Help with a Student
Dear David,
I would bring your help or your advice to a student of mine.She is 65 years old and has been playing the harmonica with a puckering for about 1 years. She sings in the choir and would also like to learn the songs she sings there on the harmonica.I have been teaching her since February this year and I am also teaching her a few techniques. Tongue blocking is also available upon request. So I showed her how to play tongue blocking and showed her the octaves.But now there is a problem: After 10 months she doesn’t get any further, is now incredibly frustrated and doesn’t want to learn to play Okatven for the time being. She also has difficulties with the tremolo. She doesn't even want to play "Walk with me" anymore because it's too difficult for her, as well. What can I do? I don't know anymore what else I can show her or how I can continue to organize the lessons.
Maybe you have some advice at hand.
GreetingsRouven
Hello David,
yes. That helps. Thank you.
I will try to get her confidence back. And I will looking for a simple melodie, we can play to.
An other problem is, that she doesn't hear the tones. I think I had to plan an ear training.
Personalizing the melody then becomes important. Have her listen more in the beginning. After listening to a lick numerous times, have her then sing/hum the melody until she gets the general rhythm and contour (how the melody goes up or down). This is important to do before picking up the machine of the harmonica to play.
Alright! I will do that! Thank you. :)
Hello Rouven.
This is a fairly common issue... someone building proficiency with pucker and then feeling like they're starting over with tongue blocking.
I think the focus of "adding" the cool effects of tongue blocking is the way to go. Maybe using pucker as her main embouchure and then using tongue blocking for the cool sounds it has to offer should be the approach (octaves, slaps, pulls, and flutters).
She would generally play holes 1-3 pucker and when she bends, then playing 4-10 tongue blocked... this is the typical split embouchure approach.
Right now I recommend you think what would be fun for her and build her confidence/enjoyment level up, and then bring back challenges one step at a time.
One idea to try is to take a song she really likes that is simple and you guys explore different techniques you can add to change the presentation of the simple melody.
Does this help?