Moving the jaw
Hello,
First, I wanted to thank you for all your teachings. You have made a huge difference my harmonica learning.
I wanted to try to reconcile what I think are contradicting points of view on the role of moving the jaw to reach notes in the harmonica. In your (old) video, you recommend moving the jaw side to side to reach notes while tongue blocking to get good tone (Minute 4:35)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s08HUfIPIqE
However, in your interview with the great Annie Raines, she talks about how much she practiced NOT to move her jaw when doing tongue switch from the 4 to 1 hole. Her reason, which you seem to agree with, is that moving you jaw side to side while playing can be a source of injury in the long term.(Minute 8)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntCIYNnA8Ck&t=53s
My question for you is: what is your current opinion in the matter? Am I mixing up two different things? Or is this something you have changed your mind about with the years?
Thank you so much again and happy new year!
Hello angel1, Happy New Year to you as well.
In that old video I was speaking of using the jaw, and the context was puckering, not tongue blocking. While puckering, jaw movement can swing you up to two notes/holes left and two notes right easily. If you watch Buddy Greene's interview on speed playing (he's puckering), you'll see this as well.
While tongue blocking, large jaw movement is less effective (the single hole is not in the center, it's on the right). With this said, I can move my jaw up to one hole left or right, and is just fine while tongue blocking (no issues for me with the jaw), but I would say I more commonly move my hands a little (1/2 a hole) and my jaw a little (1/2 a hole) in actual play, using both to achieve the movement of one hole over.
Tongue switching is a different matter. When learning tongue switching, players commonly move their jaw the same direction as their tongue (unintended movement), causing them to move their embouchure (where they're trying to play the single note), away from the hole... this is to be avoided (considered a mistake).
So, to sum up...
- When tongue switching, avoid any jaw movement
- When tongue blocking, you can move your jaw to the left or right to move you to that hole, but this tends to be less common of a technique in the tongue block world (not as effective as pucker)
As for injury... some people do have sensitve jaws (TM issues). For those players, minimizing how large you open your mouth (think octaves on a 16-hole chromatic) and not moving the jaw left to right is the plan to minimize issues.