I recently playing chromatic again because I wanted to go back and actually learn it. However, a lot of my experience with learning the chromatic in my past filled with frustration. I constantly had to deal with the embouchre police in the chromatic community much more than in the diatonic community with people constantly preaching to me how lip pursing sucks and how tongue blocking is “what the chromatic is meant to be played”. I also couldn’t find any songs that I would enjoy playing because a lot of them were played with only tongue blocking, especially in the blues. I just felt extremely discouraged from learning it.
That leads into my question about octaves on chromatic. I can do the standard 3 and 4 hole splits just fine, but I need some advice on 5 hole splits. I always had trouble with 5 hole splits on the chromatic because of the size of my mouth being really small. Whenever I try to play a 5 hole split, my mouth starts to painfully stretch and I feel like I’ve pulled a muscle every time after practicing them. Is it normal to experience this when starting to play the chromatic? Also, for a little bit of context, I’m a U-blocker on the chromatic though I have tried lip pursing on chrom in the past.
1 Like
Have you tried placing the harp deeper in your mouth?
I play a lot of Chromatic, but I still struggle with 5 hole octaves. They are just…awkward.