high

Simple, but powerful, tip today. Take each lick/song you learn and play it up an octave.

As blues harmonica players we prefer the tone of the lower keyed harmonicas and the lower six holes of the harmonica. When venturing above hole 6, the tone thins and we start to move off access of our cupped hands and away from our mic.

Players commonly use slaps as their default way to present the high notes for a more powerful sound. Using octaves (4 hole for blow and 5 hole for draw) is also a great approach for a bigger sound. continue reading...

In regards to the 10+ bend... If your tongue moves forward in your mouth, the 10+ bend will start in the fully-bent position (10"+... 10 blow whole step bend)... in this case the Bb. This is due to the fact that your mouth is starting from a low tuning, and as your tongue moves forward the tuning of your chamber raises in pitch until you reach the pitch of the 10"+, and the bend sounds. In order to hear a slide from 10+ (C) to 10'+ (B) and ultimately 10"+ (Bb), you need to start with your tongue forward, tuning your mouth HIGHER in pitch that the bend. continue reading...

I helped a lot of students with their blow bends at the Harmonica Masters Workshops and in ever case the student needed to have a much smaller, more frontal chamber in their mouth to produce the bend and control it. Remember back to Bending Study 1 on the site... we're tuning our mouth cavity to the pitch that we're trying to create on the harmonica for a particular bend. Blow bends are very high notes, so when raising your tongue for the bending process it's the very front of the tongue, forward in the mouth, to create the tiny chamber needed to match that very high pitch.