Tongue blocking plus bending
Hi David,
How can you combine tongue blocking and bending at the same time? With tongue blocking your tongue is kind of bend. How to move it u and down at the same time? I assume it is required if you want to play individual notes.
Regards,
Jelle H
Jelle:
Can't resist stepping in here (and hope David doesn't mind).
First off, welcome this wonderful group of blues harmonica players! If you ever have a question, and the Experts (David, Winslow, Greg, Kinya, et al.), don't answer right away, don't worry. A bunch of us amateurs will jump right in. Leading to fun discussions.
Re tongue-blocking and bending: I got serious about the harmonica a decade ago, at age 66. At first it seeemed that I would never be able to bend a note. And then the first time I actually heard a bent note coming out of my harp, I thought, "Now how the heck did I DO that?" Now 10 years later I'm comfortable with all draw bends, and am getting ever closer to accurate and useable blow-bends on the high end. I'm a slow learner, but am really happy with not only where I am now, but also with all of the fun (including failures - the most useful part of learning) I've had - and will continue to have - along the way.
It has seemed to me that the following are true-isms about tongue-blocking and bending:
1. Listenting the the historic greats, it's clear that tongue-blocking and bending, in combination, were and are tools that create the very best sounds for blues (as well as for other styles of music);
2. Different players find that it takes a different amount of time to get a handle on specific techniques; that differently-keyed harps bend differently; that different makes of harp bend differently; and that even two of the same brand and model can behave differently. Not to mention that for some folks, getting a clean bend on the 2 proves to be the biggest challenge, while for others (like me) bending the 6 was a real effort. Every player's mouth, and every harp, are different. And even one day for a player may feel different from another. But: All that just contributes to the fun challenges. It's never boring.
3. As you get deeper into all this, you'll find that your ear begins to learn things before you realize it. You may start with using a pitch tool to visualize whether your 2 draw bend has really gone down a whole step, but after a while you'll be pleased that you're starting to hear just how accurate your 2' and 2" are. A learning process that will promote your enjoyment of a lot of other aspects of music.
4. And finally, understand that for being such an apparently "simple" instrument, the harmonica is a lifelong journey. If you're lucky, you'll never be as good as you want to be, but instead of thinking thoughts like "I'll never get this," or "I'll never be good enough," you'll instead regularly find yourself thinking, "Wow, I'm sure better at this than I was just ______ ago."
I started serious instrumental study at age 10, on 'cello, an instrument that I played in orchestras and ensembles through college (but for a variety of reasons didn't keep up with). Because of that experience I'm a fan of the great cellist Pablo Casals, who in the course of being filmed for a documentary when he was 81 yars old, and asked why after so many decades he continued to practice for many hours every day, replied, "Because I think I am making progress." (Late in his life the great jazz chromatic harp player Toots Thielemans said something similar.)
So welcome not only to Bluesharmonica, but to a lifetime jouney of musical fun and discovery.
Ukulele Rob plays Hohner™ harmonicas customized by Kinya Pollard, The Harpsmith™
Hello Jelle.
Though the front of your tongue is on the face of the harmonica while playing a single note, the rest of the tongue (middle and back) is lowered for good tone production.
When bending, you hump up the part of your tongue that will best tune your mouth cavity to the pitch of the reed you're playing (for the 6 and 5 draws for example, you're humping somewhere around the middle of your tongue... for the 4 and 3 draws, you're humping more middle-back... for the 1 you're humping the back). You then move that point of constriction further back in your mouth to bend. This wave-like motion is accomplished while the front of your tongue is on the face of the harmonica.
Check out the lesson on bending... everything in that lesson is tongue blocked https://www.bluesharmonica.com/lessons/bending_study_level_1
It will all feel very strange at first, but you'll get it with practice and time.