[Harp-L] Throat Vibrato - Finally

["samblancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

A month or so ago I posted to this list about my struggle to get a throat
vibrato and how this was eluding me.  I got several helpful return posts on
this subject and I want to thank all of you who responded.  Well, I finally
got it after daily noodling during my lunch breaks, in my truck, sitting in
front of the TV, and in more formal and deliberate practicing efforts.  I
can't tell you how satisfying it is to finally get this.  This adds so much
to my tone.  When I first became sensitive to this aspect of tone and
realized I couldn't do it I just wasn't satisfied with my playing any more.
So you can imagine how good it must feel to get it.

There are a couple of things about throat vibrato that I has to learn that I
really didn't read any place, on anyone's site, or in any posts and I just
want to touch on it here because these things were key in my learning to get
this part of my tone.  For one thing, the placement of the tongue was really
important for me.  A couple of weeks ago I posted a line or two about an
unusual embouchure I was fooling around with and it was this embouchure that
opened the door to throat vibrato.  I wrote:

"This embouchure is done by jutting the chin forward slightly and bringing
the tongue all the way forward so that it's almost touching the holes of the
harp. The tongue is filling up most of the open space in the mouth."

It turns out that the tongue wasn't really the important part here. As I
fooled around with this I discovered that this positioning of the tongue
allowed me to open up the back of my mouth - and my throat- so that the
choking off of air could be done in the right way to produce that very rich
vibrato tone.

I'm not going to go on with this description any further because I can see
that I'm not doing a very good job but I wanted to mention the part about
the tongue because nobody mentioned it and, as I said, this was key to my
getting throat vibrato. After reading what I could about tv, the subliminal
message I got was the I needed to do something to take my tongue out of the
action for fear of just copping out into a tongue powered bending vibrato.
But what you do with the tongue *is* really important.

So I hope (but kind of doubt) this description might help other intermediate
players master throat vibrato.  If I had played around with this embouchure
2 years ago I would have gotten tv much, much earlier on.

But it still feels good to finally get it!

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh