Half Steppin Tongue Blocking
Good afternoon David. I'm looking for some motivation!!! When you play Half Steppin, do you REALLY tongue block the entire song? i.e. particularly the 3 draw whole step and a half, and the 2 draw whole step? I can get to the half step bends on 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 but can't seem to get CLEAR bends, surely can't flutter or vibrato, the 3 whole and 3 whole and a half, and 2 whole. Should I just pucker those? Your notes come out so very clean and strong... is it just more and more practice? Thanks
Yes, I do use somewhat of a mixed embouchure, however, since you've told me that you TOTALLY tongue block, then I will try harder and harder to do the same. Obviously, playing the notes very quickly, as you do in Half Steppin.... would be much more practical for me to practice, practice, practice tongue block bending. I was just not sure if the whole step and step and a half bends were possible. Yes, TB surely allows for flutters, pulls, slaps, etc to TB all the time. Back to the drawing board for me. Thanks
Cool... just keep at it, you'll get it
Hello JLevy. I do tongue block every bend in that song. You'll get it, it just takes time and practice. If your pucker bending is far superior to your tongue block bending, there's no reason why you can't use a mixed-embouchure approach to your playing. This is where you commonly pucker holes 1 through 3 and whenever you bend, and tongue block holes 4 through 10, using tongue blocking wherever you want a tongue block sound (like a slap, pull, octave, flutter, etc.). The downfall of this approach is that you have to learn how to switch embouchures quickly (you'll get used to it) and more importantly, your tongue won't be on the harmonica, so you won't have tongue block techniques available to you on every note that you play (not as desirable). Something to keep in mind... both are valid ways of playing, just tongue blocking all the time has more technique available to you (for this reason, this is why the traditional high-level blues harmonica players primarily tongue block all the time). I hope this helps.