Hi all. I’m working slowly through JP’s blues course. My playing is slowly improving, but i’ve hit a road block with throat vibrato and the coughing technique.
I can do it fairly slowly and get the notes stopped and restarted with my throat, but i certainly can’t play vibrato at even half the speed of JP.
I’ve been trying it for several weeks and I know that JP said it could take a year, but i want to know - short of practicing it away from the harmonica (which I’m doing), how do i improve it?
I find doing it on the draw notes MUCH harder than on the blow notes.
Don’t use your throat try coughing from the diaphragm a sort of uh uh uh uh sound, put your hand on your diaphragm and cough from there, you can do throat vibrato using this method. Tremelo can be done a couple of ways with the hands waved in front of the harp, which is ok, the diaphragm can be used the same but faster, a method is regulating the air flow with the bottom part of the mouth and the cheeks using the tongue too very effective for pursers, I’ve heard a few guys pull that off and it sounds great and I’ve known they’re pursers but I’ve been impressed by this a few times if you can master it, it’s quite cool. One of the most effective Tremelo and vibrato by a purser I’ve heard was Paul Butterfield, his attack and timing was also amazing. When I first heard him I couldn’t believe he was a purser.
I don’t use the backwards coughing technique when doing throat vibrato. I tried to use it many eons ago, but I couldn’t get it down because I would get light headed right after doing it. But, I managed to finally get it when I started lessons with Todd Parrott. I consider him and Will Wilde to be the experts of throat vibrato.
The truth is that the cough vibrato doesn’t have a huge sound when playing lip pursed compared to the vibrato technique that I was taught. I imagine my vibrato as if I’m gulping water down from a water bottle. The throat bobbles up and down when you’re drinking anything like water or pop, so I apply that gulping motion when I’m breathing into the harmonica to do my throat vibrato. Todd has a similar explanation to mine, although it’s a slightly different topic.
Here’s Todd’s explanation for it (1:00:30 mark)
Thanks so much for this. I watched much of this video. It’s really enlightening. I can’t get the movement even half the speed i would need - or at least only for half a second and then not. But i think it’ll just need constant practice. I’m fascinated by chat about different harmonica types. I’ve got about 10 special 20’s but i’ve never tried anything else at all.
Out of interest, if i want to get a grittier sound is there anything worth testing out?
Well a lot of guys on here swear by the Hohner crossover, the comb is pearwood, I had one years ago but didn’t like it, same as Marine bands back then the wood would swell with moisture from saliva and your breath, you used to have to cut the comb or sand it and re-varnish and there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t rip you mouth to pieces or you would pick up splinters. I was put off wooden combed harps for that reason plus the fact, I don’t think wood is the greatest material when it comes to hygiene. So I tend to stick with plastic combs. To be fair I think Hohner have improved the varnishing process of their Marine bands and their Crossover’s the best thing you can do is ask on here. I think just trying a harp you’ve never tried before will bring out something new in you every time just like getting a new guitar. I would stay away from Lee Oskars as I personally think they are way too bright. Seydel’s are expensive but are said to be good as are some Suzuki models again the cost a bit more than the SP20
Are you talking about the vibrato or the gear itself? /genq
If you’re talking about vibrato, then the grittiest sounding thing that the harmonica can do is make it growl. There’s a whole thread dedicated to it, if you want to check that out. In terms of a gritty sounding harp, that’s gonna be more of a challenge because it’s not the gear that makes your harp sound gritty, but your technique by using double stops.
But if you want a gritty sounding harp, I recommend the Hohner Rocket (I have an OG Rocket in F and it plays extremely well). It might be slightly over budget for you if you live in the USA, but I also recommend the Hohner Blues Harp. It’s basically a Marine Band, but more budget friendly and it plays really nice too. The only thing that I don’t like about it is the comb being wood and as a lip purser, I hate that it swells up on me right in the middle of a solo.
