[Harp-L] Overbending vs. Half-Valving

[Bob Marsolais]

I'm a beginner and working my way through Winslow's "Harmonica for
Beginners" book. I highly recommend it. I'm learning to bend and trying to
decide how to best go about achieving full chromaticity with diatonic harps.
As we all know there seems to be two ways to do this - half-valving and
overblows. Both approaches have their proponents and significant players at
that. People like PT Gazell, Brendan Power, Adam Gussow, Jason Ricci, and
others. They all talk about the virtues of their preferred method, but I
haven't found a conversation about the disadvantages of one approach over
the other. I'm trying to decide which is the best approach for this
beginner to focus on for now. Perhaps I'll learn both later, but for now,
I'm trying to stay focused on one method. Both methods give you full
chromaticity, but which one has fewer disadvantage for a beginner?



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[Gary Lehmann]

Overbends can sound shrill, valved bends are tough to control.
I like a button for chromatic.

[Bob Marsolais]

But what if you’re into the blues?

From: Gary Lehmann [mailto:gnarl...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, March 3, 2017 10:29 AM



>> Overbends can sound shrill, valved bends are tough to control.

>> I like a button for chromatic.

[Laurent]

Hi Bob

It is of course difficult to talk about the disadvantages of a method we've chosen and mastered. This is the reason why we tend to talk about the advantages of it :)
And anyway I'm not sure there is any "disadvantages" per se with any method. It's a matter of time spent practicing. And you can even combine the methods (by valving the 2nd hole in an overblow harp in order to play the Eb on a C harp)

I'll try to answer you anyway.
From my (small) experience with half-valving, it is very difficult to obtain valved bend on holes 6 (and above) on c harps (and keys above). And the valved bends dealing with only one reed, their nature is very different from the regular bends and overblows. Thus they can be tricky to obtain and sustain,while the overblows are obtained just by inversing the breathe compared to the regular bend of the same hole.
A last point, it may be that valves buzz.

For the overblows, one of the biggest disadvantages is that you've got to tweak your harp to have it really playable.
Another one is that the 1rst hole overblow and the overdraws are a bit tricky. This is where valving the 2nd hole can make sense.

Hope this helps a bit

Laurent
www.planetharmonica.com


Envoyé de mon iPhone

> Le 3 mars 2017 à 19:14, Bob Marsolais <b...@marsolais.com> a écrit :
>
> I'm a beginner and working my way through Winslow's "Harmonica for
> Beginners" book. I highly recommend it. I'm learning to bend and trying to
> decide how to best go about achieving full chromaticity with diatonic harps.
> As we all know there seems to be two ways to do this - half-valving and
> overblows. Both approaches have their proponents and significant players at
> that. People like PT Gazell, Brendan Power, Adam Gussow, Jason Ricci, and
> others. They all talk about the virtues of their preferred method, but I
> haven't found a conversation about the disadvantages of one approach over
> the other. I'm trying to decide which is the best approach for this
> beginner to focus on for now. Perhaps I'll learn both later, but for now,
> I'm trying to stay focused on one method. Both methods give you full

> chromaticity, but which one has fewer for a beginner?

[Gary Lehmann]

Full chromaticity with double reed bends can be achieved with a few
different tunings.
I like Brendan Power's diatonic tuning called Power Chromatic, it gives you
all the chromatic notes except for one, the b6 of the home key.
Roger Myerson came up with a tuning independently that strongly resembles
this tuning, it is a variation of the Newton FourKey. He calls it
PentaBender.
I have three of these, keys of C, G, and A. Here is a video where I show
how the blues can be played using this tuning.
Sorry if I don't perform brilliantly on this tuning, just goes to show that
practice can either pay off or not, depending on whether you apply it or
not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2F5MsAcqIM

On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:54 AM, Laurent <laure...@planetharmonica.com>
wrote:

[Richard Hunter]

The discussions so far of these different techniques for achieving
chromaticity on the diatonic harp haven't directly mentioned what I think
is the most important thing: you get different sounds with these
techniques. As Vern has mentioned on one or two occasions, process is
product. Valved reeds sound different from non-valved.

I suggest that anyone who wants to explore chromatic playing on the
diatonic should make a point of comparing the sound of a valved harp to
their more-traditional diatonics to see which they prefer.

The only other thing I can add is that the learning curve on overbends can
be steep--at least it was for me. I use the technique now on most of the
material I play, but it took a long time to get there. Maybe that's
because I grew up as a harmonica player before overblowing entered the
mainstream, so I had a lot of previous learning to overcome. I see people
in their late teens/early 20s now who've mastered the techniques in a
fraction of the time it took me, thanks to Youtube (and thanks also to a
new generation of instruments that are designed to be easier to overblow
out of the box).

Anyway, a different sound is a different sound, so make your choice and
take your chances.

regards< Richard Hunter

--
"The Lucky One" 21st century rock harmonica project at
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/richard-hunter-s-the-lucky-one/x/5259889#/
Author, "Jazz Harp" (Oak Publications, NYC)
Latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://hunterharp.com
Vids at http://www.youtube.com/user/lightninrick
Twitter: @lightninrick­­­‪­‪­­­‪‪­­‪­‪­‪­­­­‪­­‪‪‪­‪‪­­­‪­‪­­­­‪‪­­‪­‪­­­­

[rex]

Bob, I may be going off topic here, but first I would ask myself what kinds of music I want to play. Then I would take note of what harps the accomplished players of that type of music are using. Your road has been traveled before. When I first started playing over 15 years ago I too was after full chromatic scales. I had played guitar for 30 years and wanted all the notes. I soon learned that for the kinds of music I was playing I really didn't need ALL the notes. For me alternate tunings like the Lee Oskar Melody Maker or Country Tuned plus swapping harps during a tune gave me all the notes I needed using standard bends. Problem solved. My harmonica album collection has a lot of Lee Oskar, Charlie McCoy, and Buddy Greene albums. Some of my other favorite albums are by Mike Caldwell, Jelly Roll Johnson, and James Conway. These guys all use Richter harps and cross tuned harps (Country Tuned and Melody Maker). So I went down that road and found it works for me. If you want to play classical or jazz then take note of what the best classical or jazz players are using. My advice to you would be learn to play the harp you have and start listening to professional musicians. Some albums will keep showing up in your CD player. Take note of what those people are playing. 

PT Gazell once told me at a SPAH teaching event that he doesn't half valve to get full chromatic scales as much as to "shade" notes...i.e. to be more expressive. 

[Bob Marsolais]

Thank you everyone who responded! I see now that the premise of my question
was wrong - full chromaticity on a diatonic isn't really important. Instead
the concern should be what kind of music and tone I'm after. Overbending is
used so often, it's pretty much an essential skill if I want to be a
respectable harp player. That skill, combine with the knowledge of various
harp tunings like Gary mentioned, will lead me to the appropriate harp.



So much to learn, so little patience!

[Gary Lehmann]

Part of the charm of the harmonica is the chords--so I find Melody Maker (and Major Cross) to be the best compromise between chords and chromaticity.
But for blues, Richter is tough to beat.
So learning to OB, if only holes 5 and 6, carries that tuning close enough to chromaticity for my purposes. Let's face it, the bottom of the harp is largely chromatic, with draw bends. And a lot of folks avoid the top octave--not the top players of course. . .
I see a lot of folks using half valved harmonicas who are unaware of the purpose of those valves--
Sent from my iPhone