Harmonica Teacher Reacts to Blues Traveler - Hook (John Popper) 

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John Popper is SO underrated. Between his harmonica and vocals, the guy is through the roof good. Through the fucking roof.

This is BY FAR my favorite type of react content. Watching an expert in a field genuinely appreciate something in a way that only an expert can. Very cool.

I graduated high school with these fellows, they were a band even back then. John, joined Princeton High in his sophomore year I think. Happy for their success...

Popper had the sweetest voice in the business and his harp mastery has Bob Dylan looking like a baboon playing with a typewriter.🤣🤣

I love this band... it was awesome to see a harmonica insider's reaction to John Popper (his harmonicas are a huge part of their sound)

Yes JP is a real talent- as you explain - in that his playing is unique, distinctive and skilled. Thank you!

What I wanna know is how the HELL he does that vibrato?!? Thats some next level shit right there!

Thanks so much Tomlin, really great addition and commentary!! The Best!

15:35. CST 02/08/23 Good job on breaking down how John is getting that incredible sound. I love and appreciate you that you are willing to go where I would not know how to interpret or analyze the music.

He is awesome and has his own sound that’s just outstanding!

Great insight into the song! Popper has always been in my list of favorite harp players, I like how he is different. Blues Traveler was one of my favorite bands in the 90's and still is now. Keep doing these videos they are awesome! 🙌🎶

Thanks for posting reaction videos. John Popper is a beast and it was good to hear you explain how he plays fast.

Tomlin, you bring us the reality of the art! Thank you!

Just curious: I am wondering if anyone else is as fascinated as I am that John Popper seems to model his singing (the inflections, runs and trills he does with his voice) after what he's able to do on the harmonica. I am amazed by it, but I've never heard anyone else point it out. Is it just me????

Cool Tomlin😀 Thank You for sharing your perception on Popper. I like this format

Check out him playing with The Dave Matthews Band on "What Would you Say" He has a killer (and long) harmonica solo.

Big fan of your depth analysis!

Excellent juxtaposition with the chamber strings to show similar structures

Love this series and your thoughts on John Popper, Tomlin. I think he sometimes gets a bad rap from other more traditional blues harp players, but his speed and accuracy on the upper range of the harmonica is amazing!

His singing is VERY underrated because of his harp skills..🍺

Year....it was great. And I like your entusiasme!!!

I'm just amazed there are harmonica teachers. Good video.

You asked what we think about your "reactions" series: I think it's brilliant. I think we need more of that from the elite harmonica instructors, educators, musicologists and composers. You are offering all the community, the less advanced players and less experienced musicians as well as your colleagues, a technical perspective that we wouldn't reach on our own. I don't even think it matters whether we like the subject-player or not. What matters is that you show us what to hear there. Popper and the blues travelers is not one of my bedside bands. No favors here, I prefer your vocals (a lot) and the interaction of the harmonica with the other voices in the songs with your band, Delacroix, for example. But I would *never* hear Pachelbel's Canon in D major there. The moment you started singing the chord progression it was there, the "aha" moment. So thank you very much.

Very nice explanation and tribute! Also nice playing yourself. ;)

Hi Tomlin t very good the guy can sing as well love it

Hello Tomlin! Your explanation is great, years ago I was working on the Popper technique and it also uses the mouth as a bellows with the movement of the jaw without swallowing air. Simply opening and closing your mouth quickly in coordination with the scale, as you have explained well. It is something that you have to work on daily to get it right and you can see in the video how he opens and closes his mouth. I hope to contribute a little to your good exhibition. All the best! 🤗

Awesome review, great to see/hear honest comments and tech style info without too much detail, keeps the joy and intrigue of the artiste your discussing, great vid, well done Tomlin, your found a unique niche to progress with,, the harmonica can be used in many styles and there is so much on "The Blues" it's refreshing to see another facet of Harmonica Music - long may you prosper 😎 Ps. There are some great players using Diatonic Harmonicas in Chromatic style with a great empathy for more melodic music - use google and see who you come up with , keep on harpin long and strong 👏👏👍

Thanks for this Tomlin. I have been a Blues Traveller/John Popper fan since I saw them on Blues Brothers 2000 (not as good as Blues Brothers but still a fantastic film) I love the sound and could never reach that level although I would love to. John Popper was sponsored by Fender for a while - and I have a full set of Fender Blues Deluxes' as a result and my pride and joy is a Fender Blues Deville in C. It sounds fantastic and looks so cool in Black and Gold (also the only harp I have with no numbers on it). In my opinion Run Around is Blues Travellers best song and such a cool video too. I like Hook too but I wont be able to listen to it without hearing Pachelbel's Canon anymore. Thanks for the review and maybe do the same with Run Around sometime - now that's fast

You can point out thinks that I didn't hear or understand - very informative!

