Mr. Kaining...you disagree with me and talk of "the PROPER technique". What is the proper technique? I must have been successfully teaching rank beginners to ob in 2 weeks using improper technique, as well as ob in performance seamlessly for 15 years.
Have described my approach at length in previous posts here. You can search for them if you like.
---------- The Iceman
Last Edited by The Iceman on Sep 05, 2015 9:51 AM
Sadly what seems to be missing or at least understated is that playing OB/OD takes lots and lots of dedicated practice...
Hours on end of practicing runs with a tuner.. AND a teacher...
Guys that do it well.. Ice, TP, and the others.. know instinctively what note that need to hit because it is locked into their mind... there is a high voltage wire that goes from their muscle control function to their ear...
You don't get this from folks on a forum.. You get it from lots and lots of practice...
---------- Greg Jones 16:23 Custom Harmonicas greg@1623customharmonicas.com 1623customharmonicas.com
I have explained in lenght what i meant by proper technique in my two previous post. I also explained as far as you can go over a web forum what you had to do with your mouth/muscles,ect... We are answering to a beginner here, having explained elsewhere doesn't give you a free pass to not redo it here, especially when you are simply saying "no, you are wrong and i am right because i have been teaching for fifteen years" like it means something on a forum to a well argumented post issuing a statement and going into details on the how and why of that statement.
Seriously, why are you reacting like that ? It's almost childish and it is completly unproductive.
Is it because of how i have worded my "advice" Let me rephrase then.
Gary, everybody out there that is not telling you to aim for a single technique for both bends and overbends is wasting your time. It's possible to have one technique for both notes. I should know, that's what i do. Why would you want one for each notes ? It's double the work when playing, it double the risk of failling too, a lot less practical and it slows you down at higher tempo.
Kaining.... I said I disagree. I'm not the one saying wrong/right.
Greg.... if you believe OB technique takes lots and lots of practice, then it will for you. I get a kick out of teaching total beginners to bend to pitch within a week or two, then teach them to OB in another week or two. I "forget" to mention that OB is really difficult and takes years to master. The result is that they OB and play in many different positions quickly and easily.
Cheers guys i like reading all the replies. Well so far my progress has been pretty good; I can get the OB in hole 6 pretty much at will. I can also get holes 4 and 5 but not at will. When i try to play them i usually get the ordinary blow note but sometimes if my embouchure is just right then i get the OB in those holes too. Sometimes not the best tone in those holes but an improvement nonetheless.
On hole 1 it's a no go! I can't get a semblance of the OB from that hole. I can't even get that blow reed to bend down and choke so the draw reed can sound! Tinus makes it look and sound so easy.
Ok on to setup for this. I gapped pretty tight but i notice when i try to gap the draw reeds tight so they respond quick after getting an OB when i go to play the regular draw note it's almost completely muted. I go on and change the gap and widen it a bit but then the OB is more difficult because the draw reed is not so responsive. It becomes a balancing act!
I watched Tinus's videos over on overblow.com on modifying the harp. So gapping is fairly straightforward but still tricky to balance out the blow reed with the draw reed but embossing and arcing i haven't tried yet. I understand the concept of embossing is to make the harp more airtight but i can't get my head around arcing. How should your reeds be shaped for the best compromise between a normal good tone and action and a nice responsive setting for overblows?
Sorry for the rambling but i'm just unsure of arcing and don't want to try it without a clear understanding of what i'm trying to achieve and what that shape will look like.
Please don't use the word "childish" in connection with another forum member. It's in violation of the forum creed.
Iceman:
You're being disingenuous. In the post of yours that provoked Kaining, you made it clear that you are the possessor of the Real S--t and anybody who doesn't get what you're saying just isn't looking closely enough or thinking subtly enough. That's a put-down, not merely a disagreement. It's a subtle put-down, but it's a put-down. You know it, I know it. I think Kaining figured it out. Hard to blame him for that.
Kaining:
Please don't take the bait.
I don't enjoy playing policeman but it sounds as thought I'll need to read through this thread and hand out tickets.
