[Harp-L] (no subject)



Drew wrote:

"The more you know and the longer you play, the more you can hear what's
going on. "


I'm not a newbie and I have pretty good ears trained to hear minute differences in timbre, volume and pitch.



"A TB bend on the 2 draw has slightly less power in it than hitting it with a pucker."


It does? Funny, it doesn't when I play it. I think this gets to my point that often people make assumptions from their own playing and generalize it for when they listen to old records. Which is a natural thing to do.



"When I get a minute I'll post Kim Wilson's segment where he discusses this
and hits a few low end draws to demonstrate the tonal differences."



Which is nice, except that he knows what he's doing while he does it, thus if he's looking for differences or even just expecting them it's likely that he will create them. It's not intentional, it will just happen as you play. It's the same effect as what happens when you have the harp upside down and try to play and the reeds won't respond. You subtly change the shape of your mouth in anticipation of what you will play.


I just tried a bunch of 2 and 3 draw bends, some pucker, some right tongue-block, some left tongue-block, some u-block. The right-block and pucker sounded identical to begin with, the left-block and u- block were hard to control and sounded different--weaker, a bit fuzz with a fair amount of air loss involved in the bend. I almost never use those two embouchures so that's to be expected. Within a minute I had familiarized myself with them enough that all four sound the same (though u-block still is harder to control--which makes sense since it is the least used, and never used in a song or piece). I also tried top-hole blow bends. They sounded the same either way, and were easiest for me to control with tb, because that's how I play them 99% of the time.




()() JR "Bulldogge" Ross () () `----'






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