From: Winslow Yerxa <76450.32~ompuServe.COM> Date: 14 Dec 96 13:03:21 EST Subject: Chromatic and Tongue Blocking
TO: internet:harp~arply.com
David Barnes asks whether to tongue block to play chromatic, and mentions he'd like to play like Rod Piazza and Mark Hummel.
The blues chromatic style these players practice employs many effects that depend totally on tongue blocking, so if you don't learn it, you won't be able to do about 80% of what you hear them do. Same goes for the playing of Little Walter, William Clarke, and most other blues chromatic players.
This is only incidentally about single note playing. A huge proportion of this style depends on playing two notes at once, on both the right and left sides of the tongue. You need to learn to play:
with a 2-block (blocking out 2 holes with the tongue and playing the notes on either side),
with a 1-block (blocking out 1 hole in the middle)
and with a 3-block for pure octaves.
2-block will probably be the easiest and gives nice rich intervals on a draw chord (the draw D minor chord (on a C chromatic) being the home chord for most of this kind of playing.
Once you can easily hold a 2-block securely while sliding up and down the harp, try narrowing for a 1-block, then streching out for a 3-block - this may well feel like a stretch and take time to master. For each size of block, get it steady enough to hold the block and slide the harp in your mouth while getting clean single notes on both sides.
Eventually, you'll find you can shift easily between 2-block and 1-block on the fly while playing a line. One good exercise is to hold a firm note on one side, while moving on the other side from a 1 to a 2 to a 3 and back again. Then try it with the sides switched. Then try the inchworm - start with a 1-block, then widen to a 2-block on the right side. Then bring in the left to make it a 1-block again. Then widen out to a 2-block again on the right, and so on. Then come back down the harp by leading with the left.
There are also several tongue effects that are used with these embouchures. The tongue lift - rapidly lifting the tongue off the mouthpiece and putting it back down, in fast repetitions. The rake - raking the tongue from side to side so as to "strum" the chord. Rolls or shimmers, where the middle hole(s) remain blocked, but the outer notes are alternating (the tongue remains firmly on the mouthpiece, but the sides sway so that first the left is open and the right is blocked, then the opposite. The tongue slap, where you start with an open chord, then say "L-Dat!", with the tongue contacting the mouthpiece and engaging its blocking position with the "DAT!" part. The spread, where you start with a pucker on one or two holes, widen it out to three or four, then bring the tongue down as a rearguard action to end with a two-note tongue-blocked interval.
I found that when I first tried playing single-note melody chromatic (as opposed to the style above) that trying to pucker gave me a headache, even though it didn't bother me on diatonic. It seemed like my entire face was trying to narrow down and fit through the hole I was playing. Tongue blocking helped me relax, and now I find I can used the embouchures almost interchangeably for single note playing. And bending with a tongue block is not a problem - if, as Mike never tires of telling us, you use what he calls resonant playing.
