tongue bending location tone

After giving a five-minute long lecture to students on mouth, jaw, tongue, soft pallet and throat positioning, I finish by saying, "basically yawn, this puts everything in a good position." An embouchure that's in a yawn-like state drops the jaw and pushes it slightly forward, lowers the tongue, raises the soft pallet (to close off the nasal cavity) and opens the throat. This all leads to killer tone on the harmonica and prevents breathing and unintended bending issues.

At 0:50 Dr Bahnson states, "the nasal passages are not nearly as important as a resonating cavity as is the oral pharynx (mouth cavity)." The oral cavity... our mouth... is the resonating chamber of our instrument. This is analogous to the body of a guitar being the resonating chamber for the string (mounted on the fret board). Have you ever seen and heard a backpacker guitar? They have full-scale fret boards, but the body of the guitar is very small. This makes the guitar easy to tote around, but the tone is very thin... non-resonant... continue reading...

Generally speaking, controlling bends and articulations further back in your mouth will give you a rounder/warmer tone. When articulating, the "K" articulation will help you to achieve a warmer tone (before and after the articulation) than the "T" articulation. You CAN achieve a good tone with "T," just make sure that the middle and back of your tongue is lowered so that you create a tone chamber behind the articulation. But, generally speaking, the more you use "K" or "G" (G is softer) the more of a chance your tone will be bigger.