[Harp-L] A Night in Tunisia



Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 15:55:04 -0800 (PST)
From: "jazmaan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmf273@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] A Night in Tunisia 
>Also as I said in an earlier post, I'm using a Bb XB-Melody harp.
Playing Tunisia in Dm on this
>harp is not too difficult.  
>
>I tried playing the head on an Ab short harp and that was somewhat
feasible, but a lot of bending
>was involved.  I also found the last note of the main phrase to be rather
unsatisfying to play
>because it ends on an "in-between" bend at draw 2.  I found it hard to
give that last note the
>attack and emphasis it needed.  But maybe that's what separates the men
from the boys!

Hi David,
  Not that I'm going to be making any submissions on the Tunisia challenge
Chris & Richard organised ... 
Something I've really benefited from is learning to bend when tongue
blocking - bending at the back of the throat, instead of the front of your
tongue (from your uvula forward) - this year its really started to come
together for me - and as I've written here before, I've endevoured to use
that bending technique when using pucker because I enjoy the tone.  The
benefit, which was unexpected is I can now play pucker and articulate and
use effects that pucker offers WHILE bending at the same time.   This is
something that will aid with bent key notes.
I continue to work on intonation of bends, and have been working on tongue
blocked blow bends in the upper register and some basic overblows using
tongue block - which I can demonstrate given enough attempts, but lacks any
control and hardly practical for me to incorporate in my playing yet.

Personally I'd prefer to use a tuning or harmonica that has clean key notes
and leave the bends & overblows for passing blue notes.  I prefer to adapt
the instrument to the music, than go against its grain.
  That said I can see the point of whats being discussed here, and
interested in the submissions.
-- G.




This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.