Conscious tongue control
Hello o/,
I am a (returning) very beginner and am searching for ways to improve quality and consistency of my tone.
I have a hard time getting conscious control over my tongue. It seems i have very poor mind-muscle connection there. When i try to lower the middle and/or the back part of the tongue not much happens other than it frantically jiggling and twitching. I can kinda do it (sometimes) by half yawning, often resulting in full yawning or even gagging tho - not exactly helpful while playing. I started to train this in front of a mirror/webcam via trial and error, but it feels unefficiant.
Do you know better ways gain more conscious control? Are there any specific (logopedic?) exercises i can do? I searched online, but did not find much convincing stuff. This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFot-l2iVHw and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phuaeXjWpSQ goes in the right direction i guess, but i was hoping to find something more professional and in depth and fitting. I read that Ben did quite some research in this field, e.g. MRI of mouth while playing etc.so maybe he has some ideas where and what for to look?
Greetings, MT
Thx Éric,
yeah, that is kind of the answere i hoped not to hear :D.
I seem to be not very gifted concerning tongue contro either*. So I was hoping there is a more efficiant/faster way then just learning it unconcious along the way because: "I spent MONTHS without moving any pitch" sounds a bit disheartening.^^
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*As a kid i almost needed to go to a speech therapist because of severe mumbling (now i wish, my parents would have send me there)
Sorry if that sounded disheartening... in my mind it was rather comforting!
Even sounding impossible, it will come. I trusted David's advice and in spite being slow at it, it worked.
And can assure you it's VERY rewarding, too! Now my progresses are steady, and very fun to observe now that I have more confidence.
Every progress I made was to relax, and realize my tongue had learned better than me. For example, at first I had to push a bit my tongue against the holes. David says not, do not push, just get a contact; but with a tongue that had erratic, random movements, I felt it was the lightest touch I could get without losing contact. I was persuaded to have a light touch; I was not in fact. Then it became a habit, and by the time my tongue was really ready to have a lighter touch, I didn't try at once. When I did, it was a sudden progress.
Tone, bending one note, sliding through bending range: every time, I progressed when my conscious movements did not hider what my tongue had already learned to do. I am a tense kind of person, but if you can stay always on the relax side, your progress can be less slow than mine!
And certainly everyone has their own path. My first bend was not 6' (proposed by David) nor 4' (reputed as the easiest) but 2'. Then, getting less far in the throat was also a question of relaxing.
Two suggestions:
First: make familiar sounds, and try to notice what your tongue is doing when you make them:
La La La
Ta Ta Ta
Ka ka ka
Tha Tha Tha
Eeee (rhymes with me)
Uuuuuu (rhymes with who)
Oooo (rhymes with go)
Second: Explore using sensations:
Touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth at the back of the teeth, and then run it back along the roof and note the contours. There's a sort of platform just behind the teeth (I call it the front porch), then a dome that runs up, and then back down to another platfrom (I call that the back porch). Bending often can use these locations to place where you make the K shapr to narrow the air flow.
Try to make your tongue touch the inner ring formed by your lower teeth. Feel it touching those teeth all around the edges of your tongue. This is the the lowest point your tongue can be placed. Couple this with the open-throated yawn to make the most open possible air passage.
As always, Winslow has really, really good suggestions.
I would add two more things:
1. Good tone, ability to bend, ability to move around on the harp, etc. etc., are not a contest. With practice you may pick it up quickly, or it may take years. Everyone is different. But no amount of anxiously seeking a quick answer will help. Just spend lots of time, and relax, relax, relax.
2. Both the harmonica and your tongue are just tools. The actual music comes from your entire body, with your throat, lungs, and even your posture making the actual sound. (The wonderful Jon Gindick once walked me into a bathroom to look at myself in the mirror, and then asked, "Why, when you play, are you trying to cram your shoulder blades into your ears?" It took months of practice to consistently keep my shoulders relaxed and dropped while playing, but it made a huge difference in my tone and my bending.)
My own experience has been much like EricD's. One day, you'll hear yourself, and you'll go, "Wow. I did it! Now ... how did I do that?" And if you're like me, you may never actually figure out just what it was that you did. But you'll intuitively do it better and better with time, to the time when you do it without thinking. I.e., you think about the music you're making, not what the different parts of your body are doing.