I really appreciate your modesty, although you are an excellent teacher.

Nice job!😊

Nice analysis

Oh my lord you're right! It's the Pachelbel chord progression!!!! No wonder it's so catchy.

It would appear that he is using a Mesa Boogie head in this video. It might be what's off to the side of the stage by the bass player. At this point in time, the Axe hadn't been invented yet. He was using a full on pedal board with the signal split various ways and controlled that with a looper or midi controller. For this particular performance, he was just playing though the amp, IMO, with no effects being used. His use of effects at this time were largely levels of gain/distortion and a pitch delay. He would occasionally use an envelope filter or octave down effect too. He frequently used a rotary speaker for an organ sound too. Over the next ten years of so, he'd really get into more pitch and time based effects. I'd say in the last ten years or so, he's really paired that down. Although he still has a very complicated rig using various gain stages, his effect use is much less. I have a rig run down of his current rig on my YT page an a video of me sitting with him several years back.

John is the best!

Wow! Pachelbels's Canon in D I'd never put those together! Brilliant!

Johm Popper is sooo good!

The AXE-FX has been used only for the last years. In the 90s he used a MIDI board, then went in the early 00s to have a full guitar EFX board for the harp. If you want anything specific to know, I probably have the answer

Just as there are a endless number of great guitar players , there are a good number of great Harp players . But John's style is so unique it puts him in a class pretty much of his own . There are far fewer like Will Wilde that can play or play along with almost anything . Myself , I'm pretty much stuck in the blues & rock rut . I just can't rap my mind around a lot of other music types . I think when it gets too slow my mind wanders off track lol . This was a great take on John Popper's kind of playing . You have a blessed one .

Super cool, who knew that this was the chord progression for Pachelbel

Wait, he was using an octave pedal? I've been convinced he was doing octave splits for a while now. This is kind of mindblowing.

Omg it is canon in d. That just blew my mind

2:32 Nice. I loved the chord progression but didn't know if had classical roots.

So recently I wanted to transcribe a solo on electric guitar, and I thought I was going to transcribe his harmonica solos, but I ended up transcribing his vocals... I think if I can teach myself to play my guitar like that guy sings then I'll be in good shape

I have a theory that John poppers singing is really influenced by the fact that he's a harmonica player. He does these weird decorations that sound like something that you would do on a harmonica, almost like a end of phrase momentary tremolo effect. What do you think?

Sounds great ! - I Will try to use that scale in the upper octave - by the Way I use a guitar pedal ; Mad Professor Royal Blue OD , and play a Laney Cub 8 😉

hi, Like it~ very useful -be well! 😌

Hey did Mr. Tomlin do air harmonica?

Hey man, how hard would you say it is to jump into his vocals ( the patter/ rap vocal) after such a breathy harp solo? Scale of one to ten?

I love that (after hearing Howard say that why aren't all there songs like Run-Around) Blues Traveler played this song at his birthday as an FU.

My fav harp man is Junior Wells

Am I imagining it, or is he wearing a harmonica bandolier? The only other time I’ve seen such a thing is on Sugar Blue.

I started following Blues Traveler when I was 12 during their fall 95 tour. Started learning harmonica a year later because of it. Nobody plays like Popper.

how is that possible to play single clean notes so fast 🤔...Astonishing!

3:45 "Yeah, that's a kickin' glissando." ~Frylock (Aqua Teen Hunger Force) But yeah, John Popper is one of the few that can uplift you with the blues, Run-Around especially, all the metaphors he uses to say how much he loves that girl...lol...

How about a reaction to Indiara Sfair? Then maybe the lead singer/harp playe Anna Kristina for Zepparella in something like WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS?

Though John Popper's playing isn't exactly my taste, I'm often recommended his stuff by the people around me. I appreciate what he does with bringing good harmonica music back into the mainstream and being the forefather of using effects for harmonica. This dude can shred like Terry McMillan and I like his unique use of the upper register.

