Re: [Harp-L] Throat Vibrato Pulse Speed

[Emile Damico <oatss_oatflakes@xxxxxxxxx>]

As Cham ber Huang used to say about playing harmonica,"you need to get proper technical control."
One exercise that is used is the use of triplets. Play a pulse using triplets with a slight accent on the
the first note in the triplet. That accent will keep you honest to your degree of control. Slowly at first
speeding up only if you can maintain that slight accent. Once you get  control you can adapt it to 
you rhythmic needs.




________________________________
From: sam Blancato <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Harp-L <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sun, February 14, 2010 12:19:45 AM
Subject: [Harp-L] Throat Vibrato Pulse Speed

Hey Folks,

For those of you who can do throat vibrato I have a question.  As you know,
when playing a note or a chord with throat vibrato (TV), you play it with a
'pulse' (a tempo) at which you modulate the pitch.  Another way to say this
is that you cause the pitch to waver at a certain speed.  And you also
probably know that the TV sounds more effective when you can control the
pulse so that this matches the tempo of the song you're playing.  

So what I'm wondering is what kind of exercises I can do to develop a fast
pulse and more than this, to get any speed I want.  On a song with a 4/4
time at a metronome tempo of 92 I can get a 16th note tempo.  That's about
as fast as I can pulse TV.  This sounds fast but it really isn't.  It's not
that slow either and I can match TV tempos to a lot of songs up to that
speed.  I'd like to be able to do it faster, maybe 16ths at 108 or 112.  

Has anybody worked on this with drills and what not?  Has anybody tried to
work on this specific thing as opposed to just developing greater speed and
control over time without conscious effort?  When I try to get 16ths over 92
it seems like my muscles won't go any faster.  Sometimes I wonder if this is
some sort of set thing, like there's a threshold one can't get past.

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh  

P.S.  Over-blowers can ignore this inquiry.  I'm sure I wouldn't be able to
appreciate your crazy, twisted perspective on anything; it would probably
give me a head ache too.  And anyway, I wouldn't want to take you away from
your Schoenberg records and tongue yoga and what ever other M.C. Escher-like
stuff you all do.