ROBERT IvaCiC - Rick Beall at 16:35:06 on 8/22/02
BLUEHARP - ROBERT IvaCiC , born 9.aug.1980
What country are you from?
I come from sLOVEnija, "NE" from Italy. (
http://www.matkurja.com )
Is there much blues or harmonica playing going on there?
We had around 20 harp players on last "AH TE ORGLICE" ( MOKRONOG ) festival
and 5 of us went to KLAGENFURT ( Celovec ) in Austria on their own HARP
FESTIVAL, but i bet there are more than 100 harmonica players or harp
players wannabe in SLOVENIA, including me, ofcorse. Let me remind just a bit
of them:
KLEMEN,Ljubljana--> group leteci potepuhi
DANILO SITAR ( ex president of the region Krsko )
LOJZE PETERLE ( minister in slovenian parlament )
JOzE LECTAR, ( contry, polka )
EDI 2000 , Swiss ( magic man, show and entertainment, harmonica player and a
great joker! )
and many others players of jazz, classic, polka etc.
How old were you when you started playing harmonica?
I was 12, when i started to play TREMOLO harmonica and practicing and
exploring it just after buying it and showing off my "abilities" while
walking all over Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia. I got my first CX-12 at age
of 16 i think and i bought another one just after high school. I had many
TREMOLO harps, but after getting my first CX-12 from my aunt, i soon bought
one HARP , DIATONIC harmonica, having problems with different note pathern
than SOLO-tuning for half of a year and then finnaly finding out what blues
should look like in one lonely evening in Ljubljana, when i was searching a
flat of a great blues guitar player from states.
Do you play any other instruments?
I was playing ACCORDION with keyboard at age of 5 and later on: ZITHER,
flute, child MELODICA, dishes... I got my first mini keyboard at age of 10 i
think and i was really surprised over playing Rock'n'roll in "G", cause the
keyboard was so short, that i couldn't play it from C up!
Out of all the instruments you could play (most of them fully chromatic and
you can see what note you are playing), why do you play the harmonica? What
is it about the harmonica that is special to you?
I AM PLAYING KEYBOARDS, mostly BLUES, RnR; i used to play folk, country and
polka, waltz music,
...But from all.. , i see HARP and HARP PLAYERS as:
-PARTY MAKERS on TRAINS, BUSSES, and any other activities, like camps,
parties,
and not just that, I see them as :
-PLAYERS of GREAT CLASSICAL MUSIC,
-PLAYERS of AMAZING JAZZ masterpieces, like you can hear in heaven from
TOOTS and similar,
- THE CREAM to the BOTTOM of DRMS,BAS,GTR,VOCALS,KBRDS(organs!) and all
other instrument playing Blues and later styles,
- the BLAST thru AMLIFIERS that you can hear at:
5 HORSE JONHSON
BLUES FOOLS ( HU )
and many others, to great to be mentioned by me,
-AN INSTRUMENT,
--- that gives you basic chords as easy as it is to open your mouth some
more.
--- that can be played in "G" HURRICANE with HIRAM BULLOCK and can end much
further in aplause for Eb or Ab "- Seems like i should stick to the boogie!
" experiment.
--- that makes girls say:
"It would be great 2 be the guitar, but HEY, it would be much MUCH better if
I could be a HARP."
An instrument that makes fresh thoughs, warms up your hands and even hearts.
"
What musical experience do you have? Do you play in bands? Play in the
studio on commericals, movies, or other people's albums?
When i started to STUDY in LJUBLJANA: I started to experiment on blues jam
session in Ljubljana, mostly with band ~ "MOJO HAND and the band", sitting
off the stage, trying to find something on my cx-12 and diatonics, even
tremolo-s. I know that they were suffering a serious brain enjuries,
listening to my experimenting there, and i say THANK YOU to all of them, for
giving me achance to practice, not even knowing a thing about trying to play
the blues.
I was practicing and playing on 3 concerts with the High school Bezigrad
band ( rock+) I got a bycicle worth 700$ on some great student party for 2
minutes of harmonica folk song, changed in blues action, but it was stolen
after 13 days,
At this point i have around 50 jam session behind my back, around 20
concerts, where i had a chance to find a point of agreement with band,
playing some blues with them, getting on the stage for a solo or a song or
2:
Let me mention just few of the greatest bands, i have ever had a chance to
play with in no particulary order:
BARE
( ex MAJKE SINGER from ex YU
GRUPA STOP
( extremely profesional band, playing HENdRIX and BLUES for more than 25
years, CRO)
BLUES ETCETERA
( ITALIAN BLUES party band with great brass section and MANY PLAYS )
HIRAM BULLOCK (
http://www.hirambullock.com ) ( psst! just listen!!! )
ORLEK
( folk, blues, punk, polka... )
A great band with a great songs about COAL miners and their lifes, FEELING
is the best expression for them!
