Re: [Harp-L] Three Standard Embouchures

[philharpn@xxxxxxx]

Embouchure discussions are much like the history of bending.


When I started playing harp about 25 years ago I used what I considered a whistle shape for diatonic and chromatic playing. I never gave it much analysis. It produced a single note, and later, allowed me to finesse draw bends and blow bends.


I suspect a great part of this discussion derives from the fact that most people don't really know exactly what technique they are using. Some analyze it and can explain it. But about 105 percent don't have a clue and call their technique by whatever term happens to be in vogue during a particular week.


For years there was very little explanation about how to execute a draw bend -- or a blow bend. Most of the so-called early harmonica books didn't even discuss the technique except to warn against choking the harp, because it voided the warranty. I remember one explanation of bent notes being cause by bending the air to hit the reeds at an angle to cause the note to change. Later, people were explaining that the bend was caused by saying eeee--owww and that changed the note. It was all mysterious and people who could bend couldn't explain how they were obtaining them. They just happened if you played long enough.


Later on, and I can't remember exactly when, I discovered that the technique that changes the pitch in whistling is the same technique that changes the pitch on bends. 


Much later, somebody took the over plate off his harmonica and discovered that if a finger was pressed on a blow reed during a bend, the bend stopped! Up until this point, nobody had ever noticed that the blow reed was active (probably more active) with the draw reed in producing the draw bend. This came to be called the double reed bend to contrast with the overblow bend and the valved bend which use a single reed. The overblow raises the pitch unlike the other (all?) bends which lower the p[itch. 


And then someone pointed out that the bend was caused by a faster airstream -- which made sense to me because that is what happened during whistling. Nowadays, lots of people talking about the whistling/bending connection. (Later, sonograms of Howard Levy confirmed this with the sonograms showing the tongue movement during bends.)


ANd even later on, I discovered/learned that the bent notes were easy to figure out on the piano keyboard. As a piano player -- five years of lessons as a kid -- I knew where the notes on the piano and harmonica were. So it just made logical sense that the bends were cause by the notes between the blow and draw notes. (Using a keyboard to match bent notes is the best and most efficient method of mastering bends!) If blow 1 is C AND draw 1 is D, the note between them is Db/C#.  The same is true for the first six holes. Blow 5 is is E and draw 5 is F; there is no note between them. Thus no bent note -- even tho some claim credit for producing a quarter tone bend. (Cf: blow bends)


I once had a student in my Harmonica 101 class who showed up playing his harmonica vertically. What embouchure is that?


Now, all the above is regarded as conventional wisdom regarding bending, much like today's kids who think phones always showed videos ever since they were invented (and never saw phonograph or typewriter)>


It  was way after all the above that I figured out what is called tongue blocking, even though the little paper clearly showed it. Not to me I could never figure out where the tongue went. It was only when I discovered it was really corner playing and the main role of the tongue was to get out of the way. Once I learned how to play in that right corner, I was off and running. Later on, It learned to pull the tongue further out of the way to vamp chords as the richter layout was designed for. And then learned how to slap the chord off sharply before playing the corner. And that since bending involved the back of the tongue, it was entirely possible to bend while tongue blocking/corner playing. As someone was quoted as SPAH: playing harmonica without tongue blocking (corner playing) is like playing piano with one hand. 




The reason why corner playing (TB) works is that the target note is the highest pitch and it continues to ring out during the time when the chord is sounded. (All of this presumes playing the harp right side up.). Playing the note with the whistle shape and widening the mouth to take in a note on either side of the melody note can produce a similar sounding vamp. But because the center note is not the highest note of the chord, it is less prominent that the corner playing vamp with it chord notes all lower in pitch.


Hope this clears everything up.
Phil














-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Marks <larry.marks@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Harp-l Harp-l <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sun, Aug 24, 2014 3:32 am
Subject: Re: Fw: [Harp-L] Three Standard Embouchures


I beg to differ with what has been written so far on this subject. From 
the discussion, the way I play is either impossible or just doesn't 
exist. I do not recognize it in any of the descriptions I have seen in 
this discussion.

What I use (and I know there are others on this list who do as well) is 
a form of tongue blocking I call center blocking.

I use tongue blocking with the air flowing down the center of my tongue. 
This is NOT U blocking. My tongue is not curled into a U shape. It is, 
in fact, perfectly flat and completely relaxed.

The tongue exhibits bilateral symmetry. In the middle is the dividing 
line between the two halves. That line is a depression so that if you 
place the tip of the tongue under the instrument air will flow down that 
line. Relaxing the tongue causes it to fill in and block the holes on 
either side of the one that receives the air that flows down the line. 
Of course, if I want to play a note at either end of the instrument or 
do a split, what I play fits the definition of tongue blocking that 
Winslow wrote.

Using this center tongue blocking technique, I can play any music I 
desire. That includes blues, bluegrass, jazz, J. P. Sousa marches, etc.

I can do overbends (isn't reverse bend a better terminology?), valved 
bends and any other bends I want. I can hit bent notes on the head and 
not slide into them (unless I intend to.)

I can do staccato and legato tonguing, and all sorts of rapid, complex 
tonguing patterns (such as the ones I use when I play the trombone.) I 
do not slide from one hole to the next. I always employ tonguing so that 
what I play sounds clean - like notes rather than a series of mouth-farts.

And I am damned good at what I do.

To me, center blocking is a form of tongue blocking. It is what I play 
and what I teach. For completeness, I offer the following list of 
limitations I have encountered using this technique:

   -LM