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DATE: Tue, 19 Jan 1993 09:41:08 CST
From: WY~egacy.Calvin.EDU
Subject: Re: Tongue-blocking

Thoughts re some recent questions. Use top or just "mash". Good question.
I mash; but Gary Primach uses top of harp; he also, by the way, holds the
upper half of the harp almost flat along his right cheek, playing amplified.
Two things re tongue blocking seem to me important. They are related.
One is that tongue blocking is not just to get intervals and octaves, but
also to get a percussive quality, which can't properly be gotten in any
other way. Basically, the idea is to use the tongue and first three holes or
so to set up a riding chord that "lays down the bottom" much as a bass
guitar does (though the harp is using chords of course), and then, in the
interior created by this riding chord pattern, create the riffs using single
notes, by tongue blocking. The use of the tongue here allows you to get
directly from the riding chord context to the interior patterns, with loss
of time. This is an aspect of traditional blues harp that is being lost by
those going in for pyrotechnical speed. The second, related point is that
one must here be able to "punch in" bent notes using the tongue block, NOT
using the pucker embouchure, otherwise this traditional use of tongue-
blocking is impossible. Here, one needs to be able to slap down the tongue
on (say ) holes 1 and 2, leaving just hole 3 open, and hit exactly any of
the four half-steps that are available on hole 3 (or any of the quarter-
tones that can also be important). Using of the tongue-block for bent notes
also creates a different tone than a pucker for these notes--a more resonant
warmer tone, especially when used with a very rapid and light throat vibrato
(a good very subtle vibrato, in harp as in voice, is aurally perceived not as
fluctuation in pitch, but as increased "warmth".) I think a lot of players
give up too soon in mastering tongue-blocked bending. The tongue is an
incredibly subtle muscle, but it takes training--at first it feels
impossible, like one's tongue has a glove on it or something. But once
mastered, it makes for far more fluid playing, especially with the combined
riding-chord/melodic mode.

I can see harps with dents in them could be painful here. Such harps
are also harder/impossibler to bend properly and accurately, because you
can no longer get the bernoulli effect that causes bending.