March 11, 2022
Mathias Heise interview
Mathias Heise joins me on episode 57. Mathias is a chromatic player from Copenhagen in Denmark. He started out playing diatonic, aged eight, before moving across to the chromatic, with which he was the first player to attend the Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Mathias won the World Harmonica Championship in Trossingen at the age of 20 with his own composition, Sudden Ascent. The album containing this track won Mathias the composers competition ‘New Jazz Star of the Year’ in Denmark i...
Mathias Heise joins me on episode 57.
Mathias is a chromatic player from Copenhagen in Denmark. He started out playing diatonic, aged eight, before moving across to the chromatic, with which he was the first player to attend the Music Conservatory in Copenhagen.
Mathias won the World Harmonica Championship in Trossingen at the age of 20 with his own composition, Sudden Ascent. The album containing this track won Mathias the composers competition ‘New Jazz Star of the Year’ in Denmark in 2015. In his band, the Mathias Heise Quadrillion, Mathias is leading the way as a chromatic player in a jazz fusion band.
His most recent album, The Beast, is recorded with the Danish Radio Big Band, with all the arrangements written by Mathias.
He has also appeared on numerous recordings as a sideman and more recently in a duo with a guitarist. Mathias has two new jazz albums coming out later in 2022.
Links:
https://www.mathiasheise.dk/
https://www.mathiasheiseq.com/
Suzuki chromatic bass harmonica:
http://www.suzukimusic.co.uk/products/harmonica/orchestral.html
Clockwork delay pedal:
https://rockettpedals.com/product/clockwork-echo/
Hall of Fame reverb pedal:
https://www.tcelectronic.com/product.html?modelCode=P0CYY
Videos:
Isn’t She Lovely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmd4mKAUDxQ
Spain with Phillip Achille:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gu1kaek-Dk
ShuffleFunk with effects pedal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZKDZolEBVM
Playing in a duo with guitarist Pelle von Bulow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMCOZTgYPzY
HUK 2017: Killer Joe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqFVhUCcS98
Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com
Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB
Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ
Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/
01:13 - Mathias is a chromatic player from Denmark, near Copenhagen, and the music scene there
01:44 - Was the first harmonica player to attend Music Conservatory in Copenhagen
02:14 - First musical instrument was violin
02:26 - Hearing harmonica on television when 8 years old inspired him to take up the diatonic
03:10 - Started playing chromatic a few years later
03:52 - Had lessons on violin but enjoyed the freedom of the harmonica more
05:31 - Also learnt piano when young and the way it has supported learning chromatic
06:22 - The comparisons between the chromatic and piano
07:27 - Had some harmonica lessons on diatonic and chromatic, and lessons with a saxophone player
08:28 - The value of having a face-to-face teacher
09:58 - Also important to spend a lot of time yourself with your instrument, especially the harmonica
10:23 - Value of learning jazz chromatic from a saxophone player, and transcribing saxophone solos
11:58 - Advice for people who want to take on learning jazz on the chromatic
13:38 - Mathias decision to move entirely to chromatic and overblows on diatonic
15:08 - Differences between diatonic and chromatic harmonicas
16:34 - Harmonica players who influenced Mathias: Toots Thielemans and Stevie Wonder
18:28 - Antonio Serrano is another influence
19:21 - Won the World Harmonica Championship at the age of 20, which helped raised his profile
21:10 - Did a performance with Phillip Achille at that World Harmonica festival
21:41 - Won the composers competition ‘New Jazz Star of the Year’ in Denmark in 2015, for his debut album Sudden Ascent
22:13 - Mathias approaches composing using both the chromatic and the piano
24:05 - The Mathias Heise Quadrillion band is a fusion of funk, rock and jazz
25:54 - Mathias is possibly the only fusion harmonica player in the world today
28:17 - Has been making use of some effects pedals more recently
30:01 - Second album, Decadence, released in 2017, and what is a Quadrillion
31:55 - The band spends a lot of time in post-production on the albums
32:41 - Third album is called The Beast, recorded with Danish State Big Band
33:57 - Mathias wrote the arrangements for all the instruments in the Big Band
35:26 - Released two singles recently, which are part of a new album coming out in June 22
36:15 - Releasing singles is a strategy to get on streaming platform playlists
37:26 - Done lots of recordings as a sideman on other performers albums
