Jaw movement
Hello David,
I am on a kind of crossroad and I need your guidance chosing the right way.
I am fairly new to the diatonic harmonica (started August last year) and I initialy started puckering, cos the first teacher I had is a pucker player. So naturaly he pointed me towards some excersizes to develop a faster jaw movement when moving up and down the instrument.
Then January this year I have joined bluesharmonica.com where all the studdies are tongue blocking oriented. Having had some encounter with the tongue blocking already and knowing about it's benefits I said to myself "why not", let me try to retrain myself and make a few steps back in order to be able to make a giant leap forward. So now I am orienting towards being a full time tongue block player (tongue switching for the 1, blow benging with the tongue on). My puckering even started to kind of suck cos I dont really use it anymore(just made an experiment the other day).
During the first studdies you are teaching the studdents to try and not move their jaw when tongue blocking, so I dropped off completely the jaw movement excersizes and concentrated on paying extra atention not to move my jaw and only the harp or my head.
However I came upon this lesson: Movement Exercises Study 1 - Patterns
Those 2 vides in particular:
Example 2 - Jaw Movement, Part 1Example 2 - Jaw Movement, Part 2
Then again I came back to some of my old excersizes to keep working on my jaw movement.
However I am a bit conflicted at the moment.
Can you please explain in with some more details when is OK and when is it not OK to move one's jaw and should I really work on it or against it?
I'd rather clarify this now while I am still fresh then develop some bad habbits.
Thanks in advance!
Thank you very much, David for helping me clear that doubt out!
Then I will keep working on not movng my jaw when moving my tongue and moving my jaw when qyickly reching for a neighbour hole.
You got it. My pleasure.
Hi Dave,
I have another doubt on this subject.
What about moving my upper lip while moving my jaw in order to reach for a neighbour hole.
Would that be "ok" or I should aim for having my upper lip completely static?
Thanks in advance!
Hello Angel. I’ve never heard of the upper lip moving... you’re in new territory.
:D
Well it is more of unvoluntary movement that appears together with the jaw movement
But since that is new to you I will try to avoid it.
Hello Angel. Jaw movement while playing the harmonica is fine. The focus of your earlier lessons was to train you to not move your jaw AS you move your tongue. For many, when they move their tongue, their jaw wants to move with it, unintentionally.
An example of this is, when playing a 3, and then wanting to play 1 with a tongue switch. You play the 3 (blocking holes 1 and 2) and then you move your tongue to the right to play hole 1 (blocking holes 2 and 3). The untrained player moves their jaw to the right when they move their tongue to the right, so they end up having their lips over holes 2, 3, and 4, with the tongue blocking 3 and 4, with hole 2 sounding.
Another example is when playing an octave after a single note. You play 4 draw and then want to move the tongue slightly to the right to center the tongue and block holes 2 and 3. The untrained player moves their jaw to the right when they move their tongue to the right, so they end up shifting their lips about a half of a hole to the right, causing the octave embouchure to be between holes 1 and 2 on the left and 4 and 5 on the right.
Moving the jaw as a technique, to capture the hole to the left or to the right (that's as far as you'll commonly go), is fine. This is different from accidentally moving the jaw when moving the tongue.