Re: [Harp-L] Songs for practicing intonation? Bending on pitch

[philharpn@xxxxxxx]

This all comes down to accurate bending. And it's easier than you think. If you can whistle on pitch and press a key on an electronic key board/ piano, you can get accurate bends.


Then will allow you to:
1. learn to bend 
2. bend to pitch


You may need a 
1. chromatic tuner ($20) ($5 for iPod, iPad, iPhone app)
2. electronic keyboard ($50-$100)


 Bending notes on the harmonica uses the exact embouchure used in standard whistling. I discovered this several years ago while I was teaching my Harmonica 101 class.Just recently I discovered that 
several pro players explain bending the same way. 


Most people who whistle don't pay much attention to how they change pitch -- lower it or raise it. 
Whistle a ditty with various notes. High and low notes. Try the Saints if you can't think of a tune.


You are able to change the pitch of your whistle note by arching the anchor part of the tongue to change pitch and blow. It's that arch in the back of the tongue that changes the pitch. But don't worry about arching your tune. Just change the notes and it will happen automatically.


Just for demonstration purposes, find a keyboard and whistle a note. Find it on the keyboard. Lower the whistle note, find it on the keyboard. Now shift from the high note to the low note (matching it on the keyboard, and PAY attention to what it FEELS like in your throat. That is how a blow bend works. Holes 8, 9, 10.


This technique works for blow bends, overblows, valve=bends, chrome blow bends.


*EXTRA CREDIT: check the notes on your whistle  against a chromatic tuner (NOT a guitar tuner -- but a real chromatic-all note tuner). See if you can get the notes on pitch.


DRAW BENDS : The next step is much harder. It requires whistling on the inhale. Most people exhale when they whistle; very few inhale, although it can be done.


Since very few people whistle on the inhale it is much harder. But this is exactly how the draw bends are executed. Keep inhale whistling until you can get a sound. Then play a lower note. (use your chromatic tuner to tell whether you are making noise or notes.) 


Once you get a handle on whistling notes, you can slap that draw whistle right on the harmonica and execute a draw bend or a blow whistle for a blow bend. That's because the size of your embouchure needed to whistle it about the exact same size as that needed for a good seal on a reed channel.


Part Two:


Now that you can lower and raise and adjust the pitch of your whistle, it's time to try it on the harmonica. 


There are two ways to check your pitch. A Chromatic tuner will tell you if you are flat or sharp (too low or too high) or right on the money. Easier is to use an electronic keyboard to play the note you are bending to and match the pitch. If you are trying to learn the first bend on hole 2 (F), you can go to what you think in the half-step bend. But if you press the F on the keyboard and match the pitch you will know for sure. 


If you can play the C scale in the first octave (F and A bends) then you are on your way.


For a trickier pattern try the walking bass line: based on scale notes 1 3 5 6 b7 for all three chords G, C, D. Use the keyboard to check the bend pitches.




Walking bass line. Take a C harmonica. Get your keyboard. Play the harp on draw 2, 3 ,4, +5, 5, 4, 3, 2 while matching the keys on the keyboard for the tonic I chord G. When you get to the C chord IV, it's blow 1, 2, 3, draw 3 =2nd bend (A,)1st bend (Bb), blow 3, 2, 1. For the V chord D, it's draw 1, draw bend 1 (F#), draw 3 2nd bend (A) , draw 3, blow 4.


PART THREE: Find the blow and draw notes on the keyboard. Blow 1 is C; draw 1 is D. Db/C# is the note between them. It is the bent note. All the draw bend notes work like this. 


Blow 2 is E; draw 2 is G; the bent notes between are F#, F.


Blow 3 is G, draw 3 is B; the bent notes between them Bb, A, Ab.


These are the tricky bends. Match the keyboard for correct pitch.


Hope this helps


Phil


PS I learned to bend by the EEEEEoooow method for draw bends; it was only later I made the obvious connection with whistling.


 


   





-----Original Message-----
From: JON KIP <jonkip@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: harp-l <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Fri, Oct 4, 2013 10:15 am
Subject: [Harp-L] Songs for practicing intonation? And Meanderings about Fun.



On Oct 3, 2013, at 5:31 AM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Subject: [Harp-L] Songs for practicing intonation?
> 
> 
> Any songs that help playing 3 draw bends to pitch?  Specifically, a
> non-harmonica to play along with?  There has to be a head or motif in a
> song that requires as such.  Thanks!

I think there are two points here. First, the actual hearing of a correct pitch 
as being correct. Secondly, the way to achieve that pitch.

You don't need an actual tune to work on either of those. Yeah, tunes are fun. 
Learning the basics.....less fun. (I was fortunate enough to have been born with 
money, so I hired other people to learn the basics for me, but not everyone has 
that luxury, for which I am truly sorry, and I do take food to the homeless on 
thanksgivings of even-numbered years, so I think I'm covered in the Karma 
Department [take the elevator to the fourth floor, go to the right, just past 
the Toy Department])

You can simplify things, and really make them intensely boring, by just playing 
notes and intervals with a keyboard. Play long notes and listen for the beats 
that show your ears that you're at 'close but no cigar', or the lack of beats 
that shows you that you're at the correct pitch.

If you have trouble hearing what those beats are, just play purposely flat, 
along with the fixed-pitch keyboard (or even a pitch-producing tuning machine), 
and at some point you'll say "OH, THAT"S what they mean by 'beats'. Let the 
pitch rise and you'll find the sweet spot.

And I realize that, to most, that above stuff is obvious....except, perhaps, the 
location of the Karma Department. You're welcome.