38:33 - The appeal of the chromatic harmonica to the female vocalist
39:53 - Other recordings with different artists
41:37 - Recently been playing in a duo with a guitar player and role of chromatic in a duo
44:19 - Doesn’t sing
44:34 - TV sessions and appearances on Denmark TV and harmonica composition which Mathias plays
45:17 - Does a little face-to-face teaching when it fits into busy schedule
45:35 - Festival and international appearances
46:42 - 10 minute question
47:38 - Practise regime
48:39 - Plays the G48 chromatic
49:28 - Diatonics of choice and how much he plays them
50:14 - Only uses 12 hole chromatics and in only uses key of C, for now
50:31 - Suzuki chromatic bass harmonica
51:15 - Embouchre and split octaves
52:17 - Uses SM58 mic
53:19 - Amplification and using reverb
54:40 - The actual pedals Mathias uses
55:36 - Also uses SM58 when recording
56:14 - Also cups SM58 when playing and recording
57:08 - Future plans
WEBVTT
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Matthias Heiser joins me on episode 57.
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Matthias is a chromatic player from Copenhagen in Denmark.
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He started out playing diatonic, aged 8, before moving across to the chromatic, with which he was the first player to attend the Music Conservatory in Copenhagen.
00:00:16.013 --> 00:00:22.286
Matthias won the World Harmonica Championship in Trossingen at the age of 20 with his own composition, Sudden Ascent.
00:00:22.658 --> 00:00:29.586
The album containing this track won Matthias the composer's competition New Jazz Store of the Year in Denmark in 2015.
00:00:29.746 --> 00:00:36.795
In his band, the Matthias Heiser Quadrillion, Matthias is leading the way as a chromatic player in a jazz fusion band.
00:00:37.377 --> 00:00:44.146
His most recent album, The Beast, is recorded with the Danish radio big band, with all the arrangements written by Matthias.
00:00:44.642 --> 00:00:50.307
He has also appeared on numerous recordings as a sideman, and more recently in a duo with a guitarist.
00:00:50.668 --> 00:00:58.677
Matthias has two new jazz albums coming out later in 2022.
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Hello, Matthias Heiser, and welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you, Neil.
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Yeah, thanks so much to join us today.
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And you're from Denmark, yep?
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That's true.
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Exactly.
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I'm sitting here in a Danish city called Willowa.
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I think you were born near Copenhagen.
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Is that where you are now, just around Copenhagen still?
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Yeah, it's a suburb to Copenhagen, on the west side of Copenhagen.
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What was the music scene like growing up?
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What got you into playing?
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Was it a good music scene in Copenhagen?
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Yeah, definitely a very nice music scene in Copenhagen.
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We have a lot of jazz musicians and a lot of jam sessions.
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When I was getting into music, I had the opportunity to go to a high school that had something called MGK.
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which is like an advanced course of music training.
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I went there with the chromatic harmonica actually as the first in Denmark.
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Later on, I went to the conservatory, but just for one year.
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After that, I've just been freelancing.
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Jam sessions here in Copenhagen has been very important for my development as a jazz harmonica player.
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I know you also play keyboards.
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Was chromatic harmonica your first instrument?
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My first instrument was actually the violin when I was only five years old.
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I played that for a couple of years and I stopped.
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Then when I was eight years old, I was watching a TV show called Guess the Song.
