Go to www.myspace.com/markburness see "MBH Embouchure Ex."
OK, so the clips have come out a little "deliberate" sounding, put that down to the fact that I did my best to not give away one approach over the other as being more slick/comfortable. I chose that piece because all the notes played are adjacent, there shouldn't be any glisses vs slaps giving the game away.
If you want to post an opinion HERE, on which is which, I'd rather there weren't any stabs in the dark (skewing the sample), please post your opinion ONLY if you are sure in your mind that you know which is which.
Once we have a decent selection of opinions & a sample that will break down sensibly to a percentage, I'll reveal the answer. For people to be able to "tell" just by listening, I would expect the result to be reasonably emphatic (if that's not too much of a contradiction), so if the final count is +/-10% that will count as a "don't know".
If you don't care, or it doesn't matter to you, fair enough - I just ask that you please don't fill up this thread saying so.
At a push, I'd say the first one is tongued and the second lipped.
On single hole playing,I don't think there is any difference. It's when you bring in tongue slaps that you get a bigger sound. ---------- The Harpist formerly known as Doggycam
Mark - are you equally comfortable with both embouchures? I did feel that the vibrato was more natural on the second, suggesting that this (which ever it may be) is your preferred playing style.
@7LimitJI I agree about tongue slaps, but is that 'tone' or 'technique'?
"I agree about tongue slaps, but is that 'tone' or 'technique'? "
Well oddly enough I was just typing a similar answer to something you said on another thread.Here you go-
---------------------------- Earlier its been said that tongue slaps are "stylistic embellishments". Not for me.
I base my playing around tongue slaps. They are an integral part of how I play.
Big Walter was the player I tried to emulate. By using slaps I was able to get as close as I could.
Now, I'm listening more to Little Walter,Rod Piazza and Gary Primich, these guys mixed it up a lot more. Therefore, I'm going to have to mix it up more too. -----------------------------------
Tone like music is subjective. To my ears tone envelopes all my playing and sound. From me,to harp to mic, to amp.
All effect what you hear.
I always tried to get a big acoustic tone and am happy with it, but find myself constantly searching and tweaking mics, and amps and delay pedals because basically, I'm not completely satisfied with my amped tone.
Some say this is folly, as amplifiers only make bigger what you put in.
Not to me, my whole set up is part of what creates my tone/sound.
"Mark - are you equally comfortable with both embouchures?" No, not really, but if I do a song and I think about a solo/harp part that's a particular embouchure from conception, then it will be easy enough for me to play that way, but phrasing will usually end up quite different depending on approach. Some things feel more appropriate one way rather than the other TO ME, but that's more down to the limitations of my playing rather than those imposed by a particular technique. I can't simply switch from one to the other in the same piece of music...well not without it being apparent. If did I set out to play pieces in both ways, then that difference would be less...but life is really too short! :-)
Tongue slaps, lip slaps, articulation are a separate issue as far as I'm concerned, more connected to dynamics than to purely tonal aspects & harmonic content. Slapping makes the note front more dramatic, as to whether it affects the quality of the body of the note ...I really don't know...someone would have to record 2 notes, one slapped, one not, (whilst making a concerted conscious effort not to skew the result) fade the recordings in after the slap was finished to A/B compare...that someone's not me - this clip alone nearly drove me insane in my efforts to make each as round as possible & not to bias the result!
Oddly enough I was answering on the other thread :-) but I'll post it here since it seems the other thread might finally have achieved some sort of closure! (thank Gawd)
My mention of tongue slaps as 'stylistic embellishments' was purely to enable a fair comparison. I'm not dissing the technique or the style, I'm just trying to seperate out what can be compared. If you say that tone is everything that comes out of the harp/mouth before it hits the mic, then you just cannot fairly compare TB and LB. Apples and Oranges. You cannot tongue slap with LB and as Mark pointed out you can't gliss with TB.
I keep hammering this point. There is an inconsistency of the language and what it means to different people. Half the time I think folk are getting their knickers in a twist arguing about two completely different things. I'm happy if the concensus is that 'tone' refers to the total sound (as you use it) but then what word will we use to talk about just the pure harmonica sound as it resonates from the player?