It's a fun journey. Enjoy!
Thx, Winslow and Rob. Will try that. Btw. i am not seeking answers anxiuously o.O. I just think when learning something, it is not a bad idea to use everything that can help, especially with the basics (not sure how it is in music, but i am mainly an illustrator (just recently started to dipping my toes ... erm ... my tongue into making some music) and with drawing, strong knowledge of the basics make at least 80% of a good work. Somehow more concious tongue control sounded/sounds like a good/practical idea to me.^^
The relaxation tip i cannot hear enough, need to tell this to me every other minute when practicing cause i tend to tense up else.
Either a 3d printed one (Dave posted a link to one in somewhere forum thread that will cost you around $10 to print) or make yourself one with a milk bottle. Then try blocking holes and switching your tongue very slowly. Be relaxed, the important part is where the tongue ends up within your mouth, then once you have it there slowly figure out the fastest path to that position. Once you've done it ten times using the tongue block trainer, do it with the harmonica. Train single holes, tongue switching, slaps, pulls, pull slaps, flutters, rakes etc. as you learn each technique on your studies.
The tongue agility exercises that David explains (1 blow, 4 blow, 1-4 blow octave, 1 draw, 4 draw, 1-4 draw octave etc up to the 4 blow and back) is a great exercise that I keep repeating every now and then to keep muscle memory. Your can watch the videos where Sharon is doing them, she does them great and I have not found any better way to build tongue technique than that. Couple it with the tongue block trainer, spend some 10 minutes each session and in no time you'll be able to control your tongue to easily do single notes, splits, have great tone and so on. And that exercise is actually fun to do.
Yeah, i printed me a tongue block trainer (3d modelled one myself, as the measurements of the one linked here in forum seem to be off a bit... maybe not enough to cause trouble tho).
I find it not as easy to use as i thought tho (sometimes the difference between a blocked hole and a non blocked hole is hardly discernible visually. Also to translate what i learned on the trainer to a real monica does not work very well for me ... just putting the real thing in my mouth and listen closely while trying fits me better).
I am doing the 1, 4+1, 4 excersice every day for a while now for some minutes, and i get better at it (albeit only slowly). My hit rate went up from 0% to maybe 40% (with some wiggling. Getting it right instantly is still almost impossible, but it was the same with single notes for the first few days, so i guess it will come with more routine)..
MT:
I'm certainly no expert on this sort of thing, but you've hit two important points:
1. You can't see the face of the harmonica when it's in your mouth, and "the tongue will do what the tongue wants to do." So your best feedback is your ears! Practicing is as much listening as playing.
2. So ... with practice time you're already experiencing improvement! Your exercises harken to stories of Pete Rose, who would literally spend hours on end slowly going through his batting stance and movements, analyzing and perfecting. And then spend more hours in a batting cage, hitting slow pitches, for further analysis and perfection. Don't be afraid to go through exercises with exagerated slowness, listening all the while.
Harmonica playing is asking the tongue to do stuff it's not used to doing. That's part of the fun.
I'm myself a beginner, and at first I had a very hard time controlling my tongue, too. I too tried to analytically understand what to do, and David kept answering "keep trying, it will come".
I did, and it worked! It's very mysterious, almost magical. Getting a decent 2 draw was the first challenge. Then bending was an impossible journey: I spent MONTHS without moving any pitch (tongue-block bends, since I began with this site).
With time I tamed my tongue, and controlled it. What is crazy is, it was largely unconscious. The intent for "what to try with my tongue" did not really change, the success did. In the mirror, at first lowering my tongue resulted in raising it and moving wildly, now it justs lowers. I suppose that everything I tried at first was in fact wild tense tongue movements, which then became subtler relaxed movements; but it didn't really feel like that to my "awareness". I was not specially "gifted" and I think others can learn more quickly, but it eventually came nonetheless.
If my personal experience has any generality, it is an error to focus on consciously precisely controlling the tongue: it won't obey before a certain amount of practice. Only with practice will intent and result converge, but the process is unconscious. For me, "better ways to gain more conscious control" which you ask, was just trying and trying again with the harmonica in mouth.
I even don't know if there is any interest in learning to control one's tongue, save paying the harmonica!
Only a testimony, and nothing really more than David's "keep on it, it will come", but I hope it can help.
Éric