How do you reliable do a quarter bend?
In the Solo Harmonica lessons there is an exercise called Mark Hammel’s Submission. In the second chorus there are some 3’ draw notes with a plus sign above them which I think means these are half of a half step bend. If I have that correct my question is why would someone only do a quarter bend for a note? My untrained ear can’t hear the difference.
My second question is, how do you reliable do a quarter bend? I use the Keee sound to get the 3’ and even then, I struggle to not pass the half step bend.
Thank you,
Brian in Tennessee
Thanks David.
The 3 Draw Rule lesson was very helpful. It turns out in my laziness I naturally do a quarter bend on the 3 draw and I discovered I have to put forth the effort to drop my jaw and/or tongue in order to get an unbent 3 draw.
I also noticed that when I played along with you in the lesson, I felt like I was matching your bending and pitch with you without any trouble. When I’m on my own and using Harp Ninja I struggle with the ½ step 3 draw bend and I think using Harp Ninja and watching the meter might be too much cognitive thinking and not enough feeling for the note, so I tried closing my eyes and pressing the note on Harp Ninja and then tried to match the pitch with what I’m hearing and all of a sudden I had no problem consistently hitting the ½ step 3 draw bend. Interesting discovery.
Thank you for your help.
Fantastic. Great job figuring out that you're more aural than visual... not a bad thing since it is music we're speaking of.
Hello Brian.
You are correct, a quarter tone is half of a half step bend.
The key is to control the bend more with the front of your tongue, further forward in your mouth (it's obviously a very slight bend).
To hear why we use this, check out the lesson The Three Draw Rule here https://www.bluesharmonica.com/lessons/3_draw_rule
The quick answer is that it sounds bluesy, without being overly dark. Blues in on a spectrum... some songs are light ( = 3 draw B)... some songs are bluesy ( = 3 quarter tone bend Bb+)... and some songs are dark/minor ( = 3' Bb).