As for actually physically making the pitch happen, assuming that you KNOW the 
technique and just haven't mastered it yet, start with the same note that the 
pitch machine is playing, and play increasingly large intervals (above and 
below) against that note and then back to that note. If you don't know the 
technique, there are lots of books with pictures of throats, tongues, and arrows 
pointing at things that are, to some, helpful. Never as helpful as being 
physically with a teacher who knows stuff, but workable, in a pinch, and up to a 
point.

It's the Jack LaLanne method....an exercise for body and ears...and, unless 
you've been married to my first wife, or you played  oboe on The Sound of Music 
eight shows a week, for eight years running, it's probably the most boring 
enterprise imaginable. 

And, just so you know, I'm not a diatonic player, not much, anyway, but I do 
play recreational jazz chromatic harmonica a bit, have a background in some of 
the more expensive woodwind instruments, some of which I play in tune on, and 
some, I don't, but, when the need arises, I have the wisdom to look at the 
person next to me as if SHE was out of tune, and adjust my tuning when nobody's 
looking..... you learn that early on in Studio Land.

The thing  with harmonica seems to be that few people really approach it the way 
one would approach a More Expensive instrument, say flute, violin or one of 
those other instruments that our parents made payments on when we were young, 
and should have been learning piano.

There's probably a reason for that. It might partially be that the harmonicas 
give the player nice sounding things from the beginning. There are built-in 
things that it will do. This is especially true of the diatonics. Those 
instruments have lots of fun built-in, Chromatic harmonicas, a bit less, but 
clarinets, only the squeaks are built in, but that's not ALL bad, as the squeaks 
can happen in ANY key without any transposition needed, so that's cool.

So, if the object is to have fun, you start on harmonica, learn The Licks, (most 
applicable to diatonic, but chrom. has its own built in things that sound 
"harmonica-y")  your friends love it, and you're having FUN. Then, perhaps, a 
goal having been achieved,  your education slows down, if you let it. You then 
get to re-decide your goals. Practice for years more, six to eight hours a day, 
and become a Great Harmonica Player, perhaps one of the greatest in the Local 
State Unemployment line, or be really happy with what you've gotten thus far, 
and gradually widen your scope a bit, if there's time in your schedule. But you 
can make a good sound, play some tunes, and, perhaps gotten a few Groupies to 
follow your career and give you hope that playing harmonica will open up a 
Social Life for you.

All this, while the poor parents of early-stage clarinet players are walking 
around with ear plugs, lying thru their teeth and telling the kids how great it 
sounds. It does not. "Tone" on the clarinet (or most other traditionally taught 
instruments) comes after several years of really boring work.

If the purpose of playing is to have fun, (and I think that was the original 
idea) and you're having fun... that's great. 

Perhaps one attraction of the harmonica is that you can, with reasonable effort, 
play pretty well and have fun.

And perhaps, and this is personal experience for me, you want to take it to the 
level of, say, a good professional flute player, or sax player....(I had no 
options there, as, in theory, and according to the IRS,  I'm a professional 
musician, and can only approach a new instrument the same way I approached the 
Regular Instruments... one of those blessing/curse things, I suppose. It's just 
what is.)

Then, the harmonica is really, really difficult....and, when the goal is far 
away, or nebulous,  not so much fun.

For me, far more difficult than The Real Instruments. Some of that may be my 
age, I think I'm approaching 68,  but most is the really silly instrument, that, 
aside from the Campfire Jokes, doesn't even have its own jokes, since most are 
just revamped viola jokes.....

I've been working on a difficult passage someone wrote for me, and I asked my 
teacher about a fingering, he suggested a pattern, and it has taken me more than 
a few days for me to adjust. (Yeah, I am procrastinating by doing this silly 
writing, I admit)  He sent me an email saying "I forgot to tell you, ten years 
ago,  how hard the harmonica was, when you started to study harmonica with me".

Next time he checked in, I thanked him for not telling me, as, had I been 
daunted and not kept at it,  I would have had a much different life for the last 
ten years, and for me, it's pretty rewarding.

But not always fun.

I think the great part is that the people who play at any level on the 
harmonicas are really having fun. It took me a while to realize that, and to 
stop comparing their playing with the playing of people with different goals. I 
was truly wrong in my judgement of others (except those people who insist that 
Tabs is a good approach to conveying a piece of music to others. It's not. 
Please stop, and take the two weeks it takes to learn to read basic music... 
WITH MELODY!!!!!!!!)

And who's to say that the fun they have, approaching it their way, is any better 
than the fun I have, approaching it my way?

Not me....this stuff is hard work, not matter what your goals are.

I think becoming a professional baseball player would have been wiser... they 
can be right a small % of the time and make millions picking their noses and 
rubbing their crotches for TV,  while we musicians have to be 100% accurate, or 
we're unemployed. Actually we can be 100% and be unemployed as well. That 
'crotch' thing, is still available to us, but chances are it won't be on TV, 
unless you're Anthony Weiner.

seems unfair, the income disparity, not the other stuff.

The last thing, sorry for the length (we have to write that in, in spite of the 
fact that that makes the note even longer, which seems to be a bit 
counter-productive.).....is concerning Jazz Chromatic Players. 

There may be a good reason why MOST of the very good jazz chromatic players 
started on another instrument.

After a more traditional learning experience, they had no choice other than to 
approach it the same way.


ok, what was the question?


jk

http://jonkip.com
where there are a few out of tune notes, and some that, for one reason or 
another, are pretty close.