@5F6H sorry to take the thread off-topic a bit!
Last Edited by on Mar 16, 2010 4:42 AM
Good exercise Mark. I would say that the 1st was TB and second LP but was hard to tell. The reason is some of the bends were slightly louder and stronger in the second sample. This made me think about if I played the same sample in both embouchures wich I would play more naturally. but thats just me. Interesting to know the answer. ---------- Oxharp
"So, maybe tone should be used to describe the player him or herself." Perhaps, but it is obviously possible for a player to develop/change their tone, perhaps away from what they might be considered to be "born with"...so the player as in physiology perhaps drops back in terms of being a deciding factor, behind the desire/ability/knowhow to fully exploit your individual tonal possibilities.
Cameron - You & the guys were never shy about expressing your feelings on my "thin, weedy" tone when I started playing. Not that it wasn't what I needed...though some contributions towards the cost of therapy, nightmares about "lost tone" etc wouldn't go amiss. :-) Actually, the "lost tone" nightmare is an improvement over the " being naked in the supermarket" nightmare that it replaced!...at least I hope that was just a nightmare...
Singing & thinking about posture, "space within the body" helped me no end.
"Cameron - You & the guys were never shy about expressing your feelings on my "thin, weedy" tone when I started playing. Not that it wasn't what I needed...though some contributions towards the cost of therapy, nightmares about "lost tone" etc wouldn't go amiss. :-) Actually, the "lost tone" nightmare is an improvement over the " being naked in the supermarket" nightmare that it replaced!...at least I hope that was just a nightmare..."
Oh dear !! Scarred for life,no compensation !
Mark, I'm nothing, if not honest.
Your tone now, to me is authentic Chicago. Far more than mine, which has been corrupted by the West Coast and the need to cut through a loud band.
As far as contributions. You are welcome to visit anytime and I'll ply you with fine malt whisky...... ..................................................... then steal all your amp secrets !! :0) ---------- The Harpist formerly known as Doggycam
Well, the sun will have set over the Rockies by now, so I guess everyone who might be interested has had an opportunity to assess the clips...do you want me to reveal all, or give it a couple more days?
Verylong..."You cannot tongue slap with LB", I was mucking about with tongue slaps & lip slaps last night...I'm pretty sure I could get the 2 sounding close enough that no one could tell embouchure, in that respect.
"Yo Bro you are a hard task master" Ha ha...if I've learned anything in life, it's if something is easy you're either doing it wrong, or you're about to get a wake up call! :-)
I'd say the first was TB'ed and the second was LP'ed. The difference for me was the bends. That's the main point where I could hear any difference between the two clips. The first had "strained" bends, whereas the second had crisp bends. Maybe since I'm a lip purser, I'm reading into this a bit, and you can bend better TB'ed than LP'ed because you are a TB'er. But I'm pretty sure #1 is TB and #is LP. ---------- ------------------ The magnificent YouTube channel of the internet user known as "isaacullah"
Last Edited by on Mar 17, 2010 4:19 PM
Damn. I can't tell the difference for NOD's clip. I think the first was LP and the second was TB, but only because of some (perhaps imagined) difference in note articulation. Not tone. There was no difference in tone. ---------- ------------------ The magnificent YouTube channel of the internet user known as "isaacullah"
Yo Bro 5F6H you want no iffs or Buts a strait out answer 1st TB 2nd LP
OK, so the clips have come out a little "deliberate" sounding,
YES they did i think way to deliberate i found that your long gaps takeing in a fresh breath is effecting the judgement of this clip for some as a valide example or test clip,
Put that down to the fact that I did my best to not give away one approach over the other
Bro the large gaps breaking the melody line apart hasn't allowed you to keep a constant even flow of breath makeing it hard for some to make a fair Judgement
But now the big Joke comes when you tell use you where realy Playing a Clarinette,
Bro i have gave you my fair judgement my comments aren't retubution for your comments on my Thread just my Honest Opinion,
check out the example Buddha has offerd in my thread im still working on that i will attempt to give him an Answer even if im wrong but its very tricky one that one..
