Bending practice
Hi David,
I've been practicing examples ex. 1.2 and 1.3 of the Bending Study 4 every day on 3 harmonicas: A, G and D. It helps me a lot, but it's also quite time consuming -- about 10 minutes, which is quite a big portion of my daily practice time (about an hour at most). Have you any idea how to make this time shorter, but still efective?
I started with just one harmonica a couple of months ago. It was A and I am still most comfortable with it, but I soon realized, that bending on different harmonicas is quite different and that's why I've added G and D. I tried to practice on one harmonica only for about a week and then changed the key for another week, but it didn't work. I improved on a partucular key during its week, but after two weeks on other keys this improvment vanished.
So I've moved back to paractice all three keys every day and it's perfect, except the time that it takes :-(
What do you think and what would you recommend?
Thank you very much,
Marek
Well, I work from home and I've already arranged my pratice into shorter, 10-20 minutes long blocks between my work. But I've got your main point -- I should keep those bending excercises with different keys of harmonica and I should't mix them with more focused study of the songs.
Thank you David,
Marek
You got it... 5 minutes here and there (while practicing bending, the tongue tends to get tired quickly).
Hello Marek. It’s a very good idea to practice your bending on different keys of harmonica. In regards to practice time, what I recommend my students to do is to do that type of practice in the car, when you get a couple of minutes throughout the day, stopped at lights, or, just little parts of the day that you have a couple minutes. this way, you can reserve your practice time at home, when you’re concentrating in front of the music stand, for your study songs and such.