That's a damned shame. A friendly newbie shows up here and asks for guidance. Surely it's not the end of the world if two people disagree about what he should be doing, or disagree about the precise language in which what he should be doing should be described. Please don't make it about ego. If you've been teaching something that works, or if you've got a technique that works for you, we'd like to hear about it.
Civility, gentlemen. And you ARE gentlemen. Please straighten the bowties and resume the stately processional in your tuxes.
--The Majordomo
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Sep 05, 2015 7:29 PM
As was painfully pointed out to me.. It is not that difficult to product the overblown note.. Producing it on a fast run and in tune from ascending and descending is a whole different story.
Here I though Howard Levy got so good by practicing.. all those years.. How was I to know all he did was book a few lessons w/the Iceman.. :) ---------- Greg Jones 16:23 Custom Harmonicas greg@1623customharmonicas.com 1623customharmonicas.com
Adam... in rereading my post, I see a statement of disagreement with a possible explanation of why there may be a difference. In realizing the listowner's approach that both posters should be cited to keep things equal, my take is that "disingenuous" , "you know and I know", put down and baiting is off the mark, but I certainly recognize what you are trying to accomplish.
I know Greg is just poking fun, but all I decided to do was to turn the scary OB technique approach on its head by experimenting with a newbie approach on total beginners to see if I could sidestep the accepted idea that they take years to master. It's worked so far.
Of course, the Howard Levy speed/mastery takes time, but I wasn't talking about that. The beginner student plays everything much slower. All I do is add in OB to his mix and let him grow all techniques equally as he progresses.
Gary..hole 1 OB is the most difficult of all. I wouldn't even go there at this point in your learning curve. Revisit my initial comment in the subtle technique differences and concentrate on hole six until you can sustain it (long tones) and pull it up to pitch before moving on. ---------- The Iceman
Last Edited by The Iceman on Sep 06, 2015 7:23 AM
Sorry Adam to make you loose your time over that. I shouldn't have said that and should not have taken the bait.
@ Greg: "Producing it on a fast run and in tune from ascending and descending is a whole different story."
And that's why having as less technique as you can helps a lot. Playing a C phrygian on my C harp (country tuned), i have blow the 4th hole, get into position to bend the 4 draw (Db), simply blow for the 4° (Eb), then use a 2nd technique to get the 5 draw bend (F *) , 5 overbend to get a G ** , 6 draw bend, 6 overbend, and then back to natural 7 blow for tyhe C. By simply 3 OB, 3 bends, and 2 natural notes by simply moving my tongue 3 times. The 3rd time was going back to a neutral/relaxed position.
* regular 5 draw is raised a semitone. it's F# on a country tuned harp instead of F Gary. Or if you aren't using a C harp, it's the augmented fourth instead of the fourth. That's why it can also be called a lydian tuning since you get the lydien scale instead of the major scale starting from the 4 hole blow. It helps a lot for playing arpegios and scale as it makes the harp more symetric but you loose the 5-9 draw octaves and a few chords. ** i could use the 6 blow to get one but it would mean switching back and forth between natural and bend techniques from 5', +6, 6'. That's how you make more mistake than you should once you get to a speed over your confort zone.
Anyway, you may think that i have gone a little bit too much into detail but that's just to draw your attention on 2 points: 1) my enbouchure is the same for each hole and for each sorts of notes, natural, bend, overbend. I never move my jaw and lips. 2) the only muscle i use is my tongue. If you are breathing from your abdomen, all you need is to move your tongue without using any strenght. All your muscle aboe your neck except your tongue should be relaxed and void of any tension.
The 2nd point helps a lot when you have trouble with the first. Unecessary tension are what makes you having a hard time with your embouchure. There is one exception to the 1rst point : 10°° on a C harp ( and 10 °°° on a higher harp as once you use a higher harp, the techniques for 10°° and 10°°° are the same. Supposedly, i am simply quoting Sebastien Charlier with this one as i don't have any proper harp higher than C to test the 10°°°.). And the reason for that is simple. You kind of need to put the tip of your tongue out of your mouth to get that double overbend. Even like that, it's stupidly hard to get it as something else than a passing note. At least to me. Charlier uses it as a note like any other.
