Tongue blocking bottom three holes?
I enrolled in you course after a long period hiatus from playing. I'm hoping to refresh my skills and get back to playing. Many years ago, (maybe in the early 90s), I used your materials extensively. That was before your emphasis on tongue blocking had developed to the point it has now, so I built my technique around puckering, though as time went on I added some tongue blocking technique. I can see the value of embracing the tongue block and really wished I had learned it from the start. (Even though at some points trying to learn the technique is forcing me to humble up and embrace my inner beginner).
I am a little puzzled when it comes to tongue blocking the bottom three holes where I have always puckered. Is the common approach to block with the tongue on the left down to the first hole and then pucker for the one, or do you switch to a right sided tongue block around hole 4 and never pucker at all?
I have no doubt you cover this in the impressively huge amount of information you have available, but could you save me a bit of time and point me to the appropriate video lessons?
And, if you have discussed the relative merits of tongue blocking vs puckering in a lesson,could you point me to that, also?
(By the way, even your initial material worked out very well for me. With the skills I gathered from your teaching I had a great time playing in several local blues bands through the 90s and the 00s. No real money or fame, but successful enough to have paid for all my equipment and gas, and still have a little walking around cash - and some great friends and stories.)
Hello Joshua, and welcome back.
I don't have material on the site for this, but I can share with you the general approach.
Yes, keep your tongue to the left, all the way down to 2 draw (so that you can do pulls and slaps, with the lower holes supporting the upper). Generally, players with a pucker background (like myself), we pucker hole 1. As the years have gone on, I enjoy tongue switching (tongue to the right, with he opening to the left), for hole 1 on passages that switch back and fourth, like on the typical V-IV-I licks where you move from hole 4 to hole 1 to play root note of those chords (see Improvising Study 4 and Accompaniment Study 2). Check out Tongue Block (TB) Study 1 for all this.
At first, mix-embouchure players like yourself will TB holes 4 and above (for octaves, slaps, flutters, pulls, etc.) and pucker holes 1-3, and when they bend. As time goes on, they learn to TB down to hole 2 as well, for bass lines (see Solo Harmonica Study 1, Ex. 2.1 onwards). Then, as more time goes on, they learn how to bend in a TB. I first learned on holes 4-6, where I was typically tongue blocking, and didn't want to have to do fast embouchure switches. Then, I worked on bending holes 2 and 3 in a TB for when I wanted to play very TB technique-laden passages. As time went on, I ended TB'ing everything.
It is definitely easier to just TB from the beginning (and why I teach that way on the site), but this is a common journey you're going through, and I can help you along the way.