What's your opinion about this tongue-blocking bending technic?
As a beginner with bending, I'm having a lot of trouble, especially with holes 2 and 3, so besides watching Bending Study 1 I did a little research to see how other players teach tongue-blocking bending. So I found this site with this set of instructions:
- Hold the harmonica with an angle, as you were trying to touch your right ear with it.
- While tongue-blocking the note, make a J shape with your tongue (i.e., lift the right part of the tongue) or a U shape.
I tested it and it works very well for me, especially making the U shape. This technic seems a lot different than the one you teach here with the tongue making a wave shape in the mouth. I wanted to know what is your opinion about this technic and if it's better for me to try yours instead. I can bend using your technic really well in holes 6 and 4, for hole 5 I can go 1/2 a half-step (I use the tuner from GarageBand to measure) and hole 2 and 3 are a disaster. With this alternative technic, I can do pretty well hole 4-6 and I'm starting to get good in holes 2 and 3.
Hello tandeitnik.
What I teach is not my technique, it's what the tongue is actually doing in the mouth for a bend (note the MRI study).
People are great at confabulating, "thinking" what they're doing is creating the bend, when the business-end of their movement is happening unconscious to them. I once had an instructor say, "to bend, you need to lower your tongue in the front." What they were unaware of is that the back was humping up when the front was lowering... it's the back that was creating the bend. Sometimes, something can be completely wrong, but be helpful if it gets the student close to the right spot. As long as you're not using excess tension while bending, and you're using your tongue (not lips), you probably are not going to far astray.
The harmonica angle described has nothing to do with bending, that's about cupping (using your right cheek to block the leakage of sound from the upper holes). If it happens to help you bend (no reason why it should), then good!... there's no issue with it (you'll just be a leg up on tight cupping). My gut is that when they're saying to bring the right side of the harmonica towards your cheek for bending, that some lip closure may be happening... do not do this. Never squeeze the harp against your lips/face for a bend... there's no future in that.
If this teacher is talking about the right side of the tongue raising, and the left not, then no, this is incorrect. The tongue raises uniformly for the bend. The channel that the air travels in is the center, because the roof of the mouth is concave. When your convex tongue raises, due to the shape of the tongue (smaller) and the roof of the mouth (larger), there will be a small channel where the air travels (see the coronal view in the MRI bending study). So, no U shape is needed... it happens naturally.
If you're getting success, focus on where your tongue is really raising (if you raise just the right side of the tongue, if you focus enough, you'll notice that only the front of the right side of your tongue raises, but the middle back raises uniformly). By knowing what your tongue is actually doing, then you can use this technique to help dial in your understanding of the mechanics better.