So with that explanation about embouchures in mind Gary, i have to mildly contradict Iceman about the 1°. You shouldn't stay away from it until you master the 6°. You shouldn't stay away from any overnotes (blow or draw) actually. However, Iceman is right when he said that mastering holes 4th to 6th are the easiest and should be a priority over any overnotes.
By overlooking the others overnotes until you master the 6° (in tune, getting it at will and at any volume, ect...), you take the risk of having to change your embouchure slightly from hole to hole and that will stop you dead in your tracks once you start to play in 8th or 16th.
You need to be able to go up and down very fast and the only solution for that is to have the same embouchure for every holes and notes. If you go at it hole by hole, you could start with a bad habits. There are many way to produce each notes, you'd want the more practical (to you). Working on producing the other overbends, not mastering them is a simple way to check if you aren't developping a bad habit.
In that regard, it's like gapping. You must not get the perfect gap for your draw reed but the optimum gap between the blow and draw reed. Also, don't focus too much on the draw reed for overblow. The blow reed is what you need to seal with your breath. So lower the gap of your blow reed and ungap the draw reed.
You can have 2 sorts of too tight gap. The one where you can't get the natural notes at all, and the one where you can't articulate. The second one is very easy to get as you have to do more than simply blowing/drawing the natural notes to check if it's not too tight.
For the 1°. If you think about your tongue as being divided into the tip, forward, medium forward, medium, medium back and back parts with the back parts the one you can feel when you touch your glote and the medium part being halfway between the back and the tip then you need to move the medium back part of it up as close to your palate as you can without touching it and search from there very slowly. It's easier to move slightly your jaws unconsciously when you move the deeper parts of your tongue, so keep that in mind. It's also why checking your embouchure with the 1° is a good exercice. The 1° gets harder to do the less relaxed your jaws are. Last advice for the 1°, you should try to chock the reed with minimum force. The sweet spot where the blow reed can be chocked is very narrow and breathing stronly into your harp will prevent you from finding it as it is a very narrow one. So breathe softly when you search for the overbends. Especialy for the 1°, 9° and 10°. Once you find it however, it's not that hard anymore. Those overbends aren't hard to do, they are hard to find.
Also, One other good and simple thing to do to check if you are on the right track is to reverse your airflow and see if you can bend the note. Breathing softly will help you prevent reed failure.
Thanks Kaining for the tips on hole 1. The soft breathing i tried in holes 4 5 and 6 and i got those overblows. But i didn't try it in 1. I'll try it tomorrow.
As far as progress so far i can pretty much get 6 at will and it's definitely the easiest. I can also get 4 and 5 but they're a bit harder i feel. I can sustain 6 a long time and 4 and 5 are getting better every day.
I'm not just doing overblows i hasten to add i've also been practicing material that Adam put out on his videos. I love the car lesson videos!
Who knew all those years ago when i watched U2's 'Rattle and Hum' that i'd be here today getting educated on harp from the harp player from Satan & Adam! That's pretty cool whatever way you look at it.
Here's the videos from Adam i've been working with below. I like that kind of chord playing and adding in other notes but i'm getting off topic a bit!
I assume Mr. Kaining is somewhat new to this list, judging by his posting number.
Interestingly enough, we both are on the exact same page regarding bending - the tongue controls it and all other muscles should be relaxed unless directly engaged in sound/pitch/tone creation.
You'll find this exact approach in discussion on the old "throat bending" threads from a while ago.
The only difference I see is that I subdivide bending and OB approaches and he doesn't.
Newbies asking questions like this should be aware that many folk jump in with suggestions/technique discussions. This is a two edged sword - mostly confusing rather than leading to learning, so my advice is to pick one approach and try it, ignoring other suggestions that are somewhat counter philosophy.
When I teach privately, suggestion to the student is to not engage in any other's methods unless approved by your teacher.
It's also fascinating to study the art of teaching and how students learn effectively - getting the most in the shortest time.
