If I gently "break in" my harmonica, will it last longer and be easier to play? How long should my reeds last anyway?
（原文来自Pat Missin的网站，版权属于原作者）
There is a long established piece of advice that states if you play your new harmonica very gently when it is new, that it will somehow extend its playing life. I know of no reliable evidence to suggest that there is any truth in this. However, this does not stop people going though the ritual of playing them gently for the first week, or even going to the extreme of holding them out of their car windows as they drive down the road, letting the wind "loosen up" the reeds - which to me just sounds like a good way to get bugs in your harp! The most often used explanation is something like "Well, when you get a new car you have to drive it gently for the first few miles, before letting it rip." This is true, but it has very little relevance to how the harmonica works. Car engines have lots of parts that come into contact with each other and everything needs to settle into place in order to work together optimally. A harmonica has free reeds that vibrate in an airstream and they do not (unless there is a problem with the harp) come into contact with other components. Here is a better example - if you take a brand new saw and only cut balsa with it for the first week, will it last any longer when you start sawing up oak with it?
在拿到新口琴以后先轻轻演奏一段时间以延长口琴的寿命，这是一种常见的观点。不过我并没有见过任何明显的证据表明这一建议的正确性。当然，仍有人会例行公事地轻轻演奏他们的新口琴一个星期，甚至走极端——在开车时把口琴伸出窗外，让风来“放松”口琴的簧片。在我看来，这正是把口琴搞出毛病的好办法。有人解释说，“新汽车需要经过一个磨合期才可以飚起来”，这是对的，但是这不适用于口琴。汽车引擎有很多的零部件，它们需要一段时间的磨合才能很好地协同工作，但口琴只有一个在气流中振动的自由簧片，除非故障，簧片不会与任何其他部件接触（也就不存在磨合的问题）。举一个例子：如果你有一柄新锯准备用来锯硬木，但是在开始使用它的第一个星期，你只锯软木，那么以后锯硬木的时候它的寿命就会更长么？
When I first started playing the harmonica, I used to "break them in" very carefully and my harps would generally last a few weeks before I wore them out. After more than twenty years of playing, I now no longer bother to give them any special treatment when they are new and my harps seem to last almost indefinitely. I am still playing some of the first Lee Oskars that I bought back in 1986 and in the last fifteen years, I think I have only worn out four or five reeds due to playing them (although I have damaged quite a few reeds by experimenting with them). This includes several seasons working as a street musician for three months of the year, playing for eight hours a day, six days a week. That's an awful lot of time that my poor reeds have spent vibrating back and forth. The reason that they have last so long is not that they had any magical treatment in their early life, but simply that I play with good technique, that achieves volume and projection without undue stress on the reeds. That technique is something that a good teacher should be able to explain, but it is a little beyond the scope of this web page.
