Gwen Foster techniques
Hi Winslow
I'm interested in figuring out how to use some of Gwen Foster's Bay Rum Blues-style techniques but haven't been able to find any guidance. I know he uses the shimmer a lot (if shimmer's the correct term - I mean the side-to-side tongue motion) but I'm lost on other techniques. For instance, in this YouTube video: http://youtu.be/zFoMZX-gy2Y
...I can't figure out what he's doing at 0:39 seconds or 1:00 (I think this is a kind of trrrrrrrr sound as if he's rolling his rs). Can you give me any help with this or tell me if pre-war styles and techniques like this are documented anywhere? Thanks.
Great response - thanks for that! I would never have figured this out just by listening to it. The back of the tongue shimmer you mentioned is also a big help - straight away I've made a lot more progress with that. Thanks again!
I'm hearing three separate techniques in use.
At 0:39 he's doing the most astounding of the three - rapidly alternating between a bent note and an unbent note, so as to create a semitone trill. It's astounding both because of the speed and steady rate of alternation, but also because he isn't sliding at all between the bent and unbent note. It's jut on/off. I've never tried this, but I suspect that he's located the exact tongue position for the bent note, and then simply moves the tongue *vertically* in and out of the engaged K-spot position, but NOT sliding the tongue forward or back along the roof of the mouth, as that would make the bend slide in pitch.
At 1:00 he's doing another technique that I *have* tried, and it's not easy. He starts a blow note bent down, then slides up to unbent pitch. When he reaches the unbent pitch he plays a flutter-tongue - in the flute or trumpet sense. By this I mean that he has the tip of his tongue touching the roof of his mouth, and by blowing air past it makes the tip flutter on and off the roof of his mouth - basically he blows a raspberry.
Elsewhere in the tune he does play shimmers - rapidly alternating between two notes in the right and left corners of his mouth by rapidly shifting his tongue left and right. For instance, he might have Holes 6, 7, and 8 in his moth. his tongue covers two holes, so by shifting it left and right he can alternate between Holes 6 and 8 without sounding Hole 7. One trick that can help with this is to point the tip of the tongue upward and use the *underside* of he tongue to block the holes. This helps because the tip and the upper surface of the tongue can have difficulty creating a small enough block to cover only one or two holes, while the underside has a sort of "cord" shape that it can form to make a small block.
The one person I know of who has really investigated in detail the techniques of not only Gwen Foster but a whole range of pre-war players is Joe Filisko.