Posted Thu, 02/06/2014 - 09:19 by David Barrett Admin
Here's my personal approach to playing the harmonica...
1) Tilt face of harmonica slightly downward (around 30 degrees)
2) Open mouth
3) Insert harmonica, bringing the harmonica to the tongue (not the tongue to the harmonica)
4) For a standard tongue block (single note at right, with lips over four holes and tongue blocking three holes to the left), the tongue moves just one click to the left (11 O'clock)
5) To tongue switch, move to the right to 1 O'clock
6) To play an octave, center the tongue and use a lighter touch continue reading...
Posted Wed, 02/05/2014 - 09:09 by David Barrett Admin
Your tongue blocks two holes in the center, leaving the left and right holes open when performing an octave (1+ C and 4+ C for example). You can either use the tip of your tongue to block those two holes or use the tip-top of the tongue (called the blade), by using an ultra-light touch so that the natural convex shape of the tongue doesn't flatten out and cover too many holes. Give this light touch a try and I'll discuss some other interesting advantages of this light touch technique tomorrow.
Posted Tue, 02/04/2014 - 10:13 by David Barrett Admin
Knowing that we use the top of the tongue for our tongue blocking, and we commonly cover four holes with our tongue (the pull articulation for example) and even at times five holes (5-hole octave pulls and pull-slaps), it makes sense to tilt the face if the harmonica (the hole side, what faces you) downward. This downward tilt (10 degrees to as much as 45 degrees) allows the harmonica to match the angle of your tongue, instead of raising the middle of your tongue and pushing it outward towards the harmonica. Experiment with your tongue blocking while using this tilt, you may like it.
Posted Mon, 02/03/2014 - 10:11 by David Barrett Admin
Simply stated, the more holes you need to block for a tongue block technique, the further back you'll use of the top of your tongue (your tongue is more narrow at the tip and wider at its base). This is achieved by either placing the harmonica deeper in your mouth, to access more of the back of your tongue, or by arching and sticking your tongue out towards the harmonica... and of course, there can be a combination of both.
Posted Mon, 01/27/2014 - 12:35 by David Barrett Admin
Now that you've recorded yourself to a jam track, listen back to your use of dynamics (volume change). Did you stay at the same volume the entire time?... if you did, it's not uncommon, but it's time to fix this.
Varying volume is the strongest tool available to us to convey emotion to the listener. Along for the ride is tone. As we change our volume, our tone and how our rig (mic and amp) responds changes. This is why we use the term "dynamics" and not just volume change... when we change the volume, many other factors are dynamically changed with it. continue reading...
Posted Wed, 01/22/2014 - 09:00 by David Barrett Admin
Tip of the Day comes from educator Winslow Yerxa in his upcoming interview on the site. In this video snippet he talks about blow bending and the small, frontal embouchure required for the technique. My tip (in the video as well) is to play a 6 draw bend on the D Harmonica... observe the movement of your tongue... and then perform an 8+ bend on the G Harmonica with the same movement (it's the same pitch/bend, so you can use this familiar movement of the tongue for your blow bend). http://youtu.be/f8FDXiwD_o4