RE: [Harp-L] Bending intonation...the regular kind

["MLeFree" <mlefree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

J Compton wrote:
> My guess is that he was referring to the "ton(e)" part of
> intonation.  (Yes, I realize the words are probably not derived
> from the other, but I can understand his confusion.)  I bet you
> already suspected that's what he meant though.

I guess it's because I've been sensitized to the very same issue with
respect to my own playing, but I knew immediately what Mike meant. Maybe we
should call it timbre?

> >From my personal experience, my early attempts at hitting the 2
> and 3 draw bends sounded like a painful squawking duck call.

Yeah and they are *critical*, too!

> Now, with months of diligent practice (okay, that's a
> stretch...let's try that again)...now, after months of working on
> them occasionally when no one else is around usually while
> driving, I have reached a level where I am only closely
> resembling a squawking duck call.  Hey, it's progress.

Tenacity, Jonathan. Here's a little suggestion. Don't get hung up too much
on practicing in one key. I learned that in my efforts to learn how to TB
bend. I was using a C harp for months 'cuz it happened to be my "practice"
harp. One time I picked up a G harp. Suddenly I was able to TB bend like
nobody's business. I had been using the wrong size oral cavity to work well
with a C harp (too big). But my mouth was well-tuned to the frequencies of
the G harp. That let me know that my technique was basically OK (after
months, I was beginning to have severe doubts...). It was that my oral
cavity was too large for higher pitched harps. One of those priceless "ah
ha!" moments.

> (Here's the part where the newbie offers advice, as if he has a
> clue what he's talking about...)  My biggest leap in tone quality
> on the draw bends was when I stopped getting the bend with my
> lips and front of my tongue and started getting them further back
> on the tongue and more from the throat.  I think my best progress
> with that transition was when I started working on the bends
> while tongue blocking.

Precisely! Besides the tone, the depth of my bends were also vastly
improved. My own "ah ha!" moment as to bending with the back of my throat
came when I was brute forcing the U-block (curl tongue) embouchure. The
thing is, with the U-block or the Tongue-block, you ~can't~ use the tip of
your tongue to bend, so you must do it elsewhere. And like you, I
experienced a quantum leap improvement in my bent tonality.

>My guess is that further advancements in
> tone quality will come from increasing the volume/size of the
> mouth cavity while relaxing as many parts of the embouchure as
> possible...of course, while still hitting the note...oh, and
> practice.  WARNING: not only is this advice worth no more than
> you paid for it, but it's also from a total newbie with no actual
> professional instruction who has only progressed from "like a
> painful squawking duck call" to "closely resembling a squawking
> duck call".  The "secret" to true high-quality draw bend tone may
> be something entirely different.!

Don't sell yourself short, Jonathan. I think you are on the right track,
except that I'd advise once again that you (anyone) practice in a range of
keys.

I'd pass on another piece of advice given to me by Grant Dermody. Grant, who
possesses monstrous tone by any standard, will tell you that improving your
tone should be an ongoing, never-ending quest. His immediate advice to me
upon listening to me play for 30 seconds was to "get my tongue out of the
way." He was spot on! I had near immediate results when I tried it. After a
lifetime of whistling compounded by several years of front-of-tongue
bending, in which cases the tip of my tongue played a front and center role,
I had to "untrain" my tongue to keep it flat, down, and out of the way when
puckering. Heck, I'm still working with that stubborn tongue when I use the
pucker embouchure, which I am doing less and less, due to my concerted
offert to use TB almost exclusively. Thing is, when you TB, the
tongue-in-the-way problem goes away, by definition. Hmm. I once asked Annie
Raines how such a tiny little lady like her gets such awesome tone? She said
quite simply yet resolutely, "tongue-block!" She went on to share her
thoughts on why TB is often associated with killer tone, some of which we've
touched upon here.

One last word. You mentioned using your the tip of your tongue to
articulate. Try using a "Ga" or "Ka" or the equivalents on draw instead.
Those articulations will still allow you to bury that tongue on the bottom
of your mouth. I learned to try that myself as, even if I tried to keep my
tongue down, articulating with my tongue would inevitably leave it out
wagging in the breeze.

Jonathan, I'd like to thank both you and Mike for sharing your experiences
with us.

Michelle