[Harp-L] Overbending vs. Half-Valving

[Gary Lehmann]

Full chromaticity with double reed bends can be achieved with a few
different tunings.
I like Brendan Power's diatonic tuning called Power Chromatic, it gives you
all the chromatic notes except for one, the b6 of the home key.
Roger Myerson came up with a tuning independently that strongly resembles
this tuning, it is a variation of the Newton FourKey. He calls it
PentaBender.
I have three of these, keys of C, G, and A. Here is a video where I show
how the blues can be played using this tuning.
Sorry if I don't perform brilliantly on this tuning, just goes to show that
practice can either pay off or not, depending on whether you apply it or
not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2F5MsAcqIM

On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:54 AM, Laurent <laurentharp at xxxxx>
wrote:

> Hi Bob
>
> It is of course difficult to talk about the disadvantages of a method
> we've chosen and mastered. This is the reason why we tend to talk about the
> advantages of it :)
> And anyway I'm not sure there is any "disadvantages" per se with any
> method. It's a matter of time spent practicing. And you can even combine
> the methods (by valving the 2nd hole in an overblow harp in order to play
> the Eb on a C harp)
>
> I'll try to answer you anyway.
> From my (small) experience with half-valving, it is very difficult to
> obtain valved bend on holes 6 (and above) on c harps (and keys above). And
> the valved bends dealing with only one reed, their nature is very different
> from the regular bends and overblows. Thus they can be tricky to obtain and
> sustain,while the overblows are obtained just by inversing the breathe
> compared to the regular bend of the same hole.
> A last point, it may be that valves buzz.
>
> For the overblows, one of the biggest disadvantages is that you've got to
> tweak your harp to have it really playable.
> Another one is that the 1rst hole overblow and the overdraws are a bit
> tricky. This is where valving the 2nd hole can make sense.
>
> Hope this helps a bit
>
> Laurent
> www.planetharmonica.com
>
>
> Envoyé de mon iPhone
>
> > Le 3 mars 2017 à 19:14, Bob Marsolais <bob at xxxxx> a écrit :
> >
> > I'm a beginner and working my way through Winslow's "Harmonica for
> > Beginners" book.  I highly recommend it.  I'm learning to bend and
> trying to
> > decide how to best go about achieving full chromaticity with diatonic
> harps.
> > As we all know there seems to be two ways to do this - half-valving and
> > overblows.  Both approaches have their proponents and significant
> players at
> > that.  People like PT Gazell, Brendan Power, Adam Gussow, Jason Ricci,
> and
> > others.  They all talk about the virtues of their preferred method, but I
> > haven't found a conversation about the disadvantages of one approach over
> > the other.  I'm trying to decide which is the best approach for this
> > beginner to focus on for now.  Perhaps I'll learn both later, but for
> now,
> > I'm trying to stay focused on one method.  Both methods give you full
> > chromaticity, but which one has fewer  for a beginner?
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
> > This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> > https://www.avast.com/antivirus
>
>