My approach is to have the student work on one technique on one hole until that technique is completely understood and is "owned" by the student, then moving on to a different hole, building from the ground up with a solid foundation.
When one starts to go for all the "gold" at once, the end result in my experience has been that it takes longer to get to the top of the mountain even though all paths will eventually lead you there. You just have to decide which is the shortest for you.
At first, it may seem like slower progress, but overall in the long run seems to be a more effective teaching and faster approach.
Also, it's good not to feed the student too much info at once , or be too wordy. This helps with the learning process.
So, Gary, makes your choice and stick with it is my newbie advice.
Kudos to Kaining for arriving at the essence of technique, though. ---------- The Iceman
Last Edited by The Iceman on Sep 07, 2015 7:30 AM
I ain't that new Iceman, i probably started posting here in 2008. I just don't post that much.
Making a choice and sticking with it is the way to progress fast... if you aren't doing something wrong while trying to follow the advices. That's the problem with trying to learn overblow without a teacher through the net.
It may seems to you Iceman that i am telling Gary to go for broke with everything here but that's not it. He should focus to master the easiest one first. 4° and 6°, then the 5°, after that, 7° and 9° and finishing with the 10° and 1°...and if he is interested, the duplicate (hole 2, 3 and 8) and multiple overbends (some multiple overbends are easier than the hardest overbend)
But the problem when doing this alone is that you have no way to know if you aren't teaching yourself a bad habit right from the start. You have to be your own judge when self teaching and since by definition you don't know what to aim for or what to do to get there... that could be problematic.
Once you get to the hardest OB, if you have ingrained in your playing a slightly tilted embouchure, that you are relying on your lips to tighten your embouchure or anything that could hinder when you start to actually play the overbends moderatly fast, you are in for a lot of trouble. identifying the problem will be tough and once you do, you'll start relearning everything again.
So, for online advice regarding overblow there a lot that are valuable. But the best one you can get is to get yourself a teacher ! If anybody disagree with that then he must be out of is mind. He has to be i mean, it's the best thing you can do when you start anything, to find a mentor. One you can see face to face at first and that can see and listen to you playing. One that can identify any problem waaay earlier than you will on your own.
If you don't or can't, you must have a few errors checking method. Knowing what pitfall to look for when you are beginning without a teacher is the hard part. The easier part is to follow them from time to time. It will take you a lot more time than if you had a teacher though, even with a pitfall detector. So Gary, and any begginer that is reading this thread:
- breathe from the abdomen. Really anywhere under the neck is a thousand time better than breathing from the mouth.
- stay relaxed, you don't want any tension.
- remember to breathe as softly as you can when searching for the overbend.
- work on your bends, the technique should be the same
- modify the pressure of the airflow only with your tongue. Think of it as a piston.
- bends and overbends require accuracy, if you force your way through, you won't have any.
- record youself when working with the tuner. It may help to know how you sound.
- actually, use your tuner and trust it. If you can't get youself a teacher, you must have a tuner. There are online ones i think but if your pc is making any noise at all, it will distract you when trying to lock the sound of the (over)bend in your mind. You have to get it first but eventually, you will.
- check from time to time if you keep the same embouchure for every notes. If you don't, you don't have to start from scratch, simply to find a middle ground.
- if you can't get a regular teacher, it doesn't mean that you cannot book one hour or two with a teacher out of your town when you travel. With some luck there might be one...and if a harp player is playing in town, it never hurt to ask him a question or two between set.
- remember to bring beer money
- watch every video, read every thread you can on overblows and harp setup. There might be a new hint or something you have read before but forgotten/overlooked.
- don't follow it blindly unless it came directly from the best players out there. If you don't get what they say, refer to the previous point on that list.
- i ain't one of the best players out there at all, just so you know ;) I ain't telling you to do this or that, just to keep any item of that list in mind when you do get to do something. For the next two item however i will.
- don't spend way more time on overbends than on bends or regular notes.
- don't spend way more time on harmonica technique than you should. Technique should serves musicality, so working on your musical knowledge is a must.
