Re: [Harp-L] Throat Vibrato Pulse Speed

["Alexander Savelyev" <Alexander.Savelyev@xxxxxxxx>]

hi Sam, 

I do what David Barrett calls a bent vibrato, which is a throat vibrato, for instance on a 2 draw note, with an attack that involves a bent note (a quarter or so of a tone). The pulse goes as a wave, not as a staccato rhythm. But in the beginning you start with the staccato. 

An interesting visual exercise that you can do to align your vibrato with a given tempo is to use the DAW - any simple one - and to record your playing. Just set the BPM and activate the grid mode - where you can see the bars' dividers - grid - to the depth of, say, 16th notes. Then you activate metronome and start recording to the beat. Once you've recorded some 10 seconds of your vibrato, zoom in the sound wave and check the consistency of the pulse. Analyze the amplitude and smoothness of the sound wave portions. I guess you can start practising from there, from slow to fast. 

Hope that helps, 

Alex






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>>> "sam Blancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx> 14/02/2010 07:19 >>>
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.    






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