Gayle H

our breath is filling the air-chamber, when you press on keys you are opening valves that let the air out and it all comes out evenly so there is no real difference in volume. The lower notes have larger reeds that will vibrate with less pressure so they sound first and louder. Sometimes I’ve even had the low notes rob the air from the melody a…

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How do you bend the notes?

Wow, this is great, giving me ideas about how to incorporate harmony notes and chords. I just posted in another thread about how chords seem intrusive when I add them to the melody and don’t seem to blend in smoothly. You are giving me great techniques to model. Thanks!

Okay, now you are making me think about the two-handed playing again! Do you do that? Are there threads here about that? I haven’t been able to find any.

Maybe this question should go in the Technique section, but I find that when I add chords or harmony notes to the melody I am playing, the extra notes seem loud and intrusive, and it is…[Read more]

Well, I don’t know enough about the melodica to know what parts are supposed to be airtight…

But I just watched a video of Jon Batiste, in which an interviewer asked if it bothered him to only be able to use one hand to play, and he said, “No, I don’t think of this as a piano, I think of it as a horn.”

That clicked with me. The melodica may…[Read more]

Thank you for this interesting idea! I am a singer/pianist/flautist with a classical background, and my husband is a professional blues/jazz guitarist and bassist — we say we have an intermusical marriage. I teach him about classical and he teaches me about blues and jazz. I LOVE the note bending in blues and jazz, I love bending notes while…[Read more]

If you can produce a vibrato while singing, you can produce it the same way on a wind instrument. I am a singer and flautist and produce vibrato on the flute (and melodica) the same way as singing. Indeed, I feel like playing a wind instrument is just an extension of singing. But not all flautists are able to do that and there are various…[Read more]

Thanks for the suggestions. Guitar strap, keychain, maybe camera strap … no wonder search on “melodica strap” doesn’t turn up anything … except that it brought me to this forum!

With only one, okay I guess “eye” is the name for the thingy, whatever is used would have to just go around the arm or the neck, I guess it would be playable that…[Read more]