Re: [Harp-L] Embouchure terminology

[Michelle LeFree <mlefree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Frank Evers comments on "Lip Blocking:"
> Am Sonntag, 1. November 2009 schrieb John F. Potts:
>   
> > The one that comes to mind is the Diatonic Harmonica Reference
> > site.  I saw the "Lip Block" term used somewhere else on the web,
> > too, but I don't remember where else.
> >     
>
> Maybe i used it here. Ralf "BBHarpy" Fuckard uses it, too. IIRC he is 
> one of the inventors of this term (assuming that it was invented 
> independently by more than one player over the years).
>   
I have always used the term, "Lip Blocking" the way Jerry Portnoy uses 
it in his Masterclass CD Series. Jerry uses "Lip Blocking" to 
distinguish the technique from a simple pucker embouchure. He describes 
the term as playing a chord using an open embouchure covering several 
holes and then abruptly "constricting" the open lips to a pucker 
embouchure covering only one hole -- in order to simulate a 
tongue-blocked slap. In his book, "Sourcebook of Little Walter/Big 
Walter Licks for Blues Harmonica," our own Tom Ball mentions this "Lip 
Blocking" technique with the more descriptive term, "Fake 
Tongue-Blocking." That pretty much says it all for me.  :-)

Michelle