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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
Show HN: Let’s Bend – Open-Source Harmonica Bending Trainer
Stratoscope wrote 4 hours 12 min ago:
This is very nice, thank you for creating it. I have a few suggestions,
but they will have to wait until later this week. I see an email
address on the Imprint page on your website - is that the best way to
reach you?
Somewhat related, for any harmonica player who likes to play cross harp
for that bluesy sound, and wants to branch out into songs written in a
major or natural minor key (e.g. much pop/rock/country), let me suggest
the Melody Maker tuning. This gives you a major scale (along with the
relative minor) all up and down the harp in the cross harp position.
And you can still bend notes. You just don't have to for the
major/minor scale notes.
For example, a High C Melody Maker is perfect for playing Stevie Nicks'
vocal in Dreams. The song is in A minor, but the A minor harps from Lee
Oskar and Seydel are in a lower register. The High C matches her range.
The song begins with "Now here you go again", and Stevie has a
signature vocal bend on the word "go". She starts that word nearly a
semitone flat and then slides up to pitch.
On the Melody Maker, that note is on the draw 3, where it is super fun
and easy to start with a light bend to mimic her vocal style.
The nice thing is that you don't have to be so precise on your pitch
with this bend. You just start low and slide up, like Stevie does.
I used to make my own Melody Makers by retuning a conventional Richter
harp. You raise the blow 2 by a full step to get the second note in the
major scale, and raise the draw 5 and draw 9 by a half step to get the
minor 7ths. So an F Richter harp becomes a High C Melody Maker and is
labeled that way when you buy one.
For years, Lee Oskar only sold Melody Makers in five keys, but now they
have expanded it to nine keys including the High C and the Bb that I
use for the late Songbird's vocal on You Make Loving Fun.
Seydel has always sold their Melodic Maker (same as Melody Maker) in
all 13 keys, but their cover design is so different from Lee Oskar and
Hohner that I never could switch back and forth without off-by-one-note
errors.
(Yes, 13 keys, because there is both a Low C and a High C.)
Oh - how do you retune a harmonica? File the reeds! File off some
weight at the tip and it raises the pitch. Scratch off some weight at
the attached end and it lowers the pitch. You just need a single edge
razor blade to lift the reed out of its slot, a fine point file or
other small file, and an instrument tuner like Let's Bend.
noduerme wrote 3 hours 34 min ago:
Very interesting! I've played harp casually all my life without ever
really learning about alternate tunings. The Melody Maker sounds like
it would open some nifty possibilities! Someone bought me a chromatic
harp once as a gift and I could never figure out how to play it
properly. It's funny though, because as a piano and guitar player I
never thought about what I was doing. I just play a cheap blues band
or marine band, and I realize now that the positions that feel most
normal to me are 1st, 2nd and oddly, 12th. I remember once jamming
with an old folk rocker (my former guitar teacher) and he started
playing something in F major while I was on a C harp. He didn't think
I'd be able to follow - at the time, I just called this "cross harp"
because I thought that was the generic term for playing in any other
key! I don't know why playing in a major 4th seems so unusual, but he
was kinda shocked that I pulled it off. There's only one note you
can't play straight in that setup...
dhon_ wrote 5 hours 51 min ago:
This is the best explanation I've found of the mechanics of pitch
bending [1] Essentially, match the size of the resonance chamber in
your mouth to the note you're trying to bend to. This is different for
every note you bend. You can find the right size by making "hissing"
noises while breathing in (without harmonica) and matching the pitch.
[1]: https://youtu.be/Fp-GxEaChr0?si=-E9uDTQx51gtnd9C
incognito124 wrote 8 hours 2 min ago:
Damn language barrier, I thought this was about the accordion
kpgraham wrote 8 hours 21 min ago:
Harp player here. When I first started playing, I had a Gindick's book,
Country and Blues Harmonica For the Musically Hopeless. This was maybe
35 years ago. I would recommend that book and the tape (cd? mp3?) that
comes with it, for beginners.
You can't see the notes you are playing on a harmonica. You have to
hear them. You start by playing clear single notes and then shaping the
note by articulating eeeh-yah or something similar and the note
magically bends. You have to hear the note so you can tell if the note
bends. It is very organic, and I don't think an app will help much. It
may confirm what is happening, but it is not going to help if you can't
do it.
