Fwd: Re: [Harp-L] Bent overbends - more than a theory

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a different test:

Take a naked reedplate and stand in fromt of a mirror. Put your mouth
on the reedplate and play one of the reeds that is facing the mirror.
It will play as a draw reed or as an overblow reed.

PLay it as a draw reed and bend the note down. YOu can see two things
with the naked eye:

1. As the pitch goes down, the reed moves closer to the reedplate. The
note stops when it gets too low.

2. As the pitch goes down, the amplitude of the vibration diminishes.

Now play the same reed as an overblow (fairly easy with your mouth on
the reed slot), and bend the note UP. Again, you can observe two things:

1. As the pitch goes up, the reed moves farther away from the reedplate.

2. As the pich goes up, the amplitude of the vibration diminishes.

Now, in a dual reed bend, that is happening with two reeds, so there
is a bit more sound reinforcement. But played at the same level of
effort, bent notes will still be quieter than unbent.

Some players habitually (or stylistically) hit hard when they play a
bent note, thus compensating for any loss in volume. I remember one
year Ven Smith brought a pressure meter with atube you could put in
your mouth to observe your breath pressure when you played a bend.
Jerry Portnoy made the metter jump violently because he stylistically
hammered hard ion the bent notes. I found I could keep the meter from
moving at all (Doug Tate figured out how to cheat - block the tube
with your tongue).

But when I was working up a recording for the summer Ode to Joy
Challenege a few years ago, the object was to play a phrase that
included a bent note and to make the bent note NOT stick out in any
way - tone, vulume, articulation - it needed to be smoothly integrated
into the phrase. The biggest difficulty I had was in making the bent
note as strong in volume as the unbent, without making it sound like
it was being hit harder.

Winslow

--- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, fjm <mktspot@...> wrote:

Winslow writes:

> All bent notes are "weaker" than non-bent notes because the reed is
> vibrating a note that it wasn't built to sound, and it delivers less
> amplitude because it's vibrating less efficiently.

Absent proof I'd say this doesn't match my experience.  A quick check 
with a dB meter and a G Marine Band yielded mixed results.  Lower notes 
with wider differences between the blow and draw seemed to be 
appreciably louder when bent vs unbent.  As I moved up the scale 
initiating a bend definitely dropped the spl.  Overblows were noticeably 
lower in level but that says more about my ability to overblow than 
anything else.  I disregard this result because of my poor skills in 
this area.  In a bend reeds are forced to make sound at a pitch they 
normally wouldn't sound at but it's not just the one reed.  Unless 
someone has already done the experiment I'd call the above a theory.  fjm
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