Re: [Harp-L] two questions from newbie

[Frank Evers <frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

Am Donnerstag, 8. Januar 2009 schrieb Igor:
> Sometimes my lips are trembling and badly tired, that I even cannot
> play in row several single notes.

This will become better with further practice, but another problem 
might be, that you probabl play with a wrong embouchure. Don't shape 
your mouth like whistling, but put the harmonica IN your mouth.

This youtube video is not specially about this topic, but the most 
important about it is in there:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Gcchw5rkM

There might be better videos about embouchure on youtube...

> 1)Please advice how much time I need to spend per day practicing
> the instrument. I can understand that it's quite individual
> depended, but in any case would be welcome to hear your opinion.

My experience is, that it's better to practice 5 times a day for 5 
minutes and another time for 20 minutes, than practicing only once a 
day for an hour. Keep your harp in your pocket and pull it out 
whenever you have a few minutes to play. 
Your brain has to set up "hard wired" routines how to play things, and 
the more often you make it work on these routines te quicker they're 
build. Quite often you will work hard on something with little 
success, and the next day you you start to play and the same thing 
works instantly - your brain worked it out overnight. Keep on working 
on it and it will be hard wired in your brain and you can play it 
without even thinking about it.
The more often you bug your brain to work things out, the the higher 
it will be on it's TODO list. ;)

> 2)The second question.
>  What metronome speed I need to use during exercices e.g. to play
> scales etc. It seems that I can play pretty good e.g. C-Scale at
> metronome speed 54, 60, 70, but cannot handle it at speed 48. Since
> it takes much more efforts.

Then practice more at speed 48 ;)
You'll need them all: slow, medium, fast, real fast...
It's all about practice
-- 
Gruß,Frank