LES GETREX
( New orleans singer and guitar player, who played several times in
SLOVENIA, also on LENT! )
TONY LEE KING and the riders of STORM
( Croatia, a great blues singer and player who invited me to B.P. CLUB (
CLub bo$ka petroviCa), he has a realy great BAND! THANKS, TONY!
MOJO HAND and the BAND
( A great society of GUITAR PLAYER SLAVEN, great female singer that i have
full respect to her, AZRA, and more than 10 other players, usually bringed
together into a huge set of difrent players, from sax, organs, guitars, bas,
drums, with lots of guests!
I call THIS BAND one if not thE BEST BLUES+ BAND in SLOVENIA!
KOKO BLUES BAND ( Celje)
great guitar player, Azra was their guest also, i like them,
BIG BIBLS BROTHERS BAND,
extraordinary band from SW region of slovenia, close to ITALY,blues!
LOLITE
from Nederlands ( punk blues, really interesting, guitar and drums, and
nothing else, well mabye harp sometimes, really extraordinary and really
personal and "that's THEM!" sound.
HAYAL
club in ISTANBUL, TURKEY, giving me a chance to play all night long with two
great guitarists, letting me feel and express the blues and pains of that
moment, failing to forget somebody, who still means a lot to me, but now i'm
letting myself to run into somebody else,
EL-JUBL-JEJNA (LJUBLJANA)
and other guests, no-obligation JAZZ and BLUES and LIVE MUSIC TEAM, started
by a BASS PLAYER and POETRY writer, GAL GJURIN, making their plays all over
Slovenia and beyond, COnsisted out of great jazz+ youngsters, letting me to
jump in and back me as a star just before the end of the show, Yea, they are
THE ones i spent the most time with in ljubljana, i mean playing music with,
specially in GEONAVTIK on thursdays in spring of 2001. 5 concerts with a
band that i play in,
ThE PRIME
Celje, ( I AM MEMBER OF THIS BAND ) ( Blues, jazz, funk and Rock'n'Roll )
I did some recordings in studio for 2 CDs and some jiggles" and there were
many other bands, that were willing to let me join them for a part or 2, but
i think there's not enough place to mention them here.
How often do you practice? What sorts of things do you like to cover in each
workout? (scales, custom (made up scales), improvising, songs?)
I think i'm not practicing enough long. I have band rehearsals almost 2
times a week, i play when i have time and i travel, sometimes i record
myself on a PC, but i know i should do some more. I think i stucked a little
bit, cause, practicing is not the same as playing for having fun. I think
it's not so possible to practice, when you have people around, expecting
silence or at least a decent play. I think that a little part of practicing
comes from experiences, that i am gaining, when i play closer to the edge of
my abilities, not meaning this actually technically but more, experimentaly.
I practice a little bit, when i am experimenting with the players i didn't
knew before, but it takes some time to get used to each other, or it takes
more stage-time to be able to jump on stage and make a solo after a call,
"Come on, Robert!"
I have to work on this fields:
*diffrent Rythm, that i have in my body mechanism right now (4/4)
*more scales, specially minors and goign further from pentatonic activites
in minor" scales
*combinating difrent styles and "pictures" in one song
*prebending more notes
*exact halftone bendings, due to gaining full bending and getting to much
into it,
*exact and controlled 2nd and 3rd hole prebending,
*exact and prebending or mabyeeven bending on holes 7,8,9,10
*practicing of blow bending on overused harmnonicas
*getting more informations, about how to do it all on chromatic harmonica
and which one (?)
I mean i know many of people being able to bend on chromatics, but i know
there are something like 64X and C64 and some, quite more expensive harps,
that have a great tone and range, like 16 holes.
I have seen gold or shiny plated , great Cromatic harmonica, used for
classical music, and i would like to start with some jazz. I would like to
find online instructions or at least some midi pieces of many jazz
standards. I would also like to make progress into other new and old styles,
mabye even to electronic music, but always with big amount of blues, and i
still am thinking about just, sticking to the old way of: one mic, whole
band, that's it. what do you think? whtdythnk is my nickname on icq :-) I
would like to practice many blues standards, which are toutching the jazz,
and i would like to be able to play more scales by using Chromatic harp.
What are your influences?
American cowboy - western movies and train movie harp masterpieces. AC-DC.
ORLEK. ADI SMOLAR. IZTOK MLAKAR. BLUES FOOLS. MOJO HAND and the band (
slo ), Some other black harmonica player, playing chro and harps, who lost 2
teets in front, and he's singing: I'M A BUSINES$S MAN" song by Little
Walter, now that's a BLAST,
Diffrent polka bands of slovenia. Dorde balasevic. Yugo RnR music. B.B.
