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User: Shoulders
Name: James Aldcroft
Website: http://youtube; Theshoulders1

Hi - I'm James from Brighton UK. I have been playing the harmonica for around 9 years.

In the last four years i have started to add overbends to my playing which has allowed me to add a more jazzy feel to my playing.

I'm not the biggest traditional blues fan (i fully appreciate Little Walter but for some reason I don't aspire to playing Juke) so the overbends have really been inspiring.

After a couple of years of playing I started to introduce Tongue block octaves and splits into my playing. I started to think that if you could play split notes you must be able to play single tongue blocked notes.....this led me onto believing that bent notes must be available.....which a few years later led me onto thinking that overbends would be available.

So I now only play tongue blocked - maybe to my detriment. There was a long thread a while back on this forum about TB/ Lip purse and the outcome seemed to be that rapid articulation was the one thing that couldnt be achieved using TB so.

I recently have set up (with help from Greyowl -thanks) a Youtube account where i will put vidoes (warts and all!!) to document my progress.

I am having SKype lessons with Michael Rubin and these have opened up my understanding of the layout of the harp and scales, timing etc. etc. Cheers Michael.