sideways flutter?
I was wondering who of you can do the flutter , sounding right, by moving the tongue sideways?
I'm watching the interview with Jim Liban and in the part called " tonal effects " he plays a Junior Parker style riff and then uses the sideways flutter on the 2/5 octave. I really love that sound and prefer it to the normal flutter in slower songs. Kim Wilson uses it a lot as well.
I'm practicing it everyday and I feel like I'm kinda getting there but for me it's more difficult then the normal flutter in which one slaps the tongue of and on to the harp. I put the tip of the tongue on the harp and just wiggle my tongue from left to right. The difficult part seems to get the 2 hole draw to sound clear.
How about you guys?
There are two similar effects you can get with side to side tongue motion. (By the way, Little Walter seems to have used side-to-side motion and not on-off motion)
The rake is where you simply have four holes in your mouth and rake the tip of your tongue over the holes back and forth between the right and left corners of your mouth. You hear all the holes in your mouth but in different combinations as the tongue passes across the holes and blocks or opens different combination. When you play a rake, the tip of your tongue moves freely over the holes.
The shimmer is where you have several holes on your mouth and play *only* the holes in the right and left corners of your mouth. Depending on how many holes you have in you mouth, the technique may vary.
If you have four or more holes in your mouth, you can use a couple of different techniques:
1) Plant the tip of your tongue on the middle holes and then kind of nudge it from side to side to alternately block the left corner while opening the right, and then shifting to block the right corner while opening the left. Some slight motion of he lower jaw can assist with this.
or 2) Place enough of your tongue on the harp to block all but the hole in the right corner (let's say, 3 out of 4 holes). Then shift your tongue to the right so that now the hole in the left corner of your mouth is open and the three holes to the right are blocked.
For a three-hole spread, it can be difficult to get your tongue into a small enough point to block only two holes out of the three. I find myself curling the tip of my tongue UP instead of down and using the underside of the tip to do the block.
if you're doing a shimmer and have trouble getting the left hole to sound cleanly, you might benefit from learning to play single notes out of the left corner of your mouth instead of the right corner. Try playing simple single-note melodies out of the left corner of your mouth, and then try blues licks and riffs, and also learn to bend out the left corner. Once you strengthen your left-corner single notes, your shimmers will be easier to play cleanly.
Thanks Winslow. Very helpfull!
I can't do the side to side flutter a speed yet.
But recently started tongue switching on runs that go from the 1 hole to the 4 hole!
It's very useful and getting faster the more I use the tongue switch in riffs. :-)