[Harp-L] Tone difficulties

["Jim Konish" <konisj@xxxxxxx>]

I've been playing for about 2 and a half years, and for the past 6 months or
so, I've been focusing a lot on improving my acoustic tone.  I've tried
holding a note while adjusting my embouchure, breath pressure, etc to see
how different things affect the tone, and that's helped a lot.  I've also
been gradually adding tongue blocking into my playing, and I'm working
especially on bending in TB.  I've improved enough that my tone often
surprises me when I first start playing.  But here's the problem that I've
run into lately.  When I play for longer than about 20 minutes on one harp,
I seem to lose some of the resonance over time that was giving me a richer
acoustic tone.  Most of the time if I switch to a different key harp the
process repeats - nice rich tone (for me anyway, I know many many players on
this list would blow me away with their tone) for the first 15-25 minutes,
but then I start to lose it.  Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing
with this problem?  Could I be tightening up some muscle over time as I
play, or could it be a case of muscle fatigue leading me to actually relax a
muscle somewhere in my embouchure?  If either of those is the case, why
would my tone improve when I switch keys?  

 

If this helps with the diagnosis, I use a strange embouchure most of the
time that I've never heard or read anything about.  The opening of my lips
covers 2 or 3 holes (that varies as I play) and my tongue is in a *very
slight* U shape but not touching the harp.  As far as I can tell, I must be
guiding the air stream with my tongue through the right hole, even though it
doesn't seem like it should work.  This was just what came naturally to me
on day 2 for playing single notes and it's worked well for me ever since.

 

Thanks to all of you for all the knowledge and advice you share

 

Jim Konish