Air, Air, and More Air
I'm going through the Solo Harmonica 1 Study and I'm having some trouble with what seems like very leaky notes on two and three BLOW on my G harp. Playing with the harmonica, the two and three blow notes sound airy whether I tongue block or pucker. It seems much worse than any of my other harps. Is it a leaky harp, or I do I just suck?
I'm using Special 20s.
Ryan, great help! I'll take a look at your videos and learn.
The thing that got me going was in the lesson video, Dave is using a G harp that sounds perfect on the 2 and 3 blows - with no airy sounds whatsoever. I thought it might be either he's really good (he is), he's using a custom harp (he is), my harps suck (maybe), or I suck (definitely).
Ryan's comment is a good one... in general that's a good skill to have... to adjust your harp. Most issues like this are caused by the tongue location in the mouth (in most cases humped up... it takes time and reps for this to get better). One way to find out quickly is to purchase another G harp of the same model and see if it's the same... then you'll know if it's your embouchure or not.
Your blow reeds are probably gapped a bit too wide. Gapping them a bit closer to the plate will definately help reduce or even get rid of that airy sound. The lower the harp you play the more your going to get that airy sound, it seems most noticable on blow notes I think. This is mostly a "problem" with the really low harps, if a G harp is sounding really airy it's most likely just that the gapping is too high. It's hard to avoid this sound on the really low harps though (like a low Bb for example) this is because the reeds are longer and there is a lot more space for air to escape along the length of the reeds. I prefer to play the really low harps amplified as opposed to acoustic, the amplification helps cover up the airy noise and makes them sound great, but some people do actually like the airy sound of the low reeds. Some people also like to half valve thier really low harps because this will also help get rid of a lot of the airy sound on the blow reeds.
So my recommendation is to open your harp and carefully push the blow reeds on holes 2 and 3 closer to the plate, you might have to play around with it a bit to get it just how you want it. Joe Spiers has a series of youtube videos teaching how to properly gap the reeds. In my opinion this is the most important "customising" skill one can learn, it will do more to improve your harp than any other modification, and it's not terribly difficult to start learning. Here are the links to the videos:
Video #1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh79GaDVmC8
Video #2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qkx7a5mAKA&feature=related
Video #3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Upodp_mU8&feature=related
Hope this helps.