Keeping an open pathway
Winslow I've heard you reference many times keeping an open pathway. For example :
"Valved harps will sound different from unvalved - the blow notes wil be louder, and may even bend when you don't mean them to , which is good for your bending control and for your tone, as it helps prevent you from closing up your oral cavity."
Are there any specific exercises you can recommend for practicing keepng your oral cavity open? ( insert dirty joke here) No but seriously, is it something you can practice somehow Or is it just something you have to try and be mindful of while playing and that's it? I had been practicing playing this way, tryin to play with my throat pathway open. But i found that after i had it down Pretty well, my focus has shifted and i tend to lose it alot while playing now. I also find it hard to bend and keep the pathway open at the same time. Is this normal?
Thanks
Thanks alot. Your advice is always on point. You explained exactly what i wanted to know. And exactly what i had been doing. Tensing my throat while bending. I do have good throat vobrato, but have had the same problem when trying to add it to bent notes. As i said your advice is gold and always spot on. You answered questions of mine i didnt even ask. 8^)> ..... I greatly appreciate it.
I can see already from trying this that the throat habit is going to be a tough one to break. I like the mention of the elves behind the locked door aswell. Not sure where it comes from, but it sure feels that way sometimes.
Thanks again
To keep an open pathway even when you're not consciously doing it requires that you form a habit of doing it. It needs to be as automatic as breathing.
How to keep an open throat even when you're not focusing on it? Intention will help you.
Listen to the sound of your tone when you play with an open throat. You want that sound all the time. Practice doing that for a few minutes at the start of each practice session. Then, for the rest of the session, make it your intention to have that tone all the time, and listen to your tone as you play. If you've formed the association between that tone and an open throat, the elves behind the locked door will act on your intention and will open your throat for you even when you're not thinking about your throat.
Bending is accomplished with the tongue - Dave's medical video captures demonstrates this, as did the work of Hank Bahnson and Jim Antaki before him. If you concentrate on what your tongue is doing to accomplish bending, you can keep your throat relatively open while you bend. (Yes, some folks insist that they bend with the throat, but all the hard evidence so far points to the tongue.)
Why do I say relatively open? When you constrict the airflow in your oral cavity while bending, you create suction extending from the constriction point (the K-spot) down to the bottom of your air column. When I bend a draw note, I can feel suction pulling gently on my ribcage - *gently*. That same suction will pull on the throat a little as well. That's natural and perfectly OK.
What you want to avoid is tensing or tightening up the throat when you bend. Let the tongue do the work and do it with as little effort as possible - the optimal placement at the sweet spot does most of the work. To practice this, play a nice, fat note and then calmy focus on bending with minimal effort while keeping that great juicy tone going through the bend.
Side note: When I first tried to apply throat vibrato to bent notes, I found that the bend would break up and diisintegrate. Only when I realized that I could separate throat and tongue action did I accomplish throat vibrato on sustained bent notes.