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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Harmonica as speech therapy
Harmonica as speech therapy
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Philosofy
448 posts
Jan 26, 2013
9:50 AM
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My 11 year old niece has a lisp: her r's come out as w's. She is very interested in music, and takes bass and drum lessons, and plays viola in the school band. Her favorite band is Aerosmith, although she's not familiar with their entire catalogue: until last month, she didn't know that Steven Tyler played harp.
Her mother tells me that one of her problems is the strength of her tongue. There are exercises she can do, but they are boring, and she doesn't like going to speech therapy any more.
I plan on getting her a Steven Tyler signature harp, and teaching her via skype. To keep it simple, and keep her interested, I was going to start out teaching lip pursing primarily, and try to get to bending fairly soon, since that involves the type of tongue movement needed to make the R sound.
I've never taught before, so I need some advice. Is there an easy Aerosmith song to try and teach her? How do you guys handle a beginner like this?
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geordiebluesman
672 posts
Jan 26, 2013
10:50 AM
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This is very interesting to me as my 5yr old nephew has a quite pronounced speach inpediment and I have been getting him to put a Harp to his lips since he was 2, He has his own harp at my place and we always have a little jam when he comes round.
I know he is too young just yet but I'm trying to get him to do a simple Blow Draw train rythm as that seems like a logical place to beggin.
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nacoran
6430 posts
Jan 26, 2013
9:41 PM
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If tongue strength is an issue, I'd start with tongue blocking. It's not really that much harder to learn than pucker, but once you learn pucker there is a tendency to ignore it.
All the Aerosmith songs with harp parts that are popping into my head right now are from the Pump and Permanent Vacation albums, and aren't 11 year old friendly! I can hear the harp part from one of their newer ones in my head though. Oh, what are the words.
Cryin', that's the one! I have never really sat down and tried to play Aerosmith on harp, except maybe picking off some melodies by accident. I think most of my catalog is still on tape. :(
Crazy starts with a fun warble.
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