3 draw bending bend control half step whole step minor third 3rd blues bluesy

I'm excited to announce that the product of two years of research with Stanford University will be released this week in the form of a paper and two videos under the title "Bending Process on the 10-Hole Diatonic Harmonica with the Visual Aid of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)."

In preparation for this release, I'd like to prepare you by helping you travel into your mind's-eye to visualize what's happening in your mouth for the bending process. continue reading...

3' (3 draw half step bend) is an important note for blues harmonica players, and can be difficult to control for new players to bending. The common error is in thinking that the 3 bend is a deep bend and requires more use of the back of the tongue, in the back of the mouth. This is accurate for the deeper 3 draw bends (3" and 3'''), but not for the 3'. continue reading...

For those of you that haven't had the years of experience bending, to have the mouth cavity naturally tuned to each reed you play, let's give you an idea of what this feels like.

Grab any harmonica and bend the reed that's the most comfortable for you. Do this a couple times, focusing on the location of your tongue and jaw. Start bent and slowly allow your bend to slide up in pitch until you reach the exact point where the note is sounding at its originally-intended pitch. You are now tuned to that reed.

Take the harmonica away and move your mouth around to reset your embouchure. continue reading...

From yesterday... "Grab an A Harmonica... play a 1 draw... then a 4 draw... and then a 6 draw. What do you observe your tongue and jaw, i.e., the mouth cavity, doing?"

If you have years of experience bending on the harmonica, you'll find that your jaw slightly drops and the back of your tongue moves slightly back for the 1 draw. Even though you're not bending, your mouth cavity (which includes the position of the tongue) is poised to do the bend if you desire to. continue reading...

New students to the technique of bending often ask if it's rough on harmonicas. I reply, "Bending isn't rough on harmonicas, it's someone learning how to bending that's rough on harmonicas." Playing loudly, squeezing, tension and activation of muscle groups is not required to bend... BUT, telling someone to relax when they're trying hard to do something for the first time doesn't fly. So... if you're new to bending... keep this in mind and try to play softer and relax more as your bending skills develop... your tone and harmonica budget will benefit from it.

There's a difference between being able to bend in isolated practice and bending in a dynamic situation, like your first bending study song "Feelin' for the Blues." Reliably executing technique in time is of course the goal of our musical technique study. continue reading...

Grab a C and G Harmonica of the same brand and model. Take their blow reed plates and swap them. The harmonica with the C draw reed plate will bend on all draw notes... the one with the C blow reed plate will bend on all blow notes. These two special harmonicas will help you to focus on similar technique between blow and draw bending.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (Volume 133 / Issue 5 / ICA 2013 MONTRÉAL) released the basics of the MRI study we've been doing on the bending process. I'll now start work on a detailed paper of our findings (with VERY cool images of the bending process).
http://asadl.org/jasa/resource/1/jasman/v133/i5/p3590_s1?bypassSSO=1

Peter R. Egbert1, Lewis K. Shin1, David Barrett1, Thomas D. Rossing2, and Andrew Holbrook3
1School of Med., Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA
2School of the Blues, San Jose, CA continue reading...

Building on our conversation from yesterday... listening to your recording you probably also noticed your bends were louder in volume than your non-bent notes. Players still developing their bending skills tend to perform their bends with more volume, thinking that this will help them to achieve a deeper bend. Knowing that this is not the case, make a point to perform your bends at a softer volume in order to help them to balance with your other notes. Again, record and adjust... recording is the key.