Have heard a lot of talk and explanation on over blow and bend and after all these years am still confused as to what is going on... I guess if you take a 6 hole draw down a half or half and a half by what we used to call choking the reed that is a bend. But how can you make that move and call it an overblow...or is a overblow a bend on a blow reed.. any simple explanations, demo etc... thanks Jon
Anyway, I had a lot of trouble with overblows when it was explained as "draw bend as far as you can and then switch the direction of air to a blow." I got nothing like that. Howard Levy, and the late Chris Michalek explained it differently and that helped a lot.
If you can blow bend on the 8, then you can overblow the 6. Essentially, use the same motion you would use to overblow on the 8, and move it down to the six, and blow bend the six. It won't bend very far before it chokes. Gently increase the pressure and hopefully you'll start getting this horrific sound that is a little higher than the draw reed would be. That is the beginnings of an overblow.
If you're not getting any results like that, I would try closing the gapping on the blow reed a bit.
You also may want to try taking an old harmonica, and putting a strip of tape across the 4,5,&6 blow reeds. This will help you in figuring out what an overblow should sound like, because you get to skip the step of choking the reed, and just concentrate on making the draw reed sound while blowing.
Good luck. Learning to overblow didn't take me much longer than learning to bend did, so expect that level of frustration, til the eureka moment.
Thunderchicken: It can be frustrating to try to overblow on a harp that is not well set up to do so. you can easily try the following, though:
1- Remove the top coverplate of a harp. 2- Cover the six hole top slot with your finger - cover it completely so that no air can go through. 3- Try to blow bend on the six hole. The air will come out of the draw hole (the bottom) and no sound will be made until you bend the airstream correctly to hit the overblow (some people call them overbends).
Try taking your finger off the top and letting the blow not sound. Then try to hit the overblow again. You will see that when you get the airstream just right, the top reed will choke all by itself and with a little more correction, you can get the bottom reed to sound. If the air leaks out instead of the note sounding no matter what you do, then you need to adjust your harp to be less leaky in order to be able to play the overblow.
Had I known that when I started, I would have saved myself a lot of trouble. Some harps need a lot of adjustment to overblow and trying to learn on them is futile.
Skip ahead to about half way through if you're not interested in 12th position. I personally really like that position, so you might wanna give it a shot. But he talks about overblows after about 5 minutes.
It's very much the same as practicing to bend, it will detune a couple harps. I've sent a handful to the grave since learning to overblow. However, now an overblow takes LESS breath force than a bend for me. It's all in the embouchure, and having a harp that's set up right.
You'll probably detune at least one harp learning how. I got a Bb that's all kinds of screwy now... I use it to practice customizing.
Once you get proficient though, it shouldn't put any more strain on the reeds than bending. I'm no expert on the mechanics and structural integrity of a harmonica, but it definitely doesn't feel like I'm breaking anything.
Overblowing does nothing that regular playing or bending doesn't do. You don't damage/detune a reed by bending/overbending. You damage a reed by using too much force.
If you are still having trouble achieving overblows, Chris Michalek had another video that I think is much more helpful; even if I could find it on youtube I wouldn't know how to post it here, but I think it's pretty easy to explain. Imagine that you are drinking a milkshake through a straw, and you've gotten to the very bottom, and you're trying to suck that very last bit through the straw; or, even better, get a straw, put one end in your mouth, close off the other end with a finger and suck. What you are doing with your throat at the back of your mouth is exactly what you need to be doing to overblow, if you do it when you're blowing a note (it's also what you need to do to overdraw, bot it's easier to learn overblows first). I hope this helps; I wish I had this kind of information available when I as first trying to overblow. It would've saved me weeks of blowing my brains out, with my eyes about to pop out of my head!
Yeah, I definitely f-ed a couple harps thinking that 'overblow' meant 'blow hard'.
I always found the instructions that likened an overblow to something you do while drawing in... just while blowing, a little tough to follow. Just like the 'draw bend then change air direction without changing embouchure.' I couldn't, and still can't imagine how one could possibly keep the exact same embouchure while blowing and drawing. Even now, I would say my draw bend embouchure is decidedly different than my overblow embouchure.
IMO OB's are definitely closer to blow bends in embouchure.
