Tongue Humping Exercises?????
Hi Winslow,
David suggested I transfer my question to you.
You're probably sick of my complaining aboiut not getting the bends, but ... I don't seem to be able to (or don't recognize) hump my tongue while drawing breath and blocking with my tongue gently on the back of my teeth. Are there other exercises that might be more effective than trying to inhale while Shhh Keee Koooing? I can get the exact pitch change you've demonstrated, but it doesn't translate to a consistent, tone worthy bend. The draw bends I get could never be incorporated into a level 3 song.
Thanks.
Hi Winslow,
Thanks for your input. I didn't think my tongue was moving at all, but it does! I confirmed that with an intraoral finger while vocalizing "Kuh".
I'm new to the harmonica and, inexplicably, tongue blocking and pucker bending just came to me naturally. I can consistently bend on holes 1-4 & 6, on my A, B-flat, C & G harmonicas. My ongue block bends are inconsistent and whimpy but sort of there. I've not yet been successful at incorporating any bend into a song eg Level 3, Feelin" For The Blues.
My perceived lack of progress makes daily practicing 45-60 minutes a day, more of a chore.
BTW, the MRI bending demonstration is a brilliant idea, but the scanner used was a very early generation MRI scanner and the images were "suboptimal". I am a Neuroradiologist with extensive MRI experience.
Phil S
When you bend without your tongue on the harp, your tongue has a greater range of front-to-back movement along the roof of your mouth. It's like you're sizing the tuned chamber by sliding the back wall.
With your tongue on the harp, that back wall has a more limited range of motion. However, you can move the *floor* of the chamber up and down to assist with sizing the chamber. The part of your ntongue between the K-spot and the tip can be flexed up or down for this purpose.
Re the MRI: considering the limited availabilty and cost of using these machines (even interna use is recharged within an organization, as you probably know), we take what we can get. The original study in the 1990s by Hank Bahnson at UPitt was done with ultrasound for an even more "retro" look :)
Before any of you order an MRI to try to analyze bending issues, be sure to listen to Big Harp George's "Copayment" lament from his CD "Living in the City"!
Hi Winslow,
Your Dummies video was very clear and I'm practicing the moves with and without the harmoinica, with and without tongue blocking. My goal is tongue blocking 2 semitones on hole #2. I can get 1 tone fairly consistently but not the second, lower one. I'm not sure why it's so much easier with the pucker.
Thank you for sharing the video.
PRSNRS
Bending is one of the most ysterious things a harmonica player can do, and it's completely invisible, though David did do some MRI studies with some Stanford researchers; I think there's a link on this site.
Here's a video I made for Harmonica For Dummies that might help (choose Video 0801 from the sidebar on the right):
https://www.dummies.com/book-extras/harmonica-dummies-2nd-edition-resour...
Try saying the sound of "Kuh". Notice where your tongue touches the roof of your mouth when you do it. This is what I call the K-spot, and it's somewhere in the middle of the front-to-back range along te roof of your mouth, not just behind the front teeth.
When you make the usual K sound, your tongue just taps the roof of your moth to momentarily block the airflow, then releases the flow to make the "plosive" (think ex-plosive) K sound.
When you bend, instead of blocking off the airflow and moving away from the roof, you *partially* block the airflow. Air can still get through, but through a narrowed passage created by your raised tongue. And you keep your tongue raised (or humped) for as long as you want to sustain the bend.
Try this with Draw 4 on a C harp. Draw 4 is one of the easier bends to find and control because it isn't too high or low in pitch and doesn't bend very far (one semitone, like on fret on a guitar).
You can also try it on Draw 4 on other keys of harmonica, higher or lower than a C harp.
That narrowed airflow creates a tuned chamber between the K-spot and your lips, and if it's tuned right, it will perwsuade the note to bend down. You may notice a bit of suction right at the point of the K-spot. This is produced by the change in air flow as you pull air through that narrow passage.
If you inhale through the narrowed K-spot without a harmonica, you can hear the air moving through. And if you slide the K-spot forward and back along the roof of your mouth while inhaling, you can hear the pitch of the noise go lwoer when you move your tongue back, and higher when you move it forward - it's almost like the roof of your mouth is the neck of a fretless guitar.