[Harp-L] Brendan's vibrato

[bren@xxxxx]

Thanks Robert 😊 It’s always hard describing stuff that happens in your mouth, but I think I use two types of vibrato:

 

1.	Low octave is generally throat vibrato, the typical type used on blues harps: a repeated ‘gasping’ type of sound in your throat transferred to the harp, mostly on draw notes.
2.	Higher up I use a kind of fast regular bending style. Basically a light bend repeated quickly. That’s why you see my jaw moving a lot. Sometimes I use the ‘jaw-bend vibrato’ low down as well.

 

For the second type, practice regular light bends slowly and then speed up – that should give the effect. 

 

Half-valving on a diatonic allows you to achieve vibrato on all notes, blow and draw. With an un-valved Richter harp you can’t get real pitch vibrato on 12 of the notes (!), which to me makes the standard blues harp very stiff and un-expressive. Being able to add vibrato on ALL notes is a big part of why I came up with half-valving 37 years ago.

 

Hope that helps!

 

Brendan Power

 <http://www.x-reed.com> www.x-reed.com

 <http://www.brendan-power.com/> www.brendan-power.com

 <http://www.youtube.com/brendanpowermusic> www.youtube.com/brendanpowermusic

 

 

From: ynfdwas at xxxxx [mailto:ynfdwas at xxxxx] On Behalf Of Robert Hale
Sent: 22 September 2017 22:54
To: harp-l at xxxxx; Brendan Power <bren at xxxxx>
Subject: Brendan's vibrato

 

Brendan,

 

All of your videos display a wonderful vibrato.

What is your method?

 

Robert Hale

Serious Honkage in Arizona

youtube.com/DUKEofWAIL <http://youtube.com/DUKEofWAIL> 

DUKEofWAIL.com