Re: [Harp-L] RE: blown out harps



One factor is bending notes beyond where they comfortably exist - bending "through the natural floor" of the reed's capabilities.


An apt observation. You can play loudly and not break reeds. Where I've run into trouble is live acoustic outdoors no amplification like on a street. I overplay and miss the bends and in general lose pretty much all of the subtlety in my playing. Personally I don't feel as if I have nearly as much control over my playing. Mike Curtis used to say that getting the vocal tract resonance in line with the harmonica reeds was what mattered. He used the analogy of impedance mismatch to describe it. A reed has a natural frequency it will vibrate at. There is also a range that it will vibrate in if coerced. I'm wondering if people who break reeds are using amplitude as a technique to achieve bent notes? For my money matching the resonance of your vocal tract to the note you're trying to sound is much more efficient. fjm



This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.