1 Hole to Switch or Not to Switch
Hi David,
I arrived here at the school a few weeks back because I wanted to add tongue blocking to my playing. My harp journey has been a little over two years with Tomlin Leckie and I've learnt a lot but he's a pucker teacher until well into his material. Thanks so much for most excellent material in your study pieces by the way.
During the intro stuff you talk of different ways to move from hole 2 to hole 1 and, if I'm remembering right you said the most common is right to left tongue switch. So, since you are the boss ;-) I'm doing that most of the time. I say most because, on occasion note combinations and speed make it seem more opportune to play hole 1 with the right side of the tongue. As an example the start of chorus 6 in Buffet Line (TB study 2.7) where the back and forth is repetitive.
So, am I right or, should I be aiming to switch no matter what's going on?
Thanks in advance for the feedback and am sorry if this is not the correct part of the forum to ask this,
Graham
Thank you Graham, I'm glad that you're enjoying your studies.
Generally speaking, your tone will be best when you tongue switch (tongue to the right). Having more harmonica in your mouth (4 holes instead of 1) gives you a bigger tone. Also, a larger mouth helps your cupping... your lips are part of the sealed cup (under your pointing finger there's space and above your thumb there's space... your lips plug those leakages between your fingers and harmonica).
With this said, it's a pretty small difference in sound between puckering and tongue blocking the 1, so I don't tend to put much emphasis on this. In fact, as a former pucker player myself, I typically pucker my 1 and tongue block everything higher on the harmonica.
As a pucker player before your lessons with me, it probably makes sense to pucker hole 1 most of the time. Where it will be nice to tongue switch is on your V-IV-I Licks (bars 9 through 11) where we typically toggle between the 1 and 4 draws for the V Chord and 1+ and 4+ for the IV Chord.
As you stated, you can also play with keeping your tongue to the left.
So, too many options. Since the tone is better with a tongue switch, that's the way I teach (plus a lot of the greats did it that way). But, practically speaking, you can approach it whichever way you prefer, even if you change your approach for specific passages.
Make sense?