A lot of those are obvious. The kind of obvious you might not even think about without a teacher sadly. You don't think about how you run until you join the track team. Once you are there, they teach you how to run faster but what they are really doing is just teaching you how to run, 'cause you don't know how to run. But you did knew how to run. Seems paradowal, it's not. Getting a teacher is joining the track team.
Greyowl, I think that might be it. I seem to remember it being lighter in the video in my mind, but I do think that's the one.
Edit- Another thing I'd add about learning any technique that involves, well, technique, is that it's good to have a good example of it in isolation. I floundered around a bit trying to learn bending. (I spent the first few months of playing harmonica just randomly playing notes. It was a conscious decision I made to try to train my ear to intervals and their relationship to where they are on the harp). I was doing it more to treat asthma and as a way to figure out where notes were on the harp so I could use it as a pitch pipe to transcribe lyric melodies I wrote. I really wasn't that familiar with harmonica music. I know Dylan and Petty but hadn't really been exposed to blues harp. So anyway, I read online that you could bend notes and I didn't have the budget to go out and buy one in each key so I figured if I could figure out this bending/overblowing thing I could learn to play chromatically.
The problem was I didn't really have a good idea of what it was supposed to sound like though, so when I adjusted my mouth I couldn't tell if I was adjusting in the right direction or not. One day though I stumbled on Salty Holmes doing his talking harmonica routine on a YouTube video. Since he was imitating the human voice the rest of the music was way back in the mix and I could really pick out what it was supposed to sound like. I think, by not getting proper bending/overblowing out of the way earlier I probably picked up some bad habits. I've been playing now for just about as long as this site has been up, but I am just finally getting to the point with my overblows where I'm thinking about adding them in the mix musically. (On the other hand, because I focused on interval training, if I have a melody in my head well enough to whistle it and I have the right key in my hand for 1st or 2nd position I can probably (overblows excluded) get the melody or something close to it out in just a couple tries.)
As to which technique is best, I had a long thread a couple weeks ago where I talked about how I swear I have 3 holes open unblocked in my pucker even when I'm playing single notes. I have noticed sometimes when I was trying to get my first overblows that led me to accidentally grab a bit of the next hole over, but I've also found that it gives me really quick tongue slaps and a warble that doesn't shred my lips. Everyone's mouth is a little different, and everyone's techniques and strengths are going to be a little different. Like the debate between tongue blocking and pucker, I think the answer is that the more you know about each technique the better off you are. (That hiss technique worked much better for my overblow learning than the sucking through a straw technique- for me-. Sometimes I wonder if maybe some of us don't suck through a straw differently than others.)
There are some neat videos on showing how the tongue moves playing harmonica over on Turboharp, but they are profile only. What it would really be nice to have is a 3D scan of a player going through the paces. I wonder, can you have brass in an MRI? Maybe put plastic covers on? Or would you have to go all the way to a full plastic harp like an old Magnus?
Kaining Kudos for posting the ultimate guide for newbies (and everyone else), distilling all the important technique points into one post (although I still treat OB technique as separate from traditional bending, but this is a small discrepancy).
This should be the go to reference for all interested parties.
Kaining, did you develop this yourself or is it a result of lessons with Sebastian?
Also, would be interested in hearing how you play... ---------- The Iceman
Last Edited by The Iceman on Sep 08, 2015 10:55 AM
I don't know what you guys are hearing but all these overblown notes are way out of tune. Does anyone actually play them with decent intonation? ----------
I've read bits and pieces of this thread and thought I'd share a couple vids where the 6ob is played just like any other note.
This one is played pretty major until the solo near the end where it gets bluesy.
I don't OB a ton in this vid, but I do sustain and bend a 6ob at length until playing a run up with a 7od.
Basically, I learned to overblow the same time as I learned draw bends as that it what Clint Hoover taught me. I didn't learn to OD until later when I could actually set a harp up to do it.
After hundreds of hours on hundreds of harp, I can overbend harps with minimal tweaking.
It was no harder for me to learn to overbend than any other technique. The issues I had early on with playing them in pitch were the same issues I had playing draw and blow bends in pitch. As my ear got better, my technique got better.
