[Lowboy]

Good ruminations Quetscher. Important topic and worth its own thread.

I have some thoughts to contribute as I have been thinking about expressiveness for a long time. I am letting my thoughts distill a bit before sharing.

In the meantime, two things. First, can you explain (or send a recording) of overblowing (up bend) on a melodica? When I play very softly (almost too soft for performance) my tuning meter will move up maybe a couple of cents. But I have yet to figure out how to bend up significantly at a volume that is useful. You also said in the post that bending down is not possible on the melodica. By combining several techniques together, I can bend down all over the place, particularly the bottom third of the range of the melodica.

How can we have such a divergence experiences?

I agree that musical expression results from a combination of the capability of the instrument and the expressive imagination and capability of the player. I am looking forward to the discussion. But, moving beyond words is also good. So, as a precursor to the discussion, I present again a link to Billy Branch on harmonica demonstrating expressiveness at its highest level with a free reed instrument. This is what I mean by expressiveness.

Lowboy