gapping
Thu, 07/15/2010 - 01:49
Dear mr. Yerxa recently I bought some manji harmonicas which I like, but I found it impossible to bend them tongue-blocked. I managed to tb-bend on my old marine-band harmonica's which are less airtight. I opened up my old marine-band in g and found out that the gaps were pretty wide. I set up a manji in g with wider gapping and suddenly I could bend the reeds on this. Is it common that it's easier to do this when you have wider gaps? What do you think about gapping in general?
As you bend a note down, the reed sounding the original note is pulled closer and closer to the reedplate as the pitch descends. At the point where the reed is pulled so close that it no longer emerges from its slot, the note will stop sounding.
Consequently, a wider gap promotes easier bending.
(The opposite is true for the opposite reed, which gets pulled away from the reedplate during the bend. setting that reed a little closer helps it participate in the upper range of a bend).
As to what this means to you personally, you could look at it two way.
One way to regard it is as customizing - adjusting the harmonica t your playing style and technique.
Another way is to wonder whether your tongue blocked bending technique could be refined so that you could bend on a Manji or similar harp without having to re-gap it. Look at how you're attacking the notes, and how you're placing your tongue when you bend with a tongue block. If you can bend the un-adjusted Manjis when bending with a pucker, then you should be able to achieve the same result with tongue blocking.
In other words, there are two ways to solve the problem. They both have merit, and the best solution is probably somewhere in the middle.