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This TV show the host of the tv show was playing the harmonica he's called the eminence playing the blues harmonica and that inspired me to pick up my toy harmonica and and try to play some melodies on it and then it turned out i i had some kind of talent because i i was able to play single notes pretty fast and pretty fast i could play some different melodies and that was just a lot of fun also it was a fun part of playing the harmonica that you could get many different kinds of harmonicas and you could wish for harmonicas when you had birthdays and Christmas and stuff like that so it became kind of my hobby and my passion I think for five years I also started playing the chromatic harmonica in the beginning I was mostly playing the blues but I was also overblowing and bending the diatonic harmonica to get some more notes out of it but in the end I had to play the chromatic harmonica to apply for this advanced course of music So I began to play the chromatic harmonica.
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And actually, after that, I only played the chromatic harmonica.
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I still play some blues harp, mostly for the fun of it.
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Chromatic harmonica is definitely
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my main.
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Sure, yeah.
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So it sounds like then you started playing some diatonic.
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You were about eight years old, were you?
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Yeah.
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Maybe about 13 or so, you picked up chromatic.
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Exactly.
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So it's an interesting question, because obviously lots of children, when they learn instruments and their parents send them for music lessons, play something like the violin, yeah, or some sort of orchestration.
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Yeah, I think it was a good thing to play violin at an early age to get some
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experience with the notes and the scales.
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I didn't like reading music at all.
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The classical tradition was also a bit too much for me.
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I needed some more freedom.
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So in that way, it was a relief to play the harmonica and to play such an intuitive instrument, an instrument that is kind of invisible where you are producing the notes very intuitively.
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That was very nice for me.
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And, you of come back to reading music and playing classical music also on the harmonica and both playing a lot of jazz music.
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It was nice for me to have a break from the violin and just do something completely you know free and just for the joy of it.
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And you also started playing keyboards.
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Was that as a result of going for your studies that you needed a second instrument or did you start that before then?
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Well, I actually started playing the keyboard when I was 10.
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I started playing because I bought a little synthesizer and I was a very big fan of George Duke.
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I was listening a lot to his records and especially his synthesizer solos.
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So I was sitting actually with my synthesizer and pitch bending and trying to sound like George Duke.
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Then I went to get some piano lessons at the music school.
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So it's been kind of on the side of the harmonica for for many years and have also always been using the keyboard as a visual way of, you know, understanding and getting an overview of the instrument.
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So I'm visualizing the keyboard when I'm playing.
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Yeah, obviously there's a lot of comparisons between the chromatic and the piano.
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They're laid out in that sort of linear way and quite similarly.
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And a lot of the chromatic players certainly talked to on here, you know, a lot of them do play the piano.
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So, you know, what about that relationship between the two instruments?
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You think, you know, it's pretty critical to, I have that understanding, obviously, from the piano side as well, understanding the chords and that side of things.
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Yeah, definitely.
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It's just such a wonderful tool to have the piano, both when you're playing the harmonica and when you want to get a visual overview of the scales and of the chords.
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Also, when you're composing, it's really great to be able to get so much music going so relatively easily.
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But, you know, Toots Thielemans, he didn't play the piano.
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He played the guitar and That seemed to go pretty well also.
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So I guess it's not necessarily the piano you have to play on the side, but maybe it is a good thing to have some knowledge of some other instrument.
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And so you had piano lessons, as you say, from the age of 10, but you still didn't have any chromatic, harmonic lessons or any harmonic lessons?
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I had some diatonic harmonica lessons also from about age 10, I think.
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Actually, I pretty much self-taught on the chromatic harmonica.
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But then when I got into this training course, I had a couple of teachers.
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There are a couple of guys besides me here in Denmark playing the chromatic harmonica.
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And I had a guy called Finn Posen.
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And then afterwards, a guy called Jakob Vindt as teachers on the chromatic harmonica.
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And then later on, on my last year, I had had a saxophone teacher.
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He was playing the saxophone and I was playing the harmonica.
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At that point, it didn't really seem to matter very much that my teacher was playing the harmonica since I was mostly after just learning how to improvise and getting more ideas and concepts for improvisation.
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What do you think about the need to have face-to-face tuition?
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Because obviously you've done both on the chromatic, you said you were self-taught for a few years and then you went to school and you had some more formal training on the instrument as well as obviously piano lessons.
