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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Learning to blow bend
Learning to blow bend
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hvyj
2093 posts
Feb 08, 2012
5:20 AM
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It took me forever to learn to play and control high register bends. FWIW, I got there by learning to drop the 10 blow a whole step, using more or less brute force and then refining the technique to the point of finesse.
TIGHTEN the embouchure, put the tip of your tongue firmly against the spot where your gum-line meets the back of your lower front teeth and hump the tongue up as you blow until the tone drops. Once you get it to drop, keep practicing it until it becomes automatic. Use a tuner to tell when you are hitting the whole step.
After you get that down, then try to control it by slowly raising and lowering the bend and (this is important) being able to go directly from the blow bend to the draw and from the draw note to the blow bent note without hitting the unbent blow note. As you develop the ability to do that, you will have developed your muscles and technique to the point that you are no longer using brute force. At that point strive for SMOOTH airflow to develop finesse. You will find that the muscle movements involved don't need to be as extreme as what you did when you started.
I don't claim that this is the proper method, but it worked for me. Now, I can even do all the high register bends tongue blocking and I'm not a full time tongue blocker. Once you get to the point of finesse blow bending while LPing, assuming you can get a clean single note TBing, it is ridiculously easy to blow bend while TBing. Just tighten the right corner of your mouth/lips where the air aperture is and the tone will drop. At first it may help to simultaneously press your tongue forward harder against the comb as you do this, but once you get it, the tongue pressing forward is not actually necessary.
Right now I'm working on cleanly separating the two 10 hole blow bends with control. It's a matter of refining and backing off the force used to get the whole step blow bend. I am at the point where I can hit all the blow bends on ANY KEY of harp, although F# can be a little inconsistent sometimes. I really don't agree with the conventional wisdom that blow bends are easier on the low keys. The technique is the same for any key although the very high keys on harps with shorter reeds can be a little tougher.
What really helped me to learn to blow bend with control was focusing on what I needed to do to drop the 10 blow a whole step and then backing off that for the other blow bends. For YEARS I was unable to get the 10 blow to drop a whole step. BUT, once you can accomplish that, hitting the rest of them is just a matter of refining and backing off what you did to hit that whole step bend. So, FWIW, I think that's the key thing to start with.
Using a well set up or custom harp helps at the beginning, but once you "get it" you can do it on stock OOB harps just as easily. But at the early stages, using a custom harp to learn on was a big help for me.
FWIW.
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kudzurunner
2981 posts
Feb 08, 2012
8:47 AM
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I'll second that.
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Frank
167 posts
Feb 08, 2012
10:04 AM
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So true, a harp that responds to the slightest command of technique can be extremely satisfying to play and bend away!
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walterharp
812 posts
Feb 08, 2012
10:14 AM
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learning to overblow really helped refine my blow bends, getting that half step on the 10 is pretty difficult, and really hard fro me if the harp is not set up and gapped well. best to start on the low harps at first as well
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hvyj
2095 posts
Feb 08, 2012
12:32 PM
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"best to start on the low harps at first"
FWIW, I don't agree with this. I think the EASIEST harp to blow bend is C which is a midrange harp. The next easiest IMHO are D, Db and B.
There is a different mouth/oral resonance chamber position for the whole step and half step blow bends on hole 10. I'm still working on this myself, but each of these bends "feels" different. But it took me a while to get to the point where I could "feel" the difference. It is a very subtle difference.
Last Edited by on Feb 09, 2012 3:36 AM
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