@KeroroRinChou that was my issue with wooden combs, I thought they may have sorted it out with extra varnish but judging from what you say they haven’t. I haven’t played a Rocket they are very expensive here in the UK.
I guess it’s gear related. I notice that on many of the videos I watch, just listening to someone blowing or drawing a straight note has more of an “edge” to the sound (and it’s brighter) than the tone I get on my special 20s.
I am super-inexperienced and don’t understand half of the terms I read in threads… but I’m a pro musician and understand what I’m watching and listening to.
I’ve bought a couple of hohner rocket-amps and I’m awaiting delivery.
It might be the fact that most experienced harp players you are listening to, are using tongue blocking and or double stops ( playing two reeds at the same time) this gives the harp a fat gritty sound. I’m thinking this is what you might be referring to?
I can technically block notes with my tongue - where I block lower notes to play single higher notes, or even a 1&4 octave blow, but what is the difference / advantage between using tongue blocking to play a note vs just playing it?
Essentially, I can do it but I don’t know why I would use it!
Essentially, you block the notes on the left of the note your playing, and forming an embrochre with your cheek, I also get the harp right in there as far as I can get it. This gives you a deeper fatter tone, add to that double stops, ( playing the note next to your target reed slightly or fully depending on what your trying to play) will give you a grittier sound as will playing from the back of the throat or your Diaphragm. As @KeroroRinChou has stated you can also do the growl a technique similar to snoring through the harp as you play. Later on if you want that Chicago or West Coast sound, you’ll probably go through an amp and a bullet, mic with a bit of reverb this will fatten and dirty your sound even more, Tongue blocking however is not the only technique I use, pursing for playing runs and fast phrases and Tongue blocking for my chords, a lot of harp players use this happy medium, it makes you a bit more versatile as a player.
I learned octaves and slaps early on, but people on Facebook were forcing me to become a pure tongue blocker later in my journey, claiming I can play anything on the harmonica with it compared to lip pursing. However what these people don’t realize is that the players I listen to don’t regularly tongue block or barely use it at all, especially Terry McMillan. I hate pure tongue blockers for being extremely pushy with their technique claiming it as a “cure-all”, but call lip pursing “limiting” when they haven’t actually learned it. I mostly lip purse, but I do some octaves and slaps on occasion, but those people have an issue with that.
One guy claimed that Terry was a tongue blocker because his lips were big when playing the harp and played his fast licks with tongue switching, which I highly doubt he ever did as his fast licks were simply adjacent holes right next to each other with bends played articulately. Besides if he played exclusively tongue blocked, how come he uses rakes frequently in his playing? The guy who thought Terry was a tongue blocker wanted evidence of him being a lip purser, then proceeded to call me lazy for “not learning it properly” and “not giving Terry the credit he deserves”.
@david7 - this is a great question, and a big thanks to @KeroroRinChou for sharing that awesome YT vid excerpt of Todd Parrott talking about vibrato, and I think he has one of the sweetest vibrato’s out there.
Notice that he said “It didn’t sounds like this at the beginning!” Like most things with harmonica and life, we use way too much tension when we’re first learning, and then gradually we learn to relax into it more and more.
Learning how to do the “coughing” technique in a softer more relaxed manner like @KeroroRinChou called it “gulping” - I think that’s probably a helpful way of thinking about it.
I think there are basically 2 ways you can approach getting faster and more controlled vibratos.
I asked my vocal teacher about vibrato, and he told me it’s 5-6 vibrations per second. So I started putting a metronome on 60 BPM, and worked on draw notes doing 2 “coughs” (or “gulps”) per second, and then got it up to 3, and then 4, and then eventually 5, and now that I’ve been doing it for a couple years I can even get 6. While doing this, you can experiment with putting your tongue in various positions to vary the depth of the vibrato.
But the other method, which I think is superior because it puts such great demand on other aspects of technique - especially breathing - is what Joe Filisko calls the “Big Tone Train” which he talks about here:
I’m guessing that @davidkachalon thinks that playing the train is the best way to develop vibrato speed and control?
