Standing or seated?
Hi, first of all my best wishes to all of you for the New 2022! May it bring you happiness and more more music!
This post is a question if you play harmonica standing or seated. I got used to playing standing up because it was easier to involve the whole body in keeping time (as well as stamping my feet). Now I would also like to play seated for different reasons but I still have to get used to it. So I was curious how you do? Can you play both or only one? I know it may seem like a small thing but if I have the day off I can spend up to two hours playing or studying and I'd like to sit down :)
thanks you all and thanks David for the good site!
greetings, Melanie
Many blues musicians traditionally sat down to perform. I saw Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee many times that way, but photos from the 1950s show Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf doing it as well, even though they were relatively young and playing amplified.
Sitting is fine, as long as you don't slump and compress your air column. Imagine you're surveying the extent of your domain in the far distance - erect, alert, breathing easily.
One easy temptation is to rest your elbows on a table, especially if you're looking at a screen or a book. Resist that, and place anything you're looking at so that you can view it at eye level, with a desktop bookstand, music stand, iPad holder that mounts to a music stand, etc.
Re posture and no elbows on the table: For a tad over $30, a while ago I purchased a projector stand made by CODN. The tray adjusts to 43", which is plenty to get my laptop or iPad screen up to eye level while seated on a piano bench, with my music stand at similar height just to the side. And I have a plastic music stand shelf made by D'Addario attached to the projector stand, for easy access to harps, pencils, etc. (The tighening bolt for the level of the tray looked like it might not be all that tough, so I replaced it with a bicycle seat-post quick-release bolt from the junk drawer in the garage, and it works great.)
reading your comments and suggestions I arrived at the solution: I transferred the lessons to the big TV screen and I placed a 70 cm high chair in front of it. so if I get tired I can sit down but I don't risk compressing my breath because this chair does not allow me to sit comfortably but makes me sit up straight. thanks for the answers!
greetings to all from Italy , Melanie
Melanie: 70 cm looks like bar stool height! So you'll be all set to grab one of those stools at your local blues bar and take it up on stage with you. (Which works well for a lot of musicians, not just harmonica players.)
Each has its plusses and minuses. Standing seems to make breathing come more naturally (perhaps becuase when I'm singing on stage or in one of my church ensembles, I'm always standing). Sitting works best for me if I'm using my stomp-log to keep time. (And when I'm in my cabaret troupe's band pit, I'm always seated, swapping harp back and forth for other instruments.)
An interesting sidelight: When Aki Kumar started his "Tip of the Top" band, one of the band's signature looks was that all members wore suits and narrow ties, and played sitting down. Aki has said he was trying to emulate the appearance from photos of classic Chicago blues bands from the 1950s. But one of the reasons so many of those old photos show everyone seated is that many of the clubs were located downstairs in the low-ceilinged basement floors of South and West Side buildings, and the club owners built low stages for the musicians, which led to the musicians playing with very, very little headroom.
Which leads to one other situation where I play seated: If I'm at risk of bumping my head!
(PS: Unless rehearsing a number for public performance, when practicing at home I'm nearly always seated. Which makes it easier to pick up all of the stuff I'm perpetually dropping onto the floor.)