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A lot of people now, you know, a lot of harmonica players are self-taught, right?
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And they particularly, it's just an instrument where strongly people are self-taught or they might go to the internet and get, you know, sort of kind of video lessons and things.
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So what do you think about the value of face-to-face lessons?
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Do you think that's a critical thing that people should do at least for few years
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yeah well it can definitely help it can help you if you have some blind spots and we all have some blind spots the thing is you you can actually find all the information you need when you are sitting at yourself just rehearsing and practicing but you don't know you know you don't know about the things that you don't know you need if i can say that way you know for instance my saxophone teacher he told me something very important about my eight notes when I was there at the first lesson.
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And I had just never really thought about my eight notes and how much I was swinging the eight notes in medium swing tempos.
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He said that it was very important to have more even eight notes and then accentuate every second eight note.
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That kind of knowledge, I probably wouldn't have gotten that if I didn't go to him since I wasn't aware of the concept at all.
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So in that way, I think it can be very useful to have face-to-face interaction.
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And then, of course I think especially on the harmonica it's very important that you spend a lot of time on your own with the instrument especially since what's happening with the tongue and the mouth is so invisible and it's something that a teacher can't tell you how to do you just have to work your way slowly into the feeling of it and that's only something you can do by yourself.
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Final question on this kind of tuition so another thing when people are learning jazz on the harmonica which typically tends to be chromatic but obviously a lot of people are playing overblows now and playing jazz and diatonic harmonicas you know so what about taking lessons off say a saxophone player as you did you know it's entirely work obviously they're coming from it from a different instrument different techniques and
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yeah it was it was a very very nice for me to have that experience because also our instrument is such a special instrument and we sometimes we get a little caught up in the instrument we get caught up in the possibilities and and the limitations.
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Sometimes it can be very nice to have someone from the outside telling you to do something without taking into consideration that you're playing the harmonica.
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So he was, for instance, saying to me that I transcribe and learn the bow train solo from Moments Notice composition on the Blue Train album.
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That is a wonderful saxophone solo and very, very difficult to play in that tempo on the chromatic harmonica.
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I don't know if I entirely succeeded in playing it, but the process of transcribing the whole thing and playing it as well as possible on the chromatic harmonica gave me immense knowledge and immense value.
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Suddenly new horizons were opening up on the instrument.
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So in that way, it can be good to have a teacher who does not take into consideration that you're playing the chromatic harmonica, but just views you as a musician, as another saxophone player, for instance.
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Bye.
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Quite a lot of people interested in jazz were obviously quite intimidated on it.
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It's a lot to take on.
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It's a very technically challenging, difficult music to play.
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You've got to understand a lot about music theory and different chord structures and scales.
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So what would you say to people who do want to maybe take on jazz, or at least more seriously than just playing some kind of light standard sort of approach?
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Yeah, well, it definitely comes with theory and the scales and the chords.
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Those are the tools that we're using when we are playing jazz.
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But it's a wonderful thing to do and what I always try to do and tell people is that you want to be able to improvise without thinking too much about the scales at least not thinking about what scale you're playing at what time but just seeing intuitively all the notes that are available on the different chords and normally you can think about improvisation in two ways you can think about a horizontal improvisation and a vertical improvisation where the horizontal improvisation is going through all the chords with the same scale.
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So that's kind of what we are doing when we're playing the blues.
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We're just using the same scale or maybe the two or three scales over the entire song.
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And that gives us the possibility to develop our musical ideas very intuitively.
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And then when you play jazz, you play, of course, down into every chord and every chord has its own scale.
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But what you want to do when you play jazz is to be able to play horizontally through the chords and just having the background knowledge to do it by having these scales kind of in your nervous system.
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You've gone off to you're almost entirely a chromatic player now so you mentioned that quite a lot of people do play jazz now on the diatonic playing overblows so is that not that's not something you do you're not still pursuing overblows and you know why did you decide to definitely move you know entirely over to the chromatic?
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Yeah well it was actually a tough decision because I really I I loved playing the diatonic harmonica and I was very inspired by Howard Levy and Carlos del Hongo very advanced playing and I was doing the same but also there was constantly difficulties There was always limitations on what you could play on a normal C harmonica, for instance, because if you were to play two overblows after each other, that's almost impossible to do in a legato way.
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I was getting also a little frustrated with the limitations of it, even though I thought it was a very, very cool and wonderful thing that this is something that is actually physically possible.
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So for me, it was very nice to have an instrument where these notes were available more easily so i could focus on learning the scales and developing patterns in the scales and developing the jazz language without having so many difficulties on the physical level
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yeah and i think a lot of people prefer the diatonic over the chromatic because it's got that more kind of instant power but a bit like a saxophone yeah you can kind of get more crunch out of a diatonic whereas a chromatic's got a cleaner sort of gently sound you can't bend the notes so much you know and so you know do you also prefer the sound of the chromatic for the jazz for that reason or do you think you're missing a little bit of that kind of crunch that you can get out of the diatonic?
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I know what you mean and I also would prefer the diatonic when playing the blues but I must say I think the chromatic harmonica has got a wonderful sound of its own like you can bend the notes in the same way but you can still bend the notes a lot and get a lot of expression out of it and you can play double notes like maybe I can illustrate on the chromatic harmonica now but you can kind of get some of the same sound out of it.
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So I think getting, I want to get a juicy sound and I'm inspired by the diatonic sound in that way.
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I also like the bright and mellow sound of the dramatic harmonica when you're playing single notes and you're playing more softly.
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No, absolutely.
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And I hope those words do sort of inspire some diatonic players, you know, maybe to consider the chromatic more because I think a lot of people, you know, for that reason, they sort of think, oh yeah, the chromatic doesn't have the same kind of bite as the juice, as you call it, as the diatonic.
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But yeah, you know, great, yeah.
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So we're going back then to your influences when you were learning who were you listening to I mean clearly you probably listened to lots of jazz players you mentioned Coltrane they're like a giant of jazz and what about harmonica players besides Howard and Carlos who you mentioned and chromatic players particularly
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I was listening to Tillemans a lot, of course, especially some of his early work.
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There's an album called Columbia Jazz, where he's playing some stunning solos and just really showing how well you can get around on that instrument and playing b-ball on it.
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B-Ball
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And also I've been playing with Stevie Wonder, listening to his solos and trying to get that feel and those spins.
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Yeah, I've got some recordings of you doing the Isn't She Lovely?
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That's a song you really like, isn't
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it?
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Yeah, definitely.
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Definitely.
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And it's also a crowd pleaser.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, what about that fast run up at the end?
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You do play that, don't you, on the chromatic?
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That's quite a challenging run up.
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Yeah, the...
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Yeah.
00:18:08.669 --> 00:18:12.051
Actually, it depends on the key.
00:18:12.412 --> 00:18:20.398
You know, I usually play it actually one half note above his original key and that makes that run a little more smooth.
00:18:20.659 --> 00:18:20.898
Right.
00:18:21.079 --> 00:18:22.201
You're doing it in F then, are you?
00:18:22.221 --> 00:18:23.301
I think he does it in E, doesn't he?
00:18:23.561 --> 00:18:24.221
Yeah, exactly.
00:18:24.442 --> 00:18:24.782
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:25.002 --> 00:18:25.242
Great.
00:18:25.423 --> 00:18:27.525
Okay, so yeah, so Toots and Stevie, yeah, so...
00:18:28.105 --> 00:18:35.893
Yeah, but also, yeah, I've been listening a lot to Antonio Serrano when I was starting to play jazz.
00:18:36.192 --> 00:18:42.298
I was checking his videos out and I've been a big fan of his approach to jazz.
00:18:42.357 --> 00:18:44.000
He's also a big inspiration.
00:19:01.714 --> 00:19:04.718
So yeah, so you're I think, are you still just 28?
00:19:05.538 --> 00:19:06.077
Yeah,
00:19:07.920 --> 00:19:08.641
until September.
00:19:09.280 --> 00:19:13.305
Yeah, so you're sounding fantastic now, Matthias.
00:19:13.325 --> 00:19:14.566
You've got a great sound.
00:19:14.586 --> 00:19:20.971
You're starting at a relatively young age, but you've got to great heights already, so congratulations.
00:19:21.291 --> 00:19:27.136
At the age of 20, you won the World Harmonica Championship in Trossingen in 2013.
00:19:27.596 --> 00:19:27.797
Yeah.
00:19:28.137 --> 00:19:30.078
So what did you play to win there?
00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:34.563
Yeah, I played one of my own compositions called Sudden Ascent.
00:19:34.923 --> 00:19:44.839
It's also our most popular tune on spotify with my band matthias heise quadrillion actually it's the first it's from the first album i ever
00:19:44.881 --> 00:19:57.001
released also so
00:20:00.865 --> 00:20:06.171
So I had done a backing track at home and then I played that in Germany.
00:20:06.530 --> 00:20:07.271
And so great.
00:20:07.311 --> 00:20:08.492
So then you won that.
00:20:08.553 --> 00:20:12.715
And did that help sort of launch your career or were you already well on your way by then?
00:20:13.116 --> 00:20:14.637
Yeah, that definitely helped.
00:20:14.897 --> 00:20:25.788
When I got back, I wrote some of the Danish TV shows and I came into a morning TV show and told the story and played some music there.
00:20:26.048 --> 00:20:34.736
And also afterwards, it's almost always in the press text, for my concerts that I'm a World Harmonica champion.
00:20:34.976 --> 00:20:41.784
It is a nice little thing to have when it comes to marketing and when it comes to launching your career.
00:20:41.804 --> 00:20:45.768
Of course, you should take it with a grain of salt.
00:20:46.028 --> 00:20:47.990
It's not like Antonio was there, for instance.
00:20:48.270 --> 00:21:01.845
It is what it is, but I love the festival and it was such a wonderful experience to be there and to meet so many other players because you just walk around here in your own little harmonica world.
00:21:02.164 --> 00:21:07.569
It's such a shock suddenly to see 200 harmonica players at the same place.
00:21:07.789 --> 00:21:09.371
It's surreal.
00:21:10.152 --> 00:21:14.236
And you did a performance with Philip Achille in 2013 there, didn't you?
00:21:14.556 --> 00:21:16.417
Yeah, there was the jam session.
00:21:16.738 --> 00:21:21.402
We were playing the tune Spain by Chick Corea, so we decided to do it together.
00:21:21.422 --> 00:21:23.063
That was very nice.
00:21:23.324 --> 00:21:24.805
He's a great guy, Philip Achille.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...
00:21:41.057 --> 00:21:53.648
2015 you won the new Jazz Store of the Year in Denmark so you were starting to get more recognition yeah was this on the back of your first album with the Matthias Heiser Quadrillion the Sudden Ascent album
00:21:53.868 --> 00:22:14.090
yeah yeah exactly actually that was a composer's composition so you had to send in a composition to get evaluated by a jury and I sent in the same track Sudden Ascent that I used to win the Harmonica World Championship in Germany that composition So you
00:22:14.151 --> 00:22:16.496
composed the tracks for this album yourself?
00:22:16.978 --> 00:22:22.711
Yeah, I think one of them was composed by my guitar player, but all the other ones were composed by me.
00:22:23.352 --> 00:22:27.541
So are you composing on the piano or do you use chromatic as well?
00:22:28.034 --> 00:22:30.218
Sometimes one and sometimes the other.
00:22:30.258 --> 00:22:34.405
It's definitely a chromatic harmonica feature that got me going.
00:22:34.445 --> 00:22:35.929
It was the slide.
00:22:36.169 --> 00:22:39.715
You can use the slide to get some pretty nice trills.
00:22:40.155 --> 00:22:40.356
Like...
00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:43.843
I was kind of fond of that sound.
00:22:44.183 --> 00:22:46.327
Then I made up this phrase...
00:22:51.650 --> 00:22:54.273
and that's kind of what the song is built around.
00:22:54.554 --> 00:23:05.208
Then in the A part, there's a theme that is a bit advanced, and that was actually composed on the piano, and that was very hard to play in the beginning for me on the chromatic harmonica.
00:23:05.508 --> 00:23:20.087
So I like to do both, to challenge myself as a harmonica player, and also to use the harmonica as a tool to write some composition that practically you wouldn't be able to write them if you didn't play the harmonica.
00:23:20.288 --> 00:23:21.229
So I love to...
00:23:21.634 --> 00:23:24.647
to in that way use the harmonic as a composition tool.
00:23:25.511 --> 00:23:29.971
Then are you coming up with melodic lines on the chromatic and then you're adding chords afterwards?
00:23:30.465 --> 00:23:32.728
Yeah, sometimes that's what's happening.
00:23:32.768 --> 00:23:34.229
Not that much, actually.
00:23:34.328 --> 00:23:37.172
I've always been a very guy.
00:23:37.311 --> 00:23:49.942
I like harmonies, and I like chords, and much of the time, the chords are the basic structure of the song, and then I apply some melody, and maybe I then change the chords to fit the melody.
00:23:50.482 --> 00:23:54.066
I haven't wrote a lot of tunes just with the melody from the beginning.
00:23:54.646 --> 00:24:01.492
And you are the keyboard player on the album, because there's a few songs which don't have a harmonic run, so you're playing the keyboard on Yeah,
00:24:01.772 --> 00:24:04.496
it's probably 50-50, keyboard and
00:24:04.556 --> 00:24:16.108
harmonica in that band.
00:24:16.128 --> 00:24:16.388
Yeah,
00:24:16.950 --> 00:24:17.369
definitely.
00:24:17.430 --> 00:24:21.473
I've been a huge Fusion fan almost as long as I can remember.
00:24:21.494 --> 00:24:23.676
It was my first introduction to jazz.
00:24:24.057 --> 00:24:30.384
I remember listening to Herbie Hancock's Chameleon song with the very iconic bass line, do, do, do, do.
00:24:30.384 --> 00:24:40.200
I was listening to that track every day for a year when I was in eighth grade in my school.
00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:42.103
I just couldn't get enough of that tune.
00:24:42.242 --> 00:24:47.571
And also I began listening to George Duke and I'm passionate about playing fusion music.
00:24:47.711 --> 00:24:52.859
And it was my biggest dream was to get my own fusion band, write my own fusion songs.
00:25:14.337 --> 00:25:16.190
at that time in Denmark.
00:25:16.289 --> 00:25:20.313
Now this is probably in 2012 and 2010.
00:25:20.733 --> 00:25:23.016
Fusion was actually kind of frowned upon.
00:25:23.056 --> 00:25:37.508
Many jazz musicians in Denmark thought that fusion was bad taste and what you need to do was to play acoustic and maybe free jazz, maybe some rubato jazz, a lot of other ways of playing jazz.
00:25:37.769 --> 00:25:39.470
But now actually things have turned.
00:25:39.690 --> 00:25:50.701
So I did my fusion band and now it appears that all those very hardcore jazz bands They've turned around and began playing fusion jazz together with me.
00:25:50.901 --> 00:25:51.781
So that's nice.
00:25:52.261 --> 00:25:53.624
You started a trend, yeah.
00:25:53.864 --> 00:26:00.351
But it's probably reasonably unique to hear some harmonica, certainly some chromatic harmonica and that sort of fusion sound, isn't it?
00:26:00.411 --> 00:26:04.836
So I think you probably have got quite a unique position in the harmonica playing world there.
00:26:04.915 --> 00:26:07.479
Are you aware of any other sort of fusion sort of harmonica players?
00:26:07.959 --> 00:26:09.701
No, not in the same way.
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