The Jaw Harp

for those of you who have an interest in learning to play the jaw harp i'd like to try to teach you. for those of you who don't have an interest in it, i'd suggest you become interested. it's a fun instrument to play, easy enough once you figure out the right way to do it, and it's easy to carry around and whip out when ya need it.

well i'll start by giving you a little picture with numbers on it for easy reference. i started out with a primitive lookin murchunga that i ordered from nepal (the murchunga's the nepalese jaw harp) and it worked out fine, but the big steel ones you get around here end up being easier to use. the thing in the middle is the tongue. the two rods on each side of the tongue are what you put your teeth on, so you'll want to wrap the rods in a little bit of duct tape where your teeth'll touch. you tape them almost completely around but you leave little spaces open on the insides near the tongue. if tape touches the tongue it'll deaden the sound and you won't be able to use it. you'll definitely want to tape the rods, though, because that's steel and you won't want to clamp your teeth down hard onto it without some kind of cushion protection. well, now is the time to play it.

you hold the harp on the ring with the tongue prong stickin away from you. you put your index finger by the 1, your middle finger by the 2, and your thumb on the 3. your thumb should be firm against the frame but shouldn't touch the toungue, or else it won't be able to move. your fingers don't need a good grip on the frame or anything, but they need to be able to hold it in place and press the rods hard against your teeth. this is the part that confuses people a bit, but i'll try to make sense. if you have a harp in your hand, this'll be a little easier. you basically just bite down on the rods, but not on the outside edges. think of it like this..if your left hand wasn't pressing it against your teeth, the harp would fall down, so you're not clamping onto the top and bottom of the rods. you're biting onto the sides that are slanting towards you. by biting onto these slopes, your teeth are open just enough to let the tongue pass freely between that space between your top and bottom teeth. the rods are held against your two front teeth, with the end of the rods being flush with the outside edge of your right front tooth. and i gotta be clear...it's not your teeth that are holding the jaw harp to your mouth, it's your left hand. you're not even really biting the rods, they're just being pressed against the edges of your teeth. you really gotta press the rods firm against your teeth. when you flick the tongue, the whole harp vibrates. if the rods aren't firm against your teeth, they'll vibrate and rattle against your teeth. if it's firm against your teeth, though, it'll stop the harp from vibrating and the tongue will be the only thing moving. this makes your mouth the resonator, which gives the harp its volume. through all of this, your lips will rest against the rods, and the only open part of your mouth will be the space between the rods and the gap that the tongue prong goes in and out of. you'll find out pretty quick if any part of your lip is too close to the tongue, because the tongue'll swing into it and it'll hurt like hell.

well now the harp should be firm against your teeth and ready to play. you want to be sure that the tongue and prong have nothing in their way when they pass in and out of your mouth. you really can mess up your teeth, but you won't if you make sure that no parts of your teeth are in the way of the tongue when it swings into your mouth. to play the harp, you just flick the prong on the end of the tongue, flicking away from your face with your right hand index finger. the tongue will swing and it'll make a sound, if you inhale or exhale while flicking it, the harp will be louder. to get the signature jaw harp sound, you make different movements with your mouth and your tongue. the harp's sound comes from the shape of your mouth, so if your mouth is bigger, the sound will be lower, if smaller, the sound'll be higher. try mouthing "oooo-eeeee". by mouthing "ooooo", your mouth makes the low sound, and with "eeeeee" you make the high sound. try flicking the tongue of the harp while mouthing that back and forth, like "ooooeeeeeoooooeeeee". there's your lowest note and your highest note, and the harp's range is made up of those two notes and anything in between. to play the jaw harp, you just flick the tongue to a rhythm, and alternate your inhales, exhales and mouth shapes to make different melodies. once you get that down, you can start the next and one of the last techniques, which is to flick the tongue prong both away from you and towards you. you're then able to get twice as many notes from the same amount of effort as for the one. if you flick it back and forth fast enough, you can get a continuous wave of notes, and as far as i know of, that's the best a jaw harp can be played.

once you're able to get sound out of the jaw harp, it's a fun little instrument to play. and you don't really have to "practice" the jaw harp or any instrument for that matter to get better, you just have to play it. if you can get a sound from an instrument, you're playing it. you might not be playing it good or how you're supposed to, but keep playin it and it'll keep on gettin better. practice will make you better too, though...