Nowadays, the 5ob, 6ob, 7od, 9od, and 10od are notes I play with the same confidence as any other notes. I don't play the 4ob and 8od very often. ---------- Mike My Website My Harmonica Effects Blog
Howard Levy is the master of the overblow/draw. The kind of music Howard performs with Bela Fleck or Trio Globo really fits-as far as blues goes,there is really no place for it. You may here the occasional 6 overblow -but no consistency or necessity.
Last Edited by tmf714 on Sep 08, 2015 11:58 AM
Jinx...as a work in progress, I do a decent job with them in pitch and as seamless as possible. Good example is that moldy old video (by now) of Summertime shot at the Jam Camp - the one w/Dennis Gruenling behind me.
I disagree with no place for them in blues. Carlos does a nice job.
Hope to soon master computer audio recording with my ancient equipment and give examples of my approach to them in blues as well. ---------- The Iceman
tmf714: "The kind of music Howard performs with Bela Fleck or Trio Globo really fits-as far as blues goes,there is really no place for it. You may here the occasional overblow -but no consistency or necessity."
Disagree. It's not "necessary" but the 6OB, producing the flatted third above the middle octave, is HUGELY useful in blues, particularly if you can bend the OB.
Thanks guys these replies are great with a lot to think about.
I'm already experimenting with putting the 6 OB to use in little melodies and things as i can grab it pretty well. I don't get it every time if my embouchure is just a little off but most times i do get it.
I find 4 and 5 more difficult. I can get them but they don't sound as good and natural as 6 does. I can sustain 6 and it sounds nice. With 4 and 5 i can sustain them but i can get a bit of noise along with them. I need to improve that.
Hole 1 i cannot get with the covers on. Taking the covers off i got one today on 1 by blocking the draw reed with my index finger. But i can't transfer that to doing it with the covers back on. All i get is the natural blow note.
I seem to be having trouble choking 1 off.
I really like the 6 OB because it's the minor third in G which i play on this Sp20 harp i have.
Fair enough, but if you are playing jazzy blues then all the OBs are useful, in cross or straight harp (and other positions as well). If you are playing more traditional blues, then I guess not, but that's defining "blues" in a way that makes the "OBs have no place" proposition self-evident.
Gary, there is something puzzling me in your last post. You blocked the 1 hole draw reed ? Then if you got something, it wasn't an overblow but a valved bend. Either a B or a Bb, i am not so sure if you can really get the Bb as i had very high overtones doing some checking a couple min ago (cover off, draw reed bloacked)
You need to chock the blow reed, it's the draw reed that will make the minor 3rd (Eb)
@ Iceman: I haven't had proper lesson with Sebastien yet. I attended a master class (not sure if that's what its called on your side of the atlantic. Some sort of group lesson) with him about improvisation. The thing, he is very active on french harmonica forums and he answered a lot of my questions over the last decade. That's why i have this list of things to look for when teaching yourself through the internet. it's the result of a lot of pain that could have been avoided if i could have had proper lessons and not online discussion. Anyway, i had my fun so i ain't complaining.
It's always amazing to see him pop out of nowhere and answer something, going deep into the technical stuff (or not) when you aren't specificaly asking him but everybody else. So, for that list, all the technical stuff about overbends and bends do come from him. Either from a post (i can give you a link to the post where he wrote that bend and overbend are the same if you want) or one of his book.
I don't recall him saying to play as softly as you could when learning ob though. You should play softly if you don't want to break harp after harp anyway so maybe that goes without saying.
If i put it in my list, it's because it helps for overdraws. When chocking the reed while inhaling the minimum quantity of air possible, you can both focus on finding the sweet spot for the overdraws and checking if you put the wax correctly. If the wax isn't put on properly, the overdraw will hiss even before any sound is produced. If it's put correctly and you find the sweet spot, you'll start to ear the overdraw as some sort of overtone since it will be very faint.
Playing softly helps separating chocking one reed and making the other vibrate too as chocking need less accuracy than the vibrating part of the ob. That's why a lot of overbends are out of tune too. We tends to get the chocking part right but the vibrating part not so much and so to compensate, we force the OB with more strenght.
