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From: "Arlie Everett"
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 00:26:16 -0600
Subject: re: bending help

All the ideas given are excellent. Those are the best methods and
nothing beats practice. I might add to buy one harp to practice the
majority of your bending when you are first learning, especially if you
practice overblows. It's better to kill the reeds on one harp than on
several. If you still have problems though, this is what I did. I had
trouble with the last note on 3 draw also, as well as the 2nd one on 10
blow. What I did was take 2 harps, one hole step apart in key, and
swapped the blow reed plates. This changed the relationship of the
notes. Basically you end up with 2 practice harps, one (the draw bend
harp) that was tons of available draw bends and the other (blow bend
harp)that has available blow bends in the upper notes. The draw bend
harp has 3 available bends on 1d, 4 on 2d, 5 on 3d (I still have
problems with the 5th bend), 3 on 4d, 2 on 5d, 3 on 6d, 1 on 7d. The
blow bend harp has 3 bends on 8b, 3 on 9b, 4 on 10b.. There are a few
other bends available on each harp but I just practice the listed ones.
I used an A and G harp because I had a broken reed on each one. Yes it
is a goofy idea but it worked for me and helped me learn to hit the
bends right on. It almost feels like the harp wants to bend and the
number of bends available makes for lots of practice at being precise on
bends. I still use the harps to practice on. They also work for
learning to overblow notes (especially hole 7 on the draw bend harp,
hole 6 sounds funky). I'm still learning to overdraw so I can not speak
for that aspect of the setup. The bending skills do transfer over to a
regular harp, though I make sure I spend about twice as much time
practicing on a regular harp than on a bending harp (ie...10 minutes on
a bending harp means 20 means practicing bending on your normal harp).
Anyway work the relationship out on paper and it will tell you the
possible bends and notes you are hitting. If you use harps an octave
apart, the draw bend harp will have similar notes on 8 d&b and 9 d&b.
The blow bend harp will have similar holes on 1, 4, and 6 d/b. I test my
note playing with a small keyboard. The harps are just for bending
practice and are not good for playing songs. I would not buy higher
priced harps to try this. If you don't have any harps with a blown
reed, I would buy a pair of Huangs or a pair of Suzuki Easy Riders and
swap the plates. Once you are through learning, swap the reed plates
back (if the reeds are still useable).