Yo Issac Bro it's been a steap learning curve Bro i started of doing??????Hah Hah im not telling, But i have suprised myself allso Bro,
I'm sailing on your Boat Bro no difference in tone so that blows the myth right open i guess, when Poeple talk TB vs LP Tone is it realy tone there talking about or Hearing, or are they talking varyations in Pitch???????????????
Last Edited by on Mar 18, 2010 1:45 AM
"It was too slow and deliberate and you weren't slapping." EV, the clips were made following that the assertion that one method over the other gave a fatter, thicker tone, e.g. the harmonic content of the note, not articulation, which for the purpose of this test is a different subect, you can TB without slapping, you can LP with slapping.
On a rainy night with no decent TV, when I have run out of friends & wine, I might take you up on the boogie woogie idea...in the meantime listen to the accomplished lip & tongue slapper Jerry Portnoy.
NOD - It would have taken me 5 minutes to play the clip the way that I usually play, then again in the other technique, but obviously, because I am more comfortable one way over the other, the difference would have been more obvious. They are deliberate because I had to give them both the benefit of total concentration as to fatness, so fluidity lost out - in the conext of the test, it's a "fair" as you're going to get. It wasn't a test to show how well I can play the piece as such.
"when Poeple talk TB vs LP Tone is it realy tone there talking about or Hearing, or are they talking varyations in Pitch???????????????" Mostly they are talking about their own personal perception & prejudice...not the facts, nor the truth.
Last Edited by on Mar 18, 2010 6:12 AM
Everybody who expressed an opinion of which was which on this board got it 100% WRONG (a good friend of mine listened to the clips last night & got it right, "Just because I know you"). The first clip was LP, the second TB. Jim Rumbaugh expressed a preference for clip 2, (the TB'd clip) for sound, even though he thought it was LP'd.
i am surprised that everyone voted the same way, I don't really know what to put that down to? If I hadn't written down the order in which I did them & stuck to it for all the takes I did, I wouldn't have been able to tell just from listening. Perhaps you are all hearing something I'm not & LP'ing sounds superior...bollocks! The injustice...I spent years getting a tone I'm happy with & you lot pull the rug from under my feet... I'm a broken man! It's off to the woodshed for me to learn to do everything again LP'd, see you in a couple of years...!;-) (that's sarcasm for those who might be in doubt & take it seriously).
"LP" in this instance means that the note was selected by using the lips, whether you call it puckering, lip blocking, lip channelling whatever...I play with the harp against the outside of my lips, i don't wrap them around the harp, play soft & keep an open cavity.
There was me thinking I'd get it correct as I know you too !!!
Just goes to prove that you cannot tell.
Hope this puts to bed any more debate on TB vs LP
Lets move on to comb material........Wood is best!!!! !!!!...................................................................................................................Only joking :o)
Anyone who has ever tried positioning PA cabinets will know that high frequency sounds are far more directional than low ones; just a few degrees turn can make a big difference.
Playing lip pursed often means tilting the harp upwards, pointing the sound up, rather than straight at the listener or the mic.
Playing tongue blocked will mean the sound is projected straight forward.
In reality there may not be much difference in harmonic content, especially when close miked and cupped. Acoustically though, or into a vocal mic some distance away, there might be a percieved difference because some higher frequencies get lost along the way to the listeners ears.
I dunno, this is purely speculation. I've never sat firmly in either camp - I'm a U-blocker after all! Just trying to offer a scientific hypothesis as to why people claim they hear a difference.
On the other hand it could all be down to the psychology of expectation.
This experiment certainly suggests a difference is not discernible and warrants further investigation, but it needs to be a bit more robust before anyone can claim to have proven/disproven anything.
I think cover plates have more of the effect you're talking about.
Marine Bands or others with holes/slots at the end of the covers sound brighter because of the holes.
My choice of key "F" harp when playing acoustic, is an old Pro Harp with no slots as I find this rounds the sound off a bit and dulls the highest frequencies.
In all other lower keys I prefer Marine Bands though. ---------- The Harpist formerly known as Doggycam
Verylong, "Playing lip pursed often means tilting the harp upwards, pointing the sound up, rather than straight at the listener or the mic.