Personally, I played along with Little Walter's greatest hits on my
hour long morning commute, and eventually it was just natural to bend
the notes at the right time.
My advice is to look for Jason Ricci on YouTube. He has hundreds or
thousands of videos on beginner to advanced subjects. He is a weird
dude, but I've never known a better teacher.
jofer wrote 3 hours 23 min ago:
I also learned from that book + tape about 30 years ago. I also have
to strongly agree with this. It's quite different from learning
stringed instruments. I'm sure it has a lot in common with some
brass instruments, but either way, seeing doesn't help. Hearing and
feeling is everything. That also makes it easier than most to learn
via cassette tape! :)
The app seems neat, but focused on precision in bending. Precision in
bends doesn't matter a ton for most styles. It's more about feel.
Build and resolve tension. Don't worry too much about hitting things
exactly. That advice will eventually fail you if you go into styles
that need a more complete scale, but for blues/rock/country, it's
much more about intuition than precision. The best way to learn is
to play along with a lot of things and build "feel" instead of trying
to precisely hit notes. (though you do need to hit a clean note to
start bending)
abdullahkhalids wrote 9 hours 8 min ago:
This is great. Would have loved it when I used to have fun with the
harmonica.
Here is a suggestion. Display a graph of played-frequency vs time. Then
I can compare visually how my bending performance improves over time.
jimmar wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
I suppose your target audience knows what “bending” means, but I
had to google it after visiting your site. Maybe a sentence or two on
your site explaining what bending is, or a demonstration on your intro
video, would be helpful.
userbinator wrote 6 hours 53 min ago:
I know what a harmonica is and also what bending usually means, but
was perplexed at why someone would want to bend one except out of
destructive anger.
philip-b wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
When I was learning bending, I like the app "Bending Trainer" available
for both Android and iOS, with a blue on black icon
collingreen wrote 9 hours 46 min ago:
I love seeing projects that shed a little vignette on a wide world I
had no idea about! Thanks for posting!
LorenDB wrote 10 hours 13 min ago:
I love to see that you've added overbend targets! Overblowing is one of
my more favorite things to do on the harmonica, but due to it being an
advanced technique it's often overlooked.
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
Bending takes a bit of practice but it’s not terribly hard. Here are
some general tips for absolute beginners that are based simply on my
anecdotal experience as an amateur player:
1. Don’t start with a wooden harp like marine band. The metal and
plastic ones are typically a bit easier to bend.
2. One hole at a time. Ensure you can exclusively blow in a single hole
to practice
3. Lower notes are generally easier to bend than higher notes
4. Make an O with your mouth and have the tongue float in the middle.
Start by pulling, not pushing, in my experience bending on intake is
slightly easier than bending on blowing out.
5. Tighten the lips and decrease the size of the O to increase pull
force on the reed to create a bending effect, and also tighten the
airflow chamber above your tongue by pulling your tongue back and up,
then loosen it by moving your tongue forward and down
This tool looks great for helping improve once you’ve been able to
perform the initial bend. Excited to try it out!
philip-b wrote 4 hours 7 min ago:
I disagree with (1) and (3). I think for a novice bending low notes
is more difficult. For me the easiest note to bend was hole 6 on a C
harmonica. Also, I don't think wood vs plastic matters for how easy
bending is.
Stratoscope wrote 5 hours 46 min ago:
> Lower notes are generally easier to bend than higher notes
One thing to note (pun intended) is that you can only bend the higher
of the two notes in a hole. On the lower half of the harmonica, those
are the draw notes. But the upper octave switches these around. The
blow notes are the higher ones there, and those are the ones you can
bend.
balfirevic wrote 3 hours 37 min ago:
> you can only bend the higher of the two notes in a hole
Do you know why that is?
LorenDB wrote 10 hours 17 min ago:
> Don’t start with a wooden harp like marine band. The metal and
plastic ones are typically a bit easier to bend.
OTOH I find the Marine Band Crossover (with a bamboo comb) to be
probably the best bending harp out there due to it receiving detailed
factory setup.
> Lower notes are generally easier to bend than higher notes
Additionally, you'll probably find a lower key harp to bend better,
at least to a point. I feel like an A harp is the sweet spot for
bending really well without being so low that it starts becoming
difficult. G harps are good too, but require you to dig deeper to get
a good bend.
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