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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Describing the Bend?
Describing the Bend?
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HandicappedHarpist
12 posts
Apr 16, 2019
2:37 PM
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I was just watching Gussow’s YouTube video featuring his workshop on the Blues Scale. They spent some time talking about how to bend a note, particularly the 3 Draw. Of course, Adam knows how to do it, but at one point, the discussion about how to describe what to do seemed a little muddled. Albeit, he did like one student’s analogy to having an almond in her mouth and wrapping her tongue around it.
But I’ve also seen J.P, Allen’s lesson on bending, and he talks about pulling the tongue to the top of the mouth. He says if you do it right, it will almost feel like you are choking yourself. Because the idea is to constrict the air flow. it makes me think of setting the choke on a lawn mower in order to start it.
I’ve been playing harmonica for a long time. But am still fairly new to learning the Blues and to bending. And I am very new to the forum. So is what J.P. Allen said a fairly decent description of how to bend?
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MindTheGap
2606 posts
Apr 17, 2019
4:59 AM
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When I was learning to bend, I read all the descriptions like these and none were much help. But after I had learned, all the descriptions made sense.
This won't be much help either, but my breakthrough was curving the tongue in such a way as to make a vowel sound that I don't use in normal speech. But it's the same as my impression of Mr Bean.
After finding out how to bend, it appears I didn't unlearn it - even after a long gap in playing.
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Apr 17, 2019 5:02 AM
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The Iceman
3825 posts
Apr 17, 2019
8:34 AM
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It's all about tongue placement of that curve and it is subtle ...not much movement needed to create all bends at pitch...many threads already exist here describing everything in detail.
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The Iceman
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