bending 1 and 2 draw
first I have to say my tys. I don't always get around to thanking y'all for your prompt respones but I am grateful
I've started the bending exercises in prep for level 3 studies
Ive stuggled mostly with the 1 draw and whole step 2 draw bends. in reading today in the forums I learned that I've been fighting the tongues urge to scoop instead of goiing with it. and that I need to relax the tongue's tip. early experimentations indicate both tips are going to help
when I find the 1 draw bend on C harp, it's almost like the feelong of trying to swallow my tongue to get back far enough. when I try to hit the 1 draw on my A harp, I can hear it going down but tuner says not far enough.
my question: that feeling of tongue so far back it feels like I'm swallowing my tongue is normal? or am I off the right track?
Monty
another factor that I've been wondering about affecting the deep bends. I wear a full upper denture and the denture masterial changes the contur of the roof of my mouth and leaves a thick solid lip as the back of the apparatus.
the 3 draw third position bend feels like it's somewhere near that lip. after that, the hump of my tongue seems to fall off of the smooth lip of foriegn matierial and either seal against it or go farther back and away from the denture.
I know this has got to be tough to pinpoint in this venue but in your opinion is the denture affecting the sucess of the deep bends? and how might one work around and through the challenge of a full denturee in regards to bending?
Monty
I see two potential effects of a denture.
One, as you note, is the inconvenience of the sudden change in contour at the back of the plate.
The other is that by lowering the roof of your mouth, the denture is making your oral cavity smaller - like having a room with a false ceiling hung below the real one. So for any given bend, you have to compensate by moving your tongue farther back and lower in your mouth than you would without the denture.
Assuming that playing without the denture is not an option, try keeping the main surface of your tongue lower in your mouth - lowering the floor, as it were, to compensate for the lowered ceiling. That may help you to locate the K-spot farther forward.
The other, non-denture-related observation I would make is that many bends can be located farther forward in the mouth than at first they seem to be. It's fairly common to locate them too far back at first, which actually makes them harder to initiate and control. You might try finding them farther forward.
thanks so much. you confirmed what I suspected, the effects of the denture, but you also explained the whys. and with y'alls help we'll figure it out :)
Monty
okay. oh happy day. I have found the bends on the C harp by figuring out what you meant by K-spot. I've no speed or coontrol yet but the bends are where you said they are sans the tongue swallowing circus act.
\I'd always taken the kee kee kah koo to mean more jaw drooping and missing the tongue position. I see now that kee kah koo might be both but fixing on the K-spot has halped.
that's on the C harp. I'm hoping you would have some magical fix now for the lower key'd harps as in the A still having trouble finding the 1 and full bend 2 draw on the lower harp.
just a matter of practice or is there some word'o wisdom?
Monty
The lower the note, the bigger the tuned resonant chamber in your oral cavity. So the 1 and 2 bends on an A harp, being lower in pitch than on a C harp, will require a bigger chamber. And the ways to get the chamber bigger include:
- Moving the K-spot back
- Flexing the surface of the tongue downward
- Dropping the jaw
Some combination of those should work. Trying it just a moment ago with a tongue block on a well-adjusted Crossover in C and an air-hog vintage Meisterklasse in A from Hohner's 1980s-era bad period, what worked for me on the A was moving the K-spot back slightly.
The tongue-sqwallowing sensation inicates that you haven't found the real sweet spot for that bend which is much farther forward along the roof of the mouth. Try saying "un-uniung." Note where your tongue touches the roof of your mouth. Now go looking for the sweet spot in the vicinity.