Anyway, as for hearing my play... well, once i fell i have passed the beginer levels, i'll post something. I can overbend and double overbend with a certain degree of satisfaction, sure, but's that all i can do so far. I spent way more time studying how to get it right than actually playing and now, i am spending more time trying to train my ear than learning to play basic chord progression. I'll get there eventually so i don't mind anyway.
And that's why you should find yourself a teacher if you can Gary ! It has been almost a week and a teacher could have helped you throught overblowing from hole 1 to 6 in that time. Plus, he probably would have helped you do some very basic ob setup on your harp.
BTW, since we are posting blues with ob, here is a video of Keith B.Brown with Charlier as a sideman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OHCrQy6Pwc
I almost forgot, Nacoran is right, having some example of how anything should sound helps a lot. Tinus site (overblow.com) is a goldmine for overbend. Don Bakers books (with cd) is another for bend.
Kaining: "Gary, there is something puzzling me in your last post. You blocked the 1 hole draw reed ?"
I did block the draw reed with my thumb to bend the blow reed down until it chokes (like Tinus shows on his video) And then i juxtaposed that with practicing with the blow reed blocked with my index finger to get the OB.
About the teacher thing: I'm just a beginner on harp and have no aspirations to play in a band or in public. i'm simply playing for my own enjoyment and because i love the sound of solo blues harp. I also like to hear good harp players in all the bands of course too.
But i enjoy doing it on my own. It may take longer and there might be drawbacks in the approach but that's kinda how it is.
Sorry about the confusion on the covering the draw reed. I'm basically just practicing it like Tinus shows in that video.
"I don't know what you guys are hearing but all these overblown notes are way out of tune. Does anyone actually play them with decent intonation?"
I've not talked about this for a while but Jinx gave me courage. I hear, with most overblown/overdrawn notes offered in this forum, a problem with pitch. The pitch is off enough that I wince when I hear it. Some hear what I hear, some don't.
Long ago, on my way to getting a psychology degree at university, I took a course called "Perception". Perception is the process of recognizing and interpreting sensory stimuli. In that course, students were given a well-designed pitch perception test.
They were equipped with headphones plugged into a tone generating machine. Into the left ear came a constant, pre-recorded note at a certain pitch. Into the right ear came a note that could be whatever pitch you wanted it to be. All you had to do was turn a knob to make it higher or lower. The task was to turn the knob as finely as you could until the right ear note matched the pre-recorded pitch in the left ear.
All 20 of us students tried this. Once the notes matched, we signalled, and our right ear choice was noted. This was repeated for about five pitches, low to high.
My results were much better than my classmates. I was able to match the pitch exactly or miss by only one cps. I was able to turn the knob, for example, to 255, 256 or 257 Hz for "C", and 439, 440 or 441 Hz for "A", etc. My classmates were not nearly as close.
So... could the division between the "love overblows" and "hate overblows" camps simply be a difference in the ability to hear fine gradations in pitch? Don't jump on me; I'm just asking.
For what it's worth, some overblowers/overdrawers don't make me wince, pitch-wise. Howard Levy, Chris Michalek, Adam Gussow, Jason Ricci come to mind. Maybe it's just a matter of acquiring the skill. If it is, it's a difficult skill to acquire.
The change in timbre, that's off-putting too. I'll save it for another post.
Is it really worth it to force a diatonic harmonica to emit chromatic notes? Why not play a chromatic harmonica?
Hi Wolf: Yeah i thought of the chromatic harp but as far as i know you can't bend notes on that. I'm a beginner so i might be wrong with that but i thought i read that somewhere on the net and that's why blues players favor the diatonic. also you can bend the OB too which is nice.
I'll probably get a chrome at some point to experiment with it too.
It's a matter of skill. Most of us stop at the point where they can chock the read with ease and force their way through. The resulting ob can be as out of tune à 30 cents while doing that. As the timbre is a lot more rounder with ob and those note aren't naturally in our hears as harp players, noticing it can be hard at first.
