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Forums :: Ask Instructor David Barrett

TB blow bends

1 reply [Last post]
Sun, 06/10/2018 - 12:17
adiaco
adiaco's picture
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Level 3
Joined: 03/13/2018

 

This is impossible.  While puckering I can nail all my blow bends quite easily, even on Eb harps (haven't tried high F).  I jut push my tongue forward and rigid, and bam!  But can barely move a note while tongue blocking.

 

In the lessons you say that I might just want to pucker these if I already know how.  But I've spent the last few months completely learning how to play in TB embrochure, and don't feel like switching back and forth.  I decided to play some John Popper stuff because I thought they would be great movement excerices for my TB precision, like Hanon on the piano.  (Plus they are crowd pleasers).  But with the amount of blow bends he uses I'm missing half the point of the excerise if I'm changing embrochures constantly.

 

I don't think my chamber can get any smaller and I'm blowing hard.  Any other tips?  

 

 

 

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Mon, 06/11/2018 - 08:02
#1
David Barrett
David Barrett's picture
Online
ExpertHead InstructorTeacher 10Level 10
Joined: 12/20/2009
Hello adiaco. Not impossible,

Hello adiaco. Not impossible, it just takes a lot of practice. Practice on the lowest harp you have in your case (lower harps have lower pitches, making the bends not require as small of an embouchure)... I practiced on a Low D for a month, playing to a slow blues as my exercise. Then move to your next lowest harp until it is mastered... continue this until you get to the higher keys. Practice and patience adiaco... you'll get it, you just don't know when.

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