DATE: Mon, 29 Nov 1993 09:41:02 CDT From: WY~egacy.Calvin.EDU Subject: Vibrato and Bending
Last week I spouted off on the subject of vibrato and bending, and now I think I was wrong. I spoke about controlling vibrato between any of the intervals available on a given reed. Going home and trying this, it seemed to me misleading. Certainly one can do a vibrato "on" any given pitch of a reed, and I guess one can probably vary the pitch-variation too. But it doesn't seem to me now like wide variations of pitch are good for much, contrary to what I said earlier. However, I must now admit I don't really know.
I recall reading a book some years ago on the voice, and it said that while good singers sometimes claim not to have a vibrato, scientific studies show they do in fact use a fine vibrato, but that the ear perceives it not as variation in pitch, but as increased "warmth" to the tone: a truly monotonic tone is perceived as cold, unpleasant. This seemed to me at the time of possible relevance to harp vibrato too. A very subtle vibrato might be what makes certain tones warm, even though one does not perceive the fine variation of pitch that are giving rise to that perceive warmth.
I have also noticed that warmth of tone, as perceived by me playing, seems affected by the distance of my cupping hand from the harmonica, and that this distance seems to vary with the note being played. I have wondered if this is just because it is bouncing back the sound to me in a certain way, or whether it is because the size of the "cavity" is creating a certain resonance that is also perceivable to someone listening from a different position. Being lazy, I have never tested this out with a tape recorder or listener: if it is due solely to "bounce back", one would not expect to hear the difference on tape, whereas if it is a resonance thing, one would. Wouldn't one?
Sometimes it seems to me like my throat vibrato is tending to actually stop the air flow for a miniscule time, as well as staggering the amount of air going through the harp. This also produces some little extraneous throat noises through my JT-30. Can the glottis do the latter without any total momentary "shut off"? Is the guy who observed his glottis by sticking a TV camera down his nose out there to address this?
