Harmonica Cupping Technique

Video Transcript

On behalf of expertvillage.com I'm Eric Williams and I'm here to talk to you about beginning harmonica. So with another device you can use on a harmonica is called cupping which is where you cup your hand around the back of the harmonica while you're playing and you can give wah, wah effects, you can kind of mute the thing quieter and then let it louder for different dramatic effects, you can also create vibrato which is where the pitch vibrates and isolates up and down slightly with the cupping of the hand. Cupping can be used on straight harp or on cross harp. The only time you have a challenge with cupping is when you're using one of the green board mic. which I use a lot and that sticks on the back of the harmonica and gives you that really neat Chicago blues sound that's all distorted and fuzzy. The only thing is once you have the big-o harmonica mic. right there it deactivates any ability to really cup because it's in the way. But if you're doing accosted harp we'll call it, cupping is always a good thing to do. Let me demonstrate first on straight harp and show you how the cupping can give you a little bit of vibrato and different effects. So I'm getting a little bit of vibrato, I'm opening and closing the cup, just using an old time folk song and doing the cupping with that. You can turn around and do the cupping while you're doing cross harp on a blues and it has a whole lot of flavor, let's try that. The faster you move the cupping the faster the vibrato goes. It's just a matter of taste on how you want to use the cupping or not use the cupping it's just something your ear can guide you with and say, oh I like that, that's kind of neat. Something else maybe not so much but just keep trying new things experimenting and you'll get better and better at it.

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