I spend a lot of time practicing bending the overbends, adding dynamics, and adding vibrato.
Basically, I jam to a blues track and try to treat them as "wail" notes.
In addition, I try to focus on keeping all my bends as consistent as possible with other notes. You did a great job of that. ---------- Mantra Customized Harmonicas My Website
I haven't worked hard on overblow stuff for a while. But here's what I did:
Scales Major major pentatonic Dorian Phrygian Lydian Mixolydian Aeolian Locrian Minor Pentatonic Jazz Melodic Minor Harmonic Minor Phrygian major, aka Hejazz Blues scales
I would play them up and down entire harp, not just one octaves.
Yeah, the challenge I find mainly is maintaining a sense of consistency in the timbre with all the notes - I accept it as a fact of lie that there is no escaping the tonal variation in the notes and ive been particularly vexed with trying to maintain control over Eb4.
Ray, Yes I tend to U block (or tongue guide, meaning I put the tip of my tongue under the hole I want and don't stress about the curl) anything higher than hole 6, although I only need U blocking for hole 10 on a harp higher than a Bb and I am sure with practice I could pucker it just fine. My TB blow bends are miserable.
I agree with you that 10 single is very difficult, I play it best in musical context.
Just play it with vibrato, lol. It will sound awesome and be "in tune".
If guys can wail on the 5 draw with 7LI tuning and it sounds "in", playing a 10 blow bend with vibrato and dancing around pitch is totally legit. ---------- Mantra Customized Harmonicas My Website
My main thing is dealing with 3 bends tone and intonation, it's too bad we as a community don't have etudes readily available to challenge these peculiarities of our instrument. Any creative volunteers ? Out there?
I am finding it helps me become familiar with where the notes are. I can play it pretty well in the middle octave. As I try it on the first octave I am forced to get the bends right.
The notes in the book I took this from are similar to what has been said here. "Focus on tone and intonation, Make each note the same with no emphasis on any note."
Wow! That's great! I can only do it 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. I admire your pitch control. Very good.
Taking it up another notch would be to play all these scales two octaves. If you can overdraw hole 10 you can play three of the scales 3 octaves...1st, 3rd, and whatever position starts on 1 draw bent 1/2 step.
I do have a drill that is more about overbend technique than scales. I do quarter notes back and forth between 4 ob and 5 ob, then add in 6 ob for a few times up and down, then start adding in the 7,9,10 overdraws. Nothing but overbends up and down the harp. I found this helpful in developing the ability to start a musical phrase on an overbend.
Like Ninja I am HUGE into wailing on overbends. The 6 OB is great but my favorite for 2nd position wailing is the 7 od and 7 od bent up 1/2 step. Use where you would use 4 draw and 4 draw bent 1/2 step. Same thing.
Great thread and again nice job. The jazz world awaits diatonic players with your abilities.
I've got to chime in on 10 blow bend. I learned it using a big open mouth and bending with the throat. I feel like using the tongue or closing the jaw is cheating on a blow bend and the change in resonator size changes the pitch as well as the tone.
Once this method is learned it is no problem to go between the three pitches of 10 blow with vibrato. A great example of this is in Ricci's 1st position play on a YT video. Drifting Blues in Antwerp I think.
I also do what I call a throat warble on blow bends. 10 hole blow down to 10 hole blow bend full step is very useful with speed as fast as any side to side warble. Nothing works but the throat but the relaxed tongue does move as a side effect.
Ray, has understanding the major scale in each position helped you with your improv?
I guess what I'm asking is do you find yourself moving fluidly between chord changes in a song and treating chord changes like key changes?
I'm really only at the point where I do this for 2nd position (playing 2nd position over the I, 1st over the IV and 3rd over the V) or in 1st (playing 1st over the I, 12th over the IV and 2nd over the V).
