Funny thing about learning bends...

["Keith Freeman" <keith.freeman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

As a novice who's only been playing a few weeks and having difficulty with bending I'd 
decided to concentrate mainly on learning the layout. I'd just been thinking to myself, 
learning these bends is going to take a while...

Well, I'd washed the slide of my cheapo Swan chromatic (unvalved) in water, and there 
was still a lot of it in the harp when I started playing. I thought, what the hell, it'll get 
blown and sucked out, I'll just keep playing. A lot of draw notes were stuck because of 
the water, but as they started to come free and I played on regardless, I noticed a funny 
thing - they were bending by themselves! I took advantage of this, of course, and 
introduced bends left right and centre, wherever they were easy. Now that the harp's 
dried out I have a lot more bending facility than I did before!

Obviously this might not be something you're going to want to do with your gold-plated 
super-harp, but it seems like a neat shortcut on an expendable one. I haven't read 
about it on either the chromatic or the diatonic reference site, so I wondered if anyone 
has had this experience too?

- -Keith Freeman