Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Harmonica range - and tremolo harp bending

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

- --- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joe Mahan <joe.mahan@xxxx> 
wrote:
Winslow wrote:
> >The problem with some harps, like the Hohner Echo, is that there is
> >little hole punched in the wall between the top and bottom rows. 
This
> >is not to prevent bending. it's just to make sure that sloppy 
players
> >don't miss playing both rows if they don;t aim right. You can 
always
> >plug up the holes.

Steve replied:

>...but only the central holes are joined this way, not the the 
highest and
>lowest notes...which are unquestionably the hardest to play sweet on 
the
>Echo harps.  I've never worked out the reason for the perforations, 
but
>I'm...er...not entirely convinced by the sloppy players hypothesis.

I do recall reading a different explanation for the coupling of the 
upper 
and lower chambers, but I can't recall exactly what it was. It might 
have 
been on Ted Van Beek's site, which is currently down or gone. On a 
Suzuki 
Humming Tremolo, only the lowest three draw notes have coupled 
chambers. 
Since tremolo reeds are very thin and easily blown out, maybe it is a 
form 
of insurance.

Just because you can bend tremolo reeds, doesn't mean that you 
should. I 
suppose proper technique can minimize damage, but the cost of 
developing 
such a technique could be prohibitive. Check out:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/bruno.kowalczyk/anglais/faqgb.htm
- --- End forwarded message ---

Thin and easily blown out? How do you know this? have you measured 
them? I'd believe this coming from someone who had done so. But I 
remember how for years you'd read that the Hohner Blues harp 
had "paper-thin" reeds that made them easier to bend but more easily 
blown out than the Marine Band. Of course it was all nonsense - at 
that time the two harps were absolutely identical except for the 
covers and the containers they came in. I suspect this is a similar 
bit of unfounded lore - unless someone can cite actual measurements. 
The reeds are shorter overall, but again this rpoves nothing by 
itself.

As to bending damaging reeds, that's another bit of lore with a less 
than factual basis. I find that the reeds I blow out are the ones I 
DON'T bend but play loudly enough to trigger stress fractures - 
usually trying to play loudly acoustically in the middle of 60-odd 
fiddlers. Bending done properly isn't all that stressful to reeds. 
What stresses them is playing them with too much force and/or the 
wrong oral cavity resonance. Many players have poor bending technique 
and rely on excessive force when bending, so, yeah, their bending 
technique blows out reeds. But that's more the player than anything 
else.

The top-bottom punches in low-pitched reeds on some tremolo and 
octave models seems to be to allow for the reeds to speak without 
really wide gaps. I remember Cham-Ber Huang specifically telling me 
this for his octave double reed models. Heavily-weighted reeds need 
more air moving underneath them to get them to budge than reeds with 
less wieght on the tips, and having a common airspace for a pair of 
reeds always makes it possible to gap lower. I tried blocking off the 
punch on the lower holes on one of his octave models and finding the 
reeds starting to choke at much lower pressures. The same is true for 
both double-reed harps and for single-reed harps with a blow and draw 
in the same hole. Two slots can absorb more force than one.

Perhaps this is the reason for the center-range punches on Hohner 
Echos (my earlier sloppy-player rationale could be another reason). 
The rationale there may be that the middle range gets the most play, 
so the punhces should go there. The bottom octave is just used for 
tongue-blocked chording, at least according to the "book" and won't 
come under as much pressure. Why not do it on the top as well? 
Probably because air loss become critical in the top register. I 
personally have no problem with making the reeds sound in the top end 
of a tremolo. For anyone who does, I'd suggest working on making your 
mouth resonance neutral so that your mouth cavity isn't fighting the 
pitch of the reed.

Winslow