[Harp-L] Marine Band surprise, and don't give up

["Dave Murray" <dmurray777@xxxxxxx>]

A story that I must tell.

When I first started learning to play I bought a Hohner Special 20. I liked 
it alright but then a friend who played harp said, "If you're gonna play, 
you've got to have good equipment" and he gave me a Lee Oskar. I liked it, 
and bought more. I'd read that they were not good for overblows, but I was 
struggling with bends and decided that overblows were just for the harp gods 
anyway.

I've been playing a while, far too undisciplined in my approach, but making 
progress. I would occasionally try to overblow. Nope, just the chosen few 
can do it thought I. Then I discovered Adam Gussow's YouTube lessons. He 
mentioned the Marine Band, a harp that I've avoided because of the negatives 
that I've read on the internet. What the heck, I bought a couple of them.

SUTPRISE! He gave a technique for learning the overblow; draw 6, bent draw 
6, keep your mouth the same and reverse the wind to a blow. I tried it and 
it choked. I had read that that's the first step to learning overblows. Kept 
trying, whoa! Some horrible sounding screeching and then, there it was. 
Didn't sound so great, but the pitch that I was looking for. It was an 
overblow.

I may be writing this too soon, I can't do it reliably yet, but I've done it 
a few times, with out of the box Marine Bands, which by the way seem quite 
playable to me, and I like the sound.

The moral of the story. Don't assume that anything is beyond you, don't give 
up, and don't believe everything that you read. You don't know if a harp is 
right for you until you try it, and if you assume that something is beyond 
you and you give up, you'll never get there. I'm quite delighted even if I 
do sound like crap. I just had to tell someone. :0)

Peace and music,
Dave