The things is, chocking one reed and producing a sound with the other do not require exactly the same technique. Producing the sound require more acquiracy. Producing a sound will chock the other reed, simply chocking won't necesserely produce a sound as long as technique is required.
And as you can read here, beginers have an honest to god hard time chocking the reed and make the other reed sound with brute strenght most of the time. It's not bad, it's a good start. It's just the begining of ob though
At point, this is pure speculation on my part but i would bet a kidney i am not that far off the truth.
From those forced ob, emerge a simple trends, the "OB as passing notes". On how many threads here over the years have we all read that ? Why passing ? 'cause you can't sustain them ? As every physical activity with more time doing the same thing come more muscle and thus the passing note get promoted to regular notes since muscle strenght does the heavy lifting of producing the sound. They should still be out of tune though.
A good technique for making the reeds sound would not require any strenght at all, just putting your tongue in the perfect spot. In that spot, the first time you get the overnote, it's not a passing note and you can sustain it for as long as you can breathe and/or keep the position. I experienced that with the 9 overdraw. I went from not being able to do it to sustaining it in tune for as long as i could breath. To me, it's the easiest over notes as i can hardly not be in tune. Others over notes, i know exactly what i should be doing but i am still having problems executing when raising the tempo.
Since you do not use any strenght, it's really all about remembering where it was once you do any other note and move your tongue. No strenght mean no wild flow of air and weird pressure drop in your mouth that makes it hard to keep and get the note, ect, ect...
Eventually, it can be hard to stay in the sweet spot once you get to tripple, or even up to the quintuple ob on the middle octave. You need a top notch harp to try thoose ones anyway. Staying in the simple over notes sweet spot is not physically hard, even some double as long as you don't slide back and forth the bent ob to the ob. Adding articulation to ob is something else too but when you try to add that, you really should know where to land, even if you can't do it 100%. We all have to start somewhere though and it takes times.
And all those player you talked about Wolf have spent hundreds, if not thousand of hours on the woodshed playing the harp.
The difference between those players and those that make you wince is probably of a few thousands, if not tens of thousand of proudctive study in the woodshed.
I'd like to ask you one thing though, does any of those that makes your ears bleed while ob do not when bending the 3 hole draw ? Getting all of the 3 bends of the 3 hole draw in tune is a lot harder than getting ob on hole 4 to 9 in tune imo. Bad overnotes are awfull, so are bad bends on the lower end of the harp.
As for why diatonic instead of chromatic, it's an easy answer. The sound. Personally, chromatic in general, evn well played makes my ears wince. Also, you can't bend a chromatic like a diatonic and bends are the soul of the harp. Over notes can be bent the same way as regular bend too for the same effects. Hell, they can be bent even more.
edit: took me to long to write that, Gary answered your question first... the same way, at least, something is in tune on that thread about ob :p
Last Edited by Kaining on Sep 12, 2015 8:27 AM
Actually, you can bend on a chromatic but not more than 1/2 step at best and most players tend to play them way too hard and they don't respond to being played hard and most self taught players use more breath force to force the note flat, which is horrible technique and what you have to do is adjust your embouchure very subtly to make it happen. So, saying you can't bend on a chromatic is NOT true at all. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
Kaining: Good point about the hole 3 bends! I often find the sound of them a bit objectionable to the ear when i'm practicing a major scale because i don't hit them spot on and so they sound as bad as an OB not in pitch! It get's better with practice but it's hard gatting the note right bang on to fit in with what you're playing around it.
But saying that you can't bend them like diatonics is true Bob :p
Gary, for the 3 hole bends, you have to articulate them with a te/de/ke/whatever you like when going from one to the other. Otherwise, you slide them and the notes blends through each other. A good exemple can be found on Chralier's site, click on the american/union jack flag for an english description: http://www.sebcharlier.com/goodies.php First example, oh, and since you are at it, look the second example. He is doing the same with the 7 holes ovebends. -7, 7°, 7°°, 7°°° to 7°°, 7° and back on the -7.
A chromatic harmonica that's able to bend notes the same way they can be bent on a diatonic would be the dream come true of a lifetime. Sadly, that instrument is only an object of fantasy.