Playing tongue blocked will mean the sound is projected straight forward." - there is no discernable change in angle/tilt of the harp when I play using either technique, I don't think that there is a hard trend in that respect, though I am aware of certain LPers who tilt the harp up.
"This experiment certainly suggests a difference is not discernible and warrants further investigation, but it needs to be a bit more robust before anyone can claim to have proven/disproven anything." true but then we don't know how many folks saw the thread and declined to comment because they did not think that there was any difference, or how many declined to voice an opinion because they were already of the opinion that there wouldn't be a difference. Penetration of the harp playing/interested populace will therefore always be reatively small, as we may have screened out a large proportion of players...I don't really know how you would make it much more robust, unless you instilled a "forced preference" ...which to my mind, would encourage stabs in the dark & skew the result. Plus you have to find players who are at home with both styles and capable of playing each without bias...there's not many folks in one camp, or the other that will be inclined to do that.
You misunderstand my point about robustness. There are too many variables in this format which need standardising. The analysis needs to be done by spectragraph, not by human ears. The recording itself - distance to mic, angle to mic (god knows how you'd do this) must be fixed. The experiment needs repeating with multiple players. essentially you need to eliminate everything that could affect the result other than the thing you are actually testing - the embouchure. That's scientific: that would prove or disprove. What we have here is a straw poll of non-standardised observations. It suggests a lot, but it isn't scientifically robust.
I'm not knocking anything that's been done and I'm not advocating one embouchure over the other. I'm just urging people to be cautious about stating that they've 'proven' anything.
Last Edited by on Mar 18, 2010 6:50 AM
Point taken, but we need proof, not subjective observations. God knows I've stood to the side of some heavy handed gorilla of a drummmer long enough to have some high frequency loss in my left ear. Now I use ear protection, but the damage is done. A 14 year old can hear frequencies a 40 year old cannot. Hearing fails over time. Ears just aren't reliable enough.
Hearing is how music/sound is analyzed...you can use a tuner for pitch, a "harpfatnessometer"? Has anyone designed such a thing? I determine who sounds fat and who doesn't by listening to them.
You underestimate the human senses, if a chef thinks his soup needs more salt, does he taste it or have it mass spectro analysed? Even if your ears are a little shot, you still used the same ears to evaluate 2 different samples...if you used "scientific meters", how many types & brands would you have to use before you were satisfied that there wasn't a bias towards one of them?
Distance to the mic was as fixed as I could reasonably manage without locking my head & the mic in a jig...it was the length of my headphone lead pulled taught, from my ears to the H2.
A test of the kind you are suggesting would require devloping analasys tools that don't exist (& need developing), tests to be conducted by professional scientists who'll need paying...let us know when NASA sends in their estimate :-)...the end result still won't be a million miles from what you have seen here... a reasonable sample of folks (given the minute penetration of the population - stand in the street and see how many days it takes you to find someone who isn't screened out of this test) who thought that there could be a difference, but in the end simply could not correctly identify which sample was which.
In hindsight, votes should have been e-mailed to me in secret, to avoid early opinions influencing later ones (I assumed voters were grown ups with their own thoughts & opinions) ...but then the process would have been less transparent...I know that my integrity is beyond question, but I can understand people who don't know me having their doubts.
market research is my day job, I have some understanding of what an unbiased test is.
Sounds are not as subjective as many seem to think...it's just that a lot of folk are not very good at listening...I'm not suggesting that this test is conclusive evidence...but as a real world, straw poll goes, it's pretty sturdy indicator.
A RTA spectrograph analyses the harmonic content of sound. They exist, software ones are very cheap and are easy to use. Soundmen use them to balance room acoustics. This kind of scientific analysis is what they are designed for. I know because my research thesis for my degree used such a tool. Let NASA stick to getting rockets in the air.
You only need to use the same meter for every sample. IF there is any bias it is cancelled out by being in both samples.
Setting your harp in a fixed jig would be exactly the methodology a scientific analysis would require.
It wouldn't cost much either.
The results would be simple to analyse.
Congratulations on what you have done, your experiment was interesting and has certainly made people (myself included) think, but it is not a scientific proof.
