Harmonica Lessons - Guide to Draw Bending

[Demonstration] Hi everybody, welcome to onlinelessonvideos.com. My name is Sandy Weltman. Today’s lesson is all about learning to do draw bending on the harmonica. This lesson is designed for the beginning harmonica player at level one to level two. In draw bending on the harmonica is an absolute must. If you're playing blues or simple melodies or bluegrass or any other type of music, draw bending sounds great and it's got a very emotive and a very exotic sound depending on the genre of music you're using it in. And today what we’re going to be doing is learning exactly what is a bend. We’re going to be learning about why we need to bend. We will also be learning what notes can be draw bent and then finally, we will be learning exactly how to go about doing draw bends. So, we’ve got lots to do. We will be using a harmonica today in the key of C. if you haven’t already printed out your tabs, go ahead and do that and then we will go ahead and get started. [Demonstration] So the first question we’re going to ask today is what exactly is a bend? Well, a draw bend is a note that can be lowered in pitch by breathing in on the harmonica and employing a specific technique. Draw bends can be achieved on five of the harmonicas 10 holes. Those are holes one, two, three, four and six. A total of eight notes that are otherwise unavailable on the harmonica can be produced by draw bending on those five holes. Let’s read that one more time. A draw bend is a note that can be lowered in pitch by breathing in on the harmonica and employing a specific technique. So one hole one, I'm breathing in— [Demonstration] And then employing a specific bending technique and I get this sound— [Demonstration] Then can hear it being lowered in pitch— [Demonstration] That’s on hole two. So draw bends can be achieved on five of the harmonica’s 10 holes, holes one— [Demonstration] Hole two— [Demonstration] Hole three— [Demonstration] Hole four— [Demonstration] Then hole six— [Demonstration] So to get a better understanding of exactly where those are and how those work, let’s take a look at a diagram of the harmonica in the key of C now. As you take a look at our eight draw bends, you'll notice that they’re actually specific pitches. They’re not just these arbitrary sounds that—on the harmonica. But they’re actual specific notes that you can draw bend too. So one of the things that will help you learn to do draw bending is knowing exactly what the note is and what it sounds like. So, right now I'm going to go through each of those holes that can be draw bent so you can kind of hear what each of those notes sound like. So, one hole one, we can draw bend from our D to a D flat. It sounds like this— [Demonstration] On hole two, we've got two draw bends. We can bend from the two draw which is a G down to a G flat and then down to an F. it sounds like this— [Demonstration]