for both of us. We also discussed how some people seem to have a deep rich throat vibrato so naturally, and how much we hate those kind of people. Do you know what I’m talking about when I say throat vibrato? Vibrato is a subtle variation in PITCH. Tremolo by contrast is a s…

Michael’s got a much better throat vibrato than me, but I actually just mentioned throat vibrato in my most recent video.

One more forum post on the topic you might be interested in:

3 Types of Vibrato

How to Sound Less Like a Beginner [Little details matter] The difference between the sound of YOUR harmonica playing, and the sound of the GREAT MASTERS all boils down to… tiny. little. details. The details of how they shape their Tone Bending Phrasing Dynamics Note choice and embellishments are what makes the pros sound like…well, pros ! To sound LESS like a beginner, first get the fundamentals down. Then, once you…

Also, I have spent a lot of time doing what Michael recommend here of practicing the monkey sound with a metronome at 60 BPM, doing 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X per click, but I want to also remind you that Joe Filisko maintains that committing to practicing the Big Tone Train is the single fastest way to develop throat vibrato. There’s a link to that resource in this forum post:

Playing The Train - the Fastest Way to Harmonica Bossdom!?!

@Butch shared a really cool old train groove from the early 1900’s on the thread Harmonica - The People’s Instrument, and I thought I’d re-post I in a new thread specifically about the Train, because it’s SUCH AN IMPORTANT TOPIC for harmonica players. Here’s his post from that thread: In the book, Harmonica, Harps and Heavy Breathers, one of the early harmonica players from early 1900’s, Palmer McAbee has a couple recordings, 1928 it appears and his train if definitely something worth listening…