Last Edited by on Mar 18, 2010 8:16 AM
You are welcome to run the raw recordings through a spectrograph if it makes you any happier. I can e-mail them to you, message me via myspace, facebook...
Many studio engineers, amp builders, instrument builders/customisers I have met used their ears.
The most common response from scientific experiments is "we just don't know". Scientific proof is only "today's" scientific proof...a hundred years ago the earth was 4700yrs old (some still believe that), a few years later science proved it was 6,000,000yrs old, now scientists "think" it's 4.6billion yrs old, but we really don't know...OK, OK I'm playing devil's advocate :-) I don't disagree that a more scientific approach would be a bad thing...but holes could be poked in just about any methodology.
Last Edited by on Mar 18, 2010 8:42 AM
If someone can point me in the direction of free Mac RTA software I'll do it. I have RTA on my ipod but that is mic only input. The original sample would need to be edited or rerecorded: one note, sustained with no vibrato. You already have one difficult variable - breath force. I can't see a way to standardise that simply.
Verylong wrote: "The original sample would need to be edited or rerecorded: one note, sustained with no vibrato."...I'm not being deliberately awkward, I have no axe to grind...but I'm going to have to poke holes in that particular assertion, to my mind the comparison only stands up in the context of actually playing a passage, a range of holes, a range of straight & bent notes.
Breath force is secondary - fatness is what we are attempting to measure/ascertain, if it takes subtle differences in breath force, whether I am aware of it, or not, to get an equally fat sound, then that's just the lie of the land. We are not looking to analyse breath force in it's own right.
Methodology is not going to be easy to pin down to a satisfactory standard for all parties, but we can take on board comments & but try..
Funny enough, we had a similar debate in the pub last night, "cars are quicker around tracks than bikes", sure an indy car or GP car will trounce a GP/Superbike around pretty well any circuit, but selecting the scenario (power vs weight vs 2 stroke vs 4 stroke vs normally aspirated vs blown...there wasn't an example any of us could name that would show a reasonable enough comparison, for a meaningful test...in practice even 2 different bikes capable of similar lap times, will usually throw up a bias towards one example, due to differing speeds at different points in the track & resultant spoilage of lines giving an advantage in a race...(e.g. years ago, after John Kocinsky's 250 times at Hungaroring put him in contention for a podium in the 500s, teams started building twin 500s...lap times were comparable but the V4's often got to the first corner quickest and screwed up the twin's corner & exit speeds).
There are a lot of factors, but you may have to compromise in some respects, to keep any test meaningful.
It was too slow and deliberate and you weren't slapping." EV, the clips were made following that the assertion that one method over the other gave a fatter, thicker tone, e.g. the harmonic content of the note, not articulation, which for the purpose of this test is a different subect, you can TB without slapping, you can LP with slapping.
Ah, understood. I think that if you open your jaw and play from your diaphragm you can get the same or similar fat tone puckering as TB-ing. It's the front of the mouth puckering that produces a thinner tone. (Which is great for dynamics when SBWII did it alternating with a deeper tone).
So I think you're right, what TB (and U-block) mostly does is allow for more percussion and attack and syncopation techniques and effects. What I usually mean when I say thin tone for pucker is that the person is doing a real kissing action and te sound chamber is at the front of the mouth. The better players using any of the embouchures of course can lower the throat and have a deeper tone.
"What I usually mean when I say thin tone for pucker is that the person is doing a real kissing action and te sound chamber is at the front of the mouth. The better players using any of the embouchures of course can lower the throat and have a deeper tone." Agreed. Sure, as we all know, as a gas travels down to a constriction, or nozzle, it speeds up...which in the case of playing a harp can lead to a comparitively thin, strident tone, with a harder front to the note. A smaller, kissy pucker brings the teeth & jaws closer together, forming more of a nozzle. But the limiting factor must really be the harp hole itself, so if using either method, as long as you keep everything open, differences should be nominal.
When TBing, you see a siginificant difference in thickness of tone when switching between a "front of the mouth" embouchure & "side of the mouth" embouchure...utilising both can broaden your tonal palette.
(I know you know this EV, just fleshing it out for any other parties that might be following the thread).