In "canon", the 3 chord is not a *major chord*, as it is in Hook...

My God….its Canon in D! Unbelievable!

I love this performance of Hook, one of my favorites. I think John Popper’s best harmonica is No Woman, No Cry live with Ziggy Marley. It starts off a little slow, but the second half gives me goosebumps. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9zk0HFG5mDw.html

It makes sense that Hook would be another reworking of Canon in D. After the huge success they had with Runaround, the record company of course wanted a repeat. So what did they do? They took the paradigm of all pop music and made another hit. 😂

Being Serious, John is pretty sweet as a harmonica player

do more react videos, Ricci etc, also some singers , take a look at Home Free and rendtition of when a man loves a woman, you are a very credible musician and videos could become popular along with your instruction videos, just an idea, i was in edinburgh at the music instruction week, loved it, suffered from cancer but i beat it, thanks, jimmy church

At the time I'm typing this, this video is 2 months old..... ....what took you so long?

I am not at all an expert at all, but i admire that you tell folks what Popper is doing even if you can't do it.

The truly funny thing about this solo is that it was in a song that blasts the music industry. This song was just a FU to music execs who pressed him to write more pop music and he made it a formula song that was a piece of art as well as the lyrics that just wrecked the pop music scene. The best part is that most people never listened to the lyrics, they just smiled and bobbed their heads.

Canon, or as I like to call it "My Baby Takes The Morning Train"

The presenter is stating this is a '4-chord' song...ref Axis of Awesome.

There is a wealth of irony in "Hook" being their most well known song, and that John Popper brought it upon himself.

been playing just mess around blues harmonica since I was 16 to hang with my band buddies at school and jam. Blues Traveler came on and I wasnt a big fan of this album compared to the prior ones but this is just jaw drop. My crush on his music died when this album came along and sold out and they started doing stupid bit parts in shows so I never became the deep lifelong fan that would have learned about the classical song behind Hook, and that he used a pedal omg.

Seriously, is this just a troll on people who like reaction videos? - If it is, I love it! If not it really blows...

Well, Tomlin, you've got some practicing to do to reach the speed and clarity of the Fat Man Blues.

Like for canon D major !))

Usually reaction vids let the audience hear the song, and pause to introject their own thoughts, instead of talking over the ENTIRE performance.....

Great stuff as always. But...how can any novice possibly understand what you understand? How do you know he's got a D; thats he's playing in A major; or that hes in 2nd position? What the heck is pentatonic?

'The Hook' is a beautiful troll.

What?? There is no pitch shifting pedal lol

You could write a thesis paper on Hook. The entire song is a dig at how formulaic and meaningless the majority of the music industry is. They chose Canon in D because there had been a huge amount of popular songs in the previous few years using that chord progression. Even the lyrics themselves hang a lantern on how easy it can be to write a hit song.

“So so good” Damn !!!

I was a 💯% convinced that he used a chromatic harmonica before this video. I'm not an harmonica player(I dabbled) but I was convinced it was a chromatic...

Youre almost as good as John

2:10 Never heard it pronounced PATCH-uh-bell until just now. Always POCK-uh-bell. Pachelbel, Johann. I wonder if he pronounced Bach as Batch? Also a Johann.

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hey don't give the Canon secret !! too late i guess.

Everything about this song is spot on, copying Pachelbel Canon D , the lyrics stating exactly what he’s doing and showing that lyrics don’t really matter and that it’s the “hook” or the chord progression that draws you in, and last but not least, his insane harp skills. This is another song like Blur’s “Song 2”. Where it was made to make fun of how easy it is to write a certain type of song and make a chart topper.

I'm going to assume that since you are talking non stop that you aren't actually reacting to the song. You read about it, and listened to it before you turned on the camera, and then wrote a script to read.

Please pause when speaking.. thanks

Its fun how they call themselves Blues Traveler and play blues instruments and then dont play blues.

Didn’t expect you to talk during the song, ruined the reaction completely

You do your thing but have you considered, you know, not talking over the entire song?

Wow, my interpretation is entirely different. Am I the only harp player that doesn't care for Popper? Rather than the harmonica "lending itself to the Popper style", or whatever, I think the standard Richter-tuned harp is limited and Popper is simply staying within the bounds of it (unable to get out of it). It's boring.

I am happy he lost the lbs and is healthy now