Bends e Cia.

Kenji, grava em DVD e manda para a Alemanha. Aí dos EUA mesmo, sem demora.
Harp-L tá legal no momentos, algumas coisas boas. Quem for em www.harp-l.org vai até achar um Link para um trecho de uma música com Jason Ricci e Chris Michalek (pronuncia-se Micaulik).

I am spent at the moment. One day of snowboarding in not very nice conditions (wet snow, fog, snowing, bumpy tracks) drains a lot out of me. I'll probably get to bed.
All the best,
snowboarding Fernando

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Re: [Harp-L] Bending reeds on Chromatic Harmonica, a done thing?
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:16:10 -0000
From: Winslow Yerxa <>
To: harp-l

A dual-reed bend is not the "average" of the frequencies of the blow and the draw reeds. It is a range of frequencies, the highest being the unbent pitch of the higher pitch reed, and the lowest being the opening pitch of the lower pitched reed. The opening pitch of a reed is a little less than a semitone higher than the closing (standard)
pitch. The player can move freely through an infinite series of pitches within this range.

For instance, in Hole 3 of a C diatonic you have Draw B and Blow G.
Blow G will open at a slightly flat Ab. Thus the range of bending for the draw B is from the unbent B down to the slightly-flat Ab. With a little skill the player can produce any gradation of pitch between those boundaries. I don't understand in what sense this is an "average."

Except at the lowest and highest extremes, any pitch produced will involve both reeds sounding the same pitch at the same time. The vibration of the bent note does not transfer over time from one reed to the other. Time has nothing to do with it (or very little). The lower the pitch of the bent note descends, the more the opening reed takes over the note and the less the closing reed participates. So it's a function of pitch and not of time. For instance, in the above example, the unbent B would be sounded entirely by the Draw B reed, while the Ab would be sounded *almost* entirely by the G blow reed in opeining mode.

Likewise, a bent note on a chromatic does not choke out as a function of time. Time has nothing to do with it. A bent note on a chromatic harmonica can be sustained as long as the player can supply breath.
And it can be bent much farther than on a diatonic because it is not limited by the opening pitch of the opposite reed.

To demonstrate, I have placed an mp3 demonstrating a chromatic bend on my harmonica sample website:

http://www.angelfire.com/music5/winslowyerxa/chrobend.mp3

I'm bending Draw D in Hole 5 of a chromatic down 3 semitones and back up on a single breath with a duration of nearly 17 seconds. The note doesn't choke out; the duration is a function of my breath capacity.
The same not on a C diatonic would be lmited to slightly more than 1 semitone in bending range.

Winslow