I finally decided on my concert piece this week, so in preparation for it, my teacher’s asked me to start learning tongue-block instead of puckering (for differences between these two methods, see here). While this might seem like a simple transition who has been playing pucker for the last 5 years, in essence, this was like asking me to re-learn the whole instrument from scratch.
To me, why I didn’t make the switch earlier was simply because I didn’t see a need to. Other than allowing one to play double-stops, the advantages of making the switch seemed scant. I couldn’t be more wrong. Consider what Franz Chmel says here (page 16):
There are not many instruments that offer such versatile tone production possibilities as the harmonica. Changing the oral cavity allows for many different tonal colors, ranging from hard to soft to delicate, from dark to bright…
Using the puckering method, I was actually able to produce quite a range of tonal color by changing the shape of my oral cavity, but after playing one week of tongue-block I realize it doesn’t come quite as close. The science behind this is quite simple. Like other wind instruments, a large part of the tonal production, believe it or not, comes from various parts of your upper body, as the sound resonates through your mouth, your nasal cavity, forehead, chest (singers will notice this). Because tongue-blocking requires you to widen your mouth, your oral cavity immediately enlarges, vastly improving the tone color.
It’s ironic. I initially thought that making the change to tongue-blocking was pretty futile; now I find myself in the opposite situation. After seeing the change in tonal production, why should I go back? I wonder why I wasn’t taught this method right from the start… Oh well.
