Fwd: Re: [Harp-L] Bending and tone

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dave -

You are not wrong about choking the air column. Larry is also not
wrong about the direction of air with the tongue, even if he's not
very forthcoming about what that means. 

However, choking may not be the most fortunate word to use due to its
association with extreme and involuntary reactions.

Bending is a matter of creating an independent resonant chamber in the
mouth cavity. This chamber may then be tuned to a particular note. If
the reeds being played are able to respond and bend to that note, they
will.

That resonant chamber is activated by changing the air pressure
significantly at the point that forms the back of the chamber.

The way to do that is to narrow the air passage - i.e. "choke" it if
one prefers to use that term, using either the space between the
tongue and the roof of the mouth, or the glottal muscles. 

You probably already know all this; I'm just recounting it for the
sake of completeness.

Where the chamber is narrowed, air flow speeds up and air pressure
goes down. The air in the mouth will move at a slower speed and higher
pressure, hence making for a distinct system.

It is true that any *sensations* of choking, pressure, and suction
should be minimized by the player, along with muscle tension. Here's
where the word "choke" becomes counterproductive.

The narrowing action need to be just enough to set that change in air
pressure in motion. It's a small muscle action, easily accomplished.
The trick is doing it in the right place to have an effect.

Mind you, the change in air pressure will set up a feeling of the
tongue being pulled forward during draw bends and pushed backward
during blow bends. This is a side effect of the contrast in air
pressure. It isn't an activator, even though it tells you that the
activator is in play. It does, however create a certain amount of
msucle tension as the tongue tries to hold its ground. You want to be
aware of the suction/pressure for what it is and accept it, let your
tongue do the minimum to hold its ground with minimal effort, and not
let it generate secondary distress.

You may or may not experience activation of the bending chamber as
redirecting the air over the tongue. All my air goes over my tongue,
so I concentrate on other aspects of the sensation. It is possible to
bend some notes with the glottal muscles without moving the tongue at all.

Tone and resonance are problematic for fundamental reasons. When a
reed is not vibrating at its default pitch, it vibrates less
efficiently. You can see this in  mirror playing a reedplate as a draw
note (so that the reed faces the mirror). As you bend it down in
pitch, the amplitude of the vibration visibly decreases. 

If your bending technique is of the "hit 'em hard" variety, you may
never notice the loss of volume. If your bending technique is
sufficiently refined that you don't need to hit bent notes harder than
unbent ones, you may notice the loss of volume and the need to adjust.

If the narrowing action is accompanied by struggling physically,
and/or difficulty of getting the pitch to change, one element may be
proper tuning of the chamber. The better your resonance is dialed in,
the more easily the note is persuaded to bend. And the more it will
ring, as the chamber is tuned to the note. Very low notes need a very
large chamber. Moving the activqtion point back as far as it will
work, opening up the back of the mouth - drawing back the soft palate
and throat muscles, dropping the jaw - will help. So will "thinking"
the note.

The easier you can make bending happen, physically and by accurate
tuning, the easier it also becomes to let resonance reach *through*
the activation (narrowing) point into the resonant cavity and receive
the benefit of the extra sounding chamber.

So "choking off the air column" is not at all an inaccurate
description, however unfortunate an image it may invoke. You are in
fact on the right track. Larry is right that your approach can benefit
from refinement. However, it does not need to be abandoned for a
change in direction.

Winslow

--- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, icemanle@... wrote:

Your bending technique needs refining. Bending comes from redirection
of the air over the tongue, not from choking off the column of air.
 
The Iceman 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: dlmurray@...

 
 I'm choking the column of air to get the bend, and tone does change
(suffer). So, how do you do those low bends without messing up your tone? 
 
Peace and music, 
Dave 
 
_______________________________________________ 
Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org 
Harp-L@... 
http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l 
________________________________________________________________________
Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email
and IM. All on demand. Always Free.
_______________________________________________
Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
Harp-L@...
http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l

--- End forwarded message ---