[Harp-L] Throat Vibrato

["samblancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

I have inquired about the following subject on Harp Talk, another list but I
thought I'd give it a shot here as well.

The Subject is throat vibrato.  I am a pretty good harp player.  I put my
self at the upper end of intermediate, bordering on advanced.  I can do lots
of stuff: very nice controlled shakes, very nice tongue blocking, laughing
vibrato, tongue switching.  In many ways I'm happy with the way I play and
I've played for years.  But throat vibrato- man, I just can't seem to get
this down and I feel it's holding me back.  It's not that I want it so much
for the straight vibrato thing, but you have to have tb to do certain other
things getting vibrato on a hard bend, for instance, or killing a not with a
little twist at the end.  These things are real hard for me to do because I
can't do tb.  On Paul Butterfield's cover of Blues With A Feeling, there are
lots of tb spots.  I can play this cover note for note but for the little
bits of tb and it bugs me not to have this.

If anybody can give me any pointers on this I'd appreciate it a lot. Some
folks from the other list sent me a sheet on how to do tb but I have to say
the instructions seemed more for laughing vibrato than tb. TBm, for me is a
major hurdle for me to overcome. I never had any trouble learning to bend or
tongue block or tongue slap, pull slap. But Tbs proving to be a real
challenge.

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh