[Harp-L] Basic Overblowing question

["Rick Dempster" <rick.dempster@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Sam',
              George Brooks and Michael Peloquin have probably given you enough to to keep you busy for the next couple
of years at least.
              Let me see if I can make it any easier.
              The question is, why would you want to overblow/overdraw?
              Well, you would only want to if there was a note you wanted to play and couldn't get it from open playing
and conventional bending techniques.
              A typical example is playing a melodic country tune, where you might want to make use of the bluesey
notes that fall in all the right places in second position, but you still need the major seventh. To make it clearer,
you're on a C harp in the key of G, and you need the F#. You can get it with a semitone bend on hole 2, but if you need
the higher one, it ain't there.
              Some players (like Charlie McCoy) overcome this by tuning the draw 5 reed up a semitone. They can still
bend it back to the original pitch, but what they lose is that big open 7th chord that is such an important part of
trad. blues playing (and an important part of all folk harp styles)
              You can get the F# by overblowing hole 5.
              Same with the all important single-note bend on draw three, which gives you a Bb and allows you to
flavour the C chord which, unlike the fat G chord available to you with extensions, 7th (draw5) 9th (draw 6)
is a very innocent C major (C-E-G), no dirt there!
              If you want the same note as the first bend on hole 3 in the next octave, it ain't there. But you can get
it by overblowing 6.
              I could go on, but these two notes are probably the first ones that harp players are likely to miss as
they try different tunes and styles.
              Half the world plays music that only uses a 5 note scale. If you don't miss the notes, I wouldn't worry
too much.
Cheers,
Rick Dempster