[Harp-L] Practicing through the bends

["John F. Potts" <hvyj@xxxxxxx>]

The Iceman sayeth:

My opinion is that the
essence of bending techniques rests purely in tongue position - throat,
jaw etc are kept in the "almost yawn" position, but don't contribute to
the pitch placement. If you will accept this premise, the control is  
easy to achieve.

Larry,

I do not question the validity of your recommended approach.  But, it  
doesn’t work for those of us who do not use the tongue to bend.  In  
my experience, bending with the throat produces superior tone and  
control. Once one can drop the 3 Draw 3 half steps (bbb) at will  
using the throat, separating the lowest 2 (bb and bbb) available  
bends seems to be a  matter of changing the size and shape of the  
oral resonance chamber, and separating the Ist and 2d  (b and bb)  
bends seems to have more to do with the relative depth/shallowness of  
the bend.  I’ve been using a little Korg electronic chromatic tuner  
to check pitch as I work at trying to do this with precision and  
figuring out what to do when in order to be able to hit each of these  
bends consistently at proper pitch (which is still very much a work  
in progress).

Identifying/controlling the bends with tongue position works fine—but  
only for players who actually use the tongue to bend.  Those of us  
who bend with the throat must necessarily employ a different technique.

JP