User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206)
Chris Michalek wrote:
With the harmonica, there is nothing to feel or see. There is only
sound.
This is simply not true. The harmonica is in your mouth. You use your
tongue. Think about which part of your body you'd rather have a bad
burn on, hands or mouth/tongue? Mouths do not have a deficit when it
comes to nerve endings. Many of the hidden things we do with playing
harmonica, vibrato, bends, overbends, etc have a lot in common with
speech. We don't complain we can't talk because we can't see how to do
it. Harmonica may be difficult to teach because we lack an approach and
it isn't something we can visually observe in any meaningful sense but
that is not at all the same thing as saying harmonica playing doesn't
have a tactile feedback loop.
Sure, you hit a key on a piano and you get sound. The same thing is
basically true for harmonica, draw a breath you'll get sound. Many
other wind instruments strike me as initially more difficult to play
than harmonica, clarinet, trumpet, trombone.
The deficit with harmonica is in instruction. Speech pathologists deal
with harmonica type issues all the time. I recently got ahold of
Margaret Price sings Mozart. I can't imagine that singing opera at her
level of acheivement is any more difficult than playing harmonica really
well. The difference is formal training and hundreds of years of
thought and eveloved process.