KING. VLADO KRESLIN. THE DUBLINERS. ANDREJ SIFRER. ...
Were you raised in a musical family? How were you exposed to music as you
were growing up?
My family was like an enviroment to me musically, cause they provided me a
lot of diffrent instruments and most of the family was singing old folk and
other songs from books they had or from their memory, my aunt was also
recording this activities. As i know, my grand father used to play something
like a KAZOO, the hair-brush, and his father and his brother were playing
ACCORDION, specially my grand-uncle, brother of my grand-father played
ACCORDION ( With KNOBS, DIATONIC, 3 rows, polka and waltz music ).
We had an old LP - player, that got damaged before i was 5 i think, My aunt
still has a lot of LP-s and player, and i was getting some tapes of children
songs, i was listening to the radio and i really liked anything that was
related to RnR and blues, not even knowing what it was, so radio was
bringing me quite a lot of music from ex yugoslavia, but mostly from
slovenia and not that much from other contries, after 80's it changed
and my first CONTACT with BLUES , that i started to really like was the CD
from the library: "NOTHIN' BUT THE BLUES", 2 cd-s, and from then on, i was
exploring the libraries and internet for more BLUES, and it was not that
easy, cause blues is not that popular in slovenia, as it might be or used to
be in USA, but still people like to hear it, - if it sonds good, ... it is
good -.
Do you have a home studio? What kind of equipment do you use? What are your
favorite mics and amps?
My home studio looks like a PC with ability to record something, I own
AWE-64, which i want to use as MIDI recording device, but i don't know
how!!! Please, help me, i have cable, i have sound card, i have GOLDSTAR
synth GEK S525 and i would really like to record my practicing on PC.
I have SHURE 57 or something similar, but i also used to record with other
mics wannabe" and headphones used as mics.
I own HONEYTONE MINIAMP (1W ) and it runs on bateries.
One question!? Do you have any solution cause, my batteries ( 9V block )
goes out in 3 minutes and they almost die. I would like to get rid of this
problem ( seems that somehow, mabye over mono cable or over microphone, or
th jack, which might be too covered with metal , there might go too much
energy over it and it might make battery empty in 3 minutes! you know,
shortcut". I knew there was a way how to eliminate that, i think i used one
microphone with mono cable, which wad plastic surrounding of the jack and i
think microphone had diffrent impedance. I think the main problem was in the
connector ( jack ). If it was STEREO, it emptied the battery really fast and
if was mono it was ok, but not always. Mabye there are diffrent shapes of
heads ( jack ) and mabye there might be something in the miniamp, that
chould be fixed, or disconected or added ( mabye i should add some R, L or C
in the structure, i don't know.
My favourite microphone is the one,
that doesn't make my hand hurt after a long night of jaming or playing.
I'm used to SHURE57, bu they are quite hevy. I was using the headset (
half ) for that reason and cause i didn't had anything else, but i think the
sound was sometimes to covered with pillows and sometimes to bright, well,
the response of cheap headphones ain't always as it should be, but it was ok
to use them for MINIAMP, being powered from adapter for HIGH GAIN usage,
getting high distortion. One thing is that i had to coup that headknob of 1
inch diameter really tight close to the harmonica, cause it had short range,
but when you did a good couping, ut sonded really distorded and dirty, and i
liked it. THe problem was, that i couldn't predict very good, what distance
to use for more easy, bacground playing, due to strange and short range with
fast drop in volume at 2 inches and more.
About Bullet microphone: I was playing it for 3 months, cause we had it
borrowed. One thing: I couldn't coup it, cause it's so big. I couldn't
handle it cause it was heavier than shure, or the shape was not so that it
could fit between two fingers, but i could manage all that, i just wan't
used to it and it didn't gave me the sond i wanted, cause the owner was
afraid of damaging it and i think i had to leave it on the stick, without
any option of couping from bottom and all arond. and the main problem ?
ELECTRIC SHOCKS! While singing or while touching it with ma harp, it stroked
me, not much, but if i would hold it, it would burn my lips off! There might
be something wrong with the cable or the mix-table, but still, i didn't
actually enjoy it, also, cause i was not able to hear myself.
In our band, we had a lack of monitors, but still, i think we did the 2nd
best plays ever on the first and last play we had (The PRIME) and The best
ones are yet to come!
BLUEHARP - ROBERT IvaCiC
( Robert IvAchich ), born 9.aug.1980, Slovenia.
24855281 (icq)
I quote Hiram Bullock
http://www.hirambullock.com
"Robert, You played your a** off ! Thanks for coming down; let's